“It was the best football match I’ve ever seen”
9 June 2016
By Sue Williamson
Sue Williamson, Chief Executive of SSAT, writes…
Welcome back from the half-term holiday – I hope you had a good break. This term is hugely important for all schools and students will be under a great deal of stress during exam season. We do a lot of work with organisations on the mental health of young people and we will continue this work into the next academic year.
Thankfully, on the other side of this high-pressure period, we will all celebrate the exam results of our students and hopefully see them achieve their desired goal. Whether that be their chosen job, a university place, or another path.
As you may know, we have recently held a series of Educational Outcomes celebration award ceremonies for schools within the SSAT network. During these events, I found it very sad that headteachers admitted that “There are very few opportunities for our successes to be recognised.” SSAT is going to do more to help increase these opportunities, and also to help better celebrate the successes of teachers, and of students.
Recently I received a letter from a student with learning difficulties from a school of which I am a governor. He produced a superb piece of work on the management of recycling at the school and we were delighted to reward him with tickets to the FA Cup Final. The letter read:
“Thank you very much for the tickets to the FA Cup at Wembley. I went with my dad and grandpa and had a fantastic time – we took lots of photos. There was lots of noise and singing, I was shouting my head off. It was so exciting – especially when Jesse Lingard scored the second goal. Manchester United won the cup and they deserved it. It was the best football match I’ve ever seen.”
It was great that we were able to give such an opportunity to Ewan and it is an example of a way in which we can help to recognise the success of your students. We did this with the student performances at the SSAT National Conference 2015 but we want to do more.
Do you have a success story that you’d like us to share? Please do get in touch, or let us know in the comments below.
Sue Williamson, Chief Executive, SSAT
Sue joined SSAT in 2002 and focused on leadership and innovation. She worked with Professor David Hargreaves on the personalising learning agenda, and developed SSAT’s suite of leadership programmes. She was Headteacher of Monks’ Dyke Technology College for eight years.
