24/11/25
All schools are currently having conversations about the rise of pupil ‘need’ and the difficulties that come alongside best efforts to meet that need. I speak to many different school leaders within Cornwall and outside of county and the challenge of meeting pupil need is at the top of most agendas. I know that colleagues across various teams at the local authority are also working incredibly hard to ensure that maintained schools are in a position to meet pupil need.
A quick internet search of ‘SEND crisis’ will highlight just how prevalent this issue is right now for mainstream primary and secondary schools.
For example, did you know that:
It makes for quite stark reading, and it would be easy to lose faith in the system and question the impact that schools and professionals can have. It is the starkness of these national figures that saw nearly 40,000 teachers leave the profession in 2022/23, a figure that is likely to have risen considerably since then.
Our previous deputy headteacher is one of those ‘figures’ and was very open in citing these national issues as the reason for him leaving us. Whilst he was extremely supportive of the steps that Kea CP School have taken to address these issues, when faced with a problem on the scale that these national figures demonstrate- it is easy to see why teacher retention is a huge issue for all schools.
As a leadership team, we are very confident that we have pro-active, positive, and actually quite creative strategies for addressing these national problems at a ‘Kea-school’ level and there will be more blogs in the future that look at these strategies in more detail.
We are also very open to talking through these strategies with anyone that will listen- we have had a recent (and very positive) local authority safeguarding audit, and we have put ourselves forward for a Social, Emotional and Mental Health audit, as well as a Supporting Sensory needs audit. All of these are designed to help us create action plans and identify areas we can work on- as well as celebrate all the things we are doing well!
The number of agencies we work with has increased dramatically over the last twelve months too. For example, we are so pleased with our new partnership with the Mental Health Support Team, who are in school on a weekly basis and supporting pupil wellbeing need across the school.
But back to that special group of pupils that I mentioned at the start of this blog!
There are many things that those of us still committed to working in education will use to remind ourselves of why we love this job and why it is still, I believe, the best job in the world!
For example, there are a group of children that I, and many staff members, have taken such pride in watching recently; and they are our lunchtime netball players from Rescorla and Parry class.
Here is a group of young children that have demonstrated so many of the qualities that we want to see in all our children across the school- resourceful, determined, innovative, resilient, mature, kind, respectful, safe- the list goes on!
Initially, a small group of players came to speak to me because they were a little perturbed that ‘the footballers’ had all the available sports court times at lunchtimes. They very earnestly put forward their case that the court shouldn’t be dominated by one sport and potentially, the same group of pupils every day. They spoke very clearly, very calmly and very determinedly about their cause and left me with absolutely no grounds for rebuttal!
Since then, they have had a daily lunchtime slot on the court to play netball. Good evidence of the power of Pupil Voice!
What has really elevated this- now quite large and growing in number- group of children to blog noteworthy level, is that every day these children:
-organise themselves into teams considerately and respectfully
-gather their own equipment such as bibs, netballs etc.
-referee the game themselves, with a nominated referee
-coach each other as they playing
-positively encourage each other during games
-discuss tactics and game strategy prior to and during the game
-calmly and promptly ask for adult involvement if they need support to sort out an in-game issue
It is an absolute joy to watch, and they really do perfectly encapsulate our school rules; they independently get themselves READY, they are utterly RESPECTFUL towards each other and the adults that support them and their commitment to these two rules helps to keep them SAFE.
They could teach some professional sport people (not mentioning any specific footballers…) a thing or two!
Of course, we can’t take all the credit for just how wonderful this group are. As much as we hope our impact on pupils results in this exemplary behaviour- we know “it takes a village to raise a child”.
It’s just reassuring to know that, with your support, we are producing stars like this!
Kea Community is quite a team!
