Development visit at Thomas Jones Primary School

The Gold Club has been innovating in its shared practice model in its second year so that school development visits are now fully fledged and successful ways of spreading Gold Club member schools’ practice more widely.

As with Gold Club seminars and conference days, the essence is still the same – the 95 primary and secondary member schools like Thomas Jones Primary School offer to all other London schools the chance to be inspired and learn some of the crucial ingredients to their success. This is being among the top 7% of London schools achieving exceptional results for all pupils, especially for their more disadvantaged children.

Thomas Jones, which is about to enter their third year of Gold Club membership based on their continuing, high 2014 results, ran a development visit on 3 June with a focus on ‘Achieving Aspirational Outcomes for all Children’.

Head teacher, David Sellens, welcomed a small group of senior, middle leader and practitioners to Ladbroke Grove in North Kensington where around two-thirds of pupils live on the adjoining estates and there is great demand of some 300 applications for the 30 places each year.

His key messages were that ‘Head Teachers often talk about “high expectations” of children. What does this really mean? Often, there is a mismatch. What are the elements that actually make a difference? Thomas Jones is essentially about exacting standards and rigour, turning aspirations into reality, affording children opportunities to shine. At Thomas Jones we strive to avoid the myopic, be energetic and take risks. This means achieving ‘high standards’ in real terms and a school needs to be fit for purpose. At Thomas Jones, we reflect the community we serve.’

It was then a privilege for the visitors to be part of the morning welcome party to greet children, their parents and grandparents, some of whom had been Thomas Jones’ pupils themselves. The children needed little encouragement to shake hands with the visitors and introduce themselves. It was a little puzzling to hear a girl describe herself as a “year 6 scholar”, until it was explained by Phase 2 Leader, Scott Gourley, that this title, sometimes used in years 3 to 5, was to help instill a sense of pride and purpose, traits illustrated by many pupils throughout the morning’s visit.

What was even more curious until David explained this to us was the sight of children as young as year 5 brandishing a broadsheet paper under their arm. As well as challenging texts, the approach at Thomas Jones for teaching ‘English’ – pointedly not ‘Literacy’ – has been initially for the school to purchase periodically these newspapers, and now to encourage parents to do the same.

When we sat in on a Year 6 class, it became very apparent how English teaching had a huge impact on pupils’ aspiration and capacity to articulate. They talked about some of their favourite books and poems they had studied this year, and one visitor exchanged views on whether a particular poem she had read was one of Philip Larkin’s, on the basis of Larkinian elements to its title!

This was set alongside David’s earlier run through of some of the most underpinning, supportive practices. These ranged from running assemblies on social interaction and introducing the scholastic rigour of two hours’ homework per night for year 6, through to a ‘shared enterprise’ of three teachers, including himself as head teacher, being responsible for the top year and outstanding teachers deployed to teach the booster programmes where needed.

Such an early emphasis on year 5 and above pupils being introduced to high aspiration for university destinations came across in the year 6 lessons when pupils were asked to talk about their ideas for their own careers.

One boy explained that Edinburgh University is very strong for medicine, and a girl talked excitedly about Imperial College London being the place for pure chemistry research, where some had recently visited. They explained to the visitors that what they had learned during their project on universities was that a ‘first class university’ was ‘exacting’, had ‘quality outcomes’, and was ‘extremely well taught’. David also explained the school’s successful strategy of making the case with their families for Muslim girls having these same aspirations.

Indeed, testimony to the multi-faceted ways that Thomas Jones epitomises a Gold Club school is how this early stimulation of thinking about higher education with their pupils, and their families, is in line with current, pan-London work on the London Careers Offer. The importance of primary school learning on careers in terms of future opportunities comes through strongly in the new London Ambitions report. This sets out a blueprint for establishing a more substantial role for careers education, in both primary and secondary school in the capital, and with stronger and focused links with business.

The idea of Gold Club development visits was that hosting schools would have greater scope to show how they had achieved their success if colleagues visited the school. The visit to Thomas Jones certainly achieved this, whether seeing the confidence and high self-esteem of pupils across the school in their classes; seeing in action the nursery class, where ‘the start of levelling up’ begins; and the role played by a pristine fabric and cared-for environment in the corridors, art areas and play space.

Testimony to the success of the morning was feedback from the visiting schools that ‘it was a great opportunity to swap ideas with colleagues from other local schools’ through ‘sharing expertise, giving an opportunity to pause and reflect about best practice’. They particularly valued ‘the tour of the school, discussions with the teachers and head teacher’, and the ‘opportunity to visit the school - talking to senior leaders like deputy head, Lindsay Johnson’.

What stood out was ‘the clear message of the whole school approach to aspirations and expectations for the children’, and one teacher said, ‘I'd love to come back and observe an English lesson sometime in the future’

The school’s Gold Club lead, Scott Gourley, summed up that ‘the visit provided an opportunity for fellow professionals teaching in similar environments to share knowledge and outstanding practice. The positive feedback we received from our visitors was welcome as it validates what we are doing and it is essential for us to continue to learn and develop’.

The new 2015-16 Gold Club programme is being developed over the summer holidays and will be published early in autumn term as a range of half-day seminars and development visits. This will include an opportunity for more schools to visit Thomas Jones which will theme their visit offer next year to focus on exposing pupils to quality texts.

By Jason Lever, Scott Gourley & David Sellens