On Wednesday this week, Mr Ford and I attended a very grown-up meeting, organised by Mrs Howard, to share the findings of a recent survey exploring the boys’ views on how effective our approach to rewards and sanctions is in the Prep. This is exactly the sort of thing that keeps me especially interested in the ongoing development of school life.
The meeting, however, came with a rather wonderful twist. Although it was undeniably “grown-up” in both tone and content (with careful analysis of the survey findings and a thoughtful discussion around the inevitable “what next…?”) the most remarkable aspect was that it was conducted entirely by boys in Year 6!
The Head Boy, Deputy Head Boy and all our Joint Heads of House have been working on this project with Mrs Howard for some time and, with very minimal guidance from her, had put together an impressively thoughtful and measured analysis of their survey results. They will now be running focus groups over the next few weeks with boys across all Year groups to unpack the data further, gathering rich, real-life qualitative insights to bring the numbers to life. In due course, they will also curate (for me!) a set of recommendations to help guide the future development of pastoral care at our school.
This is pretty incredible stuff in my view, all coming from 10- and 11-year-olds. The real kicker came when I asked whether the boys would be brave enough to attend one of our regular after-school staff meetings on a Thursday afternoon to present their final thoughts and recommendations to the teaching staff, not just me. They could not have been more delighted or more devoted to the prospect, which only served to reinforce just how lucky we are to have such thoughtful, engaged and capable Year 6 boys playing a leading role in the ongoing development of our school.
