In the latest in our ethical leadership series, a headteacher reflects on what to do when insight from a student survey throws you a curveball by suggesting that something you thought was going well perhaps needs a second look.

The leader discusses how they used the Framework for Ethical Leadership (FELE) to consider their response and the impact this had.

What was the issue?

We are a large urban comprehensive with a broad curriculum and a reputation as an inclusive and tolerant community. Students and staff understand and champion the protected characteristics and work hard together to nurture belonging.

The school is a “White Ribbon” school and has clubs and activities that celebrate different religions and support neurodiversity. There is a large annual Pride event and colleagues from local schools have visited to see how the school supports LGBTQ+ students.

As such, it was a real surprise when, in the annual student survey, one of the lowest-scoring questions was students saying they feel they do not “see people like them in the curriculum”.

What we did next

The first thing was to find out more. Survey data is useful but it often just starts the conversation.

I worked with the senior leadership team to plan some follow-up student voice activities with smaller groups led by staff members with whom that particular group would feel at ease.

We chose students from all different year groups but also students from clubs or certain demographics. Over 100 students were involved and were all asked the same starting questions. SLT also resolved to undertake some further CPD with DiverseEd.

The training brought greater objectivity and commitment to being open to what we learned and how we could progress our work in this area.

How the FELE values helped

The first was wisdom. Leaders need the wisdom to want to seek and know more by asking questions, recognising they will not have all the answers.

Openness is key, too, to share the data and accept that it is not what we would have hoped. After all, accountability pressures, the media, some parents and those “above us” (eg, in the local authority or the trust) can lead us to adopt and hold a defensive position.

But we have to find our way out of that position and be open to useful and interesting feedback that will ultimately strengthen the community we serve.

What happened next?

From the workshops, we learned that the majority of our students are happy; they feel they belong at our school.

It revealed, though, just how important clubs and activities are in helping them find “their tribe” within school. As a result, we worked to strengthen the extracurricular offer with our best ever “Freshers’ Fayre”, more promotion and more encouragement of staff to offer clubs.

Also, our learning outside the curriculum lead gathered more data to find out who did and did not attend and followed up to find out why, so we can continue to help this meet the needs of all students.

We also resolved to relaunch our “Diversity in the Curriculum” mark to signpost all the ways we explore different characteristics and cultures in our classrooms, so those students who had scored this were more aware of what we do in this space.

We also made revisiting this regularly a part of our work going forward, led by our middle leadership teams.

Key takeaways

As leaders, we can be so sure that our school is a certain way and be confident in that view. But we have to be open to hearing different views and exploring why that might be if presented with insights or information.

It would have been easy to dismiss the survey data, mindful of all our hard work on diversity, equality and inclusion, but taking action was key, and well worth the investment of time and work, too, to ensure we remain on top of our game in this space and students feel secure in our school.

For essential weekly intelligence on the international schools sector, sign up for the Tes International newsletter