by Tim Nelson
I have already worked with a couple of newly appointed school leaders this term. In both meetings, the subject of policies came up, with neither colleague having had much policy writing experience in their previous roles before headship.
There was some concern about what needed to be in place and when policies should be reviewed. Of course, this falls within the remit of the board of governors, and the lists of statutory policies for maintained schools and academies can be found below. (Check governors are using these up-to-date lists and not the similar ones withdrawn earlier this year)
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/-governance-in-academy-trusts/statutory-policies-for-trusts
Beyond these policies, it is up to schools and trusts to decide what other policies they need. There is no point in having policies for the sake of paperwork.
Occasionally, policies exist in schools that are pretty much antique documents, having been passed down through the mists of time, reviewed on a three or four-year basis since time in memoriam, having been written by a legendary figure in the school’s history and still listing how the tape player should be used for country dancing lessons, and where the Banda machine is stored. (Younger colleagues, try Googling it. I saw them being thrown out when I trained.)
As a leader, policies give you an opportunity to articulate the details of your vision. They set the rationale and the expectations for a specific area, for example, teaching and learning, so staff know the parameters within which they work. They are the rules and guides to ‘How we do things at St. Winfred’s Primary’. As such, they are a vital tool despite having the baggage of being ‘yet more paperwork’. Involving colleagues in the review of policies is a useful way to engage a team and ensure people have a say in the development of the school. Having policy imposed with no explanation can have the opposite, and detrimental, effect.
As a new leader, reviewing policies is an important opportunity to observe how things are done, consider the impact, and make any necessary changes, whether based on research, a change in school vision, pupil need or effectiveness. This is also a good time to question whether policies are, in fact, needed!
The number of policies that exist in schools varies considerably between settings. To me, this begs the question, why? Having many policies may be a good thing if they are all helpful and needed, but sometimes there is too much overlap of content, or antique policies exist that are effectively redundant but still doing the rounds.
A final observation is about the school website. I have seen literally hundreds of school websites. (I’m using ‘literally’ in the accurate sense of the word because I’m older than 30.)
It isn’t uncommon for policies, even those for safeguarding and child protection, to be out of date on the website. This occurs when there is a problem with ensuring the up-to-date version of a policy, reviewed, agreed and dated by the governors, actually gets uploaded to the website as soon as the policy has been reviewed. If this is not a rigorous operation, the latest policy exists but is not the one that appears online. It can be worth checking that the systems work to ensure the latest policies are uploaded promptly.
I’ve just checked the policy for writing blogs about policies and reached the recommended word count, so I’ll stop there and let you review the ones in your setting. Make them work for you!
