The Anglo European School Awards Evening

David Barrs delivered the following address at the Civic Theatre, Chelmsford on the 6th September on behalf of himself and Jill Martin.

We have something special here at the Anglo European School of which Jill and I are acutely aware of and immensely proud.  The range of talent we have acknowledged this evening is testimony to that.

We have our own language. We don’t have miss, ms or mrs but ma’m; we don’t have Key Stage 5 (because there isn’t one!) we have the Sixth Form; we don’t have trips, we have visits. We patented the EID – our very own European and International Dimension. Our specialist language college programme is referred to as our Lingua programme and, of course, we don’t have a Headteacher we have Co-Headteachers.  We are also quite confident talking about care, happiness and justice as well as targets, performance and results – indeed, in our view, the former leads to the latter.

A former colleague who has just started a Deputy Headship in the West Country rang to catch up last night – he misses the strong ethos.  A senior colleague on the school gate said to me this morning, “I’m so proud of our kids, they all said hello and had smiles on their faces”. My son, who attends another school, helped on Sports Day and at the end he said, “Dad, we couldn’t do that at our school and your staff talk to pupils differently. I took it as a compliment!  Visitors to the school frequently refer to a  relaxed, friendly atmosphere.

As Headteachers, we place a high premium on the quality of human relationships between all of our stakeholders – relationships based on mutual respect.  As a consequence of this we have high expectations of all those we come into contact with in terms of the way they present themselves.  The consequence is that we have to be exemplary role models in whatever situation we find ourselves.  We try, at least to be so more often than not.

There are problems with being special.  It is easily taken for granted and occasionally lost amidst the fast pace of a modern organisation and the need to react to issues that face any school when relationships go wrong or when people don’t always live up to our expectations.

Another problem is that the special character is not always measurable.  When we undertake our annual review of exam results, as we did this week, we always have in mind Einstein’s dictum “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”.  We know it is there through feel, instinct and  anecdotal evidence.

So, we don’t relish the conversation with the OfSTED inspector when we say there is a special feel to the school and he or she responds with “How do you know?” and “What targets have you set yourself to improve it?”

Jill and I cherish the special character of this school and do not take it for granted.  As our staff and students know we have asked many questions of the school in our first year.  We have concluded that leadership is a continuous and never-ending quest for the perfect school and that will always motivate us.

An article from the Brentwood Gazette regarding this event can be found here

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