Wootton Park School – Why we do community service
Principal Dan Rosser explains why the spirit of community service is so important at Wootton Park School
- by Dan Rosser
Wootton Park School is a standalone, all-through school academy serving ages 4 to 19 with around 1,450 children.
We opened in September 2016, with this academic year seeing our first-ever primary cohort roll into our secondary phase. A third of our current Y7 are learners who originally started with us in Early Years. This was back when the school was only just getting started.
Our opening was prompted by Northampton becoming the fastest-growing area in the country outside of London, with a significant increase in new housing.
When the government identified it as an area requiring an additional school, a local group submitted a successful bid to the DfE’s Free Schools programme. That’s how we came to be.
That meant that myself and my staff were essentially able to work with a blank canvas, free from any adherence to notions of ‘We’ve always done it like this.’ We had the opportunity to create something from scratch, which I think has become something special for our local community.
A key part of our approach, is our willingness and ability to adapt over time, depending on the children’s needs. We can be flexible with our staffing because we get to make such decisions at a school level. This is rather than being beholden to managers based in London or Manchester telling us how many staff we can or can’t have.
Role models
That said, the decisions we’ve arrived at haven’t always been popular. We’ve certainly had our fair share of critics on social media concerning us being too strict. This was after introducing certain policies like our silent corridors.
If, however, a learner contravenes our behaviour system, then the sanction they receive typically has to contain an element of community service, such as picking up litter during break or lunch.
Our approach to behaviour is rooted in us being an all-through school. When our children move from the primary to secondary phase, they’re not going from being the oldest in their school to suddenly being the youngest again. This is because at Wootton Park there will still be primary children younger than them. This means they assume the responsibility of being role models to the younger children – a role they take very seriously.
We also occupy a single building, which means that there are interactions in shared spaces between children from different phases. There’s a phrase we use in school – ‘Little ears are listening.’ Our learners know that they mustn’t use poor language in corridors, because there may well be a 4- or 5-year-old not far away who can hear them.
The way we’ve designed the school allows us to teach the younger children in our specialist facilities, including our science labs, food tech room and technology suite. It also ensures that our 11- to 16-year-olds have to model positive behaviours in the presence of their younger peers.
Lessons in leadership
Community service is a crucially important part of what we do as a school. We expect all of our children to involve themselves in community service projects of one kind or another, be it in school or externally.
Examples might include assisting at an old people’s home. KS4 learners may carry out paired reading activities with our 5-year-olds.
Core to this is our ambition to develop well-rounded young people. We know that many young people at the moment are passing through higher education and gaining fantastic qualifications, but are entering the workplace lacking many of the ‘softer skills’ that employers have said they’re looking for.
As such, we place a real emphasis on developing communication, problem-solving, teamwork and leadership skills among our learners. In fact, we expect every child in our secondary phase to assume a leadership role at some stage during their time with us.
We’ve tried to mirror the school’s SLT with a ‘Learner Leadership Team’. This comprises two Head Learners, plus a separate leader who looks at how to improve the school’s environment. The latter oversees their own small team of younger learners. They meet monthly to discuss things like recycling projects, sustainability and so forth.
There’s also a team of anti-bullying ambassadors made up of Y10 and Y11 learners, led by one of our Y12s. They are available for lunchtime drop-in sessions.
We’re currently developing a new team of wellbeing support champions. They will act as a supportive ear for children who are anxious or upset, but reluctant to talk to our staff.
Those children will know that they can visit our wellbeing room at a pre-arranged time. Here they’ll be able to talk to an older peer who’s trained in listening, supporting them and guiding them in the right direction.
Shared ownership
What unites all this activity is having a sense of ownership. Our view has always been that if we can get our learners to take ownership and be proud of their school, they won’t want to let the school down through poor behaviour.
Our attendance has consistently been 3% to 4% above the national average. I put this down to the children wanting to come to school, wanting to do well and knowing that they can be themselves while they’re here.
We’ve had some children join us who other schools have permanently excluded. Within a week or two of being at Wootton Park, they feel little need to indulge in bravado, or put on an act. They can simply be who they want to be and succeed academically. It’s cool to do well at Wootton Park School!
That said, we do operate a broadly traditional behaviour policy with a sliding scale and everything else that comes with it. We endeavour to take a firm line on behaviour. If we hear one child swearing towards another, we’ll suspend the first child for their infraction.
That can seem quite tough in practice. However, we aim to replicate elements of the workplace in what we do, because that’s what we’re preparing our students for.
“We endeavour to take a firm line on behaviour”
If, in contrast, they experienced a culture in which we considered acting disrespectfully towards each other as broadly OK, we’d only be storing up problems that persist into their adult lives.
Staff wellbeing
From our opening until now, we’ve never bought in a single day of cover thanks to our low staff absence rates. Staff enjoy being here – principally because they’re not battling the kind of challenges surrounding behaviour they might have experienced elsewhere.
We’re currently developing wellbeing support champions for staff. Nine colleagues have put themselves forward for the role thus far. The plan is for them to be available informally if a member of staff feels they need a friendly and helpful chat, or some form of extra support.
“We’ve never bought in a single day of cover”
We also hold monthly ‘tea and cake’ afternoons. One event last October saw around 60 of our staff convene for friendly conversations and to simply catch up.
Teaching is a busy job. It can be nice to take 15 minutes out now and then to talk with somebody in a different department, who you might not normally see, over cake. Because who doesn’t like cake…?
Dan Rosser is the principal at Wootton Park School. Wootton Park School was among the winners at 2023’s Northamptonshire Education Awards. It won in both the ‘Secondary School of the Year’ and ‘Overall School of the Year’ categories. The Awards’ nominees were suggested by the public, with winners decided by an independent panel of experts. For more information, visit allthingsbusiness.co.uk/awards
