The A level Mindset training course...
About the team...
The story starts with two teachers at one of the country’s leading 6th forms coming up with an idea whilst sat in Costa. They figure being successful at A level - and in life - needs the right way of thinking; the right attitude. They call this the 'A level Mindset'. Having seen the impact the ‘A level Mindset’ can have with their own students they are now keen to share their knowledge and experience helping thousands more students. The ‘A level Mindset’ draws together current thinking from psychology, business and sport to inspire, motivate and support students ensuring they achieve their full potential.
About us: Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin have taught A Levels across a combined eight institutions and thirty three years. Martin is currently the Head of Sixth Form and Deputy Head Teacher at the Blue Coat School in Oldham. He’s been a head of department and head of faculty and has a keen interest in raising attainment through culture and expectations. Steve Oakes is currently the Assistant Director of the Blue Coat Sixth Form. He teaches psychology and is a professional coach. He has a passion for sports psychology and improving students' performance through changing attitudes. He has developed and implemented programmes to improve student mindsets across all key stages including a Y8 Ignite Curriculum, Y11 'Boys on Board Programme', KS4 Mental Toughness and the A Level Mindset.
Both Martin and Steve have developed and delivered an extensive range of consultancy courses including work for both the London and Manchester Challenge Programme to improve Sixth Forms across the country. They have recently worked with a number of local authorities to develop their sixth form provision and work individually with sixth form start-ups. In addition, they have developed and delivered a series of middle leaders courses in the North West.
Our context ...
Taken from: The Parliamentary Review: A year in Perspective, 2013.
A visitor taking a cursory look at Blue Coat would say we have our work cut out. The school, a Church of England comprehensive and converter academy for students aged 11–18, is on a congested town-centre site, in a ward that is amongst the 5% most deprived in England. There are no wealthy benefactors, no big companies to approach, no premier league teams to take an interest. A Victorian Gothic orphanage towers over a 1950–60s secondary-modern jerry-build and temporary classrooms well beyond their expiry date. There’s also a former vicarage, where students learn computer programming in the parson’s bedroom. It is usually raining, when it isn’t snowing.
Already desperately overcrowded at 1450 students, we are about to expand to 1600. But, notwithstanding the challenges, Blue Coat is extremely successful, and hugely oversubscribed. Students achieve outstanding results and make excellent progress. The 350-strong sixth form regularly outperforms fee-paying or selective schools and specialist sixth-form colleges. The campus is calm, orderly, cheerful and happy. Students are courteous, welcoming, lively and enthusiastic. They are extraordinarily generous in the time and commitment they offer to charitable and ethical causes locally, nationally and internationally. The school has received two consecutive ‘outstanding’ judgements from Ofsted, and was judged ‘outstanding’ in every category in December 2011. In 2013, Blue Coat became a National Support School and a National Teaching School.
About the school...
- In the top 1% nationally for progress at A-level.
- No. 2 in the The Independent’s Top 100 Comprehensive Schools at A-level.
- 90% of students annually go on to top universities across the UK.
- Over 50 schools and 1000 teachers, supported through training, mentoring and coaching.
- 9192 hours of voluntary service by students in 2012–13.
- Biggest provider for the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the North West, and the highest (98%) national completion rate.
- Best Band in Britain at the National Festival of Music for Youth.
- Alan Turing prize for coding.
- National and county honours in football, cricket, basketball, climbing, netball and cross-country.
How do we do it? We promote a culture of the highest expectations, which are transmitted first through assembly. We believe our lives have purpose and meaning. Taking responsibility, being accountable, and standing up for what is right and ethical are the most important messages we can give our young people. The citizenship curriculum and the Duke of Edinburgh programme are vital transmitters of culture, because they emphasise the behaviours we want to instil – leadership, commitment, perseverance, respect and generosity of spirit – to provide a framework for positive action within our school community. Eighty per cent of our sixth formers mentor 11–13 year olds in literacy. This has a major, measureable impact on reading and comprehension, and, just as importantly, it provides powerful, positive role models of aspiration and achievement. We train our students to see themselves as winners. The use of the phrase ‘gifted and talented’ is banned because of its connotations of innate, mystical, effortless success. We teach our students that winners are made, not born, and show them how practice, dedication and effort are what make the difference. Our mantra is ‘Goal; graft; grit’. We develop resilience through teaching that encourages and expects students to make mistakes, so we can erase adolescent fear or embarrassment about ‘getting it wrong’, and help the students understand that making mistakes is how we learn.
We ensure that our teachers are first class. Our commitment shows the students that we are not going to settle for anything less than the best. Our advanced-skills teachers research the best pedagogy, model it, and train all staff. We practice on one another, and observe, learn from and give feedback to each other. Organisationally it is complex, but these systems ensure that our teachers are focused on how they can improve.
We continuously invest in and improve the estate. We can’t do much about the shells of the buildings – they are what they are. But we can re-engineer, refurbish, redecorate. If you want your students – and staff – to be winners, they deserve the best you can provide.
We exploit to the full 24/7 learning. Our virtual learning environment has won national and international recognition, because students and staff use it all the time. It provides, at a high level, instantly available tools for students to become independent, to take responsibility for learning, to explore. It encourages and rewards curiosity.
Above all, we train our staff to lead and manage – to develop vision, and know how to engage others, to take them with you on a journey of change and improvement, and hold them effectively to account.
We coach school leaders in leadership behaviour, using a first-class trainer from business. It is a significant financial cost for the school, but it means that our middle leadership, the engine room of school improvement, is exceptionally strong.
We look outwards. Working with other schools and colleges makes us reflect, which raises our game. It has brought us into system leadership. Our work here is focusing on initial teacher education, via School Direct. Getting the right people, imprinting them in the right way at the outset of their careers, and ensuring that they have the resilience, commitment and creativity for the long haul is necessary for the profession, vital for young people, and essential for an expensive public service.
