HSAEL News

What are you trying to achieve?

We want our students to grow and develop into the leaders of tomorrow. We want the same for our teachers. At HSAEL, our mission is to make sure every teacher develops into a leader in their chosen field. We want our teachers to be among the best in the country.

We believe all students can make exponential progress with excellent teachers in front of them. 

How do we do this?

Our teacher development programme uses the Educational Endowment Funds framework on effective professional development. Our programme consists of:

Building Knowledge. This means:

• Weekly after school CPD which adapts to the needs and requests of our teachers.
• A focus on specification mastery. Whilst we may have expert knowledge on our academic disciplines, it is crucial we understand the rigors and demands of the exam board specifications we teach. This means you will find our teachers regularly sitting GCSE and A-Level past papers during designated CPD time and arguing over who got top marks. 
• Harris Federation Subject Development events allowing opportunities to learn from colleagues in our wider network.
• Training from expert Subject Specific Harris Consultants who work across multiple schools ensuring our teachers well supported from a subject specific perspective.

Motivating Teachers. This means:

• HSAEL Superstar emails. It takes two minutes to thank a colleague of their support.
• Compassion Cards written by students and sent to teachers.
• ‘Thank a teacher’ opportunity in our Community Bulletin.
• Morning briefings to check in with our teachers ensuring everyone is ready for the day; our Feel-Good Friday briefings (with tea, coffee and pastries!) celebrate our achievements from the week.
• Celebrating each other’s birthdays.

• Using credible research informed practice. Our Bulletin publishes a weekly piece of educational research. Our teachers borrow copies of Teach Like A Champion and Running the Room from our CPD library.
• Staff end of term socials and celebrations.

Developing and Embedding Practice. This means:

• Our CPDs use the same routines and structures of outstanding HSAEL lessons. This includes clicking to agree in meetings and briefings.
• There is a strong sense of camaraderie and support amongst staff as our HSAEL team works together.
• Communication is efficient and clear with daily and weekly bulletins to give teachers all the tools they need to be successful. 
• Teachers do their own Deliberate Practice. The first time we deliver our routines and rituals shouldn’t be in front of a class. Practising on each other allows us to build confidence, correct mistakes, find misconceptions before the real thing!
• An open-door policy where regular coaching feedback is expected and appreciated whether that be from a brand-new trainee teacher or the Principal himself.

What’s the early impact?

Many of our HSAEL teachers have a track record of achieving academic outcomes for students that come in the top 1% of schools nationally. Being around outstanding teaching practice makes it very easy for our HSAEL teachers to become outstanding teachers.

So far, we have embedded an effective four-part lesson format which creates a direct route to learning for all students. Behaviour in classrooms is some of the best in London with our LEADERS routines (which includes articulating answers, using hand signals, eyes on the speaker) now embedded.

Our culture of open and honest feedback has meant that in our first Spring term, 102 coaching steps were dropped by teachers for teachers. That is 102 occasions that our teachers became even better.

Our work around teacher development is changing our student outcomes:  in 2023, HSAEL was in the top 3% of schools nationally for year-on-year improvement. HSAEL was in top 20 most improved schools in London.