Jane Hayman, Headteacher of Fred Nicholson School, spoke to us about the school’s experience of partnership with Challenge Partners, including the Quality Assurance Review and local Hub collaboration.
Located in Dereham, Norfolk, Fred Nicholson School is a complex needs residential special school for young people aged 7 to 18. The school has been partnered with Challenge Partners since 2019.
Fred Nicholson’s most recent review in July 2023 was adapted into a Lead Reviewer consultation due to Covid. The school is a member of the East Coast Hub.
When did you hear about Challenge Partners, and why have you chosen to partner with us?
The hub lead from the eastern region invited me to an introductory session to find out more. Consequently I felt it was a really good opportunity to see outside of Norfolk – nothing wrong with Norfolk! But equally I wanted to have the challenge and ideas that leaving the county might offer, seeing other schools and magpie those ideas back here.
Given this has been my first headship, I really like the idea to calibrate what Good and Outstanding practice looked like. I felt it would be really useful to have that challenge year to year between inspections. We’ve had those regular touchpoints rather than waiting until [Ofsted] comes in, and built this into our regular quality assurance in school.
Can you tell me about your recent experience of hosting a Quality Assurance Review, and what worked well for you?
What has been good is having somebody who is very experienced leading the review, coming into the setting with all the background knowledge of having seen many other settings. They share ideas and connections – part of Lead Reviewer Martin Bertulis' conversation with us was that it would be really useful for us to have conversations with various schools for us to follow up with. This would have otherwise cost lots of research on our end.
Despite having to push our review to the end of the academic year in July, we found it very useful, particularly for new members of the team who hadn’t had the opportunity to have people question them and to talk confidently about their subject and area of expertise. Someone coming in, posing a challenge and getting them to think about their areas helped them gain their confidence ahead of a likely inspection by Ofsted this year. Those staff now know that they do know their stuff, what their priorities are and what they were working towards.
Post pandemic we have been looking at a consistency of practice and knowledge, including within the TA team where we see quite a lot of change. It is really important to define what good practice looks like, both for learning and engagement, in particular supporting pupils' processing and understanding their emotions. Having the Lead Reviewer come and work with our team is another pair of eyes to see this through the school and was a really good process to go through.
There were no surprises – it gave us important reassurance that we were on the right track. It's an opportunity to get honest feedback and follow next steps. The Lead Reviewer gave us feedback throughout the process to make clear what he needed to hear and see, and it was a collaboration. It was very much: What do you want to gain from this and what do you want your leaders to benefit from?
It also gave confidence that we will consider putting ourselves forward for a Challenge Partners Area of Excellence this year for our specialist resource base. The Lead Reviewer said they think there is something to celebrate there and there is something to take forward, which has given us the confidence to go for it!
What’s one thing that you changed or implemented as part of a review, and what was its impact?
One of our reviews that was pre-pandemic was around an identified Key Stage within which the practice wasn’t as strong. We were all in agreement around that and we got into the nitty-gritty about what we could do and how we could tackle this. This helped us to strategise what went into the development plan. It wasn’t an accusatory issue, it was a collaborative human approach to how we would deal with it.
It also was a point where we were recognising how well the behaviour management was being supported in school. It was a good opportunity to take this back to the team and say ‘here are all the things you are doing fantastically well!’. Similarly our most recent review, referring back to our Area of Excellence plans, allowed us to have a Lead Reviewer in to say ‘are we ready?’, which I have been able to report back to the governors, as well as plan to use as evidence within our NAS accreditation for Enhanced Practice in two years’ time.
What has been your, and your senior leaders’, experience and value of reviewing other schools?
They have all absolutely loved it and I did too! I have had to take a back seat and try to be generous to spread it around the team as they have all found it so useful.
You compare and contrast – everyone has come back with ideas and enthusiasm from looking at other schools, either because it supports you to know you are doing the right things in your own school, or you see good ideas to think about how you can evolve your practice. And people have stayed in contact afterwards. One of the schools in particular we linked up with last year had some really amazing stats for very reduced use of physical intervention around management of dysregulated young people. We were really interested in how they were achieving that and we have stayed in contact to consider how that can inform our practice.
There’s 14 LA -maintained special schools in Norfolk. We wouldn’t get the breadth of experience and opportunity unless we went out of county. Reviewing other schools gives us a whole world to go and visit! While we do collaborate heavily within Norfolk already, it's great to cross-pollinate out of county and make those links to shake up your thinking.
What has been the value of accessing your local hub of special schools?
That’s been really, really good. We have all agreed for the last four to five years that the pot of money that goes into the hub goes into subsidising leadership coaching. As a school we chose to add to that and use the coaching beyond the subsidised hub funding, having seen that value in it. This has led to improved practice, and better decision making around career development.
We’ve also had collaborative work around assessment and we have show and tell sessions between senior leaders around different areas of practice, or initiatives in our schools. Particularly with us opening a sixth-form, it was useful to be a part of the hub to see what was out there, to not feel like we were creating something from scratch as there were all those ideas at the table.
For a localised context, we have been able to temperature check what is going on in different schools in our region, so that networking is really valuable, and sharing practice and having people on the ground nearby who you can talk to about things.
With regards to Challenge Partners’ National Network Conferences, with the content and the learning being online I have taken lots away from that and really benefit from them.
Is there anything else that you would like to add?
I really value Challenge Partners. While budgets are tight and we have to go through and work out which things you’ll keep and spend on, we do stick with Challenge Partners as we find the partnership has a lot of worth – at school level, as well as for the leaders.
We thank Jane for taking the time to talk to us. If you are a partner with Challenge Partners and would like to share your story, contact partnershipsteam@challengepartners.org and we would love to talk to you!