Vertical Tutoring: background notes

This site is dedicated to the support of schools that wish to understand what VT actually is (a complete change to the school's [improvement] culture) rather than what many schools think it is (a change to the pastoral system or even more inaccurately, a vehicle for delivering PSHE and SEAL programmes). The first requirement is to unlearn old systems thinking and any accompanying assumptions. This requires a bespoke systems check followed by new learning about how systems and supported learning relationships work and develop. In turn, schools need to understand loyalty group psychology and its relationship with learning systems. Only then can a successful learning culture and real transformation take place. If you want to know more about bespoke training and support please go to the training page and please feel free to contact me...I would rather train schools for free than see so many schools make a mess of the change to VT as is the current case!! 

Readers may like to visit the Resource Page where there are downloads on Leadership / VT and management diagrams which fill in any gaps in my book (see 'book on VT' page). These downloads are mainly for PGCE and MA students but should be of interest to teachers on the various leadership courses that exist today and to any schools interested in VT.

Many schools are 'going vertical' without fully consulting, training and preparing students and staff. This includes schools and academies who then go on to spread mediocre practice rather than good. Many assume they understand the principles and values of VT but rarely do in any deep managerial and learning sense. Old cultural ways persist. This is a missed opportunity to bring the school together. Staff and students will have every right to complain when things don't work out as well as they should. VT has to be properly understood by the LT both as a culture of learning relationships and as a learning process and this requires an intensive and challenging briefing to ensure thoughtful preparation, planning and a whole school approach. It must never be 'implemented our way' or have its principles and values diminished. Teachers and kids deserve better! Governors need to be on board and so do parents and students.

Contact me via this website and I'll happily explain why the school Leadership Team MUST be the first in the school to be properly briefed and prepared and why ALL employed by the school must be properly trained. 

VT is a better and more effective way of running schools as organisations which, if well managed, ensures that everything  improves including learning outcomes. It requires no extra effort or funding and serves to remind us of why we became teachers. In many ways it is a systems thinking approach to school management.

Hi! I'm Peter Barnard. I have led two VT schools for 20 years and have worked with schools internationally and hundreds across the UK. This site builds on best practice and is for schools keen to explore the huge possibilities provided by Vertical Tutoring and its associated educational and organisational philosophy. This is not a DIY site and DIY schools will always mess up any change...!

Please read the Resource Page where there are downloads on school  leadership, management and VT. There is a further download on the Book Page. These are just some of the things that VT can do if we get it right... We can ensure that our 'tutors' are actually able to be the advocates and mentors that students need. This is what is missing from today's complex and fragmented society...  We can make tutor time more fun and and more effective, improving learning relationships throughout the school  We can massively improve SEN and inclusion at no extra cost providing we understand the management principles and values of VT We can reduce staff and student stress and increase productivity We can grow students/pupils into mentors and provide training to suit. Teachers simply cannot do it all!! Kids and parents can and want to... We can create, define and help underpin a more mature attitude to learning across the school that will improve teaching capability We can make citizenship active rather than passive We can raise standards as a consequence of the above and massively improve our support for learning and teaching We can give our superb teachers back some of the time they need We can massively improve parent partnership  We can make our schools happier and healthy places to work We can realise our vision of what magical places schools can be...                              ...and this is just the start...

VT places the learner/student at the heart of the school as an organisation and gives substantive and better meaning to 'student voice'. This is also the precise point that offers huge scope for the release of individual and organisational creativity, including improved parental engagement. It is from conversations with students and parents that the personalised curriculum best emerges. Inevitably, VT will see the school as an organisation return to an exploration of old ground such as House Systems and  'Academic Tutors' but this will happen in  new and exciting ways designed for the 21st Century and for all staff and students.

So, what are we talking about? What do we mean by vertical tutoring?

VERTICAL TUTORING is not simply a case of forming mixed age 'family' groups (this terminology is poor and patronising to parents) although this is the beginning. It is a cultural change to our schools as organisations designed to place people and learning relationships at the heart of education. In reality, everything in the school should change and improve as a result of a domino effect. This is real TRANSFORMATION not the DCFS version! The ideas set out here are won from the hard fought experience of introducing Vertical Tutoring at two schools: the Winston Churchill School in Surrey (11-16) and Sharnbrook Upper School in Bedfordshire (14-19). More recently I have enjoyed the privilege and opportunity to help many schools and academies re-think much of what they do as they develop their own ideas under the VT banner. This includes grammar schools, academies, prep schools, 11-16, 13-19 and 11-19 schools and includes schools in or near 'special measures'. Many are listed on the Transition Page and most are now VT or in the process of change.

Vertical tutoring means reducing the size of tutor groups. Each tutor group is populated by students from all years and they tend to meet their tutor for around 20/25 minutes each day. TUTORS DO NOT TEACH PSHE or SEAL as such but seek to facilitate 'learning relationships' and increased maturity ('real citizenship' and active SEAL in part) by using Leadership and the 'Power of the Pack!'. Tutors are then better enabled to be responsible for the academic and pastoral needs of students. For students, VT should provide massive leadership opportunities, mentoring opportunities and citizenship opportunities. Schools as organisations will progress from Year organisations to House organisation (Year events/assemblies however, remain essential). By placing the tutor at the heart of the school and building better systems aound them, everything evolves in better ways.

Key Questions:

So what, exactly, do tutors do? What sort of programme do they follow, if any? Is bullying reduced? Should the sixth form be involved? What training is given? How do House assemblies and Year assemblies work? What improvements have resulted in schools that already practise this? How do academic tutorials feed this process (see below)? Can non-teachers be tutors? Should they? Do students like VT? AND... Exactly how does VT raise standards faster than any other school operation???

I shall attempt to address these questions below (FAQs). Let me leave you with this thought: we assume that horizontal systems work best for kids and yet these can be prisons for bullying, neglect, poor communications, back office bureaucracies and upset for many not to mention the high potential for an anti-school ethos. Perhaps, we presume too much and question too little.

Horizontal systems do not work, have never worked and schools cannot make them work. And this is the problem; schools don't see it!