Vertical Tutoring: Bespoke Training for Schools

How to get the transformation to VT right and understand the causal link between VT and teaching and learning.

Go to the Training Page for details of Leadership Team Briefing and for All Staff Training details

This site is dedicated to the support of schools that wish to understand what VT actually is (a complete, evolutionary change to the school's learning culture designed to ensure improved student outcomes) rather than what many schools think it is (a change to the pastoral system, or even more inaccurately, a vehicle for delivering PSHE, SEAL and other programmes). In many ways VT is SEAL but is not a taught programme (another national obsession of education as a 'social cure' using programmes).

To successfully transform to a values-driven culture and escape our target-driven factory system, requires an understanding of three key, but strangely absent , 'Deeps'. These are

a) Systems Thinking: the means of understanding how schools as organisations actually work: unlearning assumptions. (This requires an external systems lens)

b) Customer Relations: how students, staff and parents are both service providers and customers within a school information and support marketplace: key to innovation.

c) Ingroup Loyalty:  the psychological affect of groups (home/peer etc etc) on young people through the social exposure they experience. 

To successfully implement VT requires school Leadership Teams to have a deeper operational understanding of these three basic organisational concepts if the school is to really support kids and learning and the tutor is to become the rightful key to school improvement and improved outcomes.

ALL help REDEFINE the semantics of schools and especially WHAT IT IS TO CARE and HOW EVERY CHILD CAN REALLY MATTER rather than what we currently have. Without this understanding, schools will at best, only develop and operate VT at a superficial level and any accompanying debate will remain at a low level of understanding ('I won't be with my friends anymore' and 'Admin will be impossible' and of course, 'We already have student mentors, don't we' etc). Without a 'deep' understanding of VT and especially its management and implementation, VT will be largely ineffective and built upon doubt and uncertainty.

My book 'Vertical Tutoring' is available from www.amazon.co.uk  and is also available on Kindle for £7.50. Further info and downloads are to be found on my pages at www.tes.co uk

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 and PhD students but will be of interest to teachers on the various quasi-leadership courses that exist today, and to anyone interested in VT.

UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VT AND TEACHING AND LEARNING IS CRITICAL, AS IS UNDERSTANDING HOW TO MANAGE A VT SYSTEM. VT has to be understood by the Leadership Team both as a culture of learning relationships and as an operational learning and support process and to achieve this understanding requires an intensive and challenging briefing so ensuring thoughtful preparation, planning and a whole school approach.

Many schools 'go vertical' without fully consulting, training and preparing students and staff. They assume VT is a simple pastoral change with a similar management structure to Year Systems. This includes some schools and academies that 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 not the fault of schools. Staff and students, however,will have every right to complain when things don't work out as well as they should.  It must never be implemented 'our way' whereby critical organisational principles and values are diminished by organisational logistics. Teachers and kids deserve better! Governors need to be on board and so do parents and students. VT requires management and care especially because of its positive potential effect on teaching and learning (developing Learning Relationships).

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 managerially briefed and prepared. Following this, ALL staff employed by the school need to have a good understanding of VT in order for learners to be properly supported.

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 does not provide a guide for VT implementation.

Please note that there are a number of downloads on this site: some of my ramblings on SEAL (this page) and others (Leadership etc) on the Resource 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 (the front office). This is what is missing from today's complex and fragmented society... This has a dramatic knock-on effect to teaching and learning when VT is properly understood and to the health and well-being of our kids 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 and outcomes 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...everyone a leader, everyone a teacher and everyone a learner but the school needs to know how to make this happen as an organisation! We can create, define and help underpin a more mature attitude to learning across the school that will impact on and improve teaching capability We can greatly enhance citizenship, SEAL and PSHE without teaching courses and programmes 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 and the respect they deserve 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 by being driven by values and principles...walking the talk!                              ...and this is just the start...But all of this requires systems thinking, an undertstanding of loyalty group psychology and a commitment to customer care (everyone a customer, everyone a teacher and everyone a learner, all connected by good data and information). This requires training and information. To ignore this is simply arrogant and ignorant!

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 the education process. VT underpins teaching and learning. In reality, everything in the school should change and improve as a result of a domino effect. This is real TRANSFORMATION! 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 over 275 schools and academies re-think much of what they do. This includes grammar schools, academies, prep schools, independent schools, church schools, 11-16, 13-19 and 11-19 schools and includes many schools in or near 'special measures'. Many are listed on the Transition Page and most are now VT or in the process of change.

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

 Without training and advice schools simply reinvent horizontal assumptions.