Katy Cox (Headteacher at St. Matthew's Catholic Primary School): Support and development in partnerships

In this episode, which was recorded just before the coronavirus restrictions were brought in, Claire talks to Katy Cox who is the headteacher at St Matthew’s Catholic Primary School, Bradford. Katy began her headship at the age of 33 and, 15 years in, she continues to seek ways of improving and supporting her staff. She talks about her keen interest in supporting her staff and newly qualified teachers with leadership roles.

Katy talks in detail about the benefits of working in a Catholic partnership and how the support has developed her school and staff. She draws upon her own experience and the opportunities she was provided in her own teaching career and expresses the need to provide the same support to staff now with the on-going changes in education.

In this podcast, Katy summarises her journey through leadership to being a head and a Local Leader of Education. She talks about the advantages and disadvantages of leadership and the various factors that contribute towards it. Furthermore, she discusses how she supports her staff and the opportunities available for all staff to progress within their careers. Drawing upon her experience and practice, Katy expresses the benefits of working in a partnership school and how this has rapidly improved the progression of her school and staff.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Work as a team
  Learning from her teaching experience and headship role, Katy believes it is important to aid and facilitate teachers - including newly qualified teachers - with leadership roles. She discusses how all teachers should be given the opportunity and support to undertake a leadership role irrespective of their teaching experience.
• The new OFSTED framework
  As a head, Katy has developed teams of staff-members for each subject. This allows teachers to support one another with the subject’s pedagogy and development within the school. When the teachers are inspected and questioned (from Ofsted) about their assigned subject, they can support one another within the meetings.
• Recruiting teaching assistants
  When recruiting for teaching assistant posts, Katy actively looks for and advertises for graduates that aspire to be teachers. She then supports them and provides them with classroom experience and encourages them to progress and develop their career path. Many of the staff do eventually enrol on postgraduate teacher training courses that are available through the school’s partnership programme while others pursue other education-based careers. Katy also supports those teaching assistants who do not wish to become teachers by offering other roles and responsibilities which allow for progression such as taking on cover supervisor roles.
• Distributed leadership
  Katy believes in distributed leadership whereby newly qualified teachers shadow and support experienced teachers and senior leaders with different responsibilities including course subjects. Through this approach, teachers are given the opportunity to develop and expand upon their skills when they are leading their own course subjects. Moreover, this approach can bring out a passion for progression and leadership within newly qualified staff at an early stage as they experience being involved within the team and working alongside leaders.
• Working in a partnership
  Between partnership schools there can be a lot of opportunities for professional development for all teachers and staff. Katy believes that the pace with which her school and staff have developed so far, along with the quality of the development opportunities, would not have been possible without this collaboration.
• Training leaders
  Staff are offered training including National Professional Qualification for Middle Leaders (NPQML) and National Professional Qualification for Senior Leaders (NPQSL) through the Catholic school partnership. Other opportunities include working with peer groups within the partnership school.
  
  

BEST MOMENTS

“I think it’s really made me think about the teachers that are coming into the career as newly qualified teachers, thinking about what was in place when I was a newly qualified teacher and then the development I had. Which I suppose was a little bit ad hoc for when I was a class teacher and I suppose it shaped my philosophy and from those very first few years in early careers that, as leaders, we need to support those teachers and give them the opportunities to develop leadership skills alongside developing the classroom skills as well.”

“They used to say you’ve got to have five to seven years of classroom experience before you can try to have a go at leadership. Whereas, for me, that’s not how it should be at all. You should be learning and developing those skills right from the start.”

“The new framework makes me a little bit concerned for middle leaders and class teachers because I think the emphasis has moved. Certainly, how it used to be, you, as a head, you were the only one involved in Ofsted. You have all the meetings and maybe with your senior leadership team. Now, the focus really is on those middle leaders and leaders of the subject. They’re not even core subjects, they are the foundation subjects that they’re doing deep dives on.”

“What I’ve really thought about at [my] school is how to support the leaders of those subjects. We’ve put a team around those leaders. Now, they’re working together looking at the curriculum planning and evidence, so that when we come to an Ofsted, if the inspectors will allow us, it won’t just be one middle leader having to go through that process. Two or three will be able to submit to go together.”

“We’ve got teaching assistants who haven’t got degrees and who don’t want to go into teaching, but they are also offered opportunities within school.”

“For me, a big part for my staff is being a part of the Catholic schools partnership. Over the last nine [to] ten years, as headteachers from all 18 primary schools and two secondary schools, we’ve come together and formed a really powerful collaboration that’s formalised. It’s renowned throughout the diocese but it’s also renowned throughout the country. The work that we’ve done collectively is really powerful for people to come and join.”

“When you join our partnership or join my school, then you are guaranteed that you are going to have a bespoke training package every year. We are already ahead of the game, thinking about the early career framework.”

“My inspiration would be that I was encouraged to develop when I was a class teacher. I had the opportunity quite young [and] early on in my career to put myself forward for what was [the] National Numeracy Project. I got involved with that, worked alongside the maths leader who was due to retire. When she did retire the year after, then I took that on with another colleague.”

“I think, as a leader in the profession, it’s really important that we invest right from day one because these teachers who are new to the profession… they are our future leaders.”

“Our whole ethos is based on our motto ‘I tried to live like Jesus; I love; I forgive; I pray. Come follow me, be the best that I can be.’”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

St. Matthew’s Catholic Primary School: https://stmatthewscatholic.co.uk/
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/

ABOUT THE HOST
Claire Riley

Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.

Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.

Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.

The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.

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