[Music] so my my name is Peter Bren um and I'm the head teacher at Westminster city school which is a school very close to the center of London we are located uh about 500 meters from uh Buckingham Palace um and very close to um the British Parliament um so we're about a mile from the House of Commons and I've been the head teacher here for just over six six and a half years and our school is a boys school uh so it just has boys from 11 years old to 16 years old and then in
the last two years so the 17 and 18 year old students uh that's mixed so that's co-educational so there are boys and girls uh in the oldest twoyear groups my school serves are very very diverse um student population so uh between the students uh their parents or their grandparents we have links to 109 different nations of the world so that's about 56% of uh the countries in the world have uh St students have a link somehow how either them or their parents or their grandparents in terms of the sort of level of deprivation um so
the kind of socioeconomic status of the students uh around 46% of the students so almost half um have come from a lower socioeconomic background as measured by um the number that either currently have free School meals uh or have in the last six years had free School meals so in in the UK you tend to to measure um the so sort of socioeconomic status of students um by whether they get provided by the government with with a meal every day at lunchtime so um that there are schools with with a higher percentage uh in London
um but quite a lot have a lower percentage so we serve uh quite a diverse Community into terms of ethnicities but also in terms of um kind of their socioeconomic background um but generally speaking that's that's much higher in terms of deprivation than the national uh average so uh the national average is around uh 22% of of students on on free School meals most of the older students are uh very aspirational so just over uh 90% of students leave leaving our sick form uh so leaving the last two years of our school uh go to
university um so very high proportion a looking to go to university and around 50% go to what we call Russell group or top top 25 um UK University so that they're kind of higher ranked uh universities so things like Oxford Cambridge uh Imperial College uh University College London so some of the the top universities so the students body uh and is very aspirational they want to achieve very highly um but many of them don't have um strong resources in terms of their kind of personal family wealth um in my my first two years obviously you
know like any new new principal you would try to understand the school very very well like its strengths uh its areas for development um I I felt quite strongly that my senior team um that I inherited from my predecessor um wasn't structured uh in the right way we didn't have the right people doing the right jobs um and in some cases I felt like the people in in their roles weren't um sufficiently um skilled to do what I needed them to do so in my first two years I spent a lot of time uh changing
my my senior team and then towards the end of that two years I also did some work to restructure what we call the middle leadership so the uh leaders that are responsible for individual subjects or individual year groups um so I've made some changes there so I think in the first two years it was really about um shifting uh who was responsible for for what within the school and what the different leaders um did around the school and and and a lot around kind of leadership [Music] culture at that point the the kind of classroom
environment was very much dependent on the individual teacher and their relations with the students kind of their individual level of passion and then the behavior for for for the classroom then was was different almost in every single space and inevitably in schools all teachers are different and you know some some classrooms uh you know are very focused and others are slightly less focused but but the extent to the variety was was massive and so my challenge I think was to try and work out how we um reduce the the variation between every classroom the general
level rose up to be much higher and still individual teachers would go above and beyond that but there was a feeling where the the sort of minimum expected level that we would have within our classrooms wouldn't be below say here whereas previously there' be some lessons that were up here and then some that would be down there in terms of quality or behavior or whatever the key really for me was to make sure that we had a much more kind of consistent approach that every single teacher would would do so that the the minimum level
was here and there' still be freedom for individual teachers you know to to use their expertise and their professionalisms to to to take take the learning to the next level but the level of learning and the types of behaviors that we saw never drop below a particular standard so that was kind of you know what what it felt like and for me the key to it is and I think the the sort of cognitive science around this also suggests that very often like system and routine give security both for the teacher and for the learner
and if you can develop systems and routines uh that everybody follows and make sure um that you teach the reasons why these routines and these structures work so that the the staff understand why it works and the students also understand why it works you're much more capable of achieving like levels and and kind of to do so consistently so it was really about how we then developed particular systems and routines and so my school is called Westminster city School WCS so we over the last of three to four years particularly coming out of covid we've
done some work before covid but coming out of covid we developed what we call the WCS way which is you know our our approach to to so many different aspects of school life including what happens in the classrooms How We Do break times like it basically sets out like this this is the way we do things around here and and being explicit about this WCS way then informs kind of everything that we do um and we're now in the process of working on a kind of student version so that there's a document for them to
really sort of refer to in terms of of H how we do things so that was the sort of before and and now what we see or increasingly are seeing that that it's the system and the routines that establish the level of learning and and what's happening in the classroom and the behavior in the classroom rather than it being down to an individual teacher and their individual skills or in some cases lack of it and because it's a kind of system approach and everybody's trying to do it consistently we're we're we're able to raise that
General level to he without necessarily removing the opportunity for staff to to go kind of above and beyond [Music] we had a really strong um shift uh particularly after covid uh on on Behavior so uh how the young people um acted around school and and a lot of the work we did there was was around R routines so um like what students did at different parts of the day how they moved around the building when they go to lessons what the structure of the lessons is like and we did a lot of work to kind
of standardize and and make more uniform um how how lessons run um and also how individual teachers managed Behavior so that there was a very common approach of all staff to to different elements of managing behavior and also um the the style of lessons so for example um we did a lot of work with staff on on what the first 10 to 15 minutes of a lesson looked like so that there were um common approaches in no matter what the subject so you go into a science lesson and all the students would come in in
silence sit down in silence um and do uh what we call a retrieval task so a task that was trying to understand how much they might have learned in the previous lesson or the you know the previous week's lesson or something a month ago um and that would be done in in silent and then the feedback would be done through maybe showing small whiteboards with responses to key questions so we very much standardized um elements of our lessons so that all staff were doing the same thing and then similarly with behavior we'd have a common
system um to to improve classroom Behavior so students would get a warning if they were maybe talking when they shouldn't have been then if they carried on then they get a final warning uh and then if they did something beyond that then they would get what we call a negative point every teacher had the same approach to managing disruption in the lessons so that had a big impact then we started looking at their movement between lessons so how students moved along our corridors or how they moved from uh lunchtime into lessons or Breaktime into lessons
and so we just stand had had a whole series of areas of school life where where we adopted the same uh approach and that had a big impact in terms of uh the behavior in students so that was something that was I think really important to change because if the students you know aren't listening aren't behaving then they're not going to learn anything and so that you know you could have the most amazing curriculum or most amazing resource but fundamentally the students aren't behaving then they're not going to access that that resource access that [Music]
learning it's all about training you know so you you you need to give time over to to to teaching this and explaining lots of things to do with this so it it's not something that you can kind of do once at the start of the year and then just expect to happen so it's something that we we did lots of training around and and kind of kept on coming back to in a cycle I think the the point around mindset I think is is really important I think we very much took the attitude amongst leaders
that firstly no no one individual teacher wants to do about bad job like no one's going to deliberately want to do a bad job and two like we want to create a culture where everybody wants to get better at doing what they do and and that if we trust that all staff a you know don't deliberately do a bad job and B would want to do things better then then fundamentally like you you'll get Buy in from from your staff so it's not something that we're like you know like why are you doing it this
way why are you doing it that way like you know negative thing it's like look like we know everybody wants to to do the best job possible so if collectively we're going to be greater than the sum of our individual Parts we've got to do things much more consistently and much more uniformly together so that will allow everybody to do a good job and like um everybody will will kind of help raise raise the standards really and so that was the thing around mindset but I think it it is this kind of constant training and
I think when you're training staff it's really important to often focus on the why not just the what and the how so like why are we doing this in our lesson so I don't know if you've ever come across there's a thinker called Simon sinic who wrote a book called start with why and his his ideas are in any organization to improve if if you forget to constantly go back to like why it is that you're doing it what's the kind of core underlying purpose uh and focus too much on the how and the what
then then you're not going to get people motivated so our training almost always reminds people of like why why it is that we're trying to do this so that's a really kind of key element like yeah like why why are we doing this uh and then the other bit is to sort of root it in in actual academic research to say look people have studied this this sort of the value of routines people have looked at how that reduces you know the burdens on individual teachers so let's root all of this stuff into a really
good academic research and and that helps with the why as well so like why are we doing it well the the research from you know academic says that this is this is a good way of doing things and then with the training I think then we we do a lot of what we call deliberate practice so as part of the training like so say we're talking about the the Silent start to lessons so part of the training is we we do a lot of this this deliberate practice where we would have teachers in room or
sorry a teacher in a room and then the other teachers would come into the room to pretend to be the students and and and we would get individual teachers to practice how they would use the the scripts and how they would get the students in how they would have things on the board so that that deliberate practice just sort of shows the teachers in in real time like this is how we do it in addition to that we'd often video um individual colleagues who were particularly good at doing the the the silent 10 minutes so
we'd video them getting the students in getting them sat down doing the different activities so that it was something that was sort of modeled to the staff and then in in terms of the training then we'd have it it linked into a cycle so we would do you know like a a a piece of training for maybe half an hour keep it short after school half an hour then we'd have two weeks of monitoring the impact of that train tring so we go into a lot of lessons see whether it's happening or not and then
do a follow-up training that would pick up like some of the issues that might have emerged for for some individual staff or others from from doing that and then that would then reset a new cycle so we'd say look we've noticed people are having problems with maybe this or that aspect here's some further suggestions some more training and then we'll go back so we're in these kind of four- week Loops of introducing monitoring retraining REM monitoring and and so on and so forth and and that way like you keep on coming back to it because
with routines it's really easy in the first week to have a lot of energy like we're doing things differently like everybody's going to try this and do this um and then in week two it's not quite as good and then week three it's not like you've got to in kind of keep on monitoring and and then re almost rebooting um um so that's again a key part of the training is that we probably like with with with the 10 to 15 minutes of of kind of Silent independent work like it's taken us you know the
best part of a year year and a half to get that really nailed down and we kind of constantly still come back to it because it's such an easy thing to to let Drift But the the training is is the key and as part of the training focusing on the why rooting it in cognitive science and then doing that that deliberate practice ractice so I think that's that's how we shift the mindset and and make sure that it works so we have these kind of these what we call dropin so that like people will only
go in for maybe 10 10 minutes or 15 like not very long because that often if it like me as the principal or any of my senior team like we don't want it to be too too high pressure like we just want to make it part of the normal practice you know we drop in we see each other so like everybody is dropping in on everybody's lessons so it it's not only the senior teachers are doing it some of the middle leaders so those that are responsible for subjects or some of the people that were
responsible for individual like year groups like groups of students will everybody's kind of dropping in and I think that's quite important because I know when I go into a lesson that can change the atmosphere in the lesson like the students maybe will will change because I'm in the room so what we want to make sure is that um that that happens as little as possible so things are are quite typical I think the key is potentially not not to do too much where it's like you stay the whole lesson you write lots of notes like
it it's quite what we call low stake so like it's a drop in it's quick and then we have a piece of software called Step blab and with this piece of software you can record your thoughts on what you what you've seen in in a very quick written format if you see something that's really really good you can do what is called a shout out so if you see something that's brilliant like a good good piece of practice you can log it as a shout out and then everybody else who and the whole staff are
on this this software platform everybody else can see that you know teacher X did this really really well so it's a kind of positive cycle uh but the Fe Fe back is just private for that person but what that allows us to do is to see how many drop-ins have happened and also um there's then the ability to for for key staff that are responsible so my my Deputy is responsible for this so he can see all of the comments that are being made and then within the software there's also a kind of red flag
so if you see something that is is quite problematic so you know a classroom is is not got lots of good learning or routines aren't being followed you can red flag that now the teacher themselves doesn't know that but we can then just pick up okay well this particular teacher is having some trouble maybe with this particular group and all that means is that if that's happening across maybe two or three classes that the same teacher is getting a red flag we would maybe then put in some extra training so a lot of it is
done through this particular piece of software but within the software step laab also has um like a whole video bank so if you've seen something that maybe is is not like not not too good you can then signpost the teacher to a a video which shows then you know teachers doing it really really well so it's not just look I've noticed this problem but have a look at this particular video and you can see how another teacher in another school has has done it and that's an amazing piece of software it's not particularly expensive you
just buy a license and and we use that quite extensively just to to kind of log how we're monitoring um we also do um twice a year like more formal like whole lesson observations but we've moved away from from that but what the advantage of the the step lab is is that you can give feedback written feedback pretty quickly now in an Ideal World you'll also give verbal feedback and when you do that I think it it's often the most effective form but sometimes finding time in the day to to meet and discuss and go
through things can be quite hard so um we don't insist that that that everybody gives like face-to-face verbal feedback from the drop-ins they must do when it comes to the whole lesson formal observations but that's only twice a year so that's how we kind of monitor all aspects of teaching and learning but we with our drop-ins we we say to staff look this week we we're looking for for this aspect of lessons so we're going to come in in the in the first 10 minutes and check that that there's the silent do Now activity happening
or another week we're saying look we we're just really concerned that the end of lessons aren't as focused and and the routine around the end of lessons isn't isn't isn't working so we're going to focus on this and and and a lot of the times it links to the training that we've done anyway so that that's how we kind of keep things [Music] monitored but we also then looked very carefully at uh our curriculum so what what we're teaching across the subjects and in in the UK particularly between the ages of 11 and 14 um
schools have quite a lot of um Power and autonomy to to decide what what it is that the students will learn in in their lessons so we work really hard on on thinking through well this is our student body with you know these different ethnicities and these different interests um and then we've got a kind of national curriculum that it's important that we make them understand but also like we want to cater to their interests and their needs so we work very hard on what our curriculum looked like and how it was sequenced so you
know in order for them to understand I don't know this concept in maths when they are 14 they've got to understand this concept when they're 13 and this concept when they're 12 or in biology if they need to understand about respiration maybe in the year seven when they're 11 they need to understand this about the structure of of the lung and then in year eight they can understand then what happens in the lungs and and what the the um I guess the flow of of oxygen into the blood is and and how all of that
works so we sequenced the curriculum very carefully so there was a period of of significant change around how we structured our curriculum and then also how we did professional development for our teachers to be able to best um teach that so there there are a number of of the changes that I guess we we've made and and we've tried I think firstly it was about changing the Staffing and then it was looking at the curriculum um and the Behavior Uh which we did side by side so we have a um a School inspection um regime
called ofstead so the off off office for standards in education and they do inspections every four to five years so we were we last had an inspection in 2022 um which rated us as as good but it was uh a strong good it was a very positive uh report in terms of their judgment on the school um I think that is that is positive view of parents that we take into consideration and the popularity and the number of applications that we have um you know they are increasing and particularly for sick form so the last
two years of school um this year we've had over 2,000 applications to join our SI form and there's only 150 places so we're very oversubscribed with with our SI form uh and then the exams that the students take um age 16 so they're National qualifications that students take at age 16 and they take more qualifications aged 18 so both of those uh examinations are the school's performance has increased quite significantly so um for for the qualifications that they take at 16 our outcomes now um uh see students make around uh well kind of point point4
above the national average so so around almost half a grade above the national average across a a range of qualifications in terms of the progress that they make from elementary school from Primary School uh to these exams um and given it's only boys actually our our outcomes are around 2third of a grade per subject higher than the national average for for boys and similarly our outcomes uh in the six form per in the top 10% in terms of the the progress that students make from starting with us aged 16 to finishing with us aged 18
so I think the school has has changed an awful lot um it's a lot calmer um than it than it was attendance is very high amongst students so in in lots of different metrics I think the school is improving [Music] in schools in London there's a lot of collaboration between schools and there's a lot of schools that are doing some incredible work very close to us so like for us you know our school hasn't always been as as you know improving as I think it is now but we've been easily able to go in and
get ideas from other schools and see that it's possible and particularly schools where where like the E econ you know socioeconomic situation of students is is worse than ours like you know really challenging communities where there's kind of you know Gang Related issues and yet in in these School in these communities the school is like a Beacon of Hope and so we've been able to see look you know if it's possible in this area with this school and we're like we're in a nice area of London even if our you know students are coming from
all over like if it's Poss possible there we've got to be able to do a similar thing and I think there's a there's a kind of like L London schools outperform schools in the rest of the country by quite a lot because I think there is so much collaboration and and there's so much expectation from leaders that anything is possible um and I think that mindset from leadership is really important like we you know I've got to believe every day that no matter how difficult this student's life is it's possible for them to to learn
well get a good education you know go on and and do incredible things and we try and use former students to come back who you know may have had lots of problems at some point but they're like look at me now and I think that's that's a really important for not just for the students to see what is possible but staff to see what is possible with these young people because sometimes it's it's the adult mentality that can limit what's possible with the children and I think yeah I think we're quite fortunate in London in
that [Music] sense I still teach even though I'm the principal so I still have one class so I know I know what it's like to be in the classroom I think my message is is always firstly this is the best job in the world world uh being a teacher I think is is the best um calling that anybody could have so my first message is you know really enjoy the fact that we have a fantastic profession the area that we work in gives us so many rewards in terms of impacting on on young people's life
I think the the biggest thing that I try to do in my with my classes and and in my lessons is to make the students really believe that anything is is possible so um really to instill in them the the the belief that um if you work hard uh Aspire High then actually education is is a way of opening so many doors into the future so I think that the biggest message that that I always try to give to the students is to believe in themselves um and to believe that anything is is possible and
I think um any any any leader is is what Napoleon I think called a dealer in hope that we're there to to provide fantastic opportunities to ensure that students believe that through an education they can genuinely transform their lives and I think um particularly where you serve communities where there is high levels of deprivation where students are coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds you know teachers really um can provide them with the keys to um Futures that that that you know are incredible and often education is the only way out of of particular circumstances in life
so our our role as teachers is is to provide them with with the the tools that they need the skills that they need uh the aspiration The Hope um the the belief that they can really uh achieve that so I think that would be be my message to to all the teachers in in sou Paulo so so the key to changing the children is to actually change the adults and for them to have higher expectations and be always be consistent in those expectations and consistent in the way that they uh approach their task so it's
about it's about consistency [Music]
