Chris May

My role as Assistant Principal for the Quadrant allowed me to work across multiple academies within the Harris Central Quadrant. My primary role was to oversee the vocational courses within four central quadrant schools, moving between the academies and working with staff as well as teaching timetabled lessons. Within this role I undertook duties such as federation professional development, leading on quality of teaching and learning, planning timetabled drop-down sessions within the academies and ensuring expectations of assessment are met. I have worked with staff both on site and virtually to support them. Within the academies I have worked in I undertake other roles to support with the Senior Leadership Team, for example leading on attendance, line management of other subjects, supporting in behaviour roles and undertaking the daily cover. During my time at the academies I worked at, there was a remarkable impact for the vocational grades. One example is at Harris Academy Clapham this year, the average grade for all vocational courses is now above a merit grade, improving by nearly a grade since the first year. At Harris Academy Peckham the vocational offering has become part of the core curriculum with all students sitting one vocational qualification in year 10. This came through improvements in moderation and through the CPD I have lead there being a consistent approach to teaching and learning. Particularly with the central quadrant now having the best overall vocational grades in the federation. One of the key factors to this is the key support that I have given in preparing departments and producing cross site internal moderation to ensure standards are met. One of the roles I have mentioned is my work on attendance at Harris Academy Peckham. With an academy of over 50% pupil premium I had to design and implement a whole school attendance strategy. This was something that was recognised and is in the OFSTED report, from their most recent outstanding inspection. I line manage and meet weekly with the attendance officer and support year teams with meetings and identifying where we need to improve. I have implemented boundary support to bring in all members of the staff in the academy to support with attendance. We have weekly attendance meetings where data is analysed and key cohorts are targeted and have worked with external agencies. There has been communication and reports for governors, as well as working closely with the safeguarding team. Working within the Harris Federation has allowed me to make key relationships across academies and lead CPD, this has taken place at federation INSET days and within academies. Here I have coached teachers from across multiple academies and support staff from trainee teachers, ECT's and heads of department. I also use standardisation and moderation meetings for staff in the central quadrant and have staff from outside of the quadrant that join as well.

During my time at Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich I progressed through a range of leadership roles, beginning as a PE teacher before becoming Deputy Director of Sport, Director of Sport and Associate Assistant Principal. As Director of Sport, I led the redesign of the PE curriculum, moving away from the federation model to create a bespoke programme focused on developing students across a wider range of sporting strands and increasing opportunities to celebrate participation, as well as tactical and team work skills. Alongside this, I led the delivery of BTEC Sport, where the department successfully taught the entire cohort and consistently achieved positive Progress 8 scores for the academy of + 2. I also led BTEC Travel and Tourism, ensuring high-quality curriculum planning, assessment and student outcomes again with progress scores above +2. Beyond curriculum leadership, I developed extensive whole school experience in raising attainment and progress, leading both Year 10 and Year 11 intervention programmes. Using detailed analysis of student performance data, I identified pupils requiring targeted support and designed a comprehensive programme of after school, weekend and holiday interventions. I monitored attendance, adapted provision where required and worked closely with staff, students and families to maximise engagement. In Year 10, interventions focused on vocational and option subjects, while in Year 11 the programme expanded to include English and Mathematics alongside option subjects, ensuring students received the support most likely to improve their final outcomes. This strategic approach to data analysis, intervention planning and performance tracking contributed to improved student progress and strengthened my expertise in whole-school improvement.

My primary role whilst at Coopers was to lead on behaviour within the school. This was a very different school with 2000 pupils on roll. My main daily duties were to lead on line managing the behaviour team such as pastoral leaders and heads of year to ensure the smooth running of the school and follow up incidents. This included changing the behaviour policy at the school to ensure there was a points system for positive and negative behaviour, including rewards and support/sanctions where applicable. One of the other roles I had was to establish effective communication channels with parents, providing regular updates on school initiatives and student progress particularly in relation to behaviour and support. Throughout this role I regularly delivered assemblies and staff training on behaviour whilst line managing multiple departments within the school. One of my other roles was to introduce the new BTEC Sport course to the PE department and esure that staff within the school had resources and the correct timing to implement this. I lead this and trained the head of PE to be able to teach and lead this course, leading to positive progress for this subject even after I had left. Whilst working at Coopers they were known as E21C and here I would lead on all staff training for the trust, working on implementing new policies and training for staff.