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Antidote helped the school to take a close look at itself and its culture in the classroom. The data, and the process of exploring it, helped the school to become cleverer and unpick where it might be possible to create lasting improvement. As a result staff are working more effectively as a team and there is less playtime fallout.
Chris Tay, headteacher
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This is a tiny rural school, with 96 children on roll. It gets glowing Ofsted reports. The children are happy and achieve well. So it might not seem like somewhere that would feel it had much to gain from the PROGRESS Programme.
But it is precisely the small scale that makes it so difficult for hotspots of staff and student discontent to be heard: better to simmer than to rock the boat when there are so few of you.
Headteacher Chris Tay says he was looking for was for an outside agency that could:
- Take an objective look at his school
- Enable everybody’s views to be heard
- Find where there might be things that could be changed for the better that would not have emerged in the normal structure of meetings
The key things that emerged were issues:
- For children about the way play spaces were being used. These led to changes to the way school grounds are used
- For staff about ensuring everyone gets to hear information that is relevant to them. This led to work on bulletin boards, news sheets and other communication systems
The school had for some time been concerned about the trend for above average children to under-achieve. Exploring why students reported low on feeling 'capable' opened up an understanding of how children at Longden did not know what they were good at. This has led the school to revisit the way it provides feedback to children on their progress and attainment.
