Journal Club

                                 Journal Club

Journal Club

Journal Club is a research forum for teachers by teachers.  Each session of Journal Club will focus on articles taken from Chartered College of Teaching’s themed journal ‘Impact’.  Participants of Journal Club will engage in a professional discussion relating to the research in the journal and consider examples of practice that exemplify the research.  Participants may decide to develop practice relating to the research and help in providing the Chartered College of Teaching with practice that exemplifies the very best in our profession.

The Chartered College of Teaching 

The Chartered College of Teaching opened in January 2017 as the new professional body for the teaching profession. Membership is voluntary and provides access to research, events, a wide community of educators, and high-quality professional learning.

Perhaps most importantly is that The Chartered College of Teaching provides the chance to make a difference for our profession.

Further information about joining the Chartered College of Teaching here.

Do I need to be a member of the Chartered College of Teaching to attend Journal Club?

Participants in Journal Club do not need to be members of the Chartered College of Teaching; although membership does provide access to a repository of research journals and resources.  Our first Journal Club also had a range of teachers from the primary phase, university lecturers, school leaders, a trust CEO and a Trust Business Manager.  This diverse group meant the discussion was varied and engaging.

When is the next Journal Club taking place?

Due to COvid-19 we have no further journal clubs planned.  Watch this space for more information.

Previous Journal Clubs:

9 October 2019 4:00- 5:00pm at Warden House Primary School, Deal.

13 November 2019 4:00-5:30pm at Pilgrims' Way Primary School, Canterbury

24 March 2020 4:00-5:30pm at Brenzett CE Primary School, Brenzett.

You may also like to sign up for our #BrewEdCanterbury event on Saturday 28 March 2020 from 12:00-5:00. (Postponed until after lockdown measures)

What was the focus of our first Journal Club?

Our first Journal Club met in November 2018.  The first edition of the Chartered College of Teaching’s journal ‘Impact’ had a focus on evidence-informed practice.  This formed the focus to the inaugural meeting of our Journal Club; delegates pre-read of the article on page 11 of the journal by Louise Stoll from the Department of Learning and Leadership, UCL Institute of Education in London entitled 'Five challenges in moving towards evidence-informed practice". This article gave a springboard to our discussions at Journal Club.  The delegates, teachers from a range of primary schools and Canterbury Christ Church University, shared their thoughts on the article and spoke about evidence-informed practices in their own settings.  The vision of the Journal Club is to bring theory to life and engage in evidence-informed practice in our own settings.  

What is the focus of our next Journal Club?

We will be using Journal articles from the Arts in Education edition of Impact journal, creativity and cultural education. In particular the article written by Peter Gregory ‘Valuing Arts in Education’ as the springboard to our discussions. This session will also consider the place of the arts in our school curriculum and touch on the new Ofsted framework in relation to the arts. Hope to see you there.

Here is the article we will be discussing:

Strengthening Trusts through peer review

Strengthening trusts through peer review

In a time where our country appears to be looking in on itself, it is ever more important that school leaders remain outward facing.  Seeking challenge and support from those beyond our own organisation is both energising and affirming.  As a headteacher, I was involved in a range of collaborations across schools, supported by local networks, teaching schools and trusts.  As a CEO of a MAT, there seems to be fewer examples of collaboration across trusts.  This blog shares the emerging stories from collaborative work from the newly formed Kent Multi Academy Trust Alliance and outlines six steps to success for ensuring trust peer reviews have a positive impact on your organisation.

1. Devise your self review document

I devised a trust self review system based on the DfE MAT Development Programme . Each key question was unpacked in the document and given a RAG rating to allow a quick assessment of relative strengths and weaknesses to be evaluated in our cross trust peer review conversations. The image below shows an example of one question and how evidence is succinctly recorded for each trust.

We decided to run the trust peer review with three trusts, this provided challenge for each CEO while making the conversation focussed enough to be helpful. The CEOs decided to meet three times across the year to review the three key elements of self review:

1. School improvement and developing people
2. Governance and risk assessment 
3. Finance and school resource management

The first meeting in the autumn term involved trust CEOs.  The second meeting in the spring term involved trust CEOs accompanied by their Chair of trustees.  The third meeting in the summer term involved trust CEOs and their Trust Business Managers. We also gave an open invitation to other trust CEOs and trustees to attend and observe our reviews to build capacity for future review groups to meet across the Kent MAT Alliance.

2. Make time to encourage a genuine dialogue

Our first trust review meeting was held in the autumn term. It became evident very early on that we had not built enough time to meet and discuss each question in depth for our trusts.  We therefore adapted our practice to provide an initial self-review prior to the meeting to allow colleagues to consider key challenge questions.  This helped keep our discussions focussed and purposeful.  We met for half a day and from each review meeting, we devised shared action that had arisen from any common areas in the self review. 

The discussions helped us as CEOs see our trust through the eyes of another trust executive, allowing us to hold our assumptions lightly as our evaluation was challenged for clarity by our colleagues.

3. Involve trustees

Our second session looked at governance and risk management.  We invited our chairs of trustees to this review session.  This proved powerful as trustees meet and challenged one another.  A common dialogue was formed across trusts to discuss the strengths and relative weaknesses and key documents were offered and shared across trusts to help develop each trust. Outcomes from this review also led to trustees visiting one another's trust board meetings to see how differing trusts structured these meetings. Unpacking the often shrouded approaches to governance across our trusts. This helped trustees think more carefully about their own structures including their trust schemes of delegation to strengthen systems of governance decision making within their trust.

4. Involve Trust Business Managers

Our third trust peer review meeting in the summer term looked at finance and school resource management.  We invited our trust business managers to this discussion after working with them in our trusts to produce an initial review statement using the trust self review tool. I found the discussion of the self review with my trust business manager helpful in deepening my own understanding of the business functions of the trust and this in turn helped me ask increasingly challenging questions of my colleagues during our review meeting. As with the previous reviews, action was shared at this meeting that then fed directly into the work both within each trust and across the ten trusts in the Kent MAT Alliance. In addition, my trust business manager took relevant action to the Kent MAT Alliance trust business managers group for further discussion. 

5. Commit to action

While the trust self review discussions were really helpful, the decision to write a shared action plan ensured the CEOs committed to action.  This agreed action challenged the CEOs to ensure action was followed through. 

In our first cycle of this review, we learnt that our action planning needs refining, as we formed some unrealistic targets that were difficult to follow attain in the timescale given. We will ensure in the future that the targets for action are both manageable and purposeful.

6. Share what works

Our next step is to share our work and to support the work of the second group of three trusts engaging in trust peer review.  We cannot work in silos in education and with our vision of being 'better together' we are happy to share what works and what hasn't worked with our trust peer review.  Knowing the educational landscape is a bumpy place that shifts beneath our feet, we need to remain nimble and take confident steps in order to navigate the winding path ahead. With the introduction of Ofsted Summary Evaluations of trusts with us and the accountability measures for trusts continuing to gain momentum; it is in our interests to ensure we remain outward facing and seek challenge for our work from beyond our trust. This model of trust self review has proved helpful in clarifying our journey as a trust while developing meaningful opportunities to share our own successful practice and being guided by that of colleagues.

If you are interested in finding out more about our work as a collaboration of trusts or trust self review then contact me here.

Collaboration across trusts

Better together - collaboration across trusts

In a time where our country appears to be looking in on itself, it is ever more important that school leaders remain outward facing.  Looking for challenge and support from those beyond our own organisation is both energising and affirming.  As a headteacher, I was involved in a range of collaborations across schools, supported by local networks, teaching schools and trusts.  As a CEO of a MAT, there seems to be fewer examples of collaboration across trusts.  This blog shares the emerging stories from collaborative work from the newly formed Kent Multi Academy Trust Alliance.

The Kent MAT Alliance was formed in 2018 with nine academy trusts and a teaching school alliance.  The group was formed to develop opportunities for the CEOs to network and support one another.  Being a leader in any organisation can be a lonely place and it was the vision of the group to form relationships that would nurture support for one another and our trusts. Here are a three steps we have made in the past six months since forming the Kent MAT Alliance.

1. Set out your terms of engagement

We started by engaging an education consultant to coordinate the set up of the alliance.  The consultant brought a wealth of knowledge to the table and helped draw together a group of like minded CEOs and a teaching school alliance.  We met together and formed our terms of reference.  This helped us bond as a group and understand our collective vision for the alliance. This led to the production of a logo and vision statement 'better together' that reflects our alliance's belief that together we are stronger.

2. Make things happen

We set out to put on meaningful events for us as CEOs and for our teams across schools.

With the support of Queenborough Teaching School Alliance, our NQTs and post NQTs have met across our trusts to supplement the NQT training offered, building relationships and strengthening teaching for our fledgling teachers.  

Three CEOs have met to trial a trust self review system based on the DfE MAT Development Programme . This has led to three in depth reviews with CEOs and trustees offering rigorous challenge for one another across trusts.  The outcome of the self review discussions led the CEOs to build a shared action plan to strengthen practice within their own trust. Being prepared for deeper external challenge has led to a strengthening of our own systems, building confidence for future inspections, Regional School Commissioner reviews and the potential of Ofsted summary evaluations of trusts.

We have set up a trust business manager group.  TBMs meet and discuss opportunities for shared procurement, opportunities to share key management information systems and engage in professional discussions about business, finance and HR.

We have offered out training events for headteachers and governors on IDSR analysis.  Utilising the knowledge base of our own system leaders across the alliance to make the training bespoke and purposeful.

3. Share what works

Our next step is to share our work.  We cannot work in silos in education and with our vision of being 'better together' we are happy to share what works and what hasn't worked with our alliance.  Knowing the educational landscape is a bumpy place that shifts beneath our feet, we need to remain nimble and take confident steps in order to navigate the winding path ahead. 

I would love to hear from you about how you have developed collaborative work across trusts.

Chartered College of Teaching Events

Canterbury Christ Church University Chartered College of Teaching Hub

The Canterbury Christ Church University Chartered College of Teaching hub supports teachers in East Kent.  The hub provides a range of events and networks that help teachers and school leaders across the region to connect and grow.  

The committee members include:

• Graham Chisnell - Veritas Multi Academy Trust
• Kerry Jordan-Daus - Canterbury Christ Church University
• Louisa Horner - CATs Canterbury
• Peter Gregory - Canterbury Christ Church University
• Tamzin Wood - TIMU Academy Trust

Forthcoming Events

• 5 March 2020 Teach Meet 4:30pm CATs Canterbury Confident exam preparation
• 24 March Critical Friends peer support group for anyone undertaking a research project
• 24 March 4:00-5:30pm at Brenzett CE Primary School, Brenzett. Book in here
• #BrewEdCanterbury event on Saturday 28 March 2020 from 12:00-5:00. Book in here
• 30 April 2020 - Journal Club - Bobbing Village School 4pm - 5:30pm
• 21 May 2020 Lead Meet 4:30pm -6:30pm CATs |Canterbury
• 2 July 2020  Journal Club - Bobbing Village School 4pm - 5:30p

For further details about joining the Chartered College of Teaching click here.

To connect with the Canterbury Christ Church University Chartered College of Teaching hub click here to email Graham.

Past events:

7 March 2019  5:30 - 7:30pm Teach meet hosted by CATs Canterbury

30 March 2019 Irresistible Curriculum Conference hosted by Canterbury Christ Church University

30 April 2019 Journal Club 5:30-7:30 hosted by CATs Canterbury

16 May 2019  Lead meet hosted by CATs in Canterbury 5:30-7:30pm

2 July 2019 Teach Meet Canterbury #TMCanterbury  hosted by Pilgrims' Way Primary School in Canterbury

8 October 2019 Journal Club hosted by CATs Canterbury

9 October 2019 Journal Club hosted by Warden House Primary School, Deal

12 November Teach Meet hosted by CATs Canterbury 

13 November Journal Club hosted by Pilgrims' Way Primary School, Canterbury 

23 January - Journal Club - Bobbing Village School 4pm - 5:30pm.

30 January 2020 Journal Club 5:00pm-6:30 CATs Canterbury