Cuppa with a change-maker

Matt Bromley sat down with Sean Harris recently for his Substack series, Cuppa with a Change-Maker. Below is an extract but you can read the full article here...

I’ve focused on several aspects of change over my career, all with the goal of ensuring every child, no matter their background, starting point, and additional and different needs, has a fair chance of success; all with the goal of ensuring a child’s birth does not become their destiny. 

I’ve worked with schools on curriculum – helping them design ambitious, broad and balanced, planned and sequenced curricula to which all pupils have equitable access and then helped them make sure pupils did access it through the better diagnosis of barriers and the more effective use of adaptive teaching strategies and interventions. I’ve worked with schools on making more impactful use of their Pupil Premium Grant, too. I’ve helped schools engage more effectively with parents and families, and their local communities. And I’ve explored ways of making better use of extra-curricular activities to build cultural capital and expand pupils’ frames of reference. 

Most recently, my focus in schools has been on inclusion and belonging. I’ve come to understand the importance of belonging – fostering a whole-school culture in which every child feels included. If children don’t think that they’re seen and heard, valued and respected, and if they’re not able to participate fully in school life, then they will think school is not for them and disengage. 

And fostering a sense of belonging in our schools has never been more important. We live in an increasingly unequal, fractured society, and schools, as microcosms of that society, are becoming increasingly unequal, fractured institutions. Schools cannot solve all of society’s ills, of course, and nor should they be expected to, but I think they can do more to ensure a child’s birth is not also their destiny. 

Currently, disadvantaged children – whether that be those living in poverty, those from underrepresented cultures, ethnicities and backgrounds, those with transient lives, or those with special educational needs and disabilities – start school behind their peers and schools fail to close the gap. In fact, that gap widens as children travel through the education system, in part because knowledge begets knowledge: those children who start out behind, find it harder than their peers to access the school curriculum and achieve, and thus they fall further and further behind. 

Covid exacerbated the problem. There’s been a marked rise in absenteeism since the pandemic and disadvantaged children are more than twice as likely to be persistently or severely absent as their peers, leading to lower progress, outcomes, life chances and earnings power, not to mention poorer health and wellbeing. Disadvantaged children are more likely to experience mental health issues and struggle to study at home or access additional extra-curricular provision. 

The school curriculum often fails to talk to the lived experiences of disadvantaged children – and, because they do not see themselves reflected in the school curriculum, they do not feel it is for them. Furthermore, they often lack the background knowledge and word power needed to access the full curriculum and so fail to achieve their potential. 

It is not that these children are less able than their peers, nor that they do not exert the same amount of effort; it is the knowledge and skills gaps (what we might reductively call ‘cultural capital’) which result from their circumstances that pose a barrier to their success at school and then in later life.

And this has been my focus of late: working with schools on belonging and on creating more inclusive classroom practices. 

It’s also – cue shameless plug – the subject of my new book, Why School Doesn’t Work for Every Child. I mean, there had to be a reason I’d sit down and have a cup of coffee with you, Sean. The coffee is weak and as for the company… 

Continue reading Matt’s chat with Sean on Sean’s substack.