As the headteacher of The Wensleydale School in North Yorkshire - a rural secondary that serves students from predominantly agricultural and military backgrounds - I understand the importance of staff retention, and its challenges.
After all, if we want students and families to engage with us and buy in to what we are trying to achieve, it helps if we have a stable staff body so teachers, pupils and parents build connections.
That’s why, over the past few years, we’ve put a focus on - and made significant strides in - staff retention. One practical but hugely important aspect of this has been reducing meetings for staff so we can give them more time for their core responsibility: teaching.
Lessons from the pandemic
The decision to reduce the number or length of meetings came in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many schools, we had to rethink how we operated.
We had “thrown away the rule book and started again”, and as we returned to normal operations, it became clear that many of our pre-pandemic practices - especially meetings - were unnecessary.
I quickly realised that a significant portion of the 1,265 directed hours in the school year were being used for meetings that largely involved information sharing and could be jettisoned.
Streamlining communication
Having realised that, I decided to take a bold step by stripping out all contacts and directed time that weren’t directly related to teaching.
For instance, we scrapped morning briefings, which used to account for 38 hours per year. Instead, we now use Google noticeboards to keep staff and students informed.
These noticeboards are updated daily with important information for the day or week. This approach has allowed us to keep everyone in the loop without taking time away from teaching.
We also scrapped the 10-minute daily registration periods, which accounted for 79 hours per year. Now, registrations are taken during lessons one and five, which has removed two additional student movements and ensures lessons start promptly.
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We restructured performance management, incorporating it into Inset training days and one-on-one sessions with staff, saving another six hours per year.
Line management of teaching staff was also scrapped and replaced by one-to-ones with me, termly, during trapped time, and removing the need for a repetitive meeting cycle.
Redistributing roles
A crucial part of making this work has been the strong commitment from my senior leadership team to support the idea and stick to the new ways of working.
This has also involved me and my three assistant headteachers taking on more of the non-teaching duties in addition to our teaching loads.
For example, we now handle morning, break and lunchtime duties, freeing up the teaching staff and ensuring the school runs smoothly.
It hasn’t been easy, but the results have been worth it and the reaction from staff has been overwhelmingly positive. Surveys have shown the vast majority are very happy here and, reflecting this, our retention rate has risen from 80 per cent in 2021 to 96 per cent now.
Positive outcomes
Of course, reducing meetings has been just part of our broader strategy to retain staff.
For example, we have provided staff with greater wellbeing support and moved away from introducing new initiatives each year, which can overwhelm staff. Instead, we tweak what we have - with staff feedback helping us understand how to do this best.
We have also tried to accommodate flexible working for those who request it, and ensure no teacher is “maxed out” by providing everyone with an additional planning, preparation and assessment period wherever possible.
With students, meanwhile, we have worked to improve behaviour, from doing more to recognise good behaviour and create positive reinforcement to providing counselling opportunities for students, including peer-led sessions.
All this has really paid off. Not only is retention vastly improved but behavioural incidents have decreased, staff absences are at an all-time low, and our GCSE results have been on an upward trend and are now above the national average.
Julia Polley is headteacher at The Wensleydale School
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