Reshaping the school vision
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Context and Background
The Cathedral School is an independent day school for boys and girls from 3 to 18 years of age. The school is close to Llandaff Cathedral in the city of Cardiff. It was founded in 1880 and has been owned since 1957 by the Woodard Corporation, an educational charity. The school describes itself as an Anglican choir school. It has a close relationship with Llandaff Cathedral, and provides choristers (boys) and choral scholars (girls) to support the Cathedral’s choral tradition.
Since 2012, there has been an increasing demand for places and a rapid expansion in pupil numbers. Over the last three years, the school has implemented a number of successful strategies to highlight and further develop the pupils’ sense of community and responsibility to one another and to the world around them. The development of a shared vision across the 3-18 age range, new leadership opportunities for staff and pupils and a close interaction between academic and pastoral leaders have helped foster values such as respect, tolerance, kindness and compassion. These fundamental values permeate across the whole school community and help pupils to develop self-confidence, acquire a broad range of important life skills and become well-informed and active citizens.
Description of nature of strategy or activity
1. Build a shared and purposeful vision of the school community including parents, staff and pupils
In 2016, with the appointment of a new headteacher, the governors identified the opportunity to reshape the senior leadership team and to restate the school’s vision. The school conducted three wide-ranging parental surveys, which ensured that leaders gained a clear understanding of the views of all parents, regarding both the strengths of the school, as well as any relevant areas for development. The headteacher held weekly meetings with pupils and met with all members of staff individually. This enabled all stakeholders to contribute meaningfully to the whole-school vision.
A number of strands emerged from these meetings, which together formed the school ethos statements. Two key principles in this shared vision were the concepts of care and of leadership. Care was defined as enabling an inclusive community that builds understanding, respect and empathy for all, developing an active social and moral conscience and serving others for the common good. The definition of leadership emerged as inspiring others to achieve a shared purpose, listening, learning and working together, ensuring that every voice counts.
These concepts underpin all aspects of the school’s provision for pupils’ care, support and guidance. They were embedded around the school through parent meetings, assemblies and in class time. The next steps were to ensure that school systems enabled this vision to become a reality.
2. Establish effective pastoral structures across the 3-18 age range
In order for this vision to be realised, clear lines of accountability and new opportunities for staff leadership were implemented. The governors invested significant resources into ensuring that this approach was effective.
- Oversight from Senior Leadership: An assistant head with responsibility for safeguarding was appointed with an extended remit. This included responsibility for pupils’ social, moral, spiritual and cultural development and line management of the school’s personal development programme (PHME) as well as the school counsellor.
- Clear lines of accountability through Middle Leadership: New middle management roles were established for the leadership of PHME programme, creating a department that spanned across the 3-18 age range. This enabled a coherent framework to be set up and expertise to be shared effectively. Additional curriculum time was allocated for PHME and a programme established that could flexibly respond to pupils’ needs while providing clear and age-appropriate guidance to develop the social and emotional skills of all pupils.
- Support for pastoral leaders: The house system, which lies at the heart of the pastoral provision for our pupils, was strengthened through the addition of an assistant housemaster / housemistress, to ensure that pupils’ wellbeing could be tracked effectively and necessary interventions identified and acted upon in a timely manner.
- High expectations of every teacher: The role of the form tutor was redefined. Every tutor now teaches PHME and pastoral reporting was given an increased emphasis. Training opportunities to support tutors and promote best practice were built into the inset programme.
- Additional pastoral provision for pupils: In addition to the school counsellor, two new emotional literacy support assistants were trained to enable a quick response to pastoral concerns faced by the pupils.
3. Strengthen the spiritual foundation of the school
The school’s strong Christian ethos has been made more relevant to every pupil through the ‘thought for the week’, put together by the chaplain and the head of religious studies.This forms the basis of school assemblies, weekly chapel services, whole-school services in Llandaff Cathedral and discussions in tutor time. This common focus, which is built on at an age-appropriate level throughout the school, celebrates pupils’ achievements in a variety of spheres of personal development (for example sporting success, active citizenship and kindness to others).It enables staff and pupils to engage with and understand their part in fostering values such as respect, tolerance, kindness and compassion.
4. Provide opportunities for young people to become active citizens
At the same time, it was recognised that pupils need to take responsibility for their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of the school as a whole. The voice of the sixth form was strengthened by extending the student leadership team and providing these pupils with explicit opportunities to influence and give feedback on the priorities within the school development plan. This approach was later extended to allow all pupils to feed in through pupil councils. Training days for student and pupil leaders across the key stages were introduced. Young people have responsibility for leading specific house events, such as the Eisteddfod and sports day, while every pupil in key stage 3 and key stage 4 has the opportunity to lead an assembly each year. Pupil initiatives such as ‘Project Rainbow’, the pupil established LGBTQ+ society, are encouraged and supported with staff time. In the primary section every pupil has the opportunity to undertake a leadership role each year. This aspect is monitored by form teachers who encourage and support less confident pupils to take on a role in which they have an interest.
As a result, pupils are able to develop their self-confidence and acquire a broad range of important life skills.
5. Close interaction between academic and pastoral monitoring.
The Cathedral School has a reputation for outstanding academic success. However, there was strong recognition from staff that excellent exam results are dependent on pupils’ pastoral wellbeing. Consequently, as part of the school’s weekly inset programme, time was allocated to allow pastoral leaders to guide interventions for underperforming pupils. A clear structure for pastoral reporting was developed in the senior section using research from the Educational Endowment Foundation. Tutors provide twice-yearly formal feedback on each pupil’s development in key areas, which supports their social and moral wellbeing. Alongside academic tracking, senior pupils and students are surveyed every half term with regard to their wellbeing. As a result, pupils are aware that the school takes their wellbeing seriously while the results of the surveys allow early intervention to be targeted carefully.
What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?
This coherent approach and the related initiatives have proved highly effective strategies for promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. The range of support available to pupils has increased in both quality and quantity. Those directly involved include the chaplain, pastoral leaders, form teachers, emotional literacy support assistants, mental health first aiders, trained peer supporters, and the school counsellor. These staff operate within a coherent and integrated system. The number of older students mentoring younger pupils with emotional or educational needs has increased, and the school has also seen an increase in young people seeking out citizenship opportunities outside school, for example standing for the Welsh Youth Parliament or designing a computer programme that can identify phishing emails. Pupils have taken an active role in shaping and formulating school policy, for example by pressing for a ban on single-use plastic bottles throughout the school. This policy was successfully implemented in September 2018.
How have you shared your good practice?
As a hub school for the Jigsaw personal development programme, the Cathedral School has hosted training events for other schools as well as hosting wellbeing and safeguarding seminars for the Welsh Independent Schools Council. The school is a member of the Urban Schools network, an informal collaboration of Church in Wales Schools in Cardiff, and worked to develop a shared Year 5 Prayer Space project, focusing on truth and justice, and a combined project for Christian Aid. The school’s pupils, together with pupils and students from other local schools, are currently working together on a Clean Air initiative for Llandaff.