Joanne Tunnicliffe, Headteacher at North Kesteven Academy, Lincolnshire, spoke to us about her experience of the Secondary Midlands Jubilee Network (JN) and Quality Assurance Review (QAR).
When did you hear about Challenge Partners, and why have you chosen to partner with us?
I have been headteacher at North Kesteven Academy for six years and I heard about Challenge Partners when I first joined the school. I was introduced to Challenge Partners by a colleague who was headteacher at one of our local primary schools. I had gone to talk to them about transition in our own school and they mentioned the work they were doing with Challenge Partners. We discussed how the partnership could support and develop what we were doing at North Kesteven and soon after we joined a local hub of collaboration for the first two years of our partnership. During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic we left Challenge Partners but rejoined the year after.
The partnership has really broadened our input into the school. We find the QAR really helpful in terms of our development and really find a great deal of use in going out to other schools and seeing what they’re doing and understanding their best practice. It’s great to see another school's journey and to learn from them and see how they’ve developed as a school.
What attracted you to the Challenge Partners Jubilee Network?
We were the only secondary school in our local hub of collaboration, the other schools were primary and special schools so we felt like there was more that we could get out of our partnership. A headteacher from a Nottingham school had spoken to me about her experience of a Secondary Jubilee Network and we thought it would be more inline with what we needed. The Jubilee Network has been the best CPD that I’ve had. The opportunity to be able to share my experiences with other heads of schools around the Midlands has been great. The commonality within the schools is as helpful as the differences - to be able to talk through issues is really helpful. The open invitation to visit other schools and be shown what it is they’re doing that is working well and seeing that in practice is great. Everyone is really open and honest in the meetings and it’s great to be able to talk and then bring this back into my school and gain ideas of what would work well for us.
How was your experience at the first in person JN launch at Joseph Whitaker School?
I had not been to Joseph Whitaker School before but knew Carey, the Head, so it was good to go to that particular setting and re-establish the ground rules of how we were going to work together that year. We had a few new leaders in the network so it gave us an opportunity to get to know each other while reconnecting with the established members of the group. The leadership element of the afternoons is also helpful. Karen, who comes to our JN for that purpose, established how we were going to work and what we were going to focus on for the year with the group. It was helpful to focus on exactly what we wanted to achieve.
In terms of your first visit day this year to Elizabethan Academy, could you give a quick summary of what happened throughout the day? And was there any practice, learning or otherwise that you took away from the visit?
We started the day with a presentation from the host school. Christine, the Head, wanted to give her leaders an opportunity to show what they had been working on - there was a lot of information given to us which was great. We then looked at various aspects of the school where I focused on sixth form lessons, and it was great to see the consistency across the school. We then fed this back to Chris who was able to take this away for developmental purposes. In the afternoon we continued with leadership development, drawing on what we talked about at the launch meeting so it very much flowed, which worked really well.
I have a book dedicated to the network where I make notes of all important discussions that I then share with my colleagues. After visiting the Elizabethan Academy I really liked the fact that they had the structure of lessons very clearly defined on each whiteboard of the school. This was broken down into six elements. Checking understanding is something that we have been working on in our own setting so we brought the idea of displaying lesson structure into our own school and are adapting it to fit our own needs by changing the wording. For example, we have changed Learning Objective to Lesson Questions and have created a few extra elements. We really liked this explicit nature of lesson structure and thought it would really help us. We are launching this programme in January in all of our classrooms.
What is the value for you in visiting schools regionally? For example, are there different or similar contexts?
There are seven or eight secondary schools within about a seven mile radius in Lincoln and while we get along well with the schools the competition and politics that sit behind that mean it can be difficult to share locally at a secondary level. The whole point of Challenge Partners for us is that it is a national network and we love the idea that we get to network all over the country and visit schools to see what they are doing differently. Our Jubilee Network is spread across quite a large region and it is helpful to see the context of other schools to understand that while a school can be far away they are still experiencing the same issues as us. This provides a sense of community so you don’t feel like you’re on your own in dealing with these problems. There is a high value in going out to a wider area - you get to hear what local schools are doing regardless, but going out and seeing what other schools are doing from across the country is one of the most valuable things we get from Challenge Partners.
How has a focus on leadership with BTS Spark helped your leadership development?
Karen, who leads our sessions, is very reflective which creates an atmosphere which allows us to have our own thoughts. We have been looking at every aspect of leadership and reflecting on how we are as leaders and what our barriers to progression might be. We spoke about what puts us in ‘our box’ and it was helpful to talk about this and the strategies to overcome this. We don’t get a lot of reflection time as head teachers unless we create the capacity ourselves because it is such a busy job. The afternoon session we do with JN enables me to have that time to reflect as does the drive to and from the school. The session provides a further opportunity to reflect on what we’ve done and think about how I'm going to present these ideas to my colleagues at North Kesteven.
You have undertaken the Quality Assurance Review for 3 years with another scheduled in 2024. What is the value of hosting reviews for your school?
The Lead Reviewers have been incredibly helpful. Rob Bourdon-Pierre has been to our school twice now and has been very supportive which we have really appreciated. The QAR has allowed us to show our progress over time which has been really helpful.
In terms of us going out on reviews, there are some members of my team who would go on a review every week if they were able to! They really love to explore other schools and they always bring back fabulous ideas.
We thank Joanne Tunnicliffe 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!