creating an ethos for excellence
Teacher 1: I think the minute you walk into St Andrew's you can feel that there is an ethos: a perfect ethos, I think. As soon as you walk in I think you can feel that you are very welcome in the school, which makes it an awful lot easier for pupils coming to the school because they know and they feel valued by all the members of staff. I think the staff themselves also feel valued.
Headteacher: It's our duty to allow every single member of staff to deliver the highest quality of teaching and learning possible in a classroom. It's about the importance of the youngster and the conditions that a headteacher and staff in a school, with the support of mums and dads, will create to make sure that the highest quality is delivered.
Teacher 2: The vision is an educational vision, it's a spiritual vision, and it’s a vision in which we recognise that every child is special. It's not a 'bolt on' vision that belongs either to a person or to a group of people; that vision which we claim makes us a school which is different and distinctive has to permeate and integrate its way into every aspect.
Headteacher: We're talking about ancillary staff who are total quality. We are talking about janitorial staff who are second to none. We're talking about cleaning staff, cafeteria staff, talking about chaplains in our school; we are talking about a partnership and if you ask any youngsters in our school, would they treat the cleaning lady differently to the way they would treat the headteacher, the answer is no.
Cleaner: I think this is an excellent school, in my view. From the headmaster down to the cleaning staff, everybody is equal: we all help one another, we all muck in. The kids are well mannered. It's just a terrific, well-run school.
Pupil: For me, St Andrew's Secondary is such a great school because everybody's a unit here. You're never alone. You're always got someone to turn to: if you've got academic problems or social problems you've always got someone to talk to. The teachers will make sure they're there for you.
Teacher 3: We've made strenuous efforts to encourage our youngsters to be here and to be here on time. So the two things together, in terms of attendance and time-keeping, have been remarkably successful in terms of bringing up our youngsters. Through the work of our business manager we have set up a very successful attendance council which parents who are having difficulty with their youngsters, in terms of attendance or time-keeping, are asked to come along to see if we can get some resolution together.
Cleaner: The parents are involved in everything. There's parents meetings at least once a week in here for different year groups and we have a lot of concert nights, charity nights... all different events going on in here. The kids are involved and the parents are involved in everything.
Teacher 3: Looking around our school you will see a number of different clubs which are actively engaging our youngsters and raising their self-esteem. For example: art and design operating at lunchtime, music at lunchtime, biology at lunchtime... a whole range of subjects where youngsters are encouraged to come along. There are after-school activities - cheerleading clubs are on, we've got dance clubs, we've got basketball clubs, we've got a rugby club. Our youngsters are well served, we feel, and that’s because of the staff that we have here in our school who are more than willing to give up their time and energies to work with our youngsters. We all benefit from that: make no mistake about it. Everyone benefits. First of all, the youngsters and their parents, but we as staff benefit because our youngsters are engaged successfully in learning with good role models, and finding out that teachers care, respect and value them and draw them out; because after all, that's what education is all about - drawing them out to the best of their ability.
Teacher 2: Ethos is not something that we turn on like the electricity, as we imagined years ago in the profession; that we switch on ethos the way we switch on a power supply, and we're surprised if it's not there. The ethos is something we work at every day - we work at all our relationships and we work at and improve what we do professionally, and so I would say that the secret of the ethos of this school is hard work and lots of it.
- Posted on 17 February 2009.