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David Sheppard Academy: improving students' life chances and supporting the community

David Sheppard Academy opened in 2006 with a vision based on principles of social justice. The academy strives for improved life chances for students, and a sustainable community for families.

This case study covers the period up to July 2009.

Key learning and outcomes

  • In January 2008, Ofsted judged that the academy had made good progress in addressing the ‘legacy of underachievement’ that it had inherited, particularly at Key Stage 4. Attainment has continued to improve.
  • Attendance rates and applications are rising. Pride in the academy is evident from students’ adherence to the uniform code and parents’ participation in academy events, such as ‘achievement assemblies’. About 90 per cent of parents attend annual pupil progress meetings.
  • In a survey about the kinds of support they receive, students’ responses were very positive. The student council is beginning to have an influence on the development of teaching and learning, for example in the way that ICT is used in lessons.
  • The academy’s ethos values constructive and respectful relations, which has a direct effect on relationships between staff and students, and between students themselves.
  • Parents trust the support for learning team and approach it before any outside agencies. Parents are now mostly supportive of the discipline code rather than truculent or questioning.
  • Increasing numbers of people take part in community activities that the academy hosts. The academy is developing constructive relationships with community members to resolve issues such as students’ behaviour outside school.

Background

The David Sheppard Academy opened in 2006, replacing two previous schools. It is a larger than average mixed secondary school in a disadvantaged area. Its specialism is design and the built environment.

A previous case study looked at the process of setting up the academy and its leadership arrangements. This update focuses on leadership of the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda. In particular, it looks at the role of the support for learning team, which is responsible for students’ attendance, guidance and welfare and has been an area of heavy investment.

Key challenges and issues

  • The social context for the academy – with low aspirations, broken families, and poor behaviour and attendance – is such that establishing a positive ethos is a real challenge.
  • Staff feel they have had to break down resistance to the academy in order to establish good working relationships with the other agencies that support children and families.  
  • Academy staff have encountered differences between the academy’s approach and that of other organisations when intervening with families. Liaison has therefore not always been as successful as hoped.
  • Leaders and managers assume that there is a link between ECM outcomes and academic performance. However, systems are not yet fully in place to track this link and establishing them seems likely to take up a good deal of resource.

Solution or approach

Social justice

Leaders’ sense of purpose is informed by a dedication to social justice. There is a commitment both to improving the life chances of students in the academy and to ensuring the sustainability of the community more generally. The view is that, as culture and practice develop in the academy, they will begin to influence the wider community positively too.

The academy’s objectives

The academy adopts a holistic approach to students’ development. Its mission includes: valuing all faiths and actively celebrating diversity; working to build self-esteem; ensuring that each student receives the highest quality of education; challenging everyone to achieve their best; nurturing relationships based on mutual respect and trust; and valuing and fostering creativity, imagination, responsibility and a love of learning.

Separation of leadership and management

A key feature of the organisational structure is the separation of ‘leadership’ – things that improve teaching and learning – and ‘management’ – overseeing and deploying the academy’s resources to support its mission. The senior leadership team has a strong teaching background while managers have expertise in their own areas, such as finance, facilities, ICT and support for learning.

Senior leaders and managers meet regularly in their respective teams, and jointly. The support for learning manager works particularly closely with the senior leadership team, joining all its weekly meetings to co-ordinate support systems with teaching and learning.

Promoting a positive ethos

ECM provision is viewed as a collective responsibility and cuts across the separation of leadership and management. All staff are expected to be alert to individual wellbeing and senior staff go on regular ‘walkabouts’ to gauge students’ welfare from their behaviour and body language.

Leaders and managers both model positive interactions as they engage with individuals in routine ways or are involved in addressing behavioural issues. They use a terminology of ‘choice’, which encourages students to think about the decisions they make and to take positive options. Senior leaders regularly invite middle leaders and other staff to observe these interactions to encourage a consistently respectful approach towards students.  

Personalised learning

The academy now delivers Key Stage 3 in two years and its Key Stage 4 curriculum is based on a ‘pathways’ model. Students are offered three routes: one aimed at preparing them for progression to higher education, another that is more vocational and a third that is designed for students who ‘struggle with more traditional subjects’. Each pathway has some flexibility to adopt the most appropriate curriculum for each student.

All staff are expected to nurture students’ individual aspirations. For example, the academy employs its own chef, who also trains students in Years 10 to 12 as part of their BTEC courses. The finance director is a mentor to a student who wants to pursue a career in accountancy.

“Everyone is a teacher in the academy, and everyone a learner.”

Evaluating ECM outcomes

To evaluate ECM outcomes, students are asked to give feedback on the success of different approaches.

Students’ six-weekly report cards give an account of progress towards the ‘4Rs’ – resourcefulness, resilience, reflectiveness and respect – and are a useful source of data. As well as providing information about ECM outcomes, they allow a comparison between the 4Rs and attainment and other variables.

Student council and discipline

The student council deals both with relatively routine matters and with ideas for bigger improvements.   

The academy has a restorative justice system for relatively serious misdemeanours. Students appear before ‘courts’, which are also attended by a parent/carer, a governor, a vice-principal, an assistant vice-principal, a representative of the support for learning team and student representatives. The panel decides on a sanction, which may include a fine or service in the community.

Student support systems

The support for learning manager, a former senior police officer, leads a support team of 18 non-teaching team leaders recruited from a variety of backgrounds. Each is responsible for the attendance, guidance and welfare of about 60 students, arranged in two vertical tutor groups. Team leaders act as surrogate parents and advocates for their students, who remain in the same group and keep the same team leader throughout their time at the academy.

Team leaders are the conduit for communication between the academy and parents/carers about progress. Rather than a parents evening, each student has an annual progress meeting, hosted by their team leader, to which parents/carers are invited. Pastoral and teaching staff communicate closely and an internal database allows them to identify where support is needed and to monitor progress.   

Family support systems

The support for learning team also works closely with parents and carers because many of the issues that affect students relate to family situations and the broader social context. Families are viewed as partners in the support process. All members of the support for learning team take a turn at following up attendance issues, and these home visits provide an opportunity for an exchange of information as well as highlighting any child protection issues.

Parents and carers themselves draw on help from team leader, and all team leaders have regular contact with a group of ‘needy’ parents or carers. Family members are all grouped in the same teams so that leaders develop relationships with the whole family.   

Multi-agency working

Where the academy identifies a need for additional support for students or families, it often develops its own internal capacity rather than bringing in outside agencies. For example, the academy has its own family liaison officer, has the part-time services of a member of the local authority’s attendance team and has its own chaplain. The academy acts independently and ‘sidesteps’ other agencies where it finds the liaison unhelpful for resolving students’ issues.

The academy has a particularly good relationship with the local liaison officer for the police service and tries to maintain good relations with local statutory and voluntary organisations in order to make contacts that will benefit students and families.

Transition from primary school

The chaplain and family liaison officer visit all feeder primary schools to learn about the new intake. The academy is in the process of customising a common assessment framework, which will be completed for every student in Year 7. The aim is to generate a full picture of individual students’ capacities and circumstances on entry to the academy in order to support personalised provision and provide a baseline for ECM outcomes.

Succession planning and leadership development

Succession planning focuses on identifying and developing leadership potential among current staff in order to safeguard the vision for the academy. Distributed leadership helps to develop capacity: members of staff are regularly invited to attend and contribute to leadership meetings and have considerable autonomy to pursue their own ideas under the supervision of senior leaders and managers.

There are good opportunities for internal promotion. Staff at all levels, including newly qualified teachers, are encouraged to attend leadership courses run by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT). Those with leadership potential gain from informal mentoring by senior staff and from observing leaders and managers as they carry out their roles.

The governing body

Now that the academy is established, governors are no longer closely involved in day-to-day decision making, but continue to have a role in reinforcing the academy’s ethos. For example, they attend all year 11 progress meetings with individual parents and pupils, and expect staff to follow up the outcomes for pupils who have been excluded to ensure that suitable provision is made for them.

Next steps

  • The academy plans to extend its mentoring strategy by involving a greater number of staff and also by linking students to members of the community through the governors.
  • It is hoped that students will gradually become ‘ambassadors’ in the community, positively influencing a wider group because of their experiences. As an example, the local army cadet detachment that is linked with the academy is growing in popularity. This has led to enquiries for the academy to set up a scout troop to meet local need.
  • There are plans for students to be trained to carry out internal research projects, which will involve them in observing lessons and interviewing members of the academy so that they can present a view on teaching and learning processes.