Primary headship has a reputation for being a lonely job. Neil Cooper and colleagues from Linthwaite Clough and Netherton Infants and Nursery describe what happens when five schools back each other up, including the Year 1 class who have started writing their own books at home again.
Neil Cooper has worked in and around primary schools for a long time. The thing they all have in common, he says, is that they are full of people working hard for their children every day, and that the work can be really tiring and quite lonely.
Our five primary schools have set out to share that load. In this film you'll hear what that looks like from the people doing it, including the teacher whose pupils have started writing their own books at home again.
Our primary headteachers meet twice a week online and face to face every term, and nobody comes to those meetings to be told what to do. For Emma Barker, who is still fairly new to headship, it means she can draw on other heads' expertise, whether the question is about a new policy or the curriculum.
Teachers work the same way. Subject leaders from each school meet every term in curriculum communities. In science they have sequenced the curriculum together and now share planning across all five schools, which gives teachers more time to adapt lessons for their own class.
In a small school that makes a real difference. Julia Livesey teaches Year 1 and leads English at Netherton, where there's no one else to talk to about English. Since working with English teachers from the other schools, she has enjoyed teaching it more, and her pupils have started writing their own books at home and bringing them in, something she hadn't seen since before Covid.
The children feel it too. Netherton's infants take part in events at Brooksbank and Ryburn alongside older students, and its school council has presented at an Ambassadors Day at the age of five, six and seven.
“People always say to me that it’s a very lonely job, but I don’t feel that that is the case at all.”
Neil's own summary is that none of it sounds like a strategy. It's a group of people who enjoy working together, and that makes it possible to give children in five communities the best opportunities their schools can offer.
