Ed Vainker, CEO and co-founder of Reach Academy Feltham, is working on a project in the N4 Trust to cultivate the next 100 head teachers in the South-West and Midlands region. Due to a shortage in the pipeline of great people, schools are unable to reach their full potential in teaching students, causing a ‘disadvantage gap’ to grow in the South West faster than other regions across England. Recently, I had the privilege to interview Ed to get his perspective and views on education.
Q: What is the SW 100 project?
A: The SW 100 project is a means to train the next generation of school leaders. Head teachers play a critical role in the community because families everywhere have the closest ‘touch point’ to the locals through schools, seeing as parents would drop off their children every single day. The key factor in having a great school is having a really strong leader. It’s important to train headteachers to enter this open mindset, as that allows students to truly flourish, so over the last year we came up with the idea of setting up a programme that identifies and prepares the next 100 leaders for the region.
Q: What differences (compared to other schools) should teachers have?
A: Interestingly, schools in the UK have a lot of financial autonomy and management within the system. In contrast, other countries, e.g. French schools are assigned teachers and resources by the government, with head teachers acting almost as figures, completely unable to use the finances assigned to the school for the well-being of the students. Even though the budget has been cut in many places, with Hounslow council operating on a 70% lower budget compared to 12 years ago, schools should use their position in local neighbourhoods to unite the community. The SW 100 project aims to educate about issues such as these, seeing as they play directly into a growing ‘disadvantage gap’
Q: What is the disadvantage gap?
A: The ‘disadvantage gap’ is simply recorded as the results that children on free school meals (pupil premium) achieve compared to children on non-free school meals (non-pupil premium). Various factors play into a child’s performance in school, but as many of us know, it’s nearly impossible to concentrate on a hungry stomach. Unfortunately, some areas like Devon and Cornwall have the worst gap compared to the national average at all stages. In both counties, on average, disadvantaged children start primary school more than 5 months behind their peers and end secondary nearly 21 months behind. In Plymouth, the gap is more than 24 months by the end of secondary.
Q: Do you think the responsibility for helping those students who may be behind in the place that they grew up in, do you think that the responsibility is more for the government or the wider community or the school specifically?
A: That's a very good question. If you look at Feltham for example, who were the institutions with the most resources - schools. That leads me to think, Yes, it's a role we can play, and it’s probably a role that we need to play. I think there are these real advantages that schools have. We have wide resources, we're based in communities, everyone comes in every day. With the primary kids, we're seeing those parents twice a day. How often are those parents at the GP? Maybe once a month, maybe once a year, maybe once every 5 years. The touch points they have with the state, a lot of them are with us. If you consider that the school is really part of the state, it's public funding that's paying for it, so in that scenario it makes me think that we should play that role.
In the next 5 years, Ed Vainker is planning for the project to finish training all the 100 headteachers and introducing them to various schools across the Midlands and South West. I would definitely say that I, and the wider Reach Academy Feltham community are very excited for the results and the inspiring work that he is pioneering to do.
