This article was originally published on 22 August 2022

When I became headteacher of Noel-Baker Academy (NBA), an inner city school in Derby that had just been placed in special measures, I knew swift action would be needed.

The school was broken and we needed a strategy to address behaviour, the curriculum, teaching and learning, and much more. 

Part of the problem was that the vast majority of staff had been at Noel-Baker for a long time, and so started to take the way things were for granted and were unable to see there could be new approaches to how we operated.

It was clear we needed to enable everyone to see what great schools looked like. So to allow this to happen, we decided to use our Inset days to let teachers visit other schools and see how they approached all aspects of school life.

We closed the school for the day, and all staff - including catering, administrative and support staff - visited schools across the country. NBA on tour was born. 

Planning the day 

The first time we ran NBA on tour, the senior team and I chose which schools staff would visit. We did this because we wanted to ensure all the schools that were being visited aligned with our vision for Noel-Baker Academy.

A lot of careful consideration went into choosing the schools. We spent time researching and making links with senior leaders via networks we had fostered through events such as ResearchEd and the Midlands Knowledge Hub. 

What we didn’t do is base our choices on Ofsted criteria or GCSE outcomes.

It was more important for us to find schools we felt matched the vision and ethos of what we wanted Noel-Baker Academy to be.

Setting the foundations

Our objective for the first year was to get our staff out there to see what was possible; working in a school that’s had poor Ofsted inspections for a long time can take a real toll on your confidence.

Staff needed to see that they were just as good as staff in other schools in some areas, and also learn about how other excellent practitioners had approached challenges similar to the ones we faced, so we could improve in those areas.

This would give us a fresh focus to help tackle some of the underlying issues that the school faced and rebuild confidence.

Deciding what to look at

Once everyone was matched to a school for their visit, they worked with the contact at the host school to agree on a schedule and the research focus for the day.

To ensure we got the most out of the day, and avoid “information overload”, we tried to keep the focus tight and simple.

This means staff were looking at just one or two aspects of a school, department or system. To decide what these aspects should be, the staff member and their line manager agreed on two or three key questions or areas of focus for the visit.

For example, how does the school ensure their Year 7 religious studies curriculum builds on what children have been taught at key stage 2 when they have such a variety of feeder schools, not all of whom are bound by the national curriculum?

The special educational needs and disabilities team visited three different special schools looking specifically at how they use teaching assistant time to maximise interventions and support students with education, health and care plans.

One group focused specifically on children with additional sensory needs and used their findings to adapt the sensory interventions we offer in school to our students for September.

Meanwhile, our pastoral team (heads of house, education welfare officers and behaviour mentors), visited a range of schools. The behaviour intervention team wanted to look specifically at how other schools use inter-house and form competitions to improve extracurricular engagement and further develop house identities in areas other than sports competitions.

As a result, our inter-house work next year will include pastoral passports, academic quizzes and spelling bees.

They also looked specifically at schools where staff have included planned activities in social times to support students who struggle with unstructured time and, as a result, are looking at what activities we can build in to break times outside to support those students.

However, as noted, all staff go on these visits.

As such, our finance and admin team visited a school that uses a different lunchtime payment model to us, our facilities mean that we have to run a rolling lunch of four 30-minute slots and so they went to look at a school with an alternative contactless payment and till system.

As a result, we’ve been able to streamline our lunchtime service and feed children and staff much faster without compromising on the food on offer.

The visit day itself

On the day, staff head in groups, pairs or individually to their host school for the time agreed and spend the day taking part in a range of activities as agreed with the hosts.

What this looks like can vary depending on the focus of the visit.

It might mean the teacher spends the day looking at curricula, talking to school leaders and spending time in lessons. Or it could be that they are out and about on duty, shadowing canteen staff and talking to children. Or they might be spending time shadowing someone in an equivalent role to see how attendance or front-of-house systems run. 

At the end of the visit, staff complete a short Microsoft Forms quiz or film a one-minute video diary summarising the key aspects of their learning. This is really helpful for when everyone returns to school as it can be used as an aide memoir for the teacher.

After the visit

In the weeks following the visit, staff will present their feedback on their learning and experiences formally during meeting times. However, in reality, because of the buzz the day generates, much is shared informally before that even happens. 

At a department and individual team level, staff discuss their experience. To begin with, we discuss what similarities and differences there are between the schools.

We then describe practices that could help us shape our own next steps, and how we might learn from colleagues in other schools.

Finally, if applicable, we talk through ideas about how we might incorporate this into our own work.

Setting up the visits

The day itself required lots of planning - after all, every member of staff would be offsite and spread out across the county.

I tasked the assistant headteacher, who leads teaching and learning, along with the admin team, with the job of approaching schools to set up the visits. 

To make contact, they used links we already had or, where we had no prior links, we simply sent emails to the enquiries or administration accounts in the schools. In our initial contact email we gave a clear outline of what we were doing, who would like to visit and why, and what, if possible, we’d like to see.

It’s a testament to the collegiate nature of schools that of the 42 schools we approached, 40 allowed us to come and visit.

Building upwards

Since doing all this, the academy is in a very different place - in February we were judged “good” by Ofsted, and myself and the senior team felt we no longer need to direct staff to the right schools to visit.

To address this change in need, we teamed up with We Are In Beta to identify schools to visit. To do this, we compiled a list of criteria (this time some included exam outcomes and Ofsted gradings but not all). Using the criteria, they provided us with a list of schools that fell within those parameters.

As well as this, we also asked all staff to put forward names of schools they’d like to visit based on what they knew about excellent practice in those schools. We felt it was important for staff to be included in the process, too, and give them ownership over their own CPD.

How to do it yourself

I would recommend to every head that they should consider organising their Inset day in this way. The feedback from staff is overwhelmingly positive and they say that they find these Inset days the most useful and enjoyable.

As well as the obvious benefits, staff also say they like the opportunity to build relationships with colleagues in other schools across the country. We have multiple reciprocal visits planned across the next academic year, as well as some exciting fledgling projects across schools, where teachers want to collaborate and learn from each other for the benefit of their students.

For anyone looking to set something similar up in their schools, my advice would be:

• Think carefully about the timing of your Inset day for your staff, and for your host schools.
• Reach out to organisations like We Are In Beta to help you to set up visits and research schools.
• Deliberately visit schools that you know might challenge your way of thinking or who have a different approach or ethos to you. This is something we did in our second year, and found it incredibly helpful as a senior team.
• Include all staff, not just teachers. Everyone who works in a school will benefit from this exercise, and it means all staff feel equally valued.
• Be clear with all staff that not all great ideas are transferable and that it can be easy to walk into a school, see something that they like and be tempted to copy it. The purpose of the day is to learn, explore and think about how to develop great practice. 
• Build time into the school week for feedback and discussion. For this exercise to be truly useful, you also need a whole school culture of being open to feedback and keen to improve, and this is something senior leaders must model.

Ann Donaghy is the headteacher of Noel-Baker Academy in Derby