Leading Roles
Phil Stapleton talks to Andy Homden about an evolving curriculum, leadership, the importance of community and learning the double bass.
Leading Roles is a new ITM series in which we talk to the people who lead schools in the 2020s. We want to know what has influenced them, what excites them about teaching and learning today, and if possible, how they switch off from the job!
Phil Stapleton has been Headmaster at West Buckland School in England’s South West since 2016. An all-through coeducational day and boarding school on the fringe of the stunning Exmoor National Park, WBS prides itself on its 150-year tradition of service to a strong local community. The school’s innovative approach to curriculum development is now redefining how that tradition is both being sustained and transformed in answer to the question ‘why’?
I began by asking Phil about the influences on his approach to school leadership.
Influences
“The most important single influence was my time as a Housemaster of a co-educational boarding house (Weekites) at Charterhouse School. Acting in loco parentis is special. Of course it’s a huge responsibility, but it’s also a great opportunity to understand young people as individuals and members of a community, to shape them, influence them certainly, but also to listen to them and understand them. The effect on my career has been profound.
“So far as educationists are concerned, I really respond to the ideas of David Didau, who writes beautifully about ‘Intelligent Accountability’, Mary Myatt on ‘High Challenge/Low Threat’ leadership and Daisy Christodoulou on teachers, technology and assessment. All are worth the read and all are relevant to the challenges and opportunities facing teachers today wherever they are in the world.”
Curriculum
“I worry about the relevance of the traditional curriculum, not because it has no value – far from it – but because it has been slow to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of our young people. Are we assessing the right kind of things in the right kind of way? There is no room for complacency and we have a responsibility to our students to give the issue constant thought.
“I think it is a question not so much of throwing out the old curriculum (where would we be without, for example, without asking our students to learn how to think like scientists?) but more of enhancing it to make it relevant to the world they will enter.
“Some of them will of course become academics and we should celebrate that. However, most will not. They will, ultimately, enter the real world of work. In my view they will be most advantageously served if they have learned to think not so much as someone capable of doing a certain job, but of someone able to create new jobs and opportunities for the society in which they are going to live.
“This implies two things –firstly giving them the confidence to pitch their ideas creatively and secondly by adding a vocational element to their education however ‘academic’ they are. Both innovations imply encouraging what is often referred to as an ‘entrepreneurial’ mindset, which will amplify the impact of purely academic achievement and greatly increase its relevance.
“How have we gone about this at WBS? It’s a little unconventional, but we have introduced the IB’s Career-Related Programme (IBCP) in Years 12 & 13 (Grades 11 & 12) alongside our more purely academic A-Level programme. We want the girl who is going to get an A* in A level Physics to be able to understand how her scientific understanding can be practically applied. The IBCP is also for the boy who wants to recalibrate his learning in favour of a more vocationally-weighted programme in order to enter higher education or the world of work.
“It’s early days with the IBCP yet, but we are really excited about how this combined approach will benefit our students.”
Work-life balance?
“Firstly – there’s a lot to be joyful about working as a school head. There is so much to celebrate and get excited about. Of course, much that is joyful is happening outside your office, so the thing I like to do is simply to get out and about and witness what is happening! Being seen also has significant advantages for one’s credibility! I am really fortunate that I live with my family on campus, which is an important part of maintaining my own life ‘balance’.
“To be really happy out of school I like to be challenged. This may involve an element of risk: I used to kayak and now I paddleboard. Not being good at something that you happen to enjoy also means that you have to shut out everything else in order to improve. Learning how to play the double bass and practising once a day has therefore had a very beneficial effect on my life!
“Ultimately you have to make the time to do other things. However, this does not always separate you from your work. I love running – and used to run long distance. However, while I run, I also think – which can be great for problem solving but not necessarily for cutting off: my team always had mixed feelings when they know I have been out for a run!
Purpose
“In my opinion we all have to know why we’re doing what we’re doing at school. The purpose. This applies to both students and teachers.
“It is important for me that students do not just sit with their knowledge, but grow with it. They need an ethical framework within which they learn how to use their new skills and apply them with a growing moral compass. Helping them acquire this framework and compass is an important part of our purpose as a learning community.
“As teachers we have to believe in what we are doing, which requires holding collective as well as individual values about learning. Developing the collective rationale takes work. Our leadership team will chew things over, listen to each other and their colleagues and then make decisions. As we implement those decisions, we constantly refer back to the rationale and as a leadership team we try not to break ranks when things aren’t happening quite as we expected.
“As long as the ‘why’ is in place and our rationale is understood, our community, will be able to go forward and make the changes we believe to be important.”
Phil Stapleton was talking to Andy Homden
Feature and support images with kind permission of West Buckland School.