Clare McCleave

It really is strange to hear people talk as though high expectations and strong culture (in NI schs we have talk about ethos) have just been discovered. 🤷🏻 We've been expected to achieve more with less for years! The remarkable thing isn't that expectations are high, but that dedicated staff and sch leaders have sustained them despite staff shortages, chronic underfunding, excessive workload and crumbling infrastructure - and often to their own detriment. If we moved to a Value-Added approach, we would see the transformative work that occurs in non-selective schools too who have very different intakes and have been striving for the same standards for years, often with fewer advantages and fewer resources.