Rural strides

Teachers in small schools often speak about the joys of their role, but there are pressures, discovers Julie Nightingale.

The challenge of recruiting and retaining headteachers in sufficient numbers has been a key priority for the College over the last four years, as it has for government and the profession in general.

Nationally attention tends to focus on the needs of large urban schools in initiatives such as National Challenge. Less publicised has been the difficulty in finding new heads and building leadership capacity experienced by some rural schools, small primaries in particular.

In Cumbria, for example, where half of the 500,000 population live in a rural area, some 220 schools match the government definition of a small school as having fewer than 200 pupils and 48 schools have fewer than 50 on roll. Cumbria County Council figures show the turnover rate of heads has been above 10 per cent for the last seven years, reaching 17.5 per cent in 2008–2009. Meanwhile, the number of applicants for each post has fallen and the number of posts readvertised has doubled.

The trouble is that picturesque locations can bring practical downsides. Remoteness can mean a head having to move house to take up a job. There is potentially a large teaching commitment, which is not to everyone’s taste. Pay is also an issue – it is generally lower than in big schools – and expectations from the local community can be especially high, as the school is often viewed as being at the heart of the village.

Access to other professionals can also be difficult. It may mean travelling long distances to take up CPD opportunities and small schools with a tiny staff can ill-afford to lose their head or senior teacher for a day at a time.

Some of these issues were examined at a recent National College event on rural headship. But despite acknowledging the challenges many of the rural leaders present spoke warmly about the joys of leading a school in a small community, the closeness with families and the benefits that spring from being obliged to find different ways of working.

Colin Ricketts, head of Curdworth Primary, a village school with 101 pupils in Warwickshire, is one of those who views the ‘downsides’ of rural school leadership as positives for himself, his staff and the pupils.

A mainstay of their work is a number of collaborations with other schools, large and small. The local cluster of eight – including a secondary and a special school – has been rebranded the Coleshill Learning Community to signal their shared purpose. They share ICT support and an extended services coordinator, and organise joint initiatives, such as an annual multicultural fortnight.

“The cluster is my first point of contact for issues of any kind, so for a headteacher the support is brilliant,” he says.

A link between Curdworth and Ephangweni School in Malawi has been extended to the rest of the learning community. “We have linked all of our cluster schools up with cluster schools over there, so we now have cross-clustering across international borders, which is really interesting,” he says.

Other collaborations include Maximising Progress in small primary schools project, funded through the National College, which is exploring how five small schools can collaborate to best effect to improve outcomes for children. They plan to appoint a business manager to work across all five and also a leading teacher in maths to look at trends, share best practice from other schools and assess how to utilise teachers move effectively across schools.

Multiple collaborations mean that Colin and his staff do not suffer from the professional isolation and lack of exposure to new practice that can hit rural schools hard.

"We held some learning-focused days where staff go to each other’s schools to look at different styles of teaching and learning,” he says. “The staff from larger primaries found it fascinating coming to our school to see the way we work – not only mixed age classes but an especially wide range of ages in there, and the different practice that it engenders. People think small schools always benefit from having the support of a larger one. I see it as beneficial to both.”

"The cluster is my first point of contact for issues of any kind, so for a headteacher the support is brilliant"

Judith Dwyer is head of a federation of two Church of England first schools, Herdley Bank (23 pupils) and Greenhead (27 pupils), both village schools in Northumberland. She is similarly enthusiastic about rural schools and the benefits that spring from collaboration.

She took over Greenhead in 2006 when the head retired. The two schools already had a long history of joint working and one head to run two schools was seen as a natural way forward – and not least for the opportunities it opens up for the six-year-old would-be David Beckhams.

“We were very clear at the beginning that this was a positive move, not something we were forced into doing,” she says. “Increased numbers was really the most important thing about our collaboration. It means having enough children for the pupils to have good social and learning experiences. Among other things, it means that our keen footballers can actually play five-a-side football on the days when the schools come together!”

The schools share a vision and do joint strategic planning and each maintains its own identity and ethos. One day a week, pupils come together on one site to work with external specialists in languages, RE or PE, while the staff have PPA time.

Staff CPD has improved through observing the practice in a different school but the move to federation has also given Judith a career development path that, as a teaching head of a small rural school, she says she could not otherwise have envisaged, and a third headship may now be in the offing.

As part of its succession planning strategy, one of the College’s aims is to provide extra support to local authorities to help them fill headships in small rural schools and build capacity there.

And as part of a range of support for small rural primary schools, 13 clusters of small rural primary schools in four largely rural counties are involved in the Maximising Progress project. The Targeted Support for succession planning initiative, meanwhile, has also helped rural local authorities to fund their succession planning projects. This year, it is focused on support for groups of LAs working together to develop local solutions across their regions.

And the work appears to be bearing fruit: the Headship Index, a poll of 1,000 teachers at all levels conducted annually for the College by independent pollsters ICM, showed in September 2009 that 40 per cent more teachers from rural England were aspiring to headship than in 2008.

There are unique challenges but also opportunities in leadership of small schools and there is a need to personalise support for leaders in these schools, says Mark Pattison, Executive Director of Succession Planning at the College.

“It’s clear from talking to local authorities and heads in predominantly rural areas that targeted support in particular has really helped put leadership on the agenda,” he adds. “But we’d like to think our work collectively on local solutions to succession planning, targeted support, school business directors and models of leadership has contributed.”

The best advocates for headship are always heads themselves and Colin and Judith are both adamant that the joys of the job far outweigh any downsides.

Colin says: “Here, I know all the children, parents, governors and many members of the wider community. All of our children can take part in school activities such as end-of-year plays and sports teams because small numbers give more opportunities to participate. They end up becoming well-rounded individuals, participating fully in all aspects of school and community life, and well set up for the next stage of their learning journey.”