School improvement update - January

Author

Mary Myatt
January 04, 2024

Sensible stuff, no quick fixes

Dear colleague

I hope the new year has started well for you.

Here are some links that I hope you find helpful:

We have developed some brilliant new courses launching this month on the Huh Academy.

Leading the Diverse Curriculum

We are delighted to be hosting Leading the Diverse Curriculum which has been developed by Hannah Wilson and Bennie Kara, co-founders of Diverse Educators.

I had a great conversation with Bennie and Hannah about their reasons for developing the programme, the benefits of offering a self-paced CPD models with live check-ins and how they support colleagues to dive deep into this important work.

You can watch our introduction conversation here. And you can book onto the course here.

Building Teams

The importance of teams has been studied extensively across many sectors. It means that there’s plenty of data to encourage us to get this right.

For example, a study by Paul Zak, (2017) found that people at high-trust companies report:

  • 74% less stress

  • 13% fewer sick days

  • 76% more engagement

  • 29% more satisfaction with their lives

  • 40% less burnout, when compared with people at low-trust companies.

This new course from Lekha Sharma and Sam Crome will help us to get the best both from ourselves and the colleagues we work with.

More information on the course can be found here. You can sign up for the introductory webinar with Lekha, Sam and me on Tuesday 9th January 7.30pm here.

Curriculum and leadership courses are ready to access, self-paced with live check-ins. More from the Huh Academy here.

Some diversity links:

  • Children’s author and former head and senior leader Troy Jenkinson offers training and support as an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Specialist.

  • It’s well worth checking out the Global Equality Collective led by Nic Ponsford. For example, their free webinar on Tuesday 16th January 13:30-14:30 about inclusive and accessible exams and assessments with Daren White, Sammy White and Nic Ponsford.

  • Looking for help teaching acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people? Ian Timbrell’s award winning package 'More than Flags and Rainbows' includes an inclusion health check, an inclusion action plan, training, policy development and support

  • I’ll be speaking at DiverseEd Cymru conference on Saturday 2nd March 2024 in Newport. The theme is ‘Be where you are celebrated, not tolerated.’

We are continuing to add to the faster reading collection and the impact that just reading can have on reading progress for all pupils and students and particularly those with lower starting points. You can find out how colleagues at St Michael’s C of E Primary School have applied the ‘Faster Read’ research approach by reading challenging texts, at pace, in whole class reading. In this film they discuss their approach and the exceptional outcomes. As with all the ‘Faster Read’ conversations, this is free to access on Myatt & Co.

If you think there’s someone who would appreciate this update, you can forward the link here.

Until next time

Mary