A Different Approach – Teaching in Special and AP

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Wellspring Way, Wellspring's very own podcast. It's the first episode of this new school year and we've got a great guest to kick things off. Joining me in front of the mic today is Executive Principal Scott Jakes. Scott's a highly experienced education leader who's been with Wellspring for almost nine years. His varied career has seen him work as a primary school teacher, a school improvement consultant, and the head of an outstanding special school. He joined Wellspring right at the start, our very first school, the Forest Academy in Barnsley, before quickly becoming executive principal at Phoenix Park and Seven Hills Academies in Grimsby. He then set up Springwell Leeds in 2016. He now heads up Springwell Leeds, Forest Moore School, Springwell Harrogate Academy, Green Meadows Academy, and Pennyfield School as Executive Principal. He's firstly committed to ensuring every child has access to high quality education, whatever challenges they may be facing. Scott, welcome to the Wellspring Way. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Thank you. Plast to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

First off, has the year got off to a good start for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Slightly uh unusual start to the year for me, really, in that I've spending a little bit more time in one of our schools at the moment where we have a vacancy in leadership. So I'm spending more time there than I would uh normally. But apart from that, you have a fairly standard start to the year across five schools. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Now, as I mentioned in my intro, you lead um a mix now of AP and SCND settings, and you've got lots of experience in that sector. Was that always the aim when you went into teaching? Was that the area you wanted to be in?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Not really. Um, it's not not how I set up. I don't think I've ever had a long-term plan as such. I certainly um when I went to uh when I started um I left school, went to uh sixth form college, and then the first university I went to didn't want to be a teacher. I had no plans to be a teacher. Um and did a year at uh in Nottingham at university there doing a course that I really didn't like. Um it was a sort of communication studies course that was very English literature based, not something that I I was really interested in. Um so I stopped doing that and had a couple of years working um to decide what I wanted to do. Um, and after a couple of years of working, doing various jobs in factories and all sorts of stuff behind a bar, all the usual sort of uh uh filling in jobs. Yeah, um, I realised the only thing I ever enjoyed doing was working with kids and I'd done quite a lot of sports coaching because I went I played cricket to a reasonably high standard and coached cricket teams and working with juniors juniors and things. That's what I really enjoyed doing. So at that point I decided to be a PE teacher and went to university again and uh and did my teaching degree. Uh, and that was a primary uh teacher course. So I ended up I started in primary education and working in a city primary school in Leeds. Um from there I sort of progressed through in the sort of middle and senior management before going to work for the local authority as a consultant, um, as a teacher advisor and then a national strategies consultant back in the I suppose that would be the early noughties, in the early 2000s. And uh and from there ended up going to work in a high school as assistant head, assistant principal in a big high school in Leeds. Um, and from there moved into special education. Um, I'd always taken an interest in in working with kids who who had additional needs. I suppose I'd always I'd always enjoyed that. I always enjoyed working with with with pupils who uh who had behavioural needs, always always enjoyed that and always found that really rewarding, and always found working with children with children with additional needs, special educational needs really rewarding. But I didn't really have a plan at any point up until I suppose the point I became uh uh head of school and a special school, and then um from then on that's really my passion. You know, my passion's really sort of embedded and ingrained and fixed in my head what I really wanted to do, which is um work with those kids who I think need us most.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

Yeah, yeah. Um, do you reckon I've got to ask this because a lot of people said there's absolutely no way. Once you've kind of made that jump from mainstream to special or AP, they can't imagine ever teaching in mainstream ever again. Are you like that?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I think so. I think so. I think I think that there is a there is a significant difference. I think it's it's it's uh it's hard if you if you go either way, if you go from mainstream into special, there's always there's so much to learn. Um yeah, uh because special is specialist and becoming a specialist, becoming an expert takes time and takes a number of years and to develop that expertise, and you have to invest, you know, you have to invest in in training, commitment, reading, learning about um the sector you're working in. Going back the other way um is just very different, I would imagine. Um, I don't know many people who've done it, they've come back from um special into mainstream because going from working with very specific needs, um, you know, groups, smaller groups of kids where you know every child individually, understand their needs individually, to as opposed if you're working in a high school, you could be teaching 150 different kids a week. Um, it's a very different, a very different commitment. People always say, Oh, you know, which is harder. I think they're both really difficult. I think they're just different, uh, difficult in different ways. Um and and you know, uh, I certainly find the the specialist and AP sector the most the most rewarding for me. Um I get the most out of that.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

There does seem to be a hell of a lot of passion in that sector, a hell of a lot when you speak to people who work in it.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Um I always say to my my staff, it takes special people work in special schools, it really does. Yeah, um, and those people have you have absolutely have to want to be here to do it.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Yeah. Um I'm thinking about AP really here. Um how do you begin to start reaching those kids who, for whatever reason, have had years of negative experiences around school? How do you bring them on board and kind of win their trust? I guess what's the what's the process?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

You've probably heard this in lots of lots of these podcasts from from people while speaking to it. It's about relationships. It is about trying to establish that relationship and and and uh children and and uh families, parents, carers, um, understanding that you are um you you do you are approaching it with to give them another chance and with an open mind and that we do we are genuinely interested and care about them and want them to be in in education now for some uh children and and some families that takes a lot more work than others. Um a lot of our uh children and families who join us in AP have got a really fractured relationship with education and with other services sometimes as well. So they see us as being part of the establishment, I suppose, is maybe one way of looking at it. And until you it's up to us to prove them different, that we're different, and then that we do mean the things we say and we do care. Um, and that takes resilience on our behalf. You know, it's that never give up approach about about chipping away, it takes longer for some kids than others. Um, certainly found that in in uh Grimmspeak when we picked up the schools uh down there, Phoenix and Seven Hills. There were some children who hadn't been in any kind of education for you know a long time, in you know, months, years in some cases, and some who had been in alternative provision for uh you know many, many months and years in some cases as well. Um so trying to uh uh trying to rebuild their confidence in the system um and and make them see that with our support and and by working with us, we could help them be successful in achieving a really positive next step for them, whatever that is. Um and you know, so I think it's about recognising that kids and and families start from very different places, and you have to get to know them, you have to build a relationship, you have to build trust, and and then you've got a fighting chance of you know uh getting a good outcome for the for the children.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

What do you think mainstream schools could perhaps do differently um to support some of those children so that they don't actually have to move to AP settings, that they could be, they could stay in mainstream?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

It's really challenging a mainstream school. Having I mean, I I came from I I've worked as an assistant head of uh of a an inner city uh mainstream school. So I know what the pressures are um on mainstream head teachers and mainstream uh staff in in terms of managing children who have additional needs and not managing children who have uh who you know fixed behaviour isn't isn't isn't quite there. So it's it's the pressures are different and their responses are different um as a result. Um I think uh where you see uh a rush to exclude um that that's never helpful. I think there are steps that can be taken um uh to prevent that. But there are pressures in terms of um priorities and finance and the support that mainstream schools are able to offer um to their children that that means that um some kids some kids will will will come out of the system will pop out, and as the pressure on those schools uh intensifies, more kids will pop out. It's it's it's a difficult, it's a really difficult one. I think uh zero tolerance approaches are not going to work for all children. I think there's you know there's good evidence that it works for it will work for a proportion of children, then other children will it will not work for, and and um those kids will pop out of the system into into AP. I think where we've been really successful in uh AP in North Yorkshire, in Harrigo, um at Springwell Harrigo, is is having a proportion of places there that are focused on preventative work. So before things get to a permanent exclusion or before things get to a high number of uh uh suspensions, um, we're working with with those schools in that area to identify children who would benefit from a different approach for a short period of time. For a limited period of time where they come out and do some uh uh work with us at Springwell Harrogate, uh that becomes their school for a period of time where we maybe build confidence, build coping strategies, build resilience for them so they can return uh successfully back into a mainstream setting and and hopefully uh stick and and and not be not be excluded. Uh those I think have been really positive. Um the issue with with with that for AP is is if there's a lot of permanent exclusions, they will always take priority because they have to be there, their kids without school. Um if these places, if you fill up with permanent um exclusions, um you're not going to be able to have the capacity to do to take kids on the preventative work. And I think the preventative work is uh is has been valuable and has has worked pretty well in uh Springwell Harrogate.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Yeah, it sounds like a like a really good model, that that just um that additional support to mainstream schools that you know, yeah, like you say, mainstream schools don't have the capacity and resources and the specialisms. Um, but if they could work in partnership with with providers like Springwell Harrogate, then that seems like a really good model. Thinking about that and how different schools work together, you're you're covering at the minute a real wide range of settings and thinking about the difference between say Pennyfield and um Springwell Harrogat or Springwell Lees. That that's a sick that's a significantly different um school setting. How do you manage the conflicting priorities, I guess, between between those different settings?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

I think my my uh the the the the role I have um as executive head is is really working with um the principals of those settings or the heads of centre and the the leadership teams there to to ensure that that they operationally are meeting the needs of the pupils there. That's that's number one priority. Um so that sort of generic leadership um element of it is is the same in any school. The the detail, I suppose the detail of the specific needs within the school, the uh the principals and the leadership teams have to own that. They have to own that, and and our leaders do, you know, they know the they know their children, they know their uh families, uh parents' carers really well. Um so uh I suppose my job is working with with them to ensure they have everything they need and the support they need to be able to do that as successfully as they can. So um, and depending where we pick schools up and where schools are in their uh stage of development, then my time is is allocated accordingly to those with greatest needs. So, for example, at the moment um I'm spending more a lot more time than I've done at uh before at Green Meadows because because we have a vacancy here in leadership, so it's important that there's um uh that that my more of my time spent here. Um schools that are more established, um, so our uh older schools of Springwell Leeds um and Arivia have been with us some time, um they uh don't need as much of my time because they're well established, uh both good schools, even in terms of Ofsted and both on um you know very stable in terms of their development and their trajectory. When we pick up a new school, as we did uh last two years, two years ago, we picked up Forest Moore school. Um that needed a lot of work at the start, but you know, um, and then that tends to be the case depending when you when you pick schools up out of and maybe come and join us in a cat in a in an officer category that they wouldn't want to be in. Um that's always going to take more work to move things forward quickly. So I um allocate my my time and and and and my efforts based on need.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Yeah. What makes an amazing um special or um AP school? What is it? Is it just is it that is it just about relationships? What what really sets sets one apart? Because I'm thinking we we have special schools that are um good, outstanding, that get, you know, you read the offset reports and they're quite phenomenal actually in terms of what they're achieving. What is it that allows a school to be to reach those heights?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I think I started off a bit earlier by saying it takes time, you know, it takes time to get specialists, and and what makes a um a special school uh really special is is having a high level of expertise within this within the workforce, um having uh staff who are very uh uh trained to a high level really understand the needs of the kids and what they need to do to meet them, and how they can you know remove some of those barriers of learning or or work around them, and depending on whatever whatever each child starts from. Um you know to do that, um that takes uh time and investment from leadership in training and making sure staff have the right opportunities, but also the opportunity to see um uh what a good one looks like. Um so so I think um to train a uh a teacher who joins us from mainstream um to get them to uh uh to be an expert in special education takes about three years. I would say three years of of really hard investment um and in training and um three years of practicing their um you know their their skills in the classroom. Um so it's it's having that established team of well-trained expert professionals um really makes a massive difference. It's a people businesses education, getting the right people uh with the right level of training, right level of expertise solves most of your problems, you know, and and and will ensure that what you're delivering is really high quality. Um, I think on top of that, uh I think you need to foster a creative approach and allow uh leaders and allow uh staff uh the ability to try um different things out and and and create uh um an open approach to try try you know new things without fear of of failure. Um you know and be willing to make mistakes um when you when you are trying things out. Obviously, we're talking about within a within a safe, safe environment and not you know not doing anything unsafe, but but certainly try give give them a chance to try something if they have a you know their their expertise, uh their research um uh uh tells them this might work. Well, try it and let's see, let's see if it works and let's learn from it. Um I think having a community of of professionals working around young people, so not just teachers um and and and teaching assistants, and but everybody uh who is who is prepared to share and learn from each other and be open and honest with each other is is absolutely vital. Um, you know, you don't fix you know the CMA school behaviour by one person being really good at it. You know, it's a team approach to behaviour, it has to be a collective approach. Um if if we've got extraordinary teachers in some classrooms and extraordinary professionals working with kids in some classrooms and not others, then the school won't be successful. You know, that's it's about sharing, sharing the knowledge, sharing the understanding, sharing what we've learned every day about working with our with our children. Every lesson that's taught is a is a learning opportunity for staff as well as as pupils, and and sharing that knowledge as we get to know our children better and better and better the more we work with them. Um sharing that knowledge is is vital to make sure that we all we all benefit from each other's you know collective experience. Um I think uh within that there's there's in terms of a good school, there has to be um an absolute uh commitment to um never sort of taking a step backwards in terms of development. You know, we we we always look always look forward. Uh uh if we if we bring an improvement in something that we think will work, then we stick to it and see it through, uh seeing through change um is is is really important when things need to change. Uh, I think helping uh staff recognizing uh and being open and honest about when things aren't right and need to change is is critical, and helping them understand why it goes back to you know any change needs to start with why we're doing it. Um but helping people understand why things uh need to change and then how they can be improved is is critical. And having uh an impatience about that really, um that we want things to continually get better and and not be satisfied with um with just being okay. You know, we need we want things to be as good as they can be. Our children get one opportunity at school. Some of our children have missed big chunks of school for various reasons, whether that's uh through you know previous poor experience with education or you know, poor health or or whatever. Uh so it's absolutely vital that every minute counts in school for those kids who make the most of it because they only get one goal and they're probably not gonna get as good a goal as um all the other kids because they've uh uh the you know the medical conditions or time they've missed.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Yeah, yeah. What are you most proud of in your career today?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Um that's a really good question. Um I was really proud of um I think having the opportunity, I don't know if proud is the right word, um having the opportunity to to start school from scratch, um, and and see that through from uh uh conception of an idea around what the school could be, all the way through uh the planning, the design of the buildings, the uh construction of a team um around around that to deliver Spring One Leeds, which is three schools uh across across the city of Leeds, is is uh something that I'll be able to look back on and think and think, yeah, that's that's yeah, we did all right there. That's a pretty good achievement to do that from nothing, particularly when we reflect on how what what it replaced and and how poor that had been. Um the the uh its predecessor school was you know um special measures and had been for a long, long time. Uh to give the city of Leeds uh a functioning uh good quality SEMH provision um when it hadn't had one for years and years, uh is is something that I think we can we can be proud of.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

Yeah, I'd I'd say so. I mean, just walking around those buildings is is something in itself that you know they're fabulous, fabulous. Places where kids are getting the highest quality facilities to enjoy for a start. We've talked a lot about staff, but they've got the best the best resources and facilities there as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah, the other thing I would be proud, staff is one of those things that I'm proud of every day. Of course, I'm proud of the staff. I'm proud of the uh the leadership team that we've built. And you know, I'm I'm proud that some of the some of the people who who've worked with me as as leaders are now off being executive head elsewhere and spreading that stuff elsewhere. That's something I'm you know I'm proud of that we've able been able to develop really, really good people who can go on um at all sorts of different levels, teachers, leaders, um uh some of our positive regard um uh consultants uh all worked um in in my schools and and have gone on to add more put something back into the system.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Well yeah, he's talking about national national reach there with them now. They you know they're all over the country kind of spreading that that um ethos and expertise. Yeah. Um right then. I think it's probably about time that we went on to um a little bit of an insight into your own school days. So do a little a little quick fire round, Scott, and see um see if we can get a little insight into what what school was like for you.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Um just start by saying, can I just start by saying that I am I had the uh I I think it's probably unique um experience at school in that um I got to pull down my old school uh and build a new one on it. So one of the Springwell Leeds schools, Springwell Leeds North, was built on the site of my old middle school.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Oh my word.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

So when we when we got that site, there was still a school in it, and when we opened the Springwell, that was one of our uh settings that was uh after a year we pulled it down and built a new school on it. So I got to pull my old school down and build a new one. That's pretty good. So that's that's really and I love that I I did love that school, obviously. I did love that school. Very good.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

But you love it even more now.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Um, first of all, easy one for you. School dinners are packed lunches.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Um school dinners, school dinners. Although by the time I got to high school, um, everyone went out for dinners. It was there was no school dinners really. At high school, there was a time of the teacher strike, so there was no so the schools all shut over dinner time, so everyone got turned out. So it was usually the chippy over the rub from the school.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Well, you know, that's that's better than um you know soggy chips or whatever it is at school dinner. Although you know, yeah, school school dinners have come a long way now, haven't they? They're not quite what they were when I was there. Um maths or English?

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Oh English. English, definitely. I was certainly better at English than I was at maths. Yeah. My yeah, my my old level, I did all levels, that's how old I am. Um my old level math teacher told me I'd never passed a level math. And then it was pointless me being entered for it because I never passed. Um, and I got a B, so I really enjoyed going to see him when I got my B.

SPEAKER_03 25:21

I I bet you did. Yeah, that's a that's an interesting approach to take with your students, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Whether whether we I'd like to think it was reverse psychology, but I don't think it was.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Oh dear. Um school trip or school disco.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Oh, school trip, yeah. Had some great school trips when I was at school. I mean, those those are I say this a lot to our staff about in education and other things about creating memorable learning experiences, you know, those magic moments. And I think we probably all we probably all remember a really good school trip. We went on, yeah. Um, and and we went on some really good ones when I was at school. Went to France and went to uh should we go to to uh Whitby and all over the place, just great school trips, residentials were fabulous, things you remember for for your life.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

I could yeah, first time I ever went over overseas, went to to France and saw the Bayer tapestry. That was that was cool. Yeah, well, yeah. Um music or drama?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Drama. Yeah, I mean I love music. I you know, music's a big part of my life. It's that one of those sort of uh omnipresent things in my life. I've always listened to music and still do um, still buying lots of uh vinyl records and still listen to those you know, much to my wife's um frustration because it's uh expensive and inconvenient in terms of uh you know, it takes up a lot of space.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Yeah, you need a lot of storage, it's not quite an iPod, is it?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

It really isn't. Um, but I love uh you know, so I love music, but uh never musical. Um not really. I sort of played a little bit of guitar really badly, um, but was never did never discerning music, study music at school, but did drama, right? And was in school productions and and was a school drama club and that kind of thing when I was at school. So drama definitely.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Outdoor or indoor PE?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Uh outdoor, always outdoor. So I played I I played cricket, football, rugby for school. Um, not so much rugby as I got because I was quite small as a kid. So as I got to high school, I didn't play so much rugby because I just got stood on by the big kids. Um but played football for school and played cricket. Um, so I spent all my summers um from being about I don't know, 10 years old, just being out playing cricket three or four days a week. Um up to up to about the age of 20 and played cricket competitively up into my mid-40s. So yeah, played for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

Wow, wow. It's a nice um social sport cricket. I like I like cricket. It really is. And the sunshine.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

And the older the older I got, the more socially got.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

Um, and primary or secondary, which was your favourite?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Well, we had primary, middle, and high in leagues when I went, so we had three stages. Don't remember primary really because I left one that was about seven or eight, something like that. Um, I think middle school was year four, five, six, seven.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Um, I think that might be five, no, five, six, seven, eight. It was.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

Yeah, that was like me. That's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

So I would say middle school, so that's all right. Cop out, absolutely. I loved my middle school. I absolutely loved it. High school didn't enjoy high school at all, really. Don't really remember primary school, but didn't enjoy high school. Really enjoyed my middle school.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

And finally, um, this is a question that we ask everybody. Um, if I could give you a magic wand right now, and you could change absolutely anything you wanted about the education system in this country to make it better. So you've got no constraints about practicalities or finances or any of that boring stuff, um, what would you do? Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Unlimited funds, unlimited money. I I think uh I'm gonna stick with special education because that's that's the better most. Um, I think uh being able to provide uh for every child what they need what they need, you know, having enough money to provide the things that um that we can't do at the moment, um, particularly around uh SEMH education where we there's a real shortage of expertise around mental health support for young people. I think that would benefit education massively. It's a pressing need. Um, so being able to have that you know specialist uh expert uh cam support for uh access, easy, quick access for every child, which could transform you know, could transform education. Um, and I suppose on the other side of it, having you know uh every child uh educated in a building that was great in a really good uh environment, one that's not full with the roofs not falling down, like we've seen in the news recently, where we've got you know, uh I think children deserve to be educated in in good buildings. Wellspring do that really well, our environments. So, you know, we've we put a lot of emphasis on it in looking after our buildings and our estates teams work really hard to make sure uh buildings are as good as they can be, whatever the starting point is. Obviously, Spring One Leeds three, you know, three brand new buildings are amazing, but all our other buildings have significant investment to make them better and make them good. So, yeah, really good access to to mental health support so every child's mental health needs can be met. Yeah, um, and in the educated in a in a deal of really good quality buildings would be fabulous.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

Yeah, I think that's a good one. I think um it'd be transformational across society if we could get um the funding for proper mental health support for everyone. That would be um yeah, yeah, yeah, transformational. Um, thanks so much, because I know you're so busy. Thanks so much for taking the time to have a chat with us today. Um, that's been great, it's been a really interesting insight into that um special and AP world. Um, and best of luck with the year ahead. Um, thanks to you for listening. We'll be back in a few weeks with another episode at the Wellspring Way um and another education leader ready to share their story. Until then, take care, and we look forward to you joining us next time.