Futura Learning Partnership

Futura Learning Partnership comprises 26 schools, including 6 secondary and 20 primary schools, located in the Southwest of England. There are approximately 1,600 staff members working across the Trust, serving 12,000 pupils across five local authority areas. The Trust has recently undergone significant growth and change, including a merger with Cleveland Learning Trust.

Cheddar Grove Primary School is located in South Bristol and has 65 members of staff and 480 pupils, all united around serving the community, which is diverse – around 20% pupils have Pupil Premium, around 20% have SEND.

Key contributors: Ady Tomsa (Director of People & Organisational Development), Suzy Walker (Principal HR Business Partner), Paul Jeffery (Headteacher of Cheddar Grove Primary School) 

Practice and impact

Open door policy

Staff are used to visitors coming into their classrooms to observe the work going on at Cheddar Grove Primary School. By removing the stress of official classroom observations, staff no longer have to worry when someone stops by to observe their lessons. An added benefit of these more informal learning walks is that there is a quicker turnaround for feedback. If there is anything to celebrate, it is celebrated straight away, if there is anything to address, it is addressed straight away. Open communication along with consistent expectations allows for this transparency across the school to be successful. Staff are encouraged to openly communicate concerns, eliminating the need for stressful, formalised meetings, observations or assessments.

Internal career progression

One way that staff at Cheddar Grove Primary School are supported and encouraged to progress in their careers is by changing the year groups that they work with. This year, nine staff members asked to change their year group as a step in their professional development. Of course, it is not without its challenges, but by having a supportive internal culture, staff members step in to help their colleagues in their new roles. Equally notable is that staff are always openly thanked for their help in meetings, ensuring that the helping hands do not go unnoticed. Cheddar Grove Primary School had no staff turnover last year, which headteacher Paul Jeffery attributes to the fact that staff love working in the school. If staff do leave, it is usually for external reasons, such as moving house or promotion.

“Pinching” ideas through trust network meetings

At a trust level, Futura Learning Partnership organises regular collaboration days, in addition to their normal Inset days, where staff across schools can share best practices and ideas. This dedicated additional time allows teachers to avoid duplication of efforts by “pinching” successful methods from others within their specialty, such as specific subjects or work with SEND. Trust network meetings also allow staff members to feel recognised for the work they are doing by other schools, building the overall culture of collaborative learning.

Reactive and proactive initiatives

In addressing staff workload, Futura Learning Partnership employs both reactive and proactive strategies. Reactively, Futura Learning Partnership offers support like Health Assured, an employee assistance program (EAP) providing counselling and additionally, healthcare reimbursements via their Health Cash back plans, helping to alleviate personal stressors that can impact work. Proactively, the Trust focuses on engagement and wellbeing as part of a developing People Strategy, which includes the introduction of a behavioural framework to foster a positive, collaborative culture across schools that translates values into actions. It is vital that people feel they can talk to the leadership team, understand the importance of the environment (it feels clean, it feels calm), and are comfortable with raising their hand and expressing their thoughts. By proactively creating the culture of the Trust, and ensuring everyone feels like they have the resources they need to carry out their role effectively, the Trust aims to contribute to a well-rounded effort to address both the immediate and long-term challenges of staff workload and peoples’ perceptions of it.

Challenges and solutions

Unpacking invisible rucksacks

Headteacher of Cheddar Grove Primary School Paul Jeffery speaks to the idea that everyone comes into the school with an invisible rucksack, pupils and staff alike. But by unloading the invisible rucksacks that pupils carry with everything else in their life, knowing the families and needs of pupils, staff can be prepared to support and pupils can start their learning journey. This approach is mirrored for staff, with an emphasis on creating a supportive atmosphere where staff can openly discuss their wellbeing and workload challenges. Paul and his deputy make sure to talk to as many people as they can around the school every morning to have those conversations and to help staff be proactive about their needs, even little things like taking a minute and ringing the doctor right away instead of putting it off and worrying about it. In response to the question “What keeps you up at night?” Paul responds with, “We can ask what keeps us up at night, or should we instead ask, what helps us sleep?” to get to the heart of supporting his staff.

Perception of wellbeing and workload

Director of People and Organisation Culture at Futura Learning Partnership Ady Tomsa reflects on how people’s personal perceptions play a big role in their evaluation of their wellbeing and workload. As someone who can see trends across the Trust, Ady searches for reasons behind the differences in staff wellbeing and workload scores in their annual staff experience survey. Although all of the schools have the same access to processes, resources and support as Cheddar Grove School, they score differently and that, he says, is due to perception and general levels of engagement. Even if a school were to put in place extreme workload reduction measures, if people still feel stressed or overwhelmed, or do not feel listened to, their perception will be that workload is still high. This topic cannot be looked at in isolation, it needs to be viewed under the wider ‘engagement’ banner.

Culture of stability

What makes Cheddar Grove Primary School stand out among the rest? Ady reflects from the trust level and relates this to the culture in the school, mainly elements of stability, such as retention being very high, a stable set of norms, especially openness in communication to address challenges. There is high psychological trust in the school, a testament to Headteacher Paul Jeffery’s leadership style to listen and support his staff. By working on the culture at the school, along with the practical steps to balance workload, they create a whole package for buy-in and commitment to the school. As Paul himself puts it, “It’s hard work and it’s the dedication to the common purpose of why we’re here and what we’re doing.”

Channels of support for school heads

While staff workload is the main focus at Cheddar Grove Primary, Headteacher Paul Jeffery equally emphasises the need to support heads themselves. It is critical that heads have outlets to come together, to discuss successes and struggles, especially when they are going through similar processes. By investing in themselves, to be able to offload their burden in a safe space, away from school, the heads can then come to school more prepared for their role and work to be done. Additionally, change and growth at the trust level often impact heads the most since, as Ady mentions, they are the ones to accept the changes and have to see them implemented in their schools. It is important to consider who will do the heavy lifting of change management at different levels across the organisation.

Other highlights

Reflections on workload in schools

Futura Learning Partnership is currently in the process of developing a new people strategy around which staff wellbeing and engagement will be a core theme, but there is still learning and development to be done in this regard. There is excitement about the new, bigger size of the trust to benefit from economies of scale and wider specialist support. But being strategic about staff workload is critical, as Ady Tomsa reflects,

local secondary school and shares his reflections on why there is such a stark difference between staff workload perception in primary and secondary settings. One thing he thinks contributes to this is the “family” aspect of primaries, where the staff have near daily interactions with parents and carers, but as children transition to secondary, parents feel leadership at the secondary level is less accessible than before. Working on facilitating relationships with parents and carers and ensuring clear communication could help alleviate the changes parents perceive with this transition.

Another element is pupil behaviour and support for staff to manage behaviour. By working on pupil behaviour strategies so that pupils are ready to learn, and staff feel supported that they can teach their subject with less disruption.

The feel good factor that feeds into people enjoying coming to work is a universal thing that any school setting should be able to find their own approach to. But by tweaking little things that they do on a day to day basis can make a world of difference for staff wellbeing and workload. This goes back to the idea of perception of workload and working on the intangible things that build up for staff, emphasising the direct purpose of the work people are doing to create a supportive environment, ultimately improving people’s perception of workload.