There is a revolution happening across school and trust leadership teams.

Those who once were feverish in their certainty that to deliver the best outcomes for children required zero tolerance and no excuses (you know, keeping the grass well mown) are now suddenly pursuing belonging.

For those still to convert, belonging is about creating a warm affinity, strong relationships and attachment. It is the positive outcome of working extremely hard at ensuring your school is genuinely inclusive, values diversity and is determined to provide an equitable education for every child.

Belonging is ‘like a magnet’

It certainly isn’t selection through compliance or deterring parents from even applying because their child won’t have their needs met or are not a good fit.

Belonging feels like a magnet - you are drawn to a place where you feel safe and valued; it is essential for both staff and young people alike. Staff stay at schools where they feel they belong; children attend and thrive in schools where they have been made to feel as if they belong.

Yet, for over a decade, the paradigm of a strong school shifted to one that is authoritarian, enforces rigid standards (branded socks anyone?) and excludes those that struggle with tighter borders.

It was akin to the education my dad had in the 1950s and 1960s than I had myself, and a good distance from the environment I started my career in on the cusp of Labour’s 1997 landslide.

‘A bit bonkers’

Perhaps I was naive, but I never imagined rigid and uncompromising behaviour expectations would become the panacea; that those advocating them would be lauded by the government and positioned on a gilded pedestal. It’s been evangelical, and a little bit bonkers.

Consequently, I have never subscribed to this approach and never felt as if I belonged in this system.

Sure, zero tolerance along with narrowing the curriculum, becoming selective through compliance and carefully curating your intake can produce some impressive examination outcomes.

And, of course, a great set of GCSEs can be truly life changing for young people, especially if they come from homes where they may be the first to achieve this. I suspect there are many people who feel as if they belong in these environments.

Never binary

But despite what some may tell you, it’s never been a binary; good learning and positive behaviour can be developed through an inclusive relational approach.

Many schools and trusts just kept on doing what they knew worked for the young people they worked with, building cultures of kindness, respectful relationships and trying to find solutions when mistakes were made.

There have been many of us who kept on going with this approach, even when it was unfashionable, and for some, it opened up a ton of professional abuse; we were the architects of chaos and perpetrators of the bigotry of low expectations.

So it has come as a bit of a shock that those who habitually criticised this warmer approach now themselves want to belong to the world of belonging. Indeed, the way some are now talking, you’d imagine they’d always been inclusive.

A new era

I’m unsure what might have prompted this forgetfulness, but it seems to have started around June this year.

Whatever the cause, it’s a shift we should welcome. After all, education should not be divided into binary oppositions - instead, an alignment around essential values is critical for the success of all our children.

Of course, the rhetoric of inclusion is far easier than delivering it. But how truly wonderful it would be if every school served its immediate community and every child was truly made to feel like they belonged.

Keziah Featherstone is currently executive headteacher in The Mercian Trust. Keziah is also the co-founder and a strategic lead of WomenEd, as well as a member of the Headteachers’ Roundtable

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