May 2020 Chair Head Bursar Registrar Staffroom School Office ...the professional journal for Management & Staff CAREFREE SCHOOL MINIBUS OWNERSHIP Choose from our complete range of versatile 9 - 17 Seat School Minibuses • Finance Plans To Suit All Budgets Call today to arrange a quotation or free demonstration • Nationwide Service & Support • D1 and B Licence Minibuses 01202 091618 • New & Pre-Owned Available redkite-minibuses.com • Driver Assist Options [email protected] VEHICLE CERTIFICATION NATIONWIDE SUPPLIERS OF PEUGEOT (RECOMMENDED), AGENCY FORD & VAUXHALL 2 Independent Schools Magazine Advertisement Sales: 01242 259249 [email protected] In this issue... 04 Living with the Land new course developed 05 New Era for Staff Retention facing up to the challenges 06 English Literature reversing the national downturn Support for NHS 08 Encouraging Political Thinking In just 36 hours Worksop College, beyond exams Nottinghamshire, raised over £5,000 worth of equipment to increase production levels of visors, thanks to the support of former students 12 Talking Point of the school. finding the learning ‘sweet-spot’ The college has been working daily to make personal protective equipment for NHS staff battling coronavirus, a project initiated by Head 24 Profile of DT Gary Duckering. It comes as a national in conversation with Richard Foster shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for NHS staff on the front-line has resulted in many key workers suffering injury from wearing uncomfortable equipment for Plus long hours, or going without vital protective 14 Facilities & Flooring Focus Feature wear at all. The school had been funding the initiative from 20 Music, Dance & Drama Focus Feature existing materials to produce 10 – 12 protective 47 Contact Us; Editorial Advisory Board; free e-mag offer face visors a day to help local hospitals and surgeries in the UK, using an existing 3D Is Your School Mentioned? See page 47 for an A-Z listing printer. College staff invested in an additional two printers to increase production levels but put a request out for support in order to increase production levels even further. Covid-19 The school have been overwhelmed by the generosity shown by their alumni community, Reports, tributes, ideas, opinions providing an additional £5,000 worth of Including: equipment, including 13 3-D printers. And it’s not just the Old Worksopian – Independent/state partnership rises to the challenge community who are doing their bit. Year 6 – Heads flies in from China to take the helm pupil Grace Galbraith is pictured making visors using her own 3-D printer at home, after – Remote learning – how sectors compare getting in contact with the school to ask for the pattern. – A Chaplain’s response Further Covid 19 initiatives & news –Teaching re-routed & enriched – see pages 30-46 –Taking care of students who could not return home abroad – Housemistresses face life in uncharted terrain Cover background –Tens of thousands of face masks made for NHS Science Centre wins – Will the crisis mark a new dawn in education? architecture award – A vision of how ‘Phase 2’ might evolve The Tonbridge School, Kent, Barton Science – Pupils’ experiences of lockdown Centre has won a prestigious national award for architectural and design excellence. Pages 30-46 See page 15 Advertisement Sales: 01242 259249 [email protected] Independent Schools Magazine 3 Living with the Land Alistair McConville, Director of Learning and Innovation at Bedales School in Hampshire, describes the development of their new course... A friend of Visitors have often asked when course that revolves around the mine who is we would apply the same logic twin pillars of sustainability – a Professor to sixth form courses. We held food and shelter – building on of Education back because of a sense that the practical and theoretical shared with me his view about universities would want to see foundations of our BAC, and the future of education in a some externally validated grades retaining our principles of broad pub a couple of years ago. when awarding offers. We also assessment via portfolio, project, “Institution-led curriculum and held back from seeking OFQUAL and viva. accreditation for our BACs, since assessment”, he confided. In Having established via we wanted to retain as much other words, schools, or groups correspondence and phone call with autonomy as possible over them, of schools, agreeing a curriculum a very helpful OFQUAL case officer and have the freedom to adjust appropriate to their context, and that there was no bar in principle them year on year. Perhaps our necessary financial and governance assessing it themselves, or in to a school becoming its own most outlandish – excuse the pun structures in place to be a ‘going conjunction with trusted partners, awarding centre, Dr Matthew Yeo – course at 14-16 level has been concern’ for some time to come using their chosen assessment – Head of New Qualifications at the BAC in Outdoor Work. This is so that no students might be left methodology. I hope he is right, Bedales – and I set out to Coventry an eminently practical and farm- stranded. They probed deeply to talk through the logistics in and there are reasons to think he based course, covering a suite into our measures for managing person. We had expected some is. There is a great deal to be said of rural and farming skills, and scepticism about an independent conflicts of interests and appeals. for professional autonomy, and culminating in a major project, school seeking to badge its home They were less interested in contextual flexibility. usually undertaken in a group. grown courses with a cherished content than our means to ensure Level 3 stamp, but OFQUAL could consistent awarding year on year. not have been more open to the We are fortunate in that we have idea, and supportive. We were considered all of this before in left in no doubt that the bar for relation to our BACs, but the level success was high, and that a great of scrutiny and evidencing for deal needed to be done to fulfil OFQUAL has been ‘next level’. the criteria to become an awarding We had already committed to centre, and OFQUAL were frank in running our course with or without saying that most applications did OFQUAL accreditation, and an not meet the criteria first time, but enthusiastic cohort is all signed that reworked applications would up for September. We hope to be supported. We girded ourselves for some tenacious form filling. secure the right to accredit our Dr Yeo has borne the brunt to the first graduates with a Level 3 tune of several hundred pages. badge, and have two years to get The OFQUAL mantra of ‘validity, there. At the time of writing, our reliability, freedom from bias’ has first effort, as OFQUAL predicted, been branded forever into his has come back with red pen soul. The application process was on it, metaphorically, but with a huge undertaking. Quite rightly, constructive feedback and a My school, Bedales, has form Renovated tractors, hand-built OFQUAL want to ensure that renewed offer of support to get us on this front. Fifteen years ago verandas, round houses, and so on. an awarding institution has the over the line. we gave up most GCSE subjects, This has been a hugely popular and launched our own, in-house course, and there has always alternatives, the Bedales Assessed been a clamour for a sixth form Courses, in everything except a continuation, which we have not got around to, until now. core of English, Maths, Science and Languages. We found GCSEs So, in order to try and marry too prescriptive in content and too the desirability of external narrow in assessment methods. accreditation for final year work We grade them, and cite them to with our deeply held love of universities via UCAS. It has been a autonomy, we set out to create remarkably trouble free experiment. our own Level 3 course in ‘Living Bands of Bedalians have sallied With the Land’ as well as seeking forth clutching ‘BACs’ and have accreditation from OFQUAL in found them valuable currency. parallel. We have composed a 4 Independent Schools Magazine Advertisement Sales: 01242 259249 [email protected] A New Era for Staff Retention The world of teaching has certainly changed over the years and much of this has been driven by the need to raise standards, improve pupil welfare and safeguarding, more stringent inspection regulations and also to ensure greater opportunities are provided beyond the taught curriculum. Added to this, schools now face much greater scrutiny from parents who, in their bid to ensure their children achieve the best possible results and personal success, will question and challenge the decisions made by schools as well as the daily practice (and perceived quality) of its individual teachers. Ben Evans, Headmaster at Edge Grove School, Hertfordshire, reflects... The impact of if they have school-aged children their apprenticeship before come down to personal fit or the childhood themselves. seeking or being given additional atmosphere. mental health responsibilities such as subject Recruiting teachers is a competitive crisis and pupil Biting the bullet co-ordinator, head of department, business though and all schools wellbeing agenda In a world where potential teaching head of year etc. Today though, are looking to increase the ‘bonus’ has also added candidates seem to be calling this is deemed right after only one items such as pension, private to the challenges schools now face the shots, schools often have or two years’ experience and with health care, salary sacrifice schemes in ensuring adequate provision is little choice but to acquiesce. It is it, the accompanying pay increase therefore becoming increasingly and professional development made for staff and parent training and the jump up the scale.