St Andrew's Secondary School
Headteacher: St Andrew's Roman Catholic Secondary School, situated in Carntyne in Glasgow, is a 1600 pupil, denominational school. It's a first to sixth year, fully comprehensive school which, because of the wonderful work of staff, the great youngsters, the mums and dads, and the strength and leadership at every level - from headteacher right through to classroom level - is a rather successful establishment.
Teacher 1: In years past, parents often chose not to send their sons or daughters to our school because of particular difficulties with the environment and at one point, our school roll was dropping and was at around about the 600 mark. Today, in 2006, the school roll is over 1600.
Climate for learning
Teacher 2: 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. I think that 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 in the school. 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 3: 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 1: 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 that they're there for you.
Teacher 1: 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 1: 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 3: 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 in all our relationships and we work at in and through 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.
Aiming high
Teacher 4: I think one of the main areas of excellence or of the contribution of excellence in this school would come from the recognition and the celebration of success. We are recognising and celebrating success at every level, whether it's in the classroom or whether it's through our extra curricular work, kids get the opportunity to realise their potential in every area. It's recognised and it's celebrated, and I think that works through and permeates the whole curriculum, because if we pick up on that - at any stage - their success there grows throughout the school. They know that we won't let them underachieve at any level.
Pupil 2: You're always achieving what you can - your full potential. That's the motto: everybody has to aim high and everybody always does here.
Headteacher: Attainment and achievement are the number one priorities in the city, in Scotland, and I would suggest in every single school. It's a fact of the matter that results are what people ask us about - for university, for colleges, for jobs and so on. But on top of that, it's absolutely essential that in the achievement agenda, young people are recognised for the softer achievements that they have; the softer skills, the softer indicators, their self-esteem, their confidence, their team work, their integrity; at the simplest level, their attendance, their time-keeping and so on.
Teacher 1: Very often, youngsters can have low self-esteem in embarking upon their time in a secondary school. We've made strenuous efforts to turn that around by explaining to youngsters that they are valued in terms of what they do and what they can achieve, and that nothing other than their best will do in terms of attainment.
Pupil 3: The teachers are always going out of their way to help us, encourage us to do best on exams and be the best we can be and achieve our potential.
Headteacher: Youngsters respond very well to good lessons, good work, to motivation, to success. It might not be ‘cool’ at times to be the most successful in the world, but it's less ‘cool’ to be very unsuccessful and we, in common with most schools - if not, all schools - have tried very much to make it a culture of achievement; have tried very much to make peer group pressure the pressure of success rather than the other way, where people want to hide their light under a bushel.
Pupil 2: I managed to achieve five Highers last year and this year I'm doing another three - and even an Advanced Higher, which I never thought I'd be able to achieve. Because the teaching is so good, and with the extra help and support we all get, I think I'm actually going to be able to pass them all and help me get into university.
Teacher 5: We have established an ethos where it is ‘cool’ to achieve, so the children love to come and tell us what they've achieved and we use every opportunity to celebrate this. Whether it's the football team winning, the debating club winning, whether it's a class test; we use assemblies - every opportunity - to celebrate all of these things.
Teacher 6: As a whole school, we discuss progress of children and of classes, and we ensure that the pace of learning is correct for these children. We feedback to parents on a regular basis whether kids are on track and on target. Parents are regularly involved; they are regularly invited to meetings and constantly following tests, following internal components of exams and prelims, etc. Straight away parents are notified and given the opportunity to come up and discuss the next steps.
Teacher 7: Parents trust us with their childrens' education as a result of this leadership and ethos that we've built over the years. They know our expectations for their children are as high as they are for our own.
Pupil 4: They're always urging you to do your best, to reach your potential. I never thought I would pass all my exams and they made me confident. Last year I got five Highers - passed them all, and this year I'm doing another three Highers. Thanks to the teachers, hopefully I'm going to pass them and get into university.
Headteacher: The youngsters will identify with those of us who have high expectations, high standards and high demands. Their parents respond to those kinds of high expectations and demands and the youngsters, by and large, will try to achieve what we know they can achieve.
Pupil 3: The teachers have such high expectations for us and that encourages us to try even harder and make ourselves and everybody around us proud.
Leadership
Headteacher: One has to realise that there's leadership at every level in our school. Not only through headteachers, senior management and middle managers but particularly, and perhaps equally importantly, at classroom level. Teachers at every level show leadership. We have a collective leadership in our school and we have a clear agenda of where we want to get to. The headteacher, obviously, in consultation with others has to address and work out that agenda. I would think that those of us who try to exhibit strong leadership have to accept that, like the conductor of an orchestra, we don't have to be able to play all the instruments but we do have to be able to bring it together to a great piece at the end of the day. We are very fortunate at St Andrew's that, rather than having people who will come to us with a problem for every solution, we tend to find that because of the leadership exhibited at every level, people can come to us with solutions for most problems; people are quite comfortable in giving us advice and we are quite comfortable in listening to advice, because one has to realise that there's no monopoly of the right thing to do. As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘a leader who cannot change his mind or her mind cannot change anything’. A good leader and a strong leader - at whatever level, will perhaps, if things go wrong, take a little bit more of the blame, and when things are correct, take a little less of the credit. It's also important that when we have strong leadership we are not into a situation or a culture of blame, because if we don't try to change things then nothing at all will move forward, and quite frankly, if we get things wrong, the bottom line always has to be that we know they're well intentioned: we know it's in the best interest of the young people.
Pupil 5: For me the thing that makes this school such an excellent school is the fact that you can't always make everybody happy - it just doesn't happen, but when people do complain it just means that there’s an opportunity to improve it, which this school really does try and do.
Headteacher: There are occasions when it might be that others don't think a particular way to go is the correct way to go. Having said that, leaders at whatever level - headteacher level in particular, may have to say, 'Well, I've listened to what you have said and really respect and know where you are coming from on those points; however, this is the course of action we are having to follow', and sometimes that can be unpopular and tough decisions to take, but leaders have to make those kind og decisions and stand or fall by them. And accountability is very important.
Excellence in learning
Pupil 6: For me a good teacher is a teacher that will make you understand your work so that when you leave the lesson, you leave feeling satisfied; whereas, an excellent teacher will do the same thing but make the lesson fun and interactive so that when you leave you leave happily and look forward to the next lesson.
Headteacher: There's no secret. There is no secret - some of us think there’s a secret to what makes a school excellent. There's not a secret. The most important ingredient is that teacher in the classroom. That is absolutely number one. The high quality, high calibre teaching delivered by teachers who are well prepared, who have planned, and who have progressive work going on for the youngsters. That's number one.
Teacher 2: The staff are constantly innovating and constantly making sure that whatever they do is the best they can possibly achieve. And that, for me, is one of the things that I think about this school... is that it's not a school that has achieved and that's it. It's a school that is constantly looking and re-evaluating what they're doing and making sure that in the future they add on to that.
Teacher 8: The key differences which have been implemented in learning and teaching in the last few years have been based around the formalisation of formative assessment, basically using the different aspects which have been proven to raise attainment. We have introduced these into the subjects within the school. The staff have also been undergoing training on Teaching for Effective Learning. All pupils with varying learning styles and things like that are able to access the curriculum, which, I think is something we've been working on and as a school want to take a consistent approach.
Teacher 9: In the school we've got a number of very, very talented classroom teachers; however, they don't rest on their laurels. They're self-reflecting professionals. They pay great attention to continued professional development and there's a very extensive system in here to allow teachers to continue to improve and take forward initiatives like Teaching for Effective Learning, Assessment is for Learning, ICT and all the other educational initiatives which do make a difference to children in the classroom.
Teacher 6: We work hard for the children of St Andrew's and obviously the families and parents of St Andrew's, because at the end of the day, that's why we are here and if we can get the best for our young people that they can possibly achieve, then we are doing a good job. In fact, we're doing an excellent job.
- Posted on 17 February 2009.