 Welcome to Pukipondas, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pukie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, what's it like to design a school from the ground up? And I'm in conversation with Adam Daibin. Yeah, my name's Adam Daibin. I am the headteacher of the Sir Bobby Robson School, which is a free school for pupils with SEMH, due to open in September. And the question for today's episode is, what's it like to design a school from the ground up? And we should maybe amend that to say, what's it like to design a school from the ground up in the middle of a pandemic? So how's it going? Chaos is the word I would use to describe it. Semi-organised chaos, but yeah, it's been... Yeah, how can I put this? When you agree to take on this sort of project, you know at the very beginning you are signing up for coming out of your comfort zone, should we say? And especially, you know, as a headteacher, I'm used to working in a school. My job has been in a school. So my routine has been in a school or two schools because I was the executive two primary schools previous to this. So you have to be prepared to come out of your comfort zone doing this job and you learn an awful lot as you go. But then if someone then suddenly throws you a global pandemic into the mix less than three months in, yeah, it certainly brought some new challenges and some extra issues that I wasn't expecting. But yeah, we are miraculously going to be opening in September. Oh, you are? You're still on schedule to open in September? Yeah, so we... I will give a big shout out to my builders, RJ Carters, who have been absolutely brilliant and the boys on site. So we lost probably about 10 to 12 weeks of building time. So the guys, they were all on track for a September start and we probably lost about 10 to 12 weeks. They've made a bit of that up obviously in the recent weeks. But we're looking at a handover of around the 26th of October, give or take. So we're looking at about October, half term. So we had kind of a really big decision to make. It was, okay, well, we don't do anything until October or can we come up with a contingency in the short term? And I've been really, really fortunate. So we've managed to acquire a building literally just around the corner from our school called the Murray Size Center, which we're going to be using and we've got access to that until January, if needs be. Oh, wow. So it's going to allow us to make a start in September. It obviously isn't going to be a full time, all shining or singing or dancing school at that point. But in some ways, I'm going to use it, turn it into a silver lining. And actually, you know, we've missed out on doing a lot of transition work that we would have loved to have done. And we're going to use this time to do an even better piece of work that, you know, otherwise we wouldn't have got to do in the situation. So we are going to open in September. It will be a part-time offer to begin with. But, you know, I'm really excited to get going now because it's been a long time coming. Yeah, I can imagine. And even just the logistics of managing, obviously, the building of a school is massive anyway. But like right now, we've been having an extension built and we're having to send our builders out at like five in the morning to get their quota of plaster. And then, you know, everyone's trying to pay them 10 times its price, those at the back of the queue. You know, it's really actually quite hard right now, isn't it? Getting the materials, getting the people, getting everything organized. I think that was one of the concerns originally was that obviously the supply chain was going to be an issue because a lot of materials do come from abroad as well. And when borders and things were shutting, I think there was a bit of concern that certain things wouldn't make it into the country for us. But touch wood, you know, that the progress on the site is just phenomenal. I mean, I kind of had quite a big break from seeing it at the very beginning when it was foundations. So suddenly this huge thing had appeared. And the guys that are working on it seem to have done really well with the supply chain and also the labor as well because that was looking like being an issue at one point with obviously people being furloughed and people being off work. So I kind of thought we've got quite lucky in a lot of ways. But yeah, the potential issues we could have faced ended up not really being massive issues for us. So I'm, you know, lucky in lots of ways. But I think from a building perspective, those guys have certainly been under a lot of pressure as well because, you know, at the end of the day, they've got deadlines they need to meet anyway in terms of the building. And when you go on site and see the impact that Covid's had on the social distancing measures on the way they work and all of the processes and systems they've got in place, you know, building sites that are busy environments on a good day and throwing this into the mix is obviously added to that. So, you know, from my perspective, you know, the guys that have been on our site have just done a phenomenal job really. That's really great to hear. And tell me about the school and your vision for it, both in terms of, you know, what it's going to look like and be like, but also the kind of school it is, what kind of kids are you going to be serving and what's the ethos you hope to have? So we are a special free school and the primary need of the people we're going to take is the social emotional mental health needs. Obviously, all of the people have EHCPs and there is a, you know, wide variety of other needs that come with that as well. So we've got pupils with ASD, ADHD, medical needs, speech and language, a huge list of things. But primarily it's for children with social emotional mental health. Many of them have obviously been excluded previously, had very mixed experiences of education and we are taking pupils from a variety of settings. We're bringing a lot of people back into county that have been on out of county placements, which I think is a really positive step. So we've got pupils from Pruse, APs, other local alternative provisions and bits and pieces as well. So the way it's going to work is in our first year we're opening with 30 pupils and then in the second year we'll expand up to 60 and that'll be our capacity, 60 pupils. We're taking year seven to ten in the first year and then we will go down to key stage two and above and primary in the second year. The reason why we focused on secondary this year was purely just because, you know, we're a new school. We have a what is a smaller staffing line up than we'll have in the second year. And I just felt doing primary and secondary in the first year was just going to stretch us too thinly to be really effective and have a really good start. So we decided to start with our secondary focus. And so we've got 30 pupils who are good to go and then we'll go from there. So we've got, you know, we've got kind of short term plans, medium term plans, long term aims for what we want to achieve with this school. I'm not one to set kind of, you know, low bar in terms of targets for what I want us to achieve. But, you know, I think, you know, I think it's about being realistic at the moment. We're about to bring 30 pupils into a brand new school. But we're not, you know, we are about to bring 30 people into a temporary home following a period of, you know, global pandemic and lockdown. They're going to come and meet a bunch of new people that they don't really know because obviously transition has been hugely impacted by this whole process because I was previously going out to visit the pupils in their settings. I was going to go and, you know, do all the home visits, do all those things that we've just not been able to do as a result of what's gone on. And then just as we get everybody settled in January, we're then going to up sticks and move into another building. So, you know, I'm very realistic that we've got a lot of challenges in front of us and a lot of change, which, you know, our guys don't really need. But, you know, we've got plans in place to support in that. And we've been really upfront and said to the families we're working with, you know, this is what's going to happen. This is what we're doing. So, yeah, touch wood, we've got good systems and ideas in place. But, you know, we'll always be really, really reactive and reflective on what we're doing. We'll always put the needs of the pupils first. And if we think something we're doing is not working, we'll change it. You sound remarkably calm given the context. I think you have to be because... So I'm really... So I guess the context of all this is, so I joined... So this school is part of Unity School's partnership and I joined Unity in January. And I think I've been very fortunate that I'm surrounded by an incredibly strong executive team that have been massively, massively involved in what we've been doing. And I feel like I've had an awful lot of support for things that have been well out of my area. At the end of the day, I've been a teacher and I've worked in schools and I'm a head teacher. I'm not an interior designer. I'm not a graphics designer. I'm not all those sorts of things, you know, that I've had to learn and how to do, which have been amazing learning curves. But, you know, my job's always been in schools doing the nitty-gritty of running a school. So I've had a lot of support along the way from people that have been incredibly good at what they do. But to be honest, so much has happened that it's not worth getting... I'm not one that tends to do stress on a good day. I get moaned out for being quite laid back quite a lot of the time, even if internally I might be a lot more stressed than I'm given off. But it's just not worth... There's so much going on. It's just not worth getting too worried about it. You know, at the end of the day, it will be fine. We will get there. You know, I worked out, I think I've probably had one day off since January, if I'm being really honest in terms of things that have to happen. Now, that doesn't mean I'm working from 8 till 6 every day. But, you know, the nature of this job means that you need to be available and things happen all the time and at the drop of a hat and, you know, but that, again, has just been part of the process. And I knew that when I came into it. Yeah, you just have to go with the flow. I'm not being funny. Did anyone know a global pandemic was going to happen? Well, some people might not go down that route, but, you know, you can't legislate for something. So you just have to go and make the best of it. And, you know, my attitude is, you know, we've come an awful long way. We're still standing. We're still looking in a really good position. And now I'm sure there'll be a few more hazards and issues that come up between now and us starting. But you just, you know, you just work with people. You just find solutions. Yeah. And have you, has it put any sort of difficulties in place in terms of your recruitment and building your staff team and that kind of thing? If you had to do that remotely or was it already all in place or? No, so again, so we started our recruitment process back in February and, of course, within a matter of weeks, we were in a lockdown. So, yeah, recruitment has been a really interesting experience actually. So my initial concern was is that given the situation, no one would look to move jobs. I felt people would be very insecure about what was going on and would be really concerned about potentially looking at other employment and I could not have been more wrong. So we were looking for about 20 roles in the first year and I had well over 130 applications. It was crazy. So we've been very lucky that we've had, you know, immense interest in this school. That, though, I think must be interest in your school, just placing this in the context, the wider context. I know that the number of ads placed in tests, for example, is something like only 10% of what it normally would be and that, you know, the number of teachers leaving their roles, just someone I was speaking with recently who works in kind of recruitment and supply just says people aren't moving. So it makes me wonder if, you know, people are very much interested in what you're doing because it's different, isn't it? Yeah, you know, it's a very specialist school. It's a very sort of niche provision. It's one of the only ones in the area. You know, I think for people that have an interest in special educational needs and particularly in, you know, the things that we're going to be dealing with and, you know, our pupils, you know, if you're interested in that, it's an amazing opportunity. And I think, you know, what's really come across from the people that I've spoken to an interview and it's the same thing that got me, you know, that opportunity to be part of a brand new school and build a vision and an ethos from the, from the very foundations of the building. It's not an opportunity that comes up that often in education and to have the opportunity to be part of that, you know, that was one of the big things that sold it for me. And it's certainly when we've interviewed, you know, everybody pretty much has said the same thing that, you know, that opportunity to be part of something brand new and something that they feel is really needed in the locality as well. That's been a massive attract to see them. So you were spoiled for choice candidates in the end then? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, we've had some, some incredibly strong people come through. I'm not finished recruiting yet because there's a few specific positions that I'm still looking for, but I'm happy with, we've got, given our situation terms of not being full-time starting in September, I'm really happy with our staff in line up. I think we've recruited some really strong teachers and very strong teaching assistants, you know, my deputies in place, office managers in place, caretaker team, all sorts of bits and pieces. So, you know, I'm really quite content now. Obviously, you know, someone says to you, well, you've done all online recruitment, what were the pitfalls? Obviously, I've not been able to actually see people do their jobs. You know, when you interview people, you usually go through a process of doing a short observation and doing bits and pieces like that. So we've had to be really thorough in terms of, you know, we thought very carefully about the questions we asked during the interview because we wanted to get a real feel for people's values, people's visions, people's ethos themselves. We were very, very particular about the sort of questions we asked around special educational needs. What kind of questions were you asking? Just delving into people's kind of views on the best way to support, you know, talking a lot about what are the barriers, talking a lot about, you know, in primary and secondary schools, mainstream schools, you know, what are some of the challenges that these people are coming are going to face that, you know, we need to be aware of. We really kind of asked questions around, you know, just, just, just making sure that people, you know, really were aware of what, you know, our school was going to be about and what we were trying to achieve. And like you said, you know, we've been, we've been really lucky that we've had a really strong field of applicants for, for all of our roles. So, but, you know, it's certainly been, I mean, doing it like this, I mean, I've spent hundreds of hours in front of my, my screen, you know, interviewing and, and it was, it was a very weird experience to begin with. But I had a colleague of mine, Malcolm Reeve, who's done all of them with me. And, you know, by the end of it, we'd got into quite a good groove in terms of how we did it. But, you know, it's certainly an odd experience because it's not what you're used to doing. It's not the way you would go about it normally. But, you know, I'm still, you know, incredibly grateful for the amount of interest we had in the positions. You know, I felt that we interviewed incredibly strong candidates throughout and, you know, the people that have got positions for September, I'm really happy with. So, touch wood or we'll be good. And what were you looking for? People with a really good understanding of SEMH. People who I felt were really keen to develop themselves. I'm really keen on people wanting to develop their own expertise, take leads on things. You know, I'm really big on sort of teacher training as well and looking at, you know, lots of TAs and stuff. And if we can support them to go on to become teachers and that was something that came through with some of our candidates as well. And for me, it was about getting a feel for the people that I felt were just going to be the right people for working with our students. You know, it's a really tricky one because, you know, there's no guarantee that we've, you know, got it right, but, you know, you have to deal with the situation that's in front of you. You know, all of our candidates were brilliant in terms of, you know, dealing with the situation as well. Because for them, obviously they'd have been really nervous and then to be sat in front of a screen is a really different type of interview for them. And everybody was just fantastic in the way they dealt with that as well. So, you know, it was a new way of working. You know, the only thing I felt was we missed out on seeing people, you know, in a classroom actually delivering and doing those things. But again, you know, we were really big on references. We, you know, we had conversations with people and employers and stuff just to make sure we made sure we got everything that we needed to do in terms of the safer recruitment covered. And yeah, you know, overall it was a different experience, but it's one that I think, you know, I'm really content with where we're at given what's gone on. Yeah, so yeah, hopefully you can only do the best that you can do with what's available to you at the time, isn't it? Presumably, even if it hadn't been for lockdown, then it would have been challenging for you to have seen people in role because your school's not open yet. So you wouldn't have had classes they could have taught. No, but one of the, I guess one of the real strengths to what has kind of gone on in this process. So Unity committed to employing me from January, knowing that the school wouldn't open until September. So I've obviously been working on this project since January. So I had the ability to, the plan was I would go and visit people in their schools and see them teaching and I was going to go and visit all my pupils and I was going to go and do home visits and I was going to go and travel around and see some other specific settings. I went down to one school in Horsham to visit and I had plans to go and visit three or four other similar provisions just to go and see and have chats about best practice and things like that. And that was all made possible by the fact that the trust had employed me from January to work on the build up to September. But obviously again, that was massively impacted by what happened. But the plan was I would have gone in and seen people in their own settings. And so you've not been able to go and visit other settings as much as you might have wanted to but what has kind of been your inspiration as you've been working towards the opening of the school because there's not lots of similar provision out there to what you're doing, is there? I mean, I think it's, it's, it's growing but there's not, I'm not aware of lots and lots. No, there's not. And I think the key thing as well is we're actually a school. We're not an alternative provision or a pre. We are the Subabirahs in school. What does that mean? What difference does that make? I think for me, it's, for me, it's about creating an environment that is as close to a normal school for my pupils as is possible, you know, now some of my guys have had really mixed experiences and have been through. I mean, I know one of my pupils has had nine different settings in nine years. So they've never really had anywhere. It's kind of almost called their own. Obviously there's millions of reasons behind why those things happen. But, you know, for me, I think I'm, I'm, when I'm talking to parents and I'm talking to the pupils I'm at real pains to say this is your school. I think for me, that's about giving them a bit more of a sense of permanence as well. So they won't come in and go out. They'll actually stay with you. Yeah, the idea is, is that when they come in, they will then stay with us until they leave at 16. And that's something I'm really trying to impress on them as well is that, you know, and the other thing I'm really keen to sort of share with them is the fact that this building is for you. You know, when these guys see this building, hopefully they'll be blown away by it and hopefully they'll realise that that's for them because it's such an incredible investment and such an incredible facility. You know, I'm hoping that they'll look at it and be, you know, wow, that's, that's my school. So yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's been a tricky scenario all round really, but, you know, there aren't many of our facilities, which means we are very quickly subscribed, shall we say? I was going to ask about that because if you're keeping the children rather than them coming in for a few times and then returning to mainstream and surely even at full capacity, 60 doesn't sound like a lot of places when you're doing primary right through to 16. No, it isn't. I think that's one of the things that, you know, the reality is is that I'm very aware that, you know, we're not a solution to a wider problem, but we are one small part towards a solution. And if I can provide 60 places for people that need it, then I'm, you know, that's 60 more people getting what they really need as opposed to what they weren't. So, you know, I'm, yeah, I, it's, it's hard because, you know, you want to be able to kind of meet the needs of everybody, but you really can't. And because we are only 60 pupils, you know, that isn't a lot. It doesn't cover, you know, I could easily fill the school probably, you know, again, but, you know, it, you know, we have to meet the needs of the pupils we got. So our focus will be on those guys, you know, giving them everything we possibly can when we have them. And presumably given the, the kind of needs that you're looking to meet actually a bigger setting would be more difficult for many of those pupils anyway. And it may not work. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, a lot of these guys have come from similar sized settings anyway. So that, that works. And, you know, quite often a lot of the reason why they've struggled and failed in previous settings is because it has been overwhelming too big. So, you know, I think the nice thing is we're going to start with 30 and then grow in our second year. So that gives us a chance to really kind of bed our pupils in and, you know, get everything right ready for our second year expansion. But yeah, I think, you know, given that looking at the pupils we've got, you know, I wouldn't really want them to have to come into anything much bigger because of what they're used to themselves. I wouldn't want to set them up to fail potentially. So, and what will be your aspirations for your pupils? Will they sit sort of the regular exams or will they be doing an alternative kind of curriculum? Or what will it look like? It'll be a bit of both because, you know, again, it's going back to this having high expectations. You know, as a school, my expectation is, you know, we will provide a range of qualifications via GCSEs, vocational qualifications, you know, setting up apprenticeships, looking at post-16, all of those things. But obviously, again, that's going to be very much based around the individual pupils' needs. So, you know, just because some of our pupils are coming to us doesn't mean that they're not working cognitively at age-appropriate level. So we will have some pupils that will be able to sit GCSEs. We'll have other pupils that won't be able to do that and we'll look at other alternatives for them. So, you know, again, it's very much about what do the individual pupils need. And just logistically, how does that work? Will you work with kind of partner providers or something? Because presumably it would be difficult to cater to a wide range of different needs at GCSE if your cohorts are quite small or vocational subjects as well. This year, it's a bit tricky because obviously, we're a small school. So we've looked at what is the kind of core offer we need to offer in that first year. And the other thing is because we're not taking the year 11s, we won't have any GCSEs or anything in that first year. So we can work towards those and then by the second year, we'll then have a bigger staff as well, which will allow us to deliver even more. And then we are looking at building relationships with people in the local community. So, you know, obviously, we've got Suffolk College and other providers like that in the area, but I really want to get involved with some more vocational things for our guys. So actually looking at, you know, what local employees do, apprenticeships, what people do, other schemes like that where we can get involved and give our pupils the opportunity to look at what other things are out there for them. So it's about kind of building that. Again, it goes back to building relationships with your local community as well and knowing, you know, what's out there and that's one of the things that, you know, we're working on already is building those relationships with people. So we've got, you know, as big an offer or not a bigger, as big an offer available, but it's the right one for our pupils. Yeah. And more broadly, what's your kind of ethos in terms of kind of curriculum? Will you be doing lots of kind of sport or creative arts or PSHG? Or what's it going to kind of look like? Do you know yet? It'll always be underpinned by PSHG and SMSC things just because, you know, obviously with pupils with social emotional mental health, that is kind of a bit forgiven really. And I think it's something that we will, the way we're structuring our timetable and looking at starting the day with kind of choose the time as well. That will be very much built around the PSHG model. But again, it's going to be very broadly based around what suits these got. I mean, this is one of the beauties of opening a new school and one of the challenges because I'm sat here wanting to offer absolutely with them. But A, it's not practical. And B, it's not necessary because it's not actually what these guys need. So what we've done is we've obviously spoken to all of their current settings that they've been with, seen what they're doing, seen what things they're interested in, looked at what we can offer and then matched it as close as we possibly can. And then we'll continue to develop that offer as we go. And I think by the time we get to the end of next year, that's when our full range and our full offer will be readily available. But in the first year, I'm quite happy with what we've got. So we've got quite a wide range of things already. What are you most excited about? I think the day we walk in this, I think the day it becomes Subobi Robson School. I'm really looking forward to September because it's the start of the journey. But I think my gut instinct is we'll move in in January. I think by the time we get given the school at half-term, as long as there's no more delays, you're looking at a couple of weeks of filling a school up with equipment because it needs to be loaded with tables and chairs and desks. And I've been, I had a meeting this morning with a provider for kicking out the school. And it's just there's so many things you never consider when you sign up to this that you need to do. And the things you need to remember, you actually have in a school because you just assume when you walk into a school that it's all there because you've never had to do it. But when you then are the one that has to build it, there's so many things you just take for granted. So my big thing I'm looking forward to is I think getting to the end of day one when we're in that first building and just being able to sit back, send all the children home and just say to the staff, we're up and running. What are you most worried about? Well, don't do that to me. I guess I'm just at the moment, I'm just a little bit worried about any more potential delays. I think we've built a really good contingency. You know, we, I have to give Suffolk County Council so much credit for coming to the rescue with the center we're borrowing. They've been incredible and getting that sorted for me and with transport and all those things. So that's been brilliant. Yeah, I think my big concern at the moment is should anything happen? And I know, you know, people around me are in about whether we're going to end up with a second lockdown or second waves, I think, should anything else happen that would delay us beyond January? I think that would be my big worry. But what we did is we built a plan that kind of gave us a little bit of flexibility if that did happen again, which is why I always say to people, let's just assume we'll move in in January. If we can get in sooner, we absolutely will. But I just, you know, I always built in that contingency of January, just in case anything else happened. And given that you've not been able to kind of meet all your staff, how is the beginning of term going to look for you? Are you having kind of extensive kind of inset or how's that working? Yeah, bless them. I've already warned them. They're going to get absolutely blitzed. So we're starting on the second and the pupils are not going to join us until the 14th. Oh, wow. That's really extensive. But it needs to be because in a brand new school, we've got an awful lot of things we need to do. So we've got obviously induction, safeguarding, RPI. We've got trauma-informed training. We're going to spend time going through our pupil profiles and making sure everyone's aware of the need to the pupils. And there's, I've got a huge first aid training. You know, there's so many things you just, you know, you walk into a school normally and everyone's got everything they need. You know, you have to do your safeguarding update but you've got your first aid is done usually and you've got this and you've got that. Whereas, you know, as a brand new school, we need to start from scratch. So all the parents have been fantastic in giving us that little bit of extra time just to make sure we're happy and ready to go. So we're going to, you know, we're going to really blitz the staff, but I have warned them so they do know. And then we'll get through that as much as we can in those first sort of eight days. And then we'll be ready for the pupils when they come in on the Monday. How are you doing that? Are you kind of bringing external people in or are you delivering that yourself or what's- It's a bit of both. There's some remote online training we're doing with trauma-informed school network. We'll do in-house safeguarding because myself and my deputy have done all of our training for that, so we'll do the safeguarding. First aid's being delivered face-to-face obviously based on all the recommendations around COVID as well. And we've got an extensive risk assessment around COVID for our site as well. And then the other bits and pieces, again, we're having the RPI stuff being done face-to-face as well, but, you know, there's a mixture. And the other thing we're going to look to do is we're going to also do, we're going to call them like bite-sized CPD sessions every week for staff as well because we've got, when you go through the ACPs of the pupils, we have got probably about 50 different formal diagnoses of some point. Lots of them secondary and third diagnoses, but, you know, it's just making sure staff are very aware of all those other things as well that, you know, aren't primary issues, but, you know, they still need to be aware and know how to deal with, so we'll be building in those as well over the weeks. But again, that's where looking at the autumn term as it is, you know, the silver lining to what's happened is it's given us the opportunity to do that. So come January, you know, I think we'll be in a really strong position for just absolutely cracking on. Absolutely. And what happens in terms of getting all your policies in place and that kind of thing, if you had to write those in the absence of staff and governors or if you'd done it jointly or? We had a pre-opening off-stead inspection, which is part of the process when you do this, and that was when all the policies and everything had to be done. So if I write another policy in the next 12 months, I may go crazy. So you wrote them all? I didn't write, so I'm not going to claim I did this on my own. My amazing team of people did it with me. So we basically, we looked at the policies for this type of school. We put them all together, but we had to create basically every single policy you would need for a school. Now, working in a really big trust, I was very fortunate that, you know, lots of the generic type policies, we were able to take them as a template and then make them specific for our school. Other ones like the behavior policy, obviously, we tweak that to make that very specific for what we want. Admissions policy, we took, you know, lots of them, you know, you can get a policy from anywhere as a template, but you need to make sure that it suits what you need and meets your pupil's needs. So we went through all of them really, really carefully. But one of the downsides, it turns out, to a global pandemic is it meant that Ofsted had a lot more time to look through your paperwork. So we had a really, really nice HMI do our inspection. He was great to work with, but he said normally what would happen is the way it works is they kind of meet you at 8 and they finish at 4 in one day and they would look and go, yes, you do have that policy. Yes, you do have that policy and they'd scan them and they checked them. This way, he had two whole days to intricately interrogate every single piece of paper I gave him. And I gave him, the fireway uploaded was monstrous. But I knew he'd read them because he was quoting them directly back to me. So it was a really, really well scrutinized piece of work. But I mean, the brilliant thing for us was we got our kind of feedback was there were no recommendations. So there was nothing he suggested we do to improve our policies. No, nothing, I was amazed. It was brilliant. But what was great from my perspective is it means that now the school has everything it needs ready for opening. I've not got to at any point sit and now do any of that paperwork. So it was a huge task. I have many, many people to thank for their input and their support and their proof reading and their checking and their wisdom that they've added to certain bits. But yeah, that was all part of our pre-Ostead opening inspection. And again, that was very interesting because I had to go and do a virtual tour of the sites. Oh, as he showed the inspector around via kind of Zoom or something. I spent the day on my phone. It was there was a running joke, which petrol station was I sat in every time I had a meeting with him. So I so I live up in Norfolk and obviously the schools in Ipswich. So I drove down in the morning and had to do a virtual walk round of the actual Sibobir-Obson school and also do a walk round of the temporary site we're using just so he could see that it had all the appropriate things to give us, you know, the consent to open and he was he was happy with all of that. And then throughout the day you have various meetings covering lots of different subjects. So we covered safeguarding, we covered SMSC, we covered governance, we covered curriculum, you know, health and safety, a huge array of things that were discussed in the style of an off-stead inspection. But yeah, the funny thing was that between meetings I was kind of slowly winding my way home. So every time he the running joke was what McDonald's car park are you in now or what car park are you in now? But again, you know, that was a really funny process as well because you know, normally this would have just been a one day thing and we'd have been face to face and again, we had to do it remotely. So he was at home in Cornwall, I think it was and I was in my car on my phone. That was a very unique experience as well. And have you found that? I mean, obviously getting all the paperwork and policies in place, all the kind of the theoretical stuff is really important so that we know that everyone's going to be safe and the boxes have been ticked before you start. But obviously policies are normally kind of quite living, breathing things really aren't they? They influence how we practice and normally we would develop them based on how things actually happen in our school and feedback from staff and students and governance and stuff. So is your, will you just kind of see how they bed in or do you have already in plan like when you would review them or how will you? Yeah, they're all going to be, we've been very clear from the off that these are policies that are robust and strong enough to obviously meet the standards they need to meet but everything will be reflected on them and you know, if I'm very aware that most of them are going to need to eat and at some point because the reality of being in the school and the way it works will change. So I'm not overly precious about the fact that the work we've done is going to need a little bit of extra work at some point, but we've already put a plan together where we'll review the policies on an ongoing weekly cycle from September just to make sure we're happy with them and that they're relevant because there's no point in having a policy if it's not useful, you know if it's not actually serving the purpose and it's not something that's having an impact on the pupils then, you know, it's not really necessary, you know, it's not something we need. So we'll, we've been very, very open to the fact that we know we will be tweaking things as we go but I'd expect to, you know, it's a brand new school, you know, things are what you think works in theories clearly not going to quite be the case in reality and, you know, there are certain bits and pieces that, you know, we've made assumptions but once we get in that building actually things will change. So yeah, I'm, I'm very aware that the hours of policy writing is probably not quite finished yet. Sadly, but I have to say again, it was a really good look. It was a really I hate paperwork. It drives me crazy sometimes but it was just, it was a really, it was a really good process to go through actually once we got there. There was a few times in the middle of it I was sort of sat there going, no more, please spare me. I can't sit in front of my screen any longer but so I've done it now. You know, I feel that, you know, in terms of, you know, everyone having a really good understanding about what we're about and what we're looking to achieve, you know, I think the trust have a really good understanding of that and the governors have got a really good understanding of that. The off state inspector got a really good understanding of that. I think if, you know, it just shows that what we've got is effective because if people are kind of getting that vision and that ethos from what we've said, then that's what I wanted to achieve with that. So, you know, that was a good start. And it must have been really deeply reassuring to get that kind of seal of approval from off state as well. I mean, I don't doubt it was very stressful going through that process and getting ready for it but great to know that actually they've gone. Yeah, we've looked at this with a fine teeth comb and you're good. That's that's positive. Yeah, it was the one big I think the key things remember with these for anyone that does them is that they're not trying to catch you out. They want you to open the school, you know, and, you know, it's about working together just to make sure, you know, that so off state do the work on behalf of the DFE and off state basically are there to tell the DFE that they've quality assured it and that everything is there to give the school the best chance to set up successfully and start successfully when it opens. And you know, they were the guy that did it was great. He was at pains to say to me, please don't think I'm trying to catch you out. I'm not, you know, we want you to open obviously. So I think the first thing is, you know, anyone that goes through is to not get to head up about it because no one's trying to catch you out. You know, it's about doing what you need to do making sure you've got what you need to be compliant and then, you know, anything you haven't got you get a little bit of time to add to and tweak if you need to and things like that. So I think, you know, yeah, once it was done, it was certainly for me, it was probably the last major hurdle because I'd made it way bigger in my head. I'd made it way bigger in my head. You know, you hear off state and you instantly just kind of go into that kind of standard inspection mode. But, you know, the people I work from off state were brilliant. They were really, really good at just saying, you know, don't worry, you know, we've got this is what we're going to do. This is the process. Any issues will sort it out. So I think the key thing is, you know, anyone that goes through this don't get to help about that. You know, it's a lot of work and it's a, you know, it's an intense couple of days or however it gets done. But I think the key thing to remember is that they're, you know, they want you to do to do well and be open. They're not trying to stop you. And presumably having to get all that stuff ready meant that you were forced to stop and really think about how you would imagine the school actually running. I mean, you presume you had to think anyway in real depth about things like your approach to behavior. I mean, what did that look like? How was that reflected in your policies? Yeah, and the whole thing that the, you know, it because because I knew it was coming, it was always on the horizon. But I think what happened is, is that the pandemic struck and then my focus had to go on contingency. Yeah. So I had to then work a lot on, well, hang on a minute. I want us to have something in September, not having anything for me wasn't really an option. So we came up with our contingency and that took obviously a lot of work to out of nowhere, create what is fundamentally another school. And of course, then we had to double up on the, on our paperwork because we had a risk assessments for there as well. We had to do all the other bits and pieces that were required for another site. And that was all part of what we did during the inspection as well. So there was all this extra work that originally we hadn't planned on having. But yeah, when you get to this point and you're sat there and you're putting things together, it really does sort of focus your attention on, you know, okay, this is the, this is a chance now to really kind of make your own statement and to really, you know, put your mark on what you want this to be. And, you know, I'm very fortunate that, you know, there's some really strong SCN experts within the trust I work for. And we were able to sit together and have a really good conversation about, right, okay, between us, what have we experienced that we have seen that's really effective? And more to the point, what have we seen that's not effective? You know, between, you know, and we sat and we had conversations and we looked and said, right, okay, as a starter for 10, because you all comment earlier about, you know, do I think things will get tweaked? Behavior policy will absolutely be one of the ones that gets tweaked, absolutely will be. We have a framework and an outline that we won't budge from much, but you know, I'm absolutely convinced we will tweak it at some point because there are certain parts of it that just might not work for our pupils. But again, it's about being honest enough to say that we know that, you know, and not being too precious about it and saying, you know, well, I've said this, that's what it's gonna be now. You know, I absolutely refuse to set these guys up to fail. And if we've created something that doesn't quite work, I'm not gonna sit there and just sort of plot on and go, well, tough too late. We're gonna do it. But yeah, it was a great opportunity to have some really good professional conversations about, you know, okay, from our experiences and the wide range of things that we'd worked in. You know, I've been very fortunate to work with Malcolm Reeve, who is an SCN consultant and, you know, has been involved in so much on the national landscape and the new SCN director, Lucy Kaler, has just come over from being a headteacher of a complex needs school. I've worked in complex needs myself and just come from being an executive head in primary. You know, we've got a huge scope of backgrounds and experiences and we just sat with each other and said, okay, look, this is the profile of the pupils. What do we think? Yeah. You know, Malcolm had experience of doing something similar previously. So we use that as a starting point. But I'm absolutely convinced we will tweak it. And what kind of general approach are you taking? It's behavior is such a hot topic at the moment, isn't it? It feels like people are quite divided on Yeah, I mean, for me, I've always been really, really big on kind of control versus outcomes. I think it can be very easy to kind of get into a situation where you try and control every situation. But actually for me, outcomes are more important and there's a time and a place to kind of pick your battles, I think. But for me, our behavior policy is very much around positivity, about positive reinforcement, looking for the positives, picking up on the positives. But again, it's about knowing that not every child responds well to positives. So again, everything comes down to knowing those individuals. We have to be very, very aware of what each of our pupils need, what they don't need, what makes them tick, what can be a trigger, and then make sure that we kind of adapt ourselves to that. But that's what we're going to do in those opening days as well. We're going to be very thorough on everyone's personal profiles and their sort of histories from the schools that come from to make sure that we're as well informed as possible. Because again, opening a new school with new pupils, I know we will make mistakes. We will, and I've said this to every parent. I've said, I'm not going to sit here and tell you, we're not going to get it right to start with because everyone's new. But what we do have to do is make sure that we mitigate making mistakes as much as possible, which is where information sharing has been key. And I'm really grateful to the settings that are handing pupils over to me because they've been great at getting me the information. And then we have to very quickly put that together as a team and build those relationships with the pupils. And what informed your choice to have sort of trauma-informed schools training as one of your initial things that feels like quite a big statement in terms of your episodes of school? It's based on people need. When you go through the ACPs, there's a lot of pupils that have been through a lot of things. And actually, you know, when you, when you look in most schools, you know, trauma underpins so much across any setting. And to be fair, I've done the trauma-informed training previously. I did it at the start of the year actually when I joined Unity and just thought it was, you know, really, really good piece of CPD. And over time, and as the children have become real children and real pupils for the school and as I've read paperwork, it just jumped out as a really relevant piece of CPD that I felt was really purposeful to start with. And even, and even, you know, the parents are really keen for us to be aware of it. One of the things we've tried really hard to do is get as much parental voice into this as we possibly could. So silly things like the uniform. It's just a polo shirt and jumpers. There's no shirts and ties and blazers because, you know, parents were really concerned about, you know, pupils with sensory needs. They were really worried about the fact that their child would never wear that sort of thing. And then it would become an issue. So we built the uniform around the needs of our pupils. Kept it simple because I don't want to have arguments about shirts and ties. I remember what I was like at school and the irony of me learning about someone tucking their tie in is probably not lost on my old teachers. But again, you know, that was about, you know, what do the parents and carers and families feel? So we did that. And the other thing we're doing is we're also running 8.30 to 2.45. Okay. So we're going to be a little, we're going to start a little bit earlier, but we're going to finish a little bit earlier. And again, that was built around parents having concerns about being able to pick up other siblings. Oh, I see. So we've sort of looked at, you know, any way we could possibly help, you know, that's what we've tried to do. And again, the local authority had been great. They've agreed to that and transport and everything like that. So, you know, just sometimes those little things mean a lot to the parents and the community. And, you know, it's about trying to help, you know, as much as we can. And we're in a situation where if we can be helpful, I'll always try to be. And how have you managed to build those positive relationship with families? Because A, that's the pandemic, which we've mentioned once or twice. B, the schools not even open yet. And C, you are working, I would have assumed with the kinds of families who some people would label kind of harder to reach perhaps. It's been really difficult, not because the families, but just because of the situation. So what we did initially is when the project was first given to Unity and I was first appointed, we had a couple of launch events. So we did one in the Inspire Center, which is directly opposite where my school is, which is in the local area. And that invited lots of local people, settings, professionals to come and hear about what the vision was. We then did a joint session with the local authority for parents, prospective parents. And we did that in the Sobby Robson Suite of Portman Road. And that was brilliantly attended. And that gave me a chance just to say hello, talk to some of the families, answer any questions and just get to know a couple of them. And then obviously there was the plan was then to go out and to do home visits and see the kids and settings and really build those really strong relationships because for me, you know, the successes of schools I've ever been in have been built on community relationships. If you haven't got the community involved, it makes things so, it can make things so much more difficult. So I was massively, massively looking forward to having that opportunity to go and arrange, to go and see everybody and actually get to know everybody because, you know, the great thing with only having 30 pupils and families was I'd get to know them, you know, far, far better quickly because of having less people to go and see. That obviously then has been massively hindered by what's gone on. So it's a lot of it's been emails, phone calls and facetimes, if I'm really honest. My phone bill has probably gone through the roof. I won't check it. Yeah, it's just, it's just been trying. I mean, I've sent, so I've kind of tried to cover all bases. So I've sent letters out quite regularly to families. We've sent things like social story. Well, I haven't sent any yet, but I've got them to send. So now all the staff are reporting to staff have all done one page profiles with their photos and just a bit about them, which we're sending to all the pupils so the kids at least have a bit of an idea as to who they're working with come September. You know, we've shared all the information like uniform times, timetables, all those bits and pieces. I've been phoning families as well, having chats. I've done a few teams meetings and Skypes and zooms and stuff with some of the kids in their settings. That's been really good. Actually talking to some of the pupils. So it's just been trying to have as much communication as possible, but it's certainly something that for me is nowhere near at the level I expected us to before this hit, you know, the plan was was to have, you know, really nailed this. But again, you know, it is the best of a bad situation. You know, what could we do in the scenario? Right. Well, let's send as many letters as we can that are purposeful. Let's make as many phone calls that send as many emails that's FaceTime. That's Skype that's check in when people need us. All the families have got my emails. If they need anything, they can just ping me an email and I'm one of those sad people that's always attached to my phone. So whatever time they send it, I see it. And yeah, that's that's sort of been the way I've tried to work it. I'm not not perfect. And I'm sure for some families, I've probably not quite covered everything they need to know. But, you know, it's just trying to get as much information out there in as many different ways as possible. And of course, our website, which is sort of up and running now as well. And will you want to continue to engage heavily with kind of families in the community? And even once the schools open? Yeah, I've massively warned the families as well. They're not getting away with it. They're going to have to get involved. Yeah, you know, I want us to I've got quite a lot of plans around that. I appreciate for some families. It will be tricky because they'll be, you know, I've spoken to some and they're a bit dubious about coming into schools because their own experiences or just because, you know, at this point their child has had what they consider to be a really difficult experience and they're not overly enamoured with schools. Some people just don't like it full stop. You know, there's there's a lot of work to do there, but I'm really keen and I've done it in a previous place where, you know, we took a really disaffected community and they became our strength. You know, they were absolute advocates for us. So I want us to do that. And within the within the locality as well, you know, what we won't be is a new building turns up and is very intricate. You know, I want us to, you know, support the local offer. Eventually we need to get ourselves up and running first. But the plan is, is that we can then provide an outreach service to local schools and the community. I'm quite keen for us to do some enterprise as well. So looking at maybe like this of Bobby Robson Cafe for the local area if we can do some work around that. But again, it's about listening to what the families want, what they need, what, you know, at the end of the day, this is their school as well. Now, you know, what do they need from us? I've done things previously where we've put on adult education sessions for parents if they needed it. We'll obviously always run loads of sessions about how we teach. So teaching and learning. We'll talk about, you know, the way we teach maths, the way we teach English, the way we do, you know, I'm happy to do all that. It's just going to be making sure that, you know, that door is always open to the parents and they know that they're welcome whenever they need to. And, you know, when there's issues, knowing that they can pick up the phone or send an email or something and they can talk to one of us and we'll, you know, we'll always be on the end of the phone and try and, you know, solve it if we can. How do you hope that your families and your students will view you? Like what kind of headteacher do you hope they picture you as? Good question. I don't know. Hopefully a good one. Hopefully a fair one. Hopefully one that they know has their best interests. You know, I'm not going to please everybody all of the time and I'm not there to please everybody all of the time. But, you know, I think people that have worked with me before and I think pupils that have worked with me before know that, you know, I think they know deep down I'm there for them and, you know, I've worked in some challenging schools before and we've been successful. I'm covering tattoos, which seems to be a really good icebreaker with people as well. That's a very unexpected thing for a head. Oh, really? Yeah, arms are covered. So silly little things like that, you know, but even silly things like tattoos, they've been brilliant at times for me in my career for breaking barriers. Really? Yeah, for some families, it would always be good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you know, shut down, no one can see anything. And other mornings, I've had people where it's been like morning, Tracy, how are you? And, you know, and she's been like, oh, I love that one. And, you know, suddenly you've got this rapport with someone and then that's exactly what happened. I had a parent come up to me one day. I was talking to someone completely different and it was baking hot like today. So I got brave and rolled my sleeves up because I still get a bit funny about doing it at times. Not that it has any impact on my ability to do my job, I'd like to point out. And out of nowhere, someone just grabbed my arm and went, I really like that one. I've never spoken to this parent before, but it gave me an in. And the next day, I went there, I had a proper look today and she laughed and we got chatting and we broke down all those barriers. And before you knew it, you know, we were, we had this, you know, really strong working relationship. So I think, you know, use what you've got to your advantage. Why would you worry about, I mean, presumably you've made a pretty proactive choice to have tattoos. What worries you about people seeing them? Because it's not very head-like or... You know what, it's really stupid because I genuinely don't care. I forget, I don't even know I have them. As stupid as that sounds, I completely forget I've got them. I don't know really, it's a weird one because you know, it has zero ability, it has zero impact on anyone's ability to do their job unless it says something highly inappropriate which I'd like to point out, none of mine do. And yeah, it's just a funny one. Every now, usually I don't bat an eyelid about it. I don't care and they're mine and you don't have to worry about them because they're not yours. Periodically, it's really funny. Whenever I start somewhere new, I'm always conscious of them. Okay, okay. Very quickly, they will start to slowly, like the sleeve will slowly go up and then in a couple of weeks, I'll have my sleeves rolled up and that'll be it. But it's, yeah, every time I start somewhere, I am always that. I don't know what, I've got no idea why and no one has ever made a comment. No one's ever made me feel that's a problem. Really interesting. Yeah, it's a funny one. Why do you have them? Like what's your kind of motivation? Is it? I don't know, it's something they've got out of hand. Growing up, honestly, I was like the last person Earth that would ever have tattoos. I lived in America, the third year of my degree was at a college in America and when I was 21, I had my first one done. And then it just kind of evolved and then it became a bit addictive and, you know, just before I knew it, I'd got one arm done and then I was like, well, that's a bit uneven. So I better get the second arm done and my mum goes mad at me every single. I mean, I'm 37 and my mum still goes absolutely nuts at me every time I do something. So yeah, she's like, you know, have you not done enough yet? I think that ship sailed a very long time ago in mum, don't you? Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's a weird one. I just kind of happened. Yeah. Well, I always find tattoos really fascinating and that very often people have got, you know, specific stories behind, you know, different tattoos and they really. Yeah, that's the one thing with all the minors. I can tell you a very dull story behind all of them. I mean, I've got my kids' names. I've got their times and dates of birth and all sorts of stuff. And I've got various bits and pieces on me and quotes from Nelson Mandela and Confucius and lines out of googly dull songs and all sorts of weird stuff that's just kind of been acquired over the years. Oh, and my favourite one is my Dumbledore quote. What's the quote? Oh, the happiness can be found in the darkest of times. Oh, wow. I like that. That's hiding there at the moment. Oh, why is that your favourite? I just think it's a really good one. You know, we're being Harry Potter fans in this house anyway. My five-year-old daughter who should not have watched all of them has managed to somehow sneakily watch all of them. She basically is Hermione. She's got the same hair. She's got the same attitude. My son refers to her as a nightmare. So she's, you know, she might as well be Hermione. I just really like it because I think, you know, it's really relevant to so many scenarios. You know, given what's going on in the world at the moment, you know, you do need to remember to turn the light on sometimes. And you said to me right at the very beginning, you know, you seem very calm about what's going on. I think because you just have to, you know, every now and again, it'd be very easy to go under and it'd be very easy to get bogged down by all, but you just need to, you know, find that one thing that gives you that little bit of light and that little bit of respite and just, you know, remember to focus on that every now and again. You know, my two have given me mad for the last few months being home, but, you know, actually, they're the, you know, they're the great bit, you know, the stupid stuff I've heard on that corridor of them two arguing and bickering has been hilarious in the last few months. But they're all things that, you know, my day is I'm in school by half past seven and I'm home by half, you know, half six usually. I don't see them that much. No. So actually to have had this time at home with them, you know, I feel like, you know, the light for me has been, I've really got to know my two kids. Wow. Silly as that is. I'm really close with both of them. I've got a girl and a boy and I am really close with them. But, you know, those real silly little things and I've been here to watch them grow up for six months. Even if I have been telling them to get out. They've been in most of my interviews. They've met my CEO many times. They've been on the phone to an MP. Who else has Harry come and interrupted with? I don't know. It's been, yeah. They've gone out of us. You've been interrupted by them. I was going to say, well, one of my daughters, she has done an amazing line in. She can see my diary and she'll know roughly when my interviews are due to finish. And if it's someone who she thinks looks interesting, she'll appear. I think she must wait for the tenant of the conversation to change. And then she'll just appear and be like, can I borrow a charger? Oh, who are you talking to? So my usual one is Dad. Harry's been mean. Right. What do you want me to do about it? Nothing. And then this face just appears about there and you're like, actually, what you're doing is coming to see I'm talking to you, aren't you? But even silly things like that, you know, in terms of ways of working, you know, you know, to begin with, you'd have been mortified if your child kind of interrupted a meeting whereas now for everybody, it's kind of funny and part of commonplace because people have really learned and understood the realities of what's happened. Absolutely. I think the nice thing as well, I've got some people that I've worked with for years who always ask me every time I speak to them, they always ask about my children, but they've never met them and now they have, you know, and actually that's really nice. You know, it's, yeah, it's lovely. Yeah, I mean, even when I was on the phone to some of the parents, I've been interrupted and I'll be like, well, you know, this is my one, meet Harry. Really moaning about him regularly. Do you think that it will impact on how you kind of work in future? Or do you think that it's just difficult? I think for day-to-day running of schools, I think not too much because the fundamental bottom line is you have to be in the building. Yeah. I think for exec teams, I think they can change the way they work a lot. I think when you think about the fact that as a trust, you know, trust, for example, I've had teacher meetings every now and again, you know, do, do all 30 heads need to drive 45 minutes to a central place or can we sit in our office and do it like this from now on? We've been doing it for the last five months. Yes, every now and again, you do want that face-to-face interaction still, but actually from a time perspective, from an efficiency perspective, you know, do we need to do that? I think that will change moving forward. Even silly things like parent consultations. I am adamant we'll do them online if we need to. Yeah. A lot of people say they found them to be better online, actually, the parent consultations and a lot more efficient as well. Yeah, I think you probably can. I think there will be, there will be changes, but I think, you know, if you say to me as a head teacher of a school, would your life going to change massively? Probably not just because the reality is you need to be in the building. But I think, I mean, I've got friends that have got small businesses that have rented, you know, offices and stuff. And they're like, we don't need to do that anymore because we've been so efficient working from home or somewhere else remotely that actually why would we spend that overhead when we don't need it? So I think, you know, there will definitely be a few changes from it. I mean, the online learning, I think will be a really fascinating, ongoing development. I think the SCN side of it has got a lot of work that needs working on because obviously actually that's a challenge for a lot of our people is to be able to engage with and to actually interact properly. So I think there's a really good piece of work in the future looking at, you know, the way that, you know, SCN provisioning support through online learning because for some people, I know having spoken to the provisions about the guys that are coming to me, some have accessed more work than they normally would have done because they've done it on their iPad or their tablet at home and others have done nothing at all because they're just not going to access it. So I think there's a future piece of work there for someone to really get their teeth into, but yeah, there's going to have to be a few tweaks and changes, I think, from it. What about your staff training? Have they, because there's loads available at the moment, isn't there a kind of online learning for staff as well? Yeah, I'm really, really keen to remember that my staff technically aren't my staff until the 1st of September. I'm really keen to give them a summer off because everybody that's been working in a school has been, you know, working incredibly hard. You know, they work hard anyway, but with what's gone on, it's been a very unique situation. So, you know, you know, there was discussions about, you know, could we get people to do things before they start? And I just said, no, we'll do it and we'll do it when we come together. I'll give them the time to do it. We'll build that into our CPD package. Just because I don't think it's fair to, you know, just because they come into a brand new school, it's not fair that I expect people to be working all summer and doing bits and pieces. You know, they, everyone needs a break. And you know, to, you know, it's going to be difficult enough in September, moving forward when we do get going. So I need them all refreshed and recharged especially. Yeah, it's true. But yeah, there's an awful lot. There's an awful lot of stuff you can deal online, CPD wise now, which I think moving forward, I think would be really good. Yeah. And are you going to get a break? That's the face I pull when everyone asks me. I will say yes, because if my boss watches, he's told me to have one. And if, if anyone else close to me, I will, I've got a couple of things I need to know have been sorted. Yeah. And then I will probably sit back a bit and say, all right, I think I can have a week or two where I can just park it. But it's just been, you know, you know, I've said earlier on about, I've probably had one day off the entire time since January. That's absolutely been the case. You know, even if I've just answered a couple of emails on a Sunday afternoon or something at some point, I've done something on this project every single day, but I probably won just because it's, you know, there's so much that happens. There's so much that happens, you know, from project management to networking to relationships to press and media, you know, to working out what fixtures, furnishing and equipment you need to the admissions to recruitment. The most stress, do you know the most stressful thing about the whole process? Go on. Designing the logo. Really? Yep. Why so stressful? It is the thing that represents the school. It is the big for me. It was the big thing. I had to get right. And how did you do it? Thankfully, there was a genius within my trust who I told him what I wanted. And he went off and he created it for me. So described the logo. Hang on. I can probably. You'll still have to describe it because many people will be. Okay. So I'm holding up. Yeah. A what is, so it says SBR in the middle of the shape, which is the same sort of shape you get on the old fashioned footballs. And then it says, so Bobby Robson school next to it. And I was really, really keen to incorporate a football element because of the name and what Subabi represents. And also that name has a lot of weight to it. And that's something that I wanted to make sure we represented, but I don't want it to be perceived as a sports school because it isn't it's not, you know, it's not a football foundation. It's not an Academy. It's a school. So yeah, so we went through so many designs and even silly things like the colours, that shade of the colour. And then when you do the uniforms, getting that right and yeah, everything that we've done, honestly, the logo was the thing that probably caused me the most stress because that was a permanent thing. And why are you the Subabi Robson school? So when the consultation was put out to begin with, it was there was a selection of names. This was prior to my appointment. So it was Subabi Robson when I got the job. It was just a unanimously well like choice by the local community. It was then run past the family, Subabi's family, if they had any objections and they didn't, they were really really happy that, you know, that name had been chosen. And we kind of keep them updated periodically just with what's happening where we're at and we'll invite them to kind of our formal opening as well at some point as well. And yeah, it just it was the sort of the unanimous winner. People really liked it. So we went with that and when we talked to people about it still, you know, it seems to draw a lot of interest, particularly in the community because obviously being in Ipswich and what Subabi represents to the Ipswich community, you know, that I think was, you know, something that they've really really bought into as well. And I have to say that the community's been fantastic with us so far, you know, the kind of enthusiasm for what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve and the support we've had, you know, I've not had any negativity at all to us kind of appearing. So yeah, hopefully that will continue. Oh wow. So exciting, exciting times ahead and great that the community have been involved in the beginning like that. I think it was always going to be important, you know, I think anytime you you build a new school in any area, you know, you need to take the community's opinion on board, you know, and you know, from what I've seen so far and even the other site users where we are, you know, everyone's been fantastic so far. So hopefully I will not do anything to annoy them in the future. Well, it's a really fine balance though, because that's it, you know, sometimes a new school will be received and really welcomed into a community, but you know, you get that wrong and it can be very, very tricky, isn't it? So it's really important to bring them along. What thought would you like to leave people with? I think I would really actively encourage any leaders, any future leaders, anybody that wants to one day have a go at building a new school. I would absolutely plead with them to do it because has it been another nightmare? Yes, it has. Has it been utter carnage? Yes, it has. That's before you throw in a global pandemic, but has it been the most incredible learning experience of my professional life? Absolutely. You know, I'm a head, not an interior designer, but I can tell you a bit about interior design now. You know, you learn so many things and you get involved in so many conversations. Yes, you will have a billion meetings and yes, you will be up to your eyeballs and paperwork and yes, you have so much to do. But it's all worth it at the end when you're looking at what you've shaped. You know, no one will kind of ever be able to kind of take that away, you know, in a really selfish way. This is something that, you know, that like the logo, for example, that's the logo, you know, we created that and that will always be there. That will be there long after I've gone. So I would just say, you know, anyone that feels that this is something that they would be interested in, I would absolutely implore them to do it. And I think the sort of three top tips to that would be a, be nice to everyone. Even if you don't want to be, be nice to everybody because you will need a lot of people a long way because this is a tricky thing. Definitely ask for help. Definitely ask for help. There are other people who know way better than you do, have experience of things that you don't and you've never done. So definitely, definitely ask the people around you for help. And if you are someone that thinks you can plan and organize everything to the nth degree, except that it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen. It is going to change. And the sooner you accept that, the easier your life will become because so much happens and there's so many things that are out of your hands. You have to be able to be reflective and reactive to what's going on. But yeah, I would, I just might absolutely, if you are interested and it's an opportunity you get, I would don't even hesitate to do it because it has just been the most incredible learning experience for me. And that opportunity to do this, you know, what a unique and rare opportunity really. Thank you very much.