Stepping down from the chair of the Company’s Education Committee offers Richard Glover an interesting opportunity to reflect.
Thinking back over the last seven years, my principal conclusion is that educationally, across all our school groups, we have become more ‘joined up’. A year or so after I took the chair, we held the first ever meeting of Heads of all the Haberdasher schools, who had never before gathered together expressly to share good practice and discuss issues of mutual interest and concern: I remember remarking at the time that I was not quite sure why it had taken us four hundred years to do this…
Since then, this group has met regularly and other common interest groups from across the schools’ network, including Academic Deputies. Pastoral Heads, subject specialists for music, sports and other subjects, now also meet and communicate regularly: it is now the norm.
Over the last seven years there has also been a marked increase in events and activities which involve students and staff from all our schools. I am particularly pleased that so many of these originate in the schools themselves and the role of the Company has been to facilitate greater involvement in them.
Take Aspire, for instance, which has recently been launched Company-wide across all the school groups: this was conceived and developed in Monmouth, and once the benefits of linking Haberdasher students to mentors had been proven there it has now been rolled out. Similarly, the Senior Leadership training programme: this was conceived and developed by Haberdashers Academies Trust South (HATS) but now teachers from all school groups are benefitting from it. Learning from Adapt and Thrive, the alternative provision programme conceived and developed by Abraham Darby has been effectively shared and I am sure that initiatives from the recently launched Innovation Centre in Elstree will similarly benefit Haberdasher students and staff from all our school groups.
One very important collaborative project now underway is looking at the possibility of extending our range of A level options for Years 12 and 13 students by offering subjects remotely, with students joining together from across the Haberdasher schools’ network.
There is no such thing as definitive or ultimate success in education and all schools are constantly having to innovate and refresh to achieve the outcomes they require and enable all our students to fulfil their potential. And all our schools, whether in the maintained or independent sectors, are having to contend with a range of significant problems. Funding, in the face of restricted budgets for the maintained sector, or pressure on student numbers in the independent sector, with the additional burdens of VAT, the loss of business rates relief and increasing National Insurance costs, is a major preoccupation. Finding the right suitably qualified teachers is also an issue for all school groups. But as a Company we are enormously fortunate to have effective and resourceful leadership teams in all our schools, who constantly rise to these challenges.
I have been very lucky to work with three able and effective Directors of Education since I took on this role and I am most grateful to Andy Ellison, Andy Chambers and Arabella Gonzalez for their help and support. As I keep telling James Penney, chairing the Education Committee is extremely rewarding and enjoyable and, as I stand down, I am happy in the knowledge that in him I have an outstanding successor.
– Richard Glover, Outgoing Chair of the Education Committee and member of the Court of Assistants
