BAE0015

Written evidence submitted by Diane Henson (Head of Secondary at BIRMINGHAM DIOCESE MULTI ACADEMY TRUST)

Creating an inclusive and positive culture:

It is very simplistic to state that certain strategies work well for boys and others for girls. As a senior leader in secondary schools for 20 years I think the culture and ethos that schools establish and promote is a very big factor in whether their children, especially the boys engage with the education system.

When I worked in a mixed sex school, I used to organise the exam classes in gender groups and in mixed groups. I soon realised that my staff were always worried about specific groups of boys and their attitudes towards learning-we were an English department so were delivering one of the subjects that boys are supposedly disengaged from and very difficult to teach. I designed teaching groups that put all the ‘difficult’ boys in one group. Invariably these were middle to high ability teenagers who were disaffected with education and had developed a ‘far too cool for school attitude’ who wanted to perform for the masses rather than perform in their own exams. Alongside these I would add a group of switched off girls and then traditional mixed sex sets for the rest of the year group. As the then Head of Department I taught the boys, and my deputy would teach the all-female group.  We did not choose ‘boy friendly’ exam texts at all nor did we lean towards the then fashionable learning styles techniques but rather focused on engaging the students with a love of literature and  relevance to modern day life and struggles. They definitely tested our behaviour management skills in the first half term but we obtained a full house of the old grade A*-C with amazing progress rates and guess what? The boys outperformed the equivalent group of girls. We created a culture for inclusivity and learning where everyone was important and it was a safe space to learn and grow.

When I moved to Wheelers Lane I wanted to develop this further. Wheelers had a warm and inclusive ethos and we worked hard to make it the safe space that the boys wanted to come to every day. We used inclusive language as it was our school, our resources, our community that we all valued. We made multiple home/school links and encouraged full attendance by putting on curriculum enrichment events that made the boys want to be in school: Animal Man Days, Ducks and Hen Eggs in the spring, Positive Ponies to engage the hard to reach children, Dress up World Book Day ( yes, in a secondary school full of boys) with a programme of exciting events, a range of clubs and community events such as Gardening Club linked to a local in bloom initiative, Food Bank Fridays as part of the Citizenship Award schemes, Duke of Edinburgh, Peer Readers and Academic Coaches were all events the boys could buy into and take responsibility for at some point in their school career.

On the pastoral side of school life we employed a school counsellor, a family support worker and ran small group life skills courses in anxiety, self-esteem, exam stress and anger management. We also commissioned a team of mentors to work with our children at risk of outside crime influences and in danger of suspension, young men who had lived this life and learned a better way to be. What better way to learn than to hear it from someone who has been there?

Our motto was that everyone makes mistakes and you learn and grow through the experience and a chance to get things right. On the whole we managed to live by that edict with lower rates of suspension and exclusions and falling behaviour data alongside rising examination results.

Wheelers Lane is a non selective school surrounded by The King Edwards Camp Hill Grammar schools yet is above national average for examination results and progress with a national average/below intake. We have 30% SEND children and 32% of children are disadvantaged. Creating a culture whereby the boys are spoken to calmly and reasonably and the alpha male macho culture of years gone by is rejected and the opposite modelled by staff is crucial. We encouraged the boys to discuss their issues and talk about what the problem was. We spoke reasonably and modelled the behaviour we wanted to see from the students. Children blossom under these conditions and root themselves into the environment you create for them to thrive in.

May 2024