 Hello everyone, good evening. My name is Ross McGill at Teacher Toolkit. Thank you for joining me and thank you for joining this webinar on mental health and well-being at the heart of the school curriculum. I'm gonna introduce later, John Smedley, founder of TeachActive and primary head teacher, Ben Levinson of Kensington Primary School in a moment. Before I do, just kind of the context of what we're gonna do this evening. We're gonna have a good conversation about placing mental health and well-being at the heart of the curriculum. We're gonna be on picking Ben's particular story and successes, what underpins everything we do as teachers. The structure, delivery and assessment of a school's curriculum is arguably the foundation of our schooling. And given the pandemic, how can schools and teachers balance a recovery curriculum, the attainment gap and government accountability? The likely truth is that no school has the perfect curriculum. It's an ever-revolving project that must respond to a wide range of factors, not least a global pandemic. Time tables are tight, exam pressure is real and budgets are a constant challenge. And all school leaders will tell you that the curriculum underpins everything that we do in our schools. After all, if we get the curriculum right, this informs our assessment, supports our behavior, of our young people and helps all of our teachers unlock learning in the classroom. So we all need a little bit more time and money. And in my career leading whole school teaching and learning, you can have the best curriculum pans on paper, but if you haven't got the teachers that can bring that content to life, schools will still remain stuck. In my just great teaching research, 61% of schools and teachers still consider the curriculum a challenging area of practice. And this was before the pandemic. So the global pandemic we know and lockdown will only make this harder for schools, for many as we continue to future-proof the curriculum in a fast-changing world. So what now? With COVID, lockdown and learning lost, what now for our schools and our education system? We know that curriculum defines what students should be learning. We know that from an epistemological perspective, it's important to define what it means to know. And in terms of cognitive science, we are better at understanding what happens when learning shapes long-term memory. And as a result, all our teachers are better equipped with this to know how to get people to learn. The challenge with a pandemic is supporting all people's lies at the heart of this recovery plan. And at the nucleus, place of mental health and people well-being is going to play a fundamental role. So what I would like to do for people watching is introduce to you, Ben Levinson, who is our headteacher from Kensington Primary School. This is just a slide I'm just gonna put up, just can kind of see who is with us this evening. I'll just put that full slide so you can see it on your side. So Ben Levinson headteacher of Kensington Primary School. Ben is also a youth sports trust ambassador headteacher and John Smedley, former deputy headteacher, founder and director of Teach Active. I'll introduce to you in a moment. So before I bring in John, I'm gonna ask Ben to join me now. So just give me a moment. Hi, Ben, good evening. Good evening. How are you, Ross? Yeah, Ben, thank you so much for joining me. Since we've got connected and planned this event, I've done lots of reading and researching about some of the amazing work that you've done with your staff and your colleagues for your children. And I know it's not been a rosy journey. Can I maybe just get you to talk about the context of your skill to listeners, just describe where you are, number of people's on role, that just kind of general introduction. Sure, thanks, Ross, that's very kind of you to say. Yeah, so we're Kensington Primary School, which is a slightly confusing start because we're actually on the other side of London, in East London, in Newham. And we are a primary school with 650 children, so three-form entry primary school. And being in Newham, one of the most diverse parts of the country, unsurprisingly, we're a hugely diverse community. So over 97% of the children of Kensington have English as a second language and 99.3% are from a Black and minority ethnic background. And of course, there's diversity then in terms of children's backgrounds, how long they've been in the country and their financial situation as well, at a real range. Yeah, so a real diverse community. Could I maybe take you back maybe three years before, well before the pandemic? What was the context of the school? Maybe different funding pressures, different curriculum challenges. Could you maybe, and could you tell listeners how long you've been in your position as well? Yeah, I've been at Kensington seven years and headteacher for five and three years ago, I think we had a really great school and we had a really good culture within that school. But I think as you've identified in your introduction, that curriculum, which is the heart of everything that we do, wasn't what we wanted it to be for our children. And like you say, to take on some of those challenges of the 21st century, the challenges that our children face and really making the most of that time that we have with them. There are always pressures, aren't there, and three years ago was no different now in that regard. Money is always tight, there's never enough time. And I think we're asked to do more and more of schools. And I think that's a challenge because you want to do the best for your children and families, you can see how you can do more sometimes. But it's trying to strike that balance between doing what's needed to be done, but also not just continually pushing that envelope of what's within the role and ability of a school. I think what we'll do, Ben, is if I could actually just do, unpick the current year challenges and then we'll maybe backtrack later in our session and unpick the journey and the kind of key decisions you've made along the way. And I'm just gonna flag up there for listeners. Ben's school's been nominated, the TES Award. Ben, is that correct? The People Mental Health Award from the TES? Yes, so we're the 2020 Well-Being and Mental Health School of the Year. So that's congratulations. I'd like to unpick the reasons behind that, but let's just get to the current state of the nation. What are you doing for a recovery curriculum approach? What's been at the heart of your teaching? What's kind of been sidelined if that's relevant? And what kind of key decisions you've made, particularly from September until this point of the year to get your school functional? Yeah, I mean, that's a huge question. Yeah, there's lots of them. There is. I think I'm sure so many of the challenges we faced, the challenges others have faced. And I've been really fortunate. I've been having won the primary school of the year in 2020 as well. I was asked to be a judge for the Lockdown Hero Award. So I've been visiting schools virtually all over the country as part of that judging process, which has been fascinating to just hear the stories of how people have gone above and beyond. I think for us, the work that we did in terms of developing our curriculum put us in a really strong place for when our children, both during lockdown and when they returned to school. But I think it's always been about teaching what's in front of us. And those challenges were there three years ago and five years ago and seven years ago. We have children who come into our school who speak our little English. Year three, year five, year six, some who've never been to school. But even regardless of that, in any context, you're always gonna have some children who are doing well in certain areas and some who are finding it hard. And so we've always looked to give our staff the autonomy, the freedom to look at where their children are and think about what they need to do to help move them on. And that stood us in really good stead because that's the case now as it was then. I think for us, we fervently believe that putting well-being first and foremost is a crucial part of children's education. If whenever we look at children who are finding learning hard, and once we peel back some of the sort of the more obvious reasons around that, once we really get to the heart of that, it's so often to do with children's health, either their mental or emotional health or their physical health. And so for us, making sure that children are both emotionally well and physically well, not only is important in and of its own right, but is the essential building to then ensure they can access the rest of the curriculum. And so that's a key focus for us. We're talking to John later about the teach active work and getting children physically active through the day, not just through, we call it physical health, but through the PE lessons, but also through active maths and active English lessons, through active learning breaks for just a few minutes to get up and move around. And the difference that makes in terms of focus and concentration, subsequently learning is huge. There was a Cambridge University brought out just this week, which had looked at data or longitudinal data on this and demonstrated the significant impact that physical activity can have on children's wider learning. Yeah, I saw that for us as a keeper. It is. And I'm just wondering, with all the kind of pressures on bubbles and safety and those types of things, if I came along to your school tomorrow, what would I see in terms of just day-to-day teaching and learning, children's mental health, activities, assemblies, are we normal to a degree in some respects, or are we not quite there yet? We're not quite there yet. It's still, I think, the need for us, despite the numbers being low, I think there's a need for us to continue ensuring that the safety measures are in place wherever they can be. I think as always, a huge spectrum amongst the team, amongst parents around where people are at with this, and some are very anxious, understandably, and some are very anxious to return to normality. So we've got to walk that fine line, but we've also got to make sure everyone remains safe. So we do have our bubbles. We're not having whole-school assemblies. We are doing assemblies via Zoom. But there is lots of opportunities for physical activity every moment. We don't have a lot of outdoor space. We're not great with that. But every minute is timetable. Every minute there are opportunities. So you need to see children who are really happy, really excited to be at school, who love being there. And they love being there because there are great relationships and there's great communication. And that's what's at the heart of the emotional health. But I think you'd also see children who are very emotionally aware and very emotionally intelligent through our emotional health curriculum that we teach throughout the school. Really understand a great deal about their emotions depending on their age. They have a great vocabulary around their emotions. They have a great understanding of how to deal with different emotions. They have a great understanding of what causes those emotions. Now, they understand that a range of emotions is perfectly normal. We all get angry. We all get sad. That's not sad. That's just a part of being human being. So I'll come back to the mental health and wellbeing aspects of the things that you do in a moment. Could I just turn to the connectivity side of things? Children having laptop access 12 months ago, what's the general picture then and what is it now? I think there's always gonna be a challenge for communities and particularly communities where you have a lot of people living in shared housing. Newham has some of the highest levels of child homelessness in the country and a lot of families who live in shared accommodation and temporary accommodation. So clearly that was a challenge throughout our time and we did a lot of work with our families to support with that and loaning out of over 100 devices and dongles to go with that. But I think the important bit for us was, and I think from what I can see in school, it has paid dividends that the focus was very much on making sure everyone was okay because we knew that if they were okay and they came back to school and they have, we've had some of our highest attendants there, we've had nearly 98% attendance this year. And that for us is huge because we have one of the highest levels of mid phase admissions in the country and that churn causes all sorts of issues around attendance. So what's your secret there? What's the secret there? Well, I think it's what we're talking about. It's having a curriculum that the children love that they came back into school on that first day bouncing. They couldn't wait to get back and they were so excited but I also think it's about putting health and well-being at the heart of that because they are physically fitter. They are emotionally better able to deal with disputes and disagreements, disappointments. And so those things don't then play through into children not wanting to come to school next day. They do want to. So let's come to that part. Now in my teaching career, London's schools, you'd struggle to find a space to play basketball or a patch of grass outside. So you've already described your school in the heart of Newham, not much outdoor space. How do you introduce physical learning or the importance of active learning within your school and placing mental health and well-being at the heart of it? What kind of innovative things do you have to do to get kids physically learning? What kind of things have you done? So we've totally rewritten our, so in terms of physical health, our physical health curriculum. So as I say, it's physical health, it's not PE. Children do still you learn sports skills and then we do still have sports teams and we still think that's a really important place but actually the bulk of our curriculum is around two areas. So one being physical fitness and the other being skills for life. And children have three half hour fitness lessons a week which is just that. It's just about getting moving and out of breath. So year one, it could be playing stuck in the mud for half an hour. Anything that's gonna mean the children are running around and building that physical fitness. Whereas in key stage two, up to key stage two year five and year six, children use the my zone heart rate monitors. And they can see up on a screen, it shows them when it's red, when they're working really hard, when it's yellow, when they're in that zone or when it's green and they're not working hard enough. So I think they're one of only a couple of schools in the country that use those heart rate monitors and that's had a huge impact. And the other bits are skills for life curriculum. Have you had a go at that little heart rate monitor? I was out for a run this morning, Ross. Very good, very good. Absolutely. You can find an example. Yeah, not very fast, but I was out. But then our skills for life curriculum is all about building some of those core skills. So it's about agility, it's about strength, it's about flexibility. So a lot of gymnastics. But like I say, it's also, we've introduced teach active across school. We started with maths and some fantastic resources and lesson plans. I'm sure John will say more about that later, but opportunities for children to get outside and learn whilst being physically active. We've now started with the English as well because the maths had such a great impact. So all of those things really making a difference for our children. Fantastic. So I'm going to bring a good time to bring John in I suppose. John knows your work better than I. And I know teach active has been the small part of your success. So I'll come back to you in a moment, Ben, if that's okay. I'm going to bring in John here, John. Good evening. Hi, Ross. Good evening, Ross. How are you? Yeah, very well, thank you. Could I get you to introduce yourself to our listeners and tell everyone your background in teaching and your role with teach active? Okay, yeah, good evening everyone. Thanks for joining us. So yeah, I'm the founder of teach active, which we'll tell you a little bit more about but my background as I was a teacher for 20 years, I've taught primary and secondary but mainly primary school. I was a peer advisor for the local authority on the Wibble. So hence my love of getting children active and all the benefits that we're going to talk about this evening. And then I went back into school. I was a deputy head for seven years and then left in 2015 in order to set up teach active and hopefully try and do what we're doing now which is having an impact on more and more schools. Now, you're being a bit modest there. I know teach active, I believe 300,000 pupils a week can access your resources, your curriculum materials. So correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure that number is increasing every week and the connection with the schools goes wider. What did teach active skills benefit from? I think for me, when I was a teacher it was just always about thinking, well, how can I get, for example, my year six is in my heart to each year six is at the time. How can I get them to really enjoy maths and English and get their confidence open? And just as Ben said there about having this love of a curriculum that they really enjoy because they were aged with English and maths lessons. So I did that with the power of physical activity incorporating movement into the lessons. And it had a real impact at the schools I was working at and on the will which I've already mentioned. And I actually, it's part of an off-stead share and a good practice paper. It was part of a DFE international project and just teachers and schools just telling me how much they loved it. It was just a simple file of ideas that I gave away. And I actually thought, well, if this benefits schools locally to me why can't it benefit schools all over the country and internationally now as well? So schools, the main benefits I could probably list 20 or 30 but the main four that I always say are that we're going to, it's going to increase levels of physical activity and we want to do actually now at the moment when children have been really sedentary. But attitudes, children will really love it big smile on their face, twinkle in their eye. It's what we work so hard as teachers to try and achieve. It's going to help attainment. So just because we're introducing movement we're not missing a maths lesson or an English lesson we're just doing it simply in a different way. And then the fourth one is just it develops its whole child development. It's all those things that you've already alluded to along with Ben there. It's self-esteem, it's confidence, it's resilience, it's self-esteem, all of those things which that's why we're all teaching, isn't it? It is. Now, I know you know Ben and his success very well and Teach Active are a school that's supported him. Could you describe how Teach Active is being used at Kensington Primary School and how it's helped place mental health and well-being at the heart of the curriculum? Yeah, I mean it's a funny one because we work with schools all over the UK and actually there's so many head teachers and teachers do a fantastic job. I actually found out about Ben when he won primary school of the year and my wife and my children were watching the one show and told me that Ben was obviously they would do the video of showing Teach Active so and the children doing that. So it was then I really wanted to reach out to Ben and just hear about his story and just hear about how I think, you know when I spoke to him virtually over Zoom I just totally blown away by is a guy who really you know gets and I think shares my beliefs in what school and education is all about and what's really important. Yeah, it was like having a conversation with the mirror I suppose sometimes. Great, so I'm gonna, I've brought Ben back in here. So just for people watching, we're using StreamYahee which is a live stream and you know playing different kind of head shots here and just to remind everyone if you're watching on Facebook, YouTube or through Twitter on Periscope you can leave live comments and we'll pin any questions that you have for John or Ben in the video session. So Ben, back to you. How do your teachers benefit from using Teach Active? I think as John set out there I think that it's teaching such a challenging profession and I think at primary, one of the big challenges is that breadth of knowledge and skill that's required to teach across the curriculum. John's resources are fantastic in terms of being able to support. In fact, somebody just commented on that down below. They're fantastic resources to be able to support our teachers to take that math learning and that English learning now outside and realize all the benefits of having those lessons being physically active in the outdoors. And I think asking teachers to do that without having a starting point would be something, ultimately I think it would end up failing. So all of that support is a really important part of what we're doing at Kensington. Ben, I've got a question here from Jenny watching on Facebook. How does Teach Active work in your school? What does it look like on a day-to-day basis? Sure, so we have one of our math lessons a week basically is an active math lesson. So that's timetabled. There's timetabled space outside for our teachers to teach that. And so on those days they use the Teach Active resources and plan for that lesson and take that lesson outside. And then I'm going to bring back John in here. I'm just playing with all the different buttons. Now John, there's a huge body of resources inside Teach Active. You'll know I'm a huge fan. In fact, all we all are, any way to reduce teacher workload is a win for every teacher through the pandemic. That's going to be a significant challenge. I'm just going to bring your slide in here where we can see just some example resources. John, do you mind just I'm picking some of the things that you offer to teachers and to schools? Yeah, of course. So this is one lesson plan, but it's good for people to see how they're laid out. There's three and a half thousand of these covering every objective in the maths curriculum and then covering reading right in the written by maths and English consultants. We've got a great team there and they complement and enhance your scheme of work. So as you can see there, you get your lesson plan. It will tell you what year group we go from foundation all the way to year six. It's got the area of maths. It's got the objective and then a list of instructions. So this game that you've got in front of you there or you're just going to have a fit whilst, but that one with the clocks, for example, we might all have some of us have a digital clock. Some of us have an analog clock, we're dancing around the room and when the music stops, we find our partner or in a group is in intervention, we might be running and collecting these. So there are all things which teachers listening will say, I've done similar things like that before or maths or re-intering. I always use that as an example. Everyone loves maths or re-intering and the children love it, but it takes the teacher so long to plan it and to organize it and to make the resources where three and a half thousand plans done for you. So it just allows it to be really sustainable and allows your staff therefore to use their time really effectively. Sure. So just for context listeners, I've been familiar with now with Teach Active for a number of months and I've been really impressed with all the resources that they provide and the impact that they're having and the more I dig deeper, the more success stories I'm hearing and Ben's stories, one in particular. So what I'd like to do for the latter half of our show on the heart of the place and wellbeing and mental health at the heart of the curriculum is unpick the Department for Education's recent wellbeing charter, which was announced, I believe, just last week or the week before. And I know Ben, you were part of the initial plans for that. Can you just describe your involvement? Yeah, so we had an expert advisory group made up of teachers, school staff, the unions, mental health charities, so a variety of different people who had some interest or expertise in the area of mental health and wellbeing and we were part of coming up with and advising the government and Department for Education in terms of what could be put in place to support school staff wellbeing. Now, I've got all the kind of bullet points that are recommended. I believe there were 11 and I actually looked at the recommendations earlier and try not to be too cynical about the promises given that all the pressures that yourself as a head teacher has to face on a kind of day-to-day basis. Could I ask you your kind of thoughts on the 11 priorities? So we'll go through them one by one. I'll bring John in here for some comments also. And then always wanting a practical example for teachers and schools to use. Could we look at the recommendation and then talk about some of the things that you've done in your school over the seven-year journey that you've been a teacher. So the first one is prioritizing staff mental health. Give me some of the things that you've done and then maybe John can jump on and talk about how teach active or some of the things that he did in his own school leadership to prioritize mental health for staff. Yeah, I think putting the heart of the culture of how you work is the most important bit of that. And of course that is incredibly broad. So in terms of practically, so for example, I always say that we don't do any formal monitoring. So we don't do any observations. We don't do book scrooches. We don't do planning scrooches. None of it, which ultimately is true. And I think a really important part of, you know, how we take care of our team's wellbeing. I think that OECD, we're one of the highest, if not the highest nation in terms of the time we spend on monitoring teachers and what they're doing, which is crazy. I think actually what's probably closer to the truth is that rather than closely monitoring and checking on our teachers, we trust them. We work with them. So it's not that we don't know what's going on. It's not that we just let teachers go in a room and shut the door and they're left to it, but we're working collaboratively. And by doing that, we're not looking to catch people out. We're not pulling people up when someone hasn't marked a book or when a bit of planning is not how it's supposed to be. Not what it's supposed to be anyway. They can plan how they want at Kensington. But, you know, it's really that whole approach to working together. So has it always been like that? Has it always been like that? No, no, when I first got there, there was a 12-page observation form that had 70 or different things that you needed to see in a lesson. And each one, you had to rank outstanding good, R.I. or inadequate. Goodness me. OK. So we're going to prepare to where we are today. And what's the kind of one thing, you know, throughout the pandemic that you've consciously tried to do to support your teaching and support staff? And maybe give us a practical example, whether it's popping into the door and saying good morning or a phone calls or what kind of things have you been doing? Yeah, I think many things. But I think one of the most important has been trying to give people some certainty. So for example, we decided both times around on where people would be for the following year in March and let everybody know that in March, rather than waiting until, you know, the summer two at some point. And just something like that gave people a little bit of certainty in their lives in a world where everything was so uncertain and futures so uncertain. And I think that was really important. Of course, contact and communication. We had teams, we had people checking in on each other on a daily, weekly basis, making sure everyone was OK. But I think giving that certainty is so important. It is. John, can I ask you for your thoughts on some of your leadership experiences, some of your insights from TeachActive or just your personal recommendations to support? You know, you work in a team, not directly in a school, but how do you support or recommendations for supporting teacher and mental health? Well, the word that pops out to me initially is the one that Ben said in terms of trust and trusting your staff. I always thought that was really important. And actually, I remember Offstead when we were part of sharing a good practice paper, I asked that question, you know, as if we were doing something special with a secret potion and it was just, you know, trust your staff and work with them. But we all want happy staff, don't we? A happy staff, happy environment. And therefore, we know that that will, you know, therefore reflect on your children and your whole school as well. So I think that's really important. I thought one practical example, something that I did, I set up an after-school club for staff, which was a good one. And one week, I think it lasted six weeks. And one week, we had Pilates. And another week, we had yoga. And another week, we had another one, an Indian head massage. So it was just in terms of just looking after the staff and, yeah, developing them and, you know, leading them and making sure they were happy within the workplace. Now, I'm going to throw a question to both of you, suppose, how do we ensure that, particularly for teacher support staff well-being, it's not a tick box exercise. How do you get it embedded into culture so that also you know that you're winning when staff take responsibility for their own well-being but also can look out for others? So who wants to go first on? Ben, over to you. OK, like I say, it has to be baked into the culture. And that has to be part of how you work every day. I think without getting too philosophical, philosophical on a Sunday night, for us, the starting point is that people are good. People are fundamentally good. People fundamentally want to do a good job. They want to work hard. And starting from that point just shifts your perspective, you know, really taking from that point and then being positive and supportive. So, you know, at Kensington, if someone comes in who normally is absolutely fine and bites your head off, the starting point isn't to go back at them or to think they're out of order and then to go, how do we deal with this? The starting point is I wonder what's up with them today? They're not normally like that. I'm going to leave them for a couple of hours and I'll go and check in on them, see how they're doing. You know, and I think that as a culture, that as a starting point and really genuinely asking people how they are, what they want to see, what could be improved, and really listening to that and then acting on it, you know, all of that is so important. Yes, of course, you know, we buy people a cup of coffee on a Friday or we, you know, get lunch for everybody or we have a Bollywood night or a quiz night or, you know, we do all of those things. But none of that is worth the paper it's printed on. Unless you have a culture where you treat people with respect, where you really listen to their view and where you look to, you know, make sure that they're enjoying what they're doing, that they're loving being. You know, John said that they need to love being there and that's all about the interactions. That's all about how we treat each other and that's the important bit. I think of, you know, I've probably worked in about six secondary schools in my career and I'd probably say, just on the quick little mental count in my head, probably two or three of the schools, I actually love jumping out of bed on a Monday morning and that's not just the nature of the job or the role I had, but the culture that also underpinned the motivation. So part of this kind of avoidance tick box culture, the kind of next recommendation from the Department of Education is to give managers the tools and resources they need to support the wellbeing of those they line manage. John, any tips or recommendations? Well, we could always take it back to budget, couldn't we? We could always take it back to budget and what we're going to do there, but, you know, it's, again, making us feel like we can trust staff. It does go back to that and I suppose that it's then how we value our education system and if it's based on always and results and lead table, then that can certainly be a very negative part to that. And I think the head teacher and the leadership within a school know what's going on. And, you know, I remember when I was teaching year six, one year I had the best results that the school had ever had, you know, I must have been wonderful. And the year after we had probably one of the worst results that we'd ever had. And I hadn't changed. I hadn't gone to a particular college. I hadn't had a bad year. It was the cohort of the children I was working with and to an outsider coming in, it looked like something terrible had happened to the school and it wasn't, we were all working still exactly the same. So I think it's trusting the head, trusting the head teacher and those people who know the school and the staff and the children and the story to see the bigger picture and sometimes it frustrates me that that's not seen. That's a very good point. If I would just signpost one tool for people watching at least here in the UK is the well-being support charity, which I believe has been around 150 years, but only 5% of teachers are aware of this charity that's dedicated to supporting teachers and support staff. Ben, any recommendations for tools, strategies, resources? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, just to pick up on your point, I think, when we designed our vision for the school, so our vision at Kensington is a place where everyone loves to be. And actually one of the driving forces behind that was making somewhere where people didn't get that knot in their stomach, not even at this time, probably a few hours prior to this on a Sunday. You know, and I think probably by the sounds of it, we've all been there at some point in our careers. And I certainly have been and we wanted to create somewhere where people didn't get that knot. And actually, like you say, Ross, we're leaping out of bed, we're looking forward to being in, yeah, we love weekends, yeah, we love the holidays, but also we love Monday mornings and that's so important. And there's a wealth of resources out there and as a part of Youth Sport Trust, we're Kensington's one of the founding schools of the Well Schools Movement, which is a school-led movement supported by the Youth Sport Trust and the Mooper Foundation. And there's a huge amount of resource on there, all contributed by schools. So it's www.well-school.org. It's all free. You don't need to be a member of the Youth Sport Trust, you don't need to have anything, it's all free for people to join. We've got over 700 schools who signed up to that and who are contributing their ideas and their resources. And I think, you know, we probably haven't got time to get on to self-improving systems and all the rest of it tonight. But having that as a self-improving system where schools support other schools is a really great grassroots movement. Our self-sustaining systems will probably what we all want. I will get that link shared in the chat box for people watching live or recording. I'm gonna come to the next recommendations, Ben and John. I'll give you three here in a row. Establish a clear communication policy, give staff a voice in decision-making and drive down unnecessary workload. So let's just go straight to the pandemic. We all know it's been an incredibly challenging time. What key things did you do, Ben, practical solutions to reduce that burden for your teachers so that they could focus on their children? Yeah, I mean, it's something we've worked on for seven years. So that helped. My very first insight when I started at Kensington was what gets in the way of you doing your job and starting to remove those barriers. We've done that every year now for seven years. And I think it was having a realism about it. Of course, we wanted to do everything. And I believe we did do everything that we needed to do that was important for our families and for our children. But also for our team, they had their own children. They had their own parents, their own grandparents and making sure that they were looks after and taken care of and that therefore the expectations we were putting around live learning or pre-recorded lessons or responding to feedback and, you know, all of that was managed really carefully to ensure that the workload of our team was manageable. But I'll come back to that important point. The most important point is talking to those people day in, day out, week in, week out and asking them. Because unless you're doing that, you don't know whether people are overwhelmed and wherever people did say, we're really, I'm finding this really hard. Then we'd look at how we could change that and how we could support that. That was the most important part. Thank you, Ben. I'm going to come back to you in a moment and ask what have you done to help pupils with their mental health specifically at this time? But before I do, John, can I, you know, work loads these recommendations from the DFE? How, you know, your perceptions, you know, you work with a lot of skills. Also how teach active can support this? General thoughts? Well, yeah, I mean, I always used to say as a leader, we only do things if it benefits the school or benefits the children. And we have to prioritize and I certainly try and preach that now and practice that now rather within the business that I run as well. You know, and even though I am impatient and I kind of want to do everything, sometimes we have to think actually, what are the priorities? With regards to teachers, yes, working with thousands of schools and teachers, we know that, you know, teach active, I often say is something that teachers are going to really welcome because the last thing we want at the moment is something else being bought in, something else that's going to make, you know, we're already teaching 12 subjects, everything else that we've got to do at the moment. So, but funny enough, teachers really welcome and teach active because it's something that saves them hours of planning time, all the resources, all the plans are done there for them. So, that's why it seems to be worked and to be really welcomed in schools. And, you know, we've been going for six years, but we've just had the most of our schools sort of strangely enough, January to this period of time because I think people are recognizing as they had to do before, but even more now, so now recognize the importance of physical activity. So, John, I'll know that just for listeners, Bennett there watching, the teach active is for primary schools and you do have international schools now using your resources, but I'm pushing you here. Plans for a secondary key say three maybe in the future? I've asked this many, many times. We do have a lot of secondary schools who use us, key stage three, I suspect year sevens who have gone up, missed a lot of summer term, missed a lot of school last year. We work with a lot of special schools as well. No immediate plans, I'm afraid, for doing the second school product, I always kind of see my background is mainly private and that's kind of where I suppose my expertise is. Of course, okay. I'll take that answer, I'm happy with that. Ben, back to you. People went mental health well-being, what practical steps have you done since September to the present day, alongside all the kind of great ideas that you've been doing to support your teachers? What kind of practical things have been happening in the classrooms and assemblies to form time, those types of things? I can answer the question, but I can't answer it from September really, because this began for us four years ago as we began to develop curriculum K, our approach to the curriculum in the 21st century. And putting emotional health at the heart of that was absolutely essential for us, for our children and what they needed. Now, I can't pretend that I had some prescient vision of what was going to come with COVID, I certainly didn't. But having done that, it stood us in an incredibly good step. And actually on the measures that we use, our children's emotional health, mental health has improved during this last 15 months because of the emotional health curriculum that we have in place. But that's just one part of our approach. We also looked at this across the board. So we looked at it particularly in terms of behavior. We don't have a behavior policy as a school because we believe very strongly that children's behavior is something that we should be supporting and teaching in the same way that we would reading or maths. We don't believe that these are naughty children and good children, we believe that these are children. Some find fitting in with those structures and those norms easier and some find controlling their emotions and dealing with them in a constructive way far more challenging. So we have a relationship to regulation policy. So every classroom in the school has a regulation area which has some information for children about how to regulate their emotions. They might have different sensory objects for them to go away and regulate at. We have a whole, again, approach and curriculum to teaching them how to build those positive relationships. So all of that has meant that actually children at Kensington have dealt very well with the mental health. At the sharper end, we've worked with Place2Be for many years and so we have counselors in school who can support children. Newer of the Head Start borrower as well and so there's support through that program for children who are finding that they're particularly challenging with their mental health. Ben, can I ask you to maybe give us, not the specific details, it wouldn't be something we could cover in the next 10 minutes or so. But you're well-being strategy. Obviously it's been a long-term approach for you and I suspect it didn't have a pandemic as part of the original plan. But what's your strategy going forward? I think we're in a really good place for that. I think there's more work to be done on embedding our emotional health curriculum and embedding our approach to relationships and regulation. I think in terms of staff, I know a broken record but our approach will continue to be to really genuinely listen to people. And I don't know that probably what they need to support their well-being over the next year, two years is actually gonna be slightly different to what it has been because of the impact of COVID. But we have the relationships, we have the open honest relationships where people will be able to say that and we will do whatever we can to support with that. So that's gonna be a key part of that approach but also continuing to learn from others. We haven't got all the answers. I've talked about well schools and hearing what other people are doing is a really important part of developing what we're doing at the school. Now, if you haven't got all the answers, tell me how the TES award came to be. Well, I think we put in what we're doing and it's a lot of what I've talked about. I think curriculum K is something pretty special. We've stripped out quite a bit of what we're doing in the maths curriculum, in the English curriculum, we're stripping out some of the rest of the curriculum because we just don't believe. If we had all of the hours and all of the time and all of the results, we would want to teach our children everything but we don't, we have 25 hours a week or we do at the moment anyway. That's another story. We have 25 hours a week with our children so we've got to prioritise what's most important. We'll have some pick that point because I was going to ask you, this whole notion about extending the school day, is it achievable? What are your thoughts? It's also speculative at the moment, isn't it really? I mean, I think that an extra half an hour, the devil's in the detail, until you see the detail it's very hard to say. An extra half an hour a day, to be honest, is just a bit of tightening up at the end of the beginning of the day but depending on what the expectations and the detail are around that, there could be huge knock-on impacts. All of my support staff's contracts for a start. All of the after-school provision that runs, I've got two young daughters myself, they go to dance class. Well, if the school day was half an hour longer, then dance would have to change and they'd have to change the hiring of the hall and they'd have to change their own childcare. The knock-on impact of that is potentially huge. It will be huge, yeah. For minimal change, the eight to six voluntary, well, we run half seven till six already at Kensington, as many schools do. Half seven till half eight is Breakfast Club, which is a pound, so it's not free, but it is a pound, but it's a nominal cost. After school, we run clubs, 50-odd clubs, free of charge every week for our children already, which run from half three till half four, and then there's a six o'clock club that's paid. I've got a question here from one of our live watchers. What's curriculum K? Could you just explain that briefly? Yeah, so it's some of what I've been talking about, but if you Google it, then it will come up and there's more information on the website. Like I say, it's our approach to teaching and learning in the 21st century. It was a two-year research project, looking at what children genuinely need to be happy and successful in the 21st century, and it's structured around four key areas, one being academic, because children need to learn to read and write and all the rest, although we've stripped out lots of the grammar, because what I think they need to do is be able to be creative and excited about writing, not know all of the detailed nuts and bolts. It's health, it's emotional health, it's a taught emotional health curriculum and a taught physical health curriculum. It's communication because that ability to communicate is so essential and it's a taught communication curriculum and that is culture because knowing the best of what people have done and said over time and place and throughout the arts is also really important for our children. Thank you. So curriculum K, everyone watching, have a look at Kensington Primary School in Newham, London. John, I'm gonna bring you in here. I'm gonna come back to this kind of contentious issue that profession faces at the moment was extended in the school day. How can teacher active help if anything statutory happens or we don't know the details as Ben has already said, but just generally, how is teacher active supporting schools before, during and after school? Just give us a kind of few suggestions. Yeah, of course, as Ben says, it's the detail that might come along. So whether I'm a fan of it or not and I don't know if that's, I'll sit firmly on the fence, but certainly teach active supports curriculum time, but it can also really help at the moment with the different things that schools are going to do whether that's an after school club, whether it's targeted support. And it was interesting recently in some research that the three things that teachers and head teachers said that they were most worried about were gaps in attainments, which we can understand because we missed a lot of school. It was lack of physical activity that children have done during lockdown and since lockdown. And then the third one was the children's emotional and mental wellbeing. And we were a little bit worried that children might come back and just be forced to do reading, writing maths, reading, writing maths. And actually, we have DFE even saying that they should prioritise physical activity because it can support attainment. We can get children active. It can help emotional and mental wellbeing. Then actually, we need the children maybe, some children might have gaps in reading and writing and maths that we have to do after school, targeted support, in curriculum, out of curriculum, summer camps, whatever it may be, but let's do it in a fun and engaging way. Doing more maths, more maths, more maths isn't the answer, but if we can do it in a fun game and an activity, then actually a lot of teachers tell me the children sometimes don't even realise they're doing maths or realise that it's just being so much fun and engaged and it's that learning, sometimes without recognising it. Now, one thing I love about the Teach Act of Twitter channel is you're constantly quote, tweeting all the wonderful things that our children are doing in schools. Could you just unpick some of the things that you've been sharing, some of the highlights that you see over the last few months? Yeah, I mean, it's thanks to many of our schools really who go and share what they've been doing with our English and maths plans, with our isolation packs, with our COVID bubble-friendly plans that we did inside and that's it, so it's great. Our schools are fantastic and tweeting pictures. We know that schools like to hear off of the schools, it's the best way. I'm going to tell you how fantastic Teach Act of is. That's just because I'm very passionate about it, but other teachers on Twitter, and I'd encourage people to have a look at our Twitter feed and see some of the great and the smiley faces that are taking part in the lessons. What I'll do is I'm going to bring Ben in here, and Ben can just maybe just talk about some of the benefits that Teach Act of has brought for his school. Yeah, I'd say I think it's given our teachers that confidence and that's been a really important part of developing our approaches and our curriculum. More importantly, for our children, we're seeing the impacts in the lesson. So children, and often children who are not the ones who would as often be engaged in the classroom are really engaged in the learning and in those lessons. We're seeing evidence, early evidence, because we're early in the journey, but early evidence of better retention of that learning. And then we're seeing that as well, not just in that lesson, but transferring back into the classroom. So when children have been out and done an active master in English lesson, they are then more focused, more engaged in their learning, in subsequent lessons back in the classroom. So there's a whole wealth of benefits there for it. Now, what I'm looking forward to is starting to see some of the data from that, and clearly because of the last 15 months, we've not been in a position to do that, but I do think we get so caught up on that data, don't we? We know when children are learning or we know when children aren't learning. And I'm telling you, in our teach active lessons and after our teach active lessons, our children are learning and that's what matters. So what transformation have you seen since you've been using it? You know, your teacher's happy, you know, you know, you know, you know, thriving workload plans, you know, children's responses. You said you have seen a change in the data. Yeah. They are. I mean, they are absolutely happier. I think, like I say, our attendance shows that they're happier or the way that they're behaving shows that they're happier, but more than anything, just the way they come into school in the mornings, the way that they interact around the school in the playground at break times and lunch times, you know, what they're saying when we're talking to them about what they're enjoying about school. You know, they love the teach active lessons. They love their physical health lessons. They love all of that side of things and that's great on a sunny day, but even if it's raining, even when it's not so nice, there's a little bit of a grumble, but there's fewer and fewer grumbles over time. They're going outside and they're really enjoying being a part of that. And like I say, our vision as a school is a place everyone loves to be and teach active and what we're doing around that is a significant part of making it a place everyone loves to be. Fantastic. I can't wait to come and visit. You're more than welcome. Well, as soon as I'm back on the road, I'm going to be straight down. John, we know there's a huge body of research now, you know, mental health, well-being, physical learning, curriculum and outcomes, and I think we've still got some way to go yet to suggest that physical learning can really drive outcomes. I think the tipping point soon, can I put you in the corner? Can you signpost one piece of research that maybe teachers, school leaders can go and look at as a case study, perhaps something on your website or a piece of research. I know Ben mentioned the Cambridge research that came out last week. Anything that you would signpost to people watching? Yeah, I mean, there's actually a wealth of research and knowledge with regards to this. I mean, funny enough, Ross, you now live in Yorkshire and Yorkshire seemed to be doing some great work there. There's a gentleman called Andy Daley Smith who is at Bradford University and he's very much headed it up in terms of the active schools framework and I asked him, yeah, have a look at that and all the work that goes around that and that's fantastic and very much talks about a lot of these things that we've spoken about this evening as well. Yeah, and I'd say that's great. Other books, there's a book that we saw where John Ratty used a great research, got some great research with regards to this as well, one of the older books that I still love and recommend to people and I gave my copy away to someone who was doing a Masters and I haven't had it back. Teaching with the brain in mind by a gentleman called Eric Jensen and again just looking at the difference between active children and active learning and sedentary and really there's so much data now that shows you that link between physical activity and cognition and the powerful links there and what I've always said to you, Ross, that's exactly what Ben said. The best thing I see is teachers who are on the shock floor who do it saying this is making a difference to my children. Yeah, and I won't be too far away before we start to see some concrete data where head teachers like Ben who place physical mental health at the heart of the curriculum, I don't know Ben if it's the case but you know recruitment issues, it's a challenge for us all but I suspect schools that do look after their teachers well may not struggle as more as others that don't. Ben? No one left last year. Well there you go. And that's where the young staff in London where turnover, where I live in Hertfordshire, people stay at schools for life. That's just a given, 20, 30 years is the norm. Around where I am in Newham in East London the turnover is huge because of housing costs, because of age of staff and changes in life circumstances. No one left last year, one person this year is moving to Scotland. Well there's nothing wrong with that. He did want to commute but in the end failure is just a bit far. Well credit to you. You've got a lovely comment there from Rebecca who's feeling a lot more confident for her interview tomorrow. So good luck Rebecca, we love you all the best. John, we're coming to the end here. I just want a tip from you. We know primary teachers have to be a specialist in all your subjects. I guess secondary teacher like me watching. What tips would you have for someone who could bring in some physical, just imagine me, DT classroom, kids are chopping away and pizzas and sewing machines and everything else. What kind of simple physical exercise could I introduce this, doesn't need a health and safety risk assessment. Something that can make us a part of routine that's going to make a difference to the learning, the teaching taking place. Okay, what I would say is that when we talk about physical activity and active learning often people think that it's running around all over the place vigorously and actually it's not, it's just non sedentary behaviour. Yes it's great to go outside, yes it's great to go down to the hall and you've only got that classroom and it's allowing breaks just for sometimes to be open or thumbs off seats. There's research, it shows you 70% of the school day is sedentary. We know that's not great, it's not good for us, it's not good for children. So any opportunities, whether you're just simply moving chairs out of the way and even standing around the table and moving around and doing a bit of circuit training as we move from area to area. If you were doing a bit of a think-pair share and it was the person sat next to you go and stand and talk to someone else in a different corner of the room. I saw a teacher doing a register but the children stood up for the register. Little things like that make a big difference. I think the definition of active learning and what we do, we don't have to think okay, it's huge difference. It's just, let's start simply thinking what opportunities for movement even in the classroom because they will work. And great tips there. I like the little register one popping up and down. That's a nice one. Before I come to Ben and John can you remind listeners and watchers of the link to the Teach Active whether people can sign up and have a little play with your resources? Yeah, of course. If you Google Teach Active we'll be the first thing to come across but otherwise www.teachactive.org and on there you can have a free trial it's completely free. There's 50 lesson plans. Have a see if your children enjoy them and on the webinars and training there's also an opportunity you can I do daily one-to-ones with teachers so you can just have a look at it have a chat with me, ask some questions and see if it's for your school so please feel free to sign up for one of those as well. Fantastic. Ben I've got a tricky last question for you. I want kind of three strategies what you would recommend to other head teachers to look after their own mental health in a challenging time and then maybe three strategic things to do as a head teacher for the whole school and I know that's a big ass but let's just start with the three for yourself in a life of a head teacher we know it's a very challenging occupation things that you do but what would you recommend to a new head teacher? Sure. I think it's very personal and I think it very much depends on you but I guess I would say that being selfish can be the most selfless thing that you do and looking after yourself is the best way of ensuring you look after your staff and then it just depends what you need to do for me being physically active is absolutely crucial and I know that if I don't make time to be physically active then I am a significantly worse head teacher so making sure that you prioritize that and not feeling the guilt yeah I will leave I will leave at half three or four o'clock on Sundays and even now I feel guilty but I really try hard not to because I know that by doing that not only am I making sure that I look after myself and thereby better able to lead my school but I am also acting as a role model to people this is important and you shouldn't be here working 50 hour weeks you should be prioritizing your time to see your family to look after yourself and to do the things that are important to you Ben on the thought of strategy to put it into three kind of key things but what would you recommend to other head teachers who want to place well-being at the heart of their curriculum maybe have a well-being policy or a well-being strategy involving governors and parents what core things should they do unsurprisingly I'd say they need to listen to their team and really open up those channels of communications formal and informal so there is lots and lots of opportunities for people to talk and for you to really listen to what people are saying within your school I think that's absolutely crucial there is a huge amount out there whether it's the DFE well-being charter, whether it's well schools that I've talked about obviously the teach active whether we've been talking about this evening there's a wealth of material and knowledge out there you don't have to start from scratch so reach out to those groups, to those communities and take some information from them and then the third one would really be about those relationships when we did this we said what would we prefer would we prefer to have a very tight system where we monitored everything down to the second no one ever got away with anything or do we prefer a system where we trust everybody where we believe that everyone is in it for the right reasons and they're to do their best and yes okay it does occasionally mean that somebody the odd person for whatever reason who's not in a great place in their lives might take advantage of that and not step up and do what they should be doing and we said the latter every single time so starting from that point of everyone is here to do their best let's trust them to do that and let's support them in the best possible way I think those would be my three recommendations very powerful, I've always believed happy teachers, happy school happy kids and in that sequence and I think if you're looking after your staff and giving them that degree of autonomy makes a big difference so to John and Ben, thank you so much for your time and conversation this evening it's been really encouraging to see a lot of people watching and hearing from your wisdom so Ben Levinson Headteacher of Kensington Primary School I am going to come and visit Ben so I can't wait to come and see you and John who we're actually meeting up tomorrow I'm having my first physical person so John's popping over to Yorkshire tomorrow and we're going to talk about Teach Active a little bit more so thank you both gentlemen for your time this evening thank you thank you everybody for watching, we'll get all the links and all the videos shared with you in due course I guess I'm just going to finish with what I said at the start I suppose, you know never revolving kind of project managing the curriculum, we have to respond to a wide range of factors, not least that global pandemic and we know that the likely truth is that no school has a perfect curriculum and it's a constant challenge for us all to adapt and refine it so that it's current and relevant and inclusive and I think personally you know mental health and well-being should always be at the heart of every school curriculum and just conclude on that kind of point with for teachers and support staff you know schools that look after their staff don't have to battle so much with recruitment and retention issues those well-being policies you know where you're going to rather than the tick box culture where you've generally got things in place whether it's a cup of tea in the staff room or a duvet day or whatever it might be in your setting we know that these things are long-term solutions rather than just a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the pandemic so I'm going to finish with it there everybody, thank you for watching as ever, thank you for following Teacher Talk It do please check Ben's school website in Prime School in Newham London and sign up for the Teach Active Trial I'll get that correct link on the links for you at the end and if you have any questions then you know where I am otherwise from me have a lovely Sunday look after your personal well-being mental health and make sure you look after someone else's also bye for now and I shall see you again soon