Week 3

Dear Parent/ Carer,

First... an apology.  My blog posting is 'late' (posted Monday morning) this week due my Friday “sleep-over” at the Science Museum with children from Haseltine.  Sleep-over is deserving of the inverted commas… there wasn’t a great deal of sleep involved.  Below are some photographs from the visit… which was very much enjoyed by all.  Our thanks to the Sage charity and to the Science Museum staff for making this event possible for our children.  Sincere thanks also to the staff from Haseltine who participated in the visit.

 

This week, Ms Brumby, Chair of Governors Victoria Widdows and I enjoyed a Learning Walk at Haseltine.  We were all very impressed with the purposeful learning evident in the classrooms and with the calm and happy atmosphere in the school.  From there, I went to Kilmorie for a tour of the school with Chair of Governors Anita Gibbons.  This was Anita’s first visit since the refurbishment and she shared her delight with the quality and finish of the building that we have taken over.  At Fairlawn this week I was fortunate enough to be present during the Fairlawn Singers and Friends performance.  It was a lovely community event.  My thanks to Shirley Streets for being the inspiration behind the event.  I spent some late nights at the schools last week as I work through my ‘baseline’ fact-finding at all three.  I, and a team from Fairlawn, met with Teaching School Alliance partners this week and shared a vision for how we might develop the Teaching School in the coming months and years.  The Teaching School offers some exciting possibilities for our three school partnership and, indeed, for our Teaching School Alliance partners and wider network.

It is endlessly fascinating… and also a real privilege… to work with the Heads of the respective Schools and with the staff and children within.  The Executive Head teacher role is evolving week by week as we talk, assess and evaluate and work out the differing needs of the Heads, the staff and the schools themselves.

I shared a quote from Jim Collins’ fantastic book Good to Great with the teaching staff at Fairlawn the week before last.  I think it bears a wider circulation for our partnership of schools.  The book begins with the following:

“Good is the enemy of great.

And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.

We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools.  We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government.  Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.  The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good – and that is their main problem.”

Jim Collins, Good to Great

Our collective aim throughout the partnership is to push through good, always, to outstanding and beyond.

Have a lovely week.

Mark Wilson