Belvedere Junior School

Doing the PROGRESS Programme enabled us to get to know the staff much better, so that we could support them. That has raised the quality of teaching, because people no longer think they are doing it ‘for management’. Also, the children’s behaviour has changed, as a result of getting the opportunity to think about themselves, where they would like the school to be, what they would like the school to do for them and how we could all move forward.
Nicola Bulpitt, Headteacher

The staff at Belvedere Junior have always worked hard to build a supportive and caring team which works well together and is focused on shaping a happy atmosphere that supports children in their learning.

At the time of starting the PROGRESS Programme, though, this ideal was looking a little frayed. An Ofsted inspection had concluded that the school needed to improve the quality of teachers’ planning so that students were sufficiently challenged in their learning and their behaviour. The senior team responded by increasing their observation of lessons in a way that was experienced as being more judgmental than helpful. As teachers tried to deal with the anxiety they felt about their performance, they found it harder to be collaborative and supportive.

Children observed that teachers were becoming busier and seemed to have little time for them. The decline in adult attention made them feel less valued and, as a result, less able to focus and get on with each other.

Through PROGRESS, the staff identified even better ways of learning from each other. These included systems for joint planning, for observing good practice and sharing expertise. They came up with a system called Guardian Angels that involved each member of staff drawing a name out of a hat and then anonymously finding ways to make that person’s life more pleasant at school.

Thinking about getting to know children even better led them to focus on timetabling informal 1-1 chat time with each child on a rolling programme. This is in addition to the opportunities for interaction provided by timetabled circle time sessions and themed enrichment days, where staff and children work together on a topic for a day.

Children looked for ways to increase the focus on things going well instead of children only being noticed when things went badly. They came up with a system called Secret Agents that involves one child in each class being chosen to look out for things that are going well and report back to the teacher. Interviewed a term after completing the first stage of the Programme, the headteacher reported that she had not expected so see such a significant improvement in either the quality of teaching and learning or in children’s behaviour.