As there is no Staff Briefing due to the Bank Holiday, please email Lindsay with any notices and they will be collated and emailed out to staff on Tuesday 6 May.

Congratulations to Ailica Nimblet-Robinson who has successfully completed her NPQLBC, well done Ailica!   

Click here to see current vacancies

Staffing Update

Joanne Horbury has made the decision to retire at the end of this academic year. She has worked at NHTS for eleven years and has successfully developed the Art curriculum and its popularity as a subject.  As always, this is strictly confidential to staff.

In light of the above news, the Head of Art role will be advertised over the next couple of weeks.  There is also a Teacher of History vacancy and the Lead Practitioner for Behaviour and Inclusion advert is now live.

Please see below for the details of an internal vacancy as Technical Qualifications Coordinator.  The role is designed to ensure the effective implementation of the range of KS4 Technical Qualifications and will involve working with colleagues who lead on the delivery of these courses.  The start date will be confirmed on appointment with the role – in the first instance – being temporary until the end of next academic year.  Applications are welcome from suitably qualified and experienced colleagues who do not hold a substantive TLR (TLR 3s are not substantive).  Should any colleague who holds a substantive TLR wish to explore a temporary change of remit, these applications will also be considered.  The role carries a TLR 2b with leadership time commensurate in line with those equivalent across schools (six periods per fortnight).  For further information, please arrange to speak to Michael Steer.

Technical Qualifications Coordinator

Should you wish to submit an application, please outline the way your experience prepares you for the role and what you would want to achieve whilst in post.  Supporting statements should be no longer than one side of A4 and be submitted to Lindsay Taylor by 9am on Tuesday 6 May 2025.

Year 11 Planning/Resources

Thank you for the recent work on the mapping of Year 11 schemes of learning and the development of resources in line with core expectations.  As mentioned in Monday’s briefing, I have discussed this with other members of the senior team to ensure that there is a shared clarity for the ‘non-negotiables’.  To this extent, alongside the 4Es document, the following has been extrapolated and should be explicitly built into plans:

• Scaffolding to support students to attain the one clear objective
• Methods for checking understanding
• Opportunities for granular feedback
• Independent practice

As Louise has previously communicated, the scheme of learning document is only necessary where departments feel the format will help.

Linked to the ongoing improvement of the Quality of Education, I am interested in the views of CALs.  This will be explored next half term (as part of work highlighted in the item below).  Should you wish to arrange a discussion with me, please let Lindsay know.

Staff Perceptions Survey

As previously mentioned, please see an overview of the recent staff survey.  73 responses were submitted with the groups, as identified by individuals, included.  Alongside the graphs, which include benchmarking against average scores, you will see the breakdown of responses for each staff group – numbers below 4 are in red whilst above 5 is in dark green.  I have communicated on two separate occasions that I’m interested in feedback from staff within the teacher group, this offer remains and is now extended to all colleagues.  With the survey being anonymous, it is useful to a degree (as outlined below), but where the views of specific groups seem incongruous with the overall outcomes of the survey and with ongoing feedback, evaluation and general views of school, hearing from individual colleagues is the only way to understand the rationale for perceptions.

General areas highlighted as causing concern are behaviour, professional development and quality assurance (referred to in the survey as observations/performance management).  In response, please see the points below:

• Repeated low-level disruption and how this is managed was discussed at the Behaviour Working Party.  Details of tweaks to the Behaviour Policy will be communicated in due course with further information on the whole-school approach to this and the expectations for individual members of staff
• I will be working with the senior leaders for Q of E to review and develop our processes for Quality Assurance.  The focus will be on how this captures the delivery of our core curriculum principles, the way it evaluates the design and implementation of our teaching and learning strategy and how this is used to inform the development of best practice across departments and for individual colleagues

As mentioned above, I welcome any further, relevant feedback/discussion