Ian Norton

Since joining the Inaura School I have provided clear leadership and brought about positive changes and improvements in student admissions, the recruitment of staff, curriculum development, and delivery of teaching and learning across all four of the school’s Learning Centres. I am also a Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead (DDSL) and form an integral part of the Safeguarding team. Being trained to DSL level in all aspects of safeguarding under KCSIE 2024, including safer recruitment, I am a part of the shortlisting and interview panel for all educational roles within the school. I am actively involved in all areas of safeguarding and behaviour management across the school, including the review and writing of safeguarding policies. Through joint-working with the DSL, the Health & Safety Officer (H&SO) and Learning Centre Managers, I regularly review all safeguarding incidents or concerns across the school in ‘Blue, Red, Amber, Green’ (BRAG)
safeguarding briefings. The outcomes of these BRAG reviews help to identify the need for an intervention programme or 1:1 reactive work with a student, or group of students, or highlight the need for further staff training.

The safeguarding team and I screen, triage, and ensure proportional and timely responses to a significant number of SchoolPod incident logs and CPOMS incident notifications each day. At regular intervals, I conduct a scrutiny of these systems, identify any trends or patterns, and report to Governors and Trustees any overall themes or safeguarding issues. At both the Inaura School and Vranch House, I have been directly involved in working with students, their families, Governors and Trustees, Social Care, Health professionals and the Police in trying to resolve and mediate situations for children with extremely complex home lives and special educational needs. I have extensive experience of being part of a continuum of support from Early Help to Safeguarding Strategy meetings, working with children, families and professionals where domestic violence, drug and alcohol mis-use, County Lines involvement and fabricated and induced illness have been
factors of concern.

In every school where I have held a management role, I have established a culture and community of best-practise at every level of staffing. I achieve this by creating a development-focused approach to Performance Management Reviews (PMRs), empowering those I line manage to take the initiative and achieve success against the school’s strategic objectives or allocated areas within the School Development Plan.
The Wellbeing Supervisions I put in place in schools bring equal dividends for staff. During these supervisions, I use an empathetic approach and appreciation of the challenges and opportunities found within education. This approach often yields candid recognition by those I manage of their individual fears and foibles as well as recognition of their successes and achievements in supporting evermore diverse pupil cohorts. The implementation of these regular open-forum and less formal opportunities for one-to-one interactions reduces staff anxiety, stress, and low-level safeguarding worries about SEND and the students they support, and improves their overall sense of
wellbeing.

In my present role at the Inaura School the Deputy Head and I work together to achieve the DfE ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ goal of developing and maintaining a whole school culture that promotes the benefits of high attendance. We have established multiple initiatives for incentivising, recognising, and rewarding improved attendance for all students, regardless of their starting point. We scrutinise weekly attendance, identify persistent or falling attendance and work closely with the Educational Engagement team in Somerset
Council and an independent Education Welfare Officer to support parents and students in improving their attendance. In my work with SEND pupil cohorts, poor attendance of pupils can often be due to complex individual circumstances that is not captured in purely numerical attendance data. I have learnt that accurately recording and considering a narrative of these issues can be more illuminating, and as important, as the numerical data around their attendance.

Most of the students at the Inaura School have been serially excluded from mainstream provisions. They often hold very negative views about schools and act-out in verbally and physically abusive ways towards peers and staff to test the boundaries of school’s rules or actively try to get themselves excluded once more. I readily assume a pastoral role in the often-chaotic lives of these students and work closely with
parents and carers, the DSL and my Deputy to come up with outreach-style programs of learning if daily attendance on school sites is not in a students’ best interest emotionally. I recently led a successful whole-school INSET day on the redevelopment of the school’s approach to Personal Development to improve student engagement, build their self-esteem and reduce the number of negative behaviour incidents. I
have subsequently developed a bespoke Personal Development curriculum that builds on the pastoral work of Student Advocate staff.

During my time at Vranch House I continually worked in partnership with local authority commissioners, therapists, Headteachers in other settings, and families to promote the inclusion of all pupils, some of whom were on split-placements and attended mainstream schools. I worked collaboratively with others to create the more inclusive, bespoke ‘Vranch House Independence Education and Wellbeing (VIEW) Curriculum’ to meet the complex and evolving needs of the pupils. My change-management plan was based on evidence-based management theories learnt during my National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL) research. I worked in partnership
with the Head of Therapies and, in a little under 2 years, I led transformational change and improvements in every operational and strategic aspect of the education provision at Vranch House, from curriculum to safeguarding, resulting in vastly improved attainment and outcomes for pupils and an ‘Outstanding’ judgement in all areas during the Ofsted Inspection in 2018, and again in 2022.

In addition to my school-based teaching and leadership experience, I have also been an Advisory Teacher for the Visually Impaired, based in Plymouth. In this role, I ensured the inclusion of up to 90 pupils in a wide range of Plymouth schools, both Specialist Settings and Mainstream; this gave me an excellent understanding of the diversity of education provision and the complex array of professional bodies involved in the running of these schools. In this peripatetic role, I learnt quickly how to establish strong partnerships with key individuals in all
the settings I supported. I discovered what it meant to be part of a much larger virtual team, across all Plymouth schools, and became adept at networking to secure the right provision and outcome for pupils.

I have a true passion for leading the delivery of high quality, inclusive education and take pride in seeing the pupils I have supported become effective, independent learners who go on to fulfil their potential. I have taught and lead within a wide range of settings with an equally diverse range of children; from the gifted and talented to those with visual impairments, physical disabilities, Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs, ADHD, and ASD. Many of the children and young people in the last three schools in which I have worked have been a ‘Child in Need,’ a ‘Child Looked After’ or subject to special guardianship or adoption proceedings. I have learnt to lead and support
staff in remaining objective and compassionate whilst maintaining a co-operative, best practise approach to working with all parties involved with these children.

In 2021 I was honored to receive a Commendation for 'Excellence in Special Needs Education' after my Chief Executive, the Chair of Trustees, and peers at Vranch House nominated me for the Pearson National Teaching Awards.