On Tuesday in our staff briefing, I was taken slightly off-guard when Mr Dyke shared with the staff that I have just completed 25 years of service at Leventhorpe.  I was presented with a lovely gift from staff and our Governors, and I was slightly overcome!  It made me reflect on my time at the school and I thought I would share some thoughts about my 25 years of teaching and leadership at Leventhorpe.

I started my teaching career as a Business and ICT teacher at my old secondary school in Highams Park in Waltham Forest in London.  It was slightly strange going back to my old school as there were still lots of teachers who would have known me as a student.  I won’t say too much, but I wasn’t the perfect student when I was at school!

After a couple of years at the school, I was promoted to Second in Department and a couple of years later my Head of Department relocated and I got the job as Head of Business and ICT.  Mrs White and I had had our second child and decided to relocate from Walthamstow to Bishops Stortford in October 1998 and I started the daily commute up and down the M11 to school. It didn’t take me long to get a bit frustrated with the daily journey and when a colleague at Highams Park told me about a job as Head of Social Sciences at Leventhorpe, I decided to apply.  The job was a sideways move but one that would significantly reduce my commuting time.  I applied, was successful and started at Leventhorpe in January 2000.

My first impressions of Leventhorpe were that the staff seemed nice and the kids seemed lovely, but the school building and facilities were all a bit tired.  My Faculty Team were an interesting bunch and there were plenty of issues to get stuck into but I really enjoyed my teaching and it was very easy to settle into the school.

The Head at the time Mr Janke wanted the school to apply for specialist status and we applied to become a Business and Enterprise school.  This had a lot of implications for me as I oversaw the delivery of the Business courses at the school.  I picked up more responsibility as we developed our curriculum offer to introduce more Business and ICT courses.  All students did a Business Communication Systems GCSE and we introduced Enterprise at Key Stage 4 and 5 as well as the Finance courses that we have now run for many years for our sixth form students.  I also taught AS Accounting for a few years as part of our specialist status.  This was a time when I also organised a lot of outreach work with our primary schools.  Events such as the Enterprise Week at Mandeville were set up by me, working with Ms Hales and during a recent visit there, I saw that it was still running!  It was good to get additional government funding to do all this work.

In 2007 we applied for a second specialist status as a Training School.  This again brought in additional funding to support the training and development of teachers and those working in schools.  I was appointed to be on the Senior Leadership Team and to have oversight of both specialisms.  This role helped build on our strengths and increase our training provision.  Ultimately, this led to the development of our own Teacher Training Programme which has been run by Ms Kistell for many years.  We also devised and ran Leadership Development courses for teachers in the local area as well as many other projects with schools across the Eastern Region.

Specialist School Funding came to an end at around the time that Mr Reeve was successful in his application to become Headteacher at the Bishops Stortford High School and a vacancy for Deputy Head arose at Leventhorpe.  I had applied for a couple of Deputy Head jobs, but neither had felt like the right fit for me.  I applied for the Deputy Head job and was appointed in March 2014.

Under Mr Locke, I was given oversight of the curriculum, assessment and reporting as well as quality assurance and self-evaluation.  It was a time when we were planning significant changes for the school.  GCSE grading changed from A* - G to 9 - 1, we needed to revise all of our reporting and assessment schemes, and make this understandable for students, staff and parents.  There were also significant changes to A Levels with AS exams being taken out.  All this created a lot of work around our systems and processes and our staffing.

Mr Locke was very supportive of me and encouraged me to consider being a Headteacher.  I had always loved my time teaching in the classroom and as I had been promoted, I spent less and less time teaching.  However, I did enjoy the increased influence of leadership positions and the opportunity to shape and develop other staff and implement positive change.  I decided to undertake the NPQH course (National Professional Qualification for Headteachers) in September 2017 to explore the issues around being a Head in more detail.  It was an interesting course, and I realised that my leadership knowledge, understanding and skills gave me the potential to be a Head.  Just as I was completing the course in December 2018, I discovered that Mr Locke was leaving to become Head of an International School in Barcelona.

I decided to apply for the position, and after a bit of a protracted process, I was appointed in March 2018 to take over from Mr Locke in September 2018.  One of my strongest memories of my time at Leventhorpe was the day this news was shared with the students and parents.  I was in school and I could hear cheering coming from classrooms and then later, colleagues told me me that when they announced the news to the students they were whooping and screaming out in delight!  The support from colleagues and messages from parents at the time was quite overwhelming.  I remember being in shock and reflecting upon the sense of relief that people seemed to have that I had got the job.  I too, also felt relief that people were pleased that I had been appointed, but at the same time, a sense of ‘I had better do a good job’ as I didn’t want to disappoint everyone.

The school had started expanding the number of students in each year group from 180 to 240 in my first year as Head.  We had plans already in place to fund the building of a new block and to demolish and rebuild the old Science block and Sixth Form Centre. I soon realised that the funding issues were not as secure as I had thought, but after some very tense discussions and lobbying we were given the go-ahead to build the new D Block.  During 2019 the school became a building site that we had to operate around.  Old buildings were demolished, temporary classrooms were put up on the hard courts and construction got underway.

Then, in late 2019, the news began spreading about Covid-19 in the Far East.  The D Block opened in February 2020 and by this time Covid had spread to Europe and the cases in Italy were causing significant concern.  On March 20th 2020, we were told that schools would have to close for an unspecified period of time.  Then it started!

My reflections on Covid are mixed.  The impact that the lockdowns had on children have been huge.  We forced children to be isolated from their peers and to look at screens for significant periods of the day to continue with their learning.  The only way they could socialise was through social media.  The issue of screen time addiction and the impact of social media on young people has been a major concern since the pandemic.  The current mental health crisis, the huge increase in behaviour issues and school exclusions, the huge rise in the numbers of students with SEN as well as issues around school attendance and a lack of resilience in our young people have all been problems post-pandemic.

Many observers blame the lockdowns for these current problems that schools are having to navigate on a national level.  The lack of funding in education and other social care and mental health services has also increased the pressure on schools as we try to manage more complex problems with our students.

I was, however, very proud of our response to the challenges the pandemic presented.  The school community came together and the support of parents for things like the testing programme was superb.  Staff were amazing and stepped up in so many ways, showing adaptability and real commitment.

Covid did give us the opportunity to crack on with the building works with only a small number of students in attendance each day and the new A Block started to take shape.  We managed bubbles, the cancelling of exams, on-site testing, working with windows open all the time and wearing masks etc.  All of this did, however, mean that most of the plans I had prepared as a new Head weren’t enacted.  It was very much reactive management, dealing with whatever we were required to do next.

After the pandemic, we finished all the building works.  The school expansion was complete, and we now had around 1500 students, rather than 1150.  This growth resulted in much of the site feeling very cramped.  We were experiencing issues with students struggling with the problems outlined earlier and we needed to build our capacity in our student support services.  We employed our own on-site school counsellor, we added additional mentoring support and we employed staff to focus on behaviour and attendance and supportive work with students and their families.  We have seen a big increase in the number of students with additional needs and our SEN team has expanded and restructured to reflect this.  

Adapting to the national issues alongside the growth in numbers, all at once, has been challenging but there are certain things around the culture and ethos of the school that have been the foundations that we have used to manage change.  As a school, we have a committed and caring staff.  The vast majority of our students are absolutely delightful young people and a privilege to work with.  The vast majority of parents are fully supportive and will engage in positive constructive dialogue with the school regarding their concerns.   This approach helps us to work in partnership with you to resolve issues.

Last Easter the school had an Ofsted inspection that was very overdue.  Given the issues we know we are having with a small minority of students, we felt that the outcome was very positive and supportive and the final report highlighted many of the key strengths of the school.

So, 25 years at Leventhorpe!  I’ve seen a huge amount of change.  The site has developed beyond recognition, and we now have superb facilities to support the learning of our students. There are a few staff who have been here longer than me, but only a few.  We often talk about Leventhorpe Lifers – those staff who come here and then only leave when they retire.  I have been privileged to work with people like John Green, Ed Bannister and John Skelton, who have all sadly passed away since I started, but also with staff like Shelia Nash, Bob Reed, Mike Bailey, Carol Croft, Carol Tedman who all gave their teaching careers to the school for well over 25 years.

Increasingly I meet parents that I taught as students, either at Highams Park or during my early years at Leventhorpe.  This always makes me feel very old!  But conversations with these parents about my teaching and influence are always positive, which is lovely.

I apologise if this reflection is rather lengthy, however, if you have managed to get to the end, I hope you have found it interesting.

I have loved working at this school.  It is my privilege to be Headteacher of Leventhorpe.  I know that I and ‘we’ don’t always get everything right but I have endeavoured to lead the school with openness, honesty, integrity and passion and to do our best for your children.  It has been an incredible journey so far and I continue to look forward to how we can continue to improve and support the education and personal development of all of our students.

Malcolm White