Category: CEO’s Blog

Longstanding readers of my blog will remember back in October 2021 I wrote about my experiences running The London Marathon.  I was very fortunate to get a space through running for a charity (“The Rainy Day Trust” Home – Rainy Day Trust ) and, despite my best efforts in subsequent ballots, I have not been able to secure a place since.  The latest rejection coming only this week:

However, last month – for the first time since London – I did enter and complete a marathon.  This time it was in Edinburgh, my university city, and a place I don’t re-visit anywhere near enough.  Despite the torrential rain and driving winds as we ran along the Firth of Forth not having been factored into “warm weather training” for an event in late May, it was a great experience.  Soaked and exhausted at the finish line I, together with all finishers, was presented with a small box containing a few goodies and my medal.  The side of the box read as follows:

It was a quotation that I hadn’t seen before, and from an individual I hadn’t heard of. As I rode on the bus back from the race’s end at Musselburgh to the city centre nursing my blisters and trying to force down some food, it wasn’t the time to over-think its meaning.  Fred DeVito is a fitness trainer, and this quotation is his mantra he imparts upon those with whom he works.  Whilst not a novel concept (it is, in essence, Stoic in origin) it is a sentiment I wholeheartedly subscribe to.  In our schools and beyond, our children learn and grow through facing and overcoming challenge.  After all, one of our core values as a Trust is tenacity and resilience.

On Friday 27^th June, I was privileged to have the opportunity to speak at our second Pupil Leadership Conference, hosted at Fradley Park Primary and Nursery School for children of all ages across our schools.  I took the opportunity to challenge them to challenge themselves – before they can really look to lead and challenge others with integrity.  I have every confidence that they will.  They are amazing and, as their bespoke logo signals, they are stronger together.

The programme for the day required them to work together in workshops to build confidence and help them develop as public speakers, share their experiences of fundraising for charity and a team building activity.  Through such challenge, they will change – and for the better. 

Thanks for reading.

Mike.

This summer includes two milestones that have drawn me to reflect in this month’s blog on the role of parents in our schools. 

The first is a personal one.  My younger son leaves school this term.  With Year 13 rapidly drawing to a halt for him and his counterparts, and A-Level examinations in full swing, I’m at the end of a very long journey of two children’s worth of parents’ evenings, school reports, and – further back along the road – drop off and pick up at the school gate or at wraparound.  A journey that once included packing school bags and PE kits, and signing trip consent forms, but now involves making bottomless cups of tea, browsing university accommodation guides and testing knowledge of Tudor monarchs via a myriad of coloured cue cards.  And then… that’s it.  If he gets his university place, I’ll still be a parent of course.  However, the formal role I’ll play seems to be relegated to one of guarantor for his student loan.  And that’s it. 

The second milestone is a professional one.  In September, we open the doors to Branston Locks Primary – our second new primary free school. Here, parents will be at the very start of their journey with their children at school.  For many, it will be for the first time that they wave goodbye to their sons and daughters each morning.  For them, the packing of school bags and PE kits, the signing of dozens of the trip consent forms, and attending parents’ evenings is only just beginning. 

As they start their journey as parents of school children, and as I finish mine, I know we endeavour to do the best job we can.  There is no definitive and universally-recognised “Guide to Good Parenting”, no Haynes Manual where we can lift the bonnet and consult a diagram for a solution to a “fault”.  There’s no warrantee, guarantee or exchange policy. There’s no British Standard “kite mark” of quality assurance. With our children, we get who we’re given, and our children get who they’re given too.  We know that this is sometimes all too apparent. As my late father-in-law said many years ago in his Black Country drawl “you need to apply for a licence to have a dog, but anyone can have children.”

So, in the absence of a “Guide to Good Parenting”, what would I suggest as the top ten tips to parenting children of school age based on my personal experience and professional work with tens of thousands of parents over three decades in over twenty schools?

1. We are coaches and motivators, not ventriloquists and puppeteers.  Our children have agency for their words and actions and must take responsibility.  Our responsibility is to help them make the right decisions about what they say and do.
2. All children – including our own – are imperfect. Remember that when you think about judging the actions of children – your own and those of other parents. 
3. To ask questions of your child’s school is fine, but to form negative conclusions without asking questions first is not. Our opinions always need to be informed ones.
4. School staff are not telepathic.  If you don’t tell them how you feel, they can’t work with you. How you do so is an act of role modelling – good or bad – for your child.
5. Feedback via social media is not feeding back, it’s telling the world. That’s almost never a good idea for your child, their school or you.
6. You’re not there to drive the snow plough.  There will be obstacles your children face in school and in the world.  Make them strong enough to overcome them rather than trying to clear them from your child’s path.  You simply won’t always be able to, and they should feel the euphoria of accomplishment when they succeed.
7. You’ll make mistakes.  So will your child.  So will their school.  Listen to each other, learn from each other, work for each other.
8. Schools are more like factories than custom workshops.  Expect them to consider the needs of the many first, whether that is aligned to your child’s specific individual needs or not.
9. Read the menu before you reserve a table.  If you don’t like what a school is offering – uniform, behaviour approaches, its curriculum, its values – find somewhere else.  It’s better for everyone – especially your child.

And finally…

Celebrate all your child’s amazing achievements and their fantastic experiences as they become the very best version of themselves.  Because before you know it, you’ll be serving them bottomless cups of tea and testing them on Tudor monarchs via a myriad of coloured cue cards.

Thanks for reading.

Mike.

In this month’s Blog I want to take the opportunity to focus a little on an aspect of provision in schools that has become more prominent in recent years: character education.

Our schools are social settings as well as centres of learning, and I wrote many months ago about the deficit experienced by children and young people when schools were closed, or had other restrictions resultant from Covid.  As adults, much of the tone and rhythm of our social interactions was – for good or ill – already hardwired by the time ‘lockdowns’ and other measures were implemented.  However, our children and young people were at a far more formative stage in their development of societal norms.  As such, personal development, the instilling of fundamental British values and character education emerged with new prominence. 

Some teachers and leaders feel uncomfortable with the responsibilities associated with conveying ethical or moral direction, considering themselves either ill-equipped professionally, unworthy personally or acting beyond their remit and transgressing into the territory of parents and carers.  Whilst this is understandable, the counterpoint is worthy of mention here.  The argument is that we were never able to assume, and now more than ever we cannot, that all children in all contexts receive a positive and meaningful character education outside of the formal provision of schools. 

The popular philosopher Sam Harris once stated that:

“the science of morality is about maximising psychological and social health.  It’s really no more inflammatory than that.” 

We should all be able to work with children and young people based on such a premise. 

Our Trust value of collegiality is expressed as “listening to others, sharing with others, learning from others.”  Such behaviour clearly contributes to improved psychological and social health than contrasting behaviours would.

I’ll conclude with something I read recently about the British actor David Niven.  In addition to being an acclaimed and accomplished actor whose work made him a worldwide celebrity, he also famously returned to Britain from Hollywood when the Second World War broke out in order to serve.  His transatlantic schedules in film roles were numerous. 

This perhaps summarises an aspect of character education that we would want to instil in all our children and young people:

“At his funeral, the largest wreath was from the porters at Heathrow Airport.  There was a card which read, ‘To the finest gentleman who ever walked these halls.  He made a porter feel like a king.’”

What a wonderful obituary.

Thanks, as always, for reading. 

Mike.