1.4 The school community
In 2015 we visited Fulbridge Academy and met a range of adults and children at the school. In Activity 2 you will hear what they had to say about their involvement and experiences as participants in school life.
Activity 2 Learning and the school curriculum
Timing: Allow 45 minutes
In the following audio recording, you will hear from all the adults and children that we talked to at Fulbridge Academy. Listening to the recording will give you an overall sense of the school and the people who work and learn there. This audio is over 20 minutes in length, so you may find it helpful to listen to it in two or more segments. For example, you may wish to pause halfway through and jot down your thoughts at that point before listening to the rest of the recording.
Download this audio clip.Audio player: e103_2015j_aug001.mp3
Transcript
Jessica Mason
I think as soon as I walked in the door, you can tell from the atmosphere how special the school is.
Erivan
I like my school because we have loads of different experiences and different things to make our imagination bigger and more wide.
June Hawksworth
I think equality is the key word. All children are important and they all deserve equal opportunities.
Louise Chatterton
The ethos is that it equips all children with wings so that they can fly.
Kim Walker
Hello, I’m Kim Walker. I’m a lecturer in Primary Education at The Open University. Your study on this module begins by exploring the roles and experiences of people who work and learn in primary schools.
To help you do this, we’ve come to visit a primary school in England – Fulbridge Academy in Peterborough. The adults you’ll hear from are all involved in supporting children’s learning in different ways. They’ll talk about their work now as well as the experiences and skills they developed before they came to the school. We hope listening to them will prompt you to start thinking about the experiences you bring to your study with us, and to reflect on the notion of a school as a community, a place where everyone learns from and supports each other.
Every school is different and you feel their unique character as you walk through the front gates. At Fulbridge you feel that too. Outside, there’s an exciting playground and inside, the office staff greet everyone with a smile. Let’s meet the person who has a crucial role creating that unique character.
Iain Erskine
My name is Iain Erskine and I am Principal of the Fulbridge Academy, a four form entry primary school.
Kim Walker
The way they teach the curriculum here is part of Iain’s vision of primary education. So what does it look like?
Iain Erskine
Very much one of creating a bespoke curriculum that suits your community, your school. So, for example, we don’t have textbooks; we don’t have worksheets. We set the work to where the children are in their learning. So, we’re gearing everything to them. In addition to that, we value all the different subjects. We’re big on P.E., creative arts, we want to engage the children physically, emotionally and intellectually in their learning. And to do that, we do memorable learning experiences that might be down in the school cellar and the mummy comes alive in front of them; it might be a Victorian parlour or classroom; it might be a dungeon; it might be a World War II bunker, as we’ve created them in our very wide corridors around school. A lot of thought is put into them, not only in how they look, but also in the learning opportunities that come around them. So we’ve got a caving system; we’ve got an area we call ‘the shire’ outside with a pond, a hobbit house, Geppetto’s workshop, and it all fits the curriculum, and that’s reflected indoors as well with all the themed areas aligned to their topics and areas of learning.
Kim Walker
I’m getting a very strong sense of community as you talk to me about your school. So, could you talk to me about diversity of the children in your school and who are the different members of your school community, both adults and children within and outside the school?
Iain Erskine
We see ourselves as at the heart of the community and that’s why we try to get our curriculum to reflect the needs of the community. So, we are very diverse – culturally, socially diverse – and the children come from about 30 different nationalities: from Eastern Europe, from Asia, all over the world and it’s a lovely mix of children, and we’ve created a school curriculum that suits them all, and to do that, we involve the community. We look at our local environment, how we can use that in their learning, and we involve our governors, the parents, that wider community as well as obviously the key people, which are the children, and then you’ve got the staff who we value as well. All our staff are incredibly important to us.
Kim Walker
How do you engage everyone in your community from children and adults to become life-long learners?
Iain Erskine
There’s a simple comparison there in a way. If you want children to love reading books, then let’s read books with them. Let’s not jump in and start teaching phonics. So, with learning, you’ve got to get a love of learning like you would get a love of books. So, our principal aim with the children is to create an environment which makes you long for childhood, and an environment which makes you truly want to learn and become learners, and if you can achieve that and get the children onside wanting to be learners, then they’re capable of almost anything, and really the same principle then extends to the staff because in-service training it’s vitally important for everyone no matter how long you’ve been in education.
Kim Walker
It’s clear that Iain values all the staff in the school, and teaching assistants are important members of his team. Year 2 teaching assistant Jessica Mason set her heart on becoming a teacher while she was still at school.
Jessica Mason
Straight from A-levels, I went to do my university degree, studying Early Childhood Studies, and whilst I was doing that, I did a lot of work in schools getting experience as a teaching assistant. And when I finished in Lincoln, I came here and I’ve got quite a few people I know who already work here, and they encouraged me to come and get some experience in the school – ‘oh, it’s a lovely school. You’ll love it! You’ll have to come and visit it’ – and, of course, they were right and I came and did some experience at the end of last year, and luckily became teaching assistant in the Year 2.
Kim Walker
Tell me about the different aspects of your role.
Jessica Mason
Throughout the day, I take different groups. For our Letters and Sounds session, the teacher takes on table group on the carpet; I have one to myself, and HLTA and a visiting teaching assistant from another classroom has their own table as well . I’ve also taught a Literacy lesson recently this week. They’ve been doing character descriptions, so I got them standing up in front of each other and describing each other and acting out, so they could describe the way the personality and the behaviour of that child.
Kim Walker
And what does primary education mean to you? Why is it important to you?
Jessica Mason
I think primary education lays down the foundation for the rest of their life really; not just what they’re learning in their lessons – physical and emotional, psychological, development, and also in this school we’re very hot on life skills. We have a display of different life skills up in our classroom. So, we’ve got being courageous, being patient, turn-taking, risk-taking, things like that to get the children thinking and doing things, which they’re going to have to carry on throughout the rest of their lives as well. I think the children see each adult in the classroom as being one. They don’t differentiate between the teacher and the teaching assistant, so I feel like it is my role just as much as it is the teacher’s role to have that control over the children and have that mutual respect that when we’re talking, they’re not talking, or if they’re talking, then we’re not talking. We’re listening to them, we’re respecting them.
Kim Walker
Jessica continues her learning journey when she starts her teacher training next year but what can she expect of the role when she graduates? Louise Chatterton is already a qualified teacher, working with Year 1 children at Fulbridge.
Louise Chatterton
My main role is obviously as a facilitator of learning: teaching the children all the subjects that we teach here at Fulbridge within our curriculum. However, I’m also a line manager to three support staff within my classroom. I’m also a point of contact for parents in the school, in my class. I also act often as like a social worker, so I support families when they need help, and I often have to support my children emotionally in several ways. So, while teaching is my first and foremost responsibility, I have several roles within that as well.
Kim Walker
You mentioned all of the different people that you work with as part of your role. Can you tell me how you work with parents as members of your community?
Louise Chatterton
Parents are vital in the work that I do because obviously, together, we both want the best for our children. So, my priority is the children’s education and the parents’ and the children’s background is vitally important to ensuring that I deliver the quality of education that they need. I’ve found that communicating with parents about lots of positive things that their children do is incredibly important, because when that one day comes where I have to go and I have to speak to them about something negative, the fact that I built that relationship and they know that I’m not just there to deliver bad news is very, very important.
Kim Walker
What inspires you about working at this primary school?
Louise Chatterton
Working at Fulbridge Academy is incredibly special because here we employ a creative curriculum that is rich, it engages all learners, and the ethos is that it equips all children with wings so that they can fly, we want to make sure we get the very best out of every single child and every child is treated as an individual, and that inspires me every single day. I love it.
Kim Walker
Providing an education and being part of a team that ‘gives children wings to fly’ obviously inspires Louise. And for Rose Edwards, a teacher in Year 3, motivation is also provided by the people she works with.
Rose Edwards
The team of people that I work with inspire me, so I really enjoy having conversations about the children: where we’re learning; what we’re going to do next; what things will engage them, because everybody is so enthusiastic and they have such a range of experiences that they can bring in to help me and for me to help them, and people here think very big. When I first started, I was thinking ‘oh well, I’ll make a display with some paper on the wall’, and then I realised ‘no, no no, here we all use wood and we will create entire environments and outside learning spaces, and our corridors will become rooms and castles, and so suddenly my ideas have grown and grown and grown, and that’s quite an inspiring thing.
Kim Walker
Why did you become a primary school teacher?
Rose Edwards
I worked previously in a museum, and I enjoyed all of the school experiences more than any other part of my role when I was at the museum, so I saw people coming in with their classes and thought ‘that’s where I want to be. I want a bit of that’, so I just decided to retrain as a teacher a bit later on.
Erivan
My name is Erivan and I’m in Year 5.
Chris
My name is Chris and I’m in Year 3.
Rendija
My name is Rendija and I’m in Year 4.
Isha
My name is Isha and I’m in Year 6.
Kim Walker
Primary education is all about the children – so let’s hear some of them talk about their school – what they like about it, and why.
Erivan
I like my school because we have loads of different experiences and different things to make our imagination bigger and more wide.
Isha
I like that it’s really creative and imaginative, and how the corridors help us learn.
Chris
It’s open to everyone in the world and not just one person, or not people that are smart.
Rendija
The adult in my class helped me understand things that I don’t get, and if I got a question, she helps me to understand it and answer it.
Isha
My teacher helps me learn by giving me loads of input and if we’re really stuck, they’ll give me a model piece of writing to look at and adapt.
Chris
They look after you and they won’t ever let anyone hurt you.
Erivan
My favourite dance lesson was when we just began doing a dance about super heroes and I really enjoyed it because it was very creative and colourful.
Chris
I always like a hard challenge that will push me forward, and last year in Science, we got to go outside and we had to find things that you thought were naturally made, and we’re always just free to do what we wanted.
Erivan
My favourite part of the school is the Champions Corridor because it’s got loads of different champions from history and it’s really inspiring when you see different pictures of Albert Einstein and people who are very clever in those days.
Chris
My favourite thing would have to be the cave because it has loads of tunnels and connections that you have to explore, and a ball pit, and when the bell goes and we have to go in, everyone’s moaning.
Kim Walker
Every child is unique – in their experiences, their interests, and the way they learn. Sometimes they may need different kinds of learning experiences to support them. June Hawksworth is a SENCO at Fulbridge and works with others inside and outside the school to make sure that all children get the support they need, when they need it.
June Hawksworth
SENCO stands for Special Educational Needs Coordinator, and my role in school is to identify children who have specific needs and to work with the teachers to make sure that their needs are met within school.
Kim Walker
Who do you work with in the school and in the wider community?
June Hawksworth
As a SENCO, we work with several professionals. We work with a speech and language therapist; we deal very closely with the occupational therapist because we have quite a lot of children who have sensory impairments. The educational psychologist is somebody we work with on a regular basis. She would come in when we’ve got real areas of need. Parents are absolutely key. Parents, especially in the new SENCO reforms, make sure that their views are included. Then, obviously, the teachers are responsible for making sure that the needs of that child are met within the classroom, so work closely with the teachers. We work with the local authority – with the SEN team. And I meet with the governors to keep them informed of the children we’ve got, and at the end of each year, we provide a report for the different meetings that we’ve attended or referrals that we’ve made.
Kim Walker
And how do you include the voice of the child?
June Hawksworth
We do create what we call ‘coordinated plans’, and the children are involved along every step of the way, so we get their views, their aspirations, what they like in school, what they find difficult, who can help them, where we can help them, and their needs are recorded along with the parents’ views, so then we can work with families and children and teachers all together.
Kim Walker
And what values do you think underpin the role of the SENCO?
June Hawksworth
I think equality is the key word. All children are important and they all deserve equal opportunities to access the curriculum. It may be that they need extra resources. It may be that they need facilities like a sensory room or sensory circuits to help them meet their needs, but I think the importance is including everybody in school.
Kim Walker
What did you bring to this role from your previous experience? How did you become a SENCO?
June Hawksworth
I came into teaching quite late. I did study some courses with The Open University, which were all based on children with SEN and caring for young children, and I then worked as a TA one-to-one with a child that had Down’s Syndrome, and from then came into school as a teacher and experienced different children with a whole range of special needs, and then took the National Award for SENCO course last year.
Kim Walker
As June says, reporting to the governors is part of her role. A governing body is a group of volunteers that support head teachers in leading their schools. Helen Bath, Chair of the governing body at Fulbridge, tells us more.
Helen Bath
A school governor is an old-fashioned saying, I think, a critical friend, but what does that tell you about being a governor? Very, very little. And I view it as the sort of public watchdog on a body that doesn’t have any other outside agency regularly working with it. The governing body is not here to inspect teachers. We don’t judge teachers, and this is just an example of what we do – we are strategic, so that I don’t go in and say that ‘teacher is really poor’ but I will ask the head, the deputy, anyone in senior management what the quality of the teachers is, and if they say ‘well, we’ve got two that aren’t so good’, my question would be ‘and what are we going to do about it?’
Kim Walker
What is special about primary education in this school?
Helen Bath
Our creative curriculum. There is no doubt about our creative curriculum, which enables children to succeed, where otherwise they might fail at the academic testable things that happen. Children want to be here, and if they’re here and enjoying it, then you can begin to introduce the academic things, the academic rigour that is required of schools, and I think also we have one of the most open-minded, imaginative, forward-thinking staff – hard-working, but with faith in what’s happening.
Kim Walker
Everyone plays a vital role but of course in the end the buck stops with the head teacher, Iain Erskine. How does his previous experience help him lead the school?
Iain Erskine
I started a life in education as a secondary school P.E. teacher and absolutely loved it. I’ve learnt as I’ve progressed through my career in primary education that that background actually has been very valuable. You do look at things in a very straightforward way, you use your gut instinct quite a lot and I think you use common sense. And then as a leader, I’ve never considered myself an intellectual and so I’m very ready to take the advice and ideas of others, and when you’re ready to do that as a leader in a school, at whatever level you’re a leader, things go from strength to strength because you’re working as a team, you’re collaborating, you’re pulling other people’s ideas in, and somebody’s always got a better idea than you have, and when you put them all together, you come up, I think, sometimes with something quite special.
Kim Walker
And what values and beliefs are important to you within your primary school?
Iain Erskine
I’ve looked at why we feel we’ve been successful, and one thing right at the top of the list is really relationships between people. It’s how well the different parts of the workforce get on, As a child, if you can see the teachers getting on well, you can see all the staff getting on well, it transfers because you’re constantly role-modelling as a teacher. So, I place a great deal of importance on the correct role-modelling. In behaviour management, for example, we don’t raise our voices at any point. We will not shout at children. They might come from backgrounds where that’s the last thing they need, and also it creates a safe environment for them. Don’t get me wrong, you’re very firm, there’s very clear guidelines, because the children do have to behave well if they’re going to engage with their learning. So, I put a great deal of value on the type of people I appoint, which will fit in to the ethos we’ve got here at Fulbridge. I look for people with empathy and understanding.
Kim Walker
Being at Fulbridge reminded me that primary education is about so much more than teaching a curriculum. It’s about how you teach the curriculum, how everyone is included and valued and how that inspires everyone to love learning in a way that carries on throughout their lives.
But let’s leave the final word to one of the youngest members of Fulbridge, Chris. He’s in no doubt what he thinks about his school.
Chris
I wouldn’t really want to change the school because I think it’s amazing and wonderful how it is.
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Based on what you have just heard, write down your responses to the following questions.
- What comes across as the most important characteristics of the school’s approach to the curriculum?
- Who are the learners at the school?
- In what ways is the impression given of Fulbridge Academy similar to or different from your own experiences of primary education or your expectations of what primary education should be like?
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Discussion
A phrase from Iain Erskine, principal of Fulbridge Academy, that stood out for us was the desire to ‘create an environment which makes you long for childhood … which makes you truly want to learn and become learners’. This seems to be about making what excites, intrigues and motivates children the starting point for thinking about and planning the learning experiences that are provided for them, rather than starting with a prescribed curriculum and planning how to deliver it to the children. How does this compare with the kind of learning activities you experienced during your time at primary school?
We also found it significant that the school does not use textbooks or worksheets, and felt that this was about enabling the school to be fully responsive to the changing needs of its learners without being constrained by fixed resources – especially given the diverse make-up of its pupil intake. This ability to be responsive – to create a ‘bespoke curriculum’, to use Iain’s words – is also characteristic of an approach that sees all members of the school community, adults as well as children, as learners. For the adults in the school, this involves being open to learn from each other, from parents, school governors, visiting professionals such as speech and language therapists, members of the wider community and, most important of all, the children themselves.