Emotionally Literate Schools - London, May 2002

Michael Fielding, the Chair, opened Antidote's Emotionally Literate Schools conference in May by asking whether emotional literacy could do more than provide a band-aid over the dysfunctional elements in the current education system. Judy Sebba for the DfES followed with a question about where we were going to find hard evidence for the Antidote proposition that emotional literacy raises standards.

The presentations of the following day, delivered by young people and their teachers from five schools - Tuckswood First, Buckingham Middle, Westborough High, Cotham and Lister Community Schools - provided clear answers to both these questions. These were schools where emotional literacy had transformed the culture and climate, with dramatic consequences for young people's ability to learn.

For the most part, the schools were considered to be in serious need of improvement when their current headteachers took over. Sue Eagle described the Tuckswood she joined as a "frightening" place. Sue Benton-Stace talked about how family feuds spilled over into the corridors of Buckingham Middle. Françoise Leake spoke of mounted police keeping order in the racially-divided playgrounds of Westborough.

Now, though, Westborough is, like Cotham, a secondary school that boasts rising levels of academic achievement. Westborough has the best results of any comprehensive in its area. Between 1992 and 2000, the number of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grades A*-C had risen from eight to 39 per cent. A year after writing emotional literacy into its strategic plan, Cotham has reported a dramatic improvement in its exclusion data, attendance figures and academic results. There has been a 12 point improvement in the percentage of students getting five or more A* to C grades at GCSE (a total of 72.5%) and a nine point improvement in the average point score at A2.

But if it was emotional literacy that led to these improvements, what was the recipe? And if there is no recipe, how can what was achieved in these schools be replicated elsewhere?

Starting with relationships
There may not be a recipe, but there is a paradoxical principle: put relationships before results, and the results will improve. That means ensuring that relationships at every level - management-teacher, teacher-teacher, teacher-parent as well as teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil - are characterised by respect, interest and trust.

How is this done? Françoise Leake emphasised the need to start by ensuring that staff feel valued and supported. If you listen to them, they will listen more attentively to students, take their side and inspire them to achieve. In their turn, students will become confident enough in who they are to take a genuine interest in each other, to provide mutual support and collaborate on learning.

Westborough's Leake made it clear that this was anything but easy and cosy. It was about confronting difficult emotional situations and not tolerating abusive relationships of any sort. "Westborough," she said, "is a telling school. If there is a problem, it is talked about and dealt with. Things are never allowed to become issues."

Cotham demonstrated for participants the integrated medley of processes through which it ensures that important 'telling' can happen. Internal consultancy helps staff address the factors that block or promote their students' learning. Peer mediation schemes build a sense of community in the school. A counselling service provides young people with opportunities to address the distress that gets in the way of learning. A schools council is one of several forums giving staff, students and parents a voice. And the visual and performing arts help ensure that feeling and thought, emotion and logic, become partners in curriculum provision.

"We stress," vice principal Stephanie Quayle explained, "the importance of feeling as a counter to the fear that schools may become too rational, too instrumental, full of accountability, efficient rather than effective." The vehicle for bringing together feeling and thinking is the evolution of narratives designed to help teachers and pupils make sense of the school's purpose and how it might be achieved. "At Cotham," Quayle said, "we are trying to find the narratives or stories that carry reason, meaning, depth and conviction and explain why we are doing what we are doing."

Primary messages
The messages from the primary schools were very similar. Change had started with activities that brought teachers closer to each other. At Tuckswood, Sue Eagle sought to improve well-being among staff by inviting them to explore the reasons why they came to work. This led over time to a shared statement on values and a policy statement on spiritual development. At Buckingham Middle, a staff circle time opened up the question of how they could develop a school that fostered the person, rather than blindly pursuing academic results.

By giving staff the experience of being listened to, a conversation could develop that more fully addressed the challenge of improving teachers' and children's lives. Out of this emerged a diverse series of opportunities for pupils to ask questions, explore different perspectives and articulate their views.

By promoting the quality of relationships, these primary and secondary schools enabled students to take responsibility for their learning, and to find ways of learning from and with each other - by collaborating, challenging and questioning. Through their interactions, they could explore together the conditions that enabled them to learn, and look for ways to bring that about.


Conference reports