Slides That Follow Your Voice: Geordie Accent Headteacher Welcome

Slide 1: Welcome to Hadrian Vale

0:17Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Hadrian Vale. Please do sit down, including the dads at the back who are standing because they think it'll be quicker. It won't be quicker. I've got a microphone and a grievance. No? Right. Sit down anyway.

0:31My name's Mr Carrick, I'm the headteacher, and this September we welcome two hundred and twelve new Year seven students, which is the largest intake in the school's history, two hundred and fourteen, actually, two more signed on Friday, and I'd like to say that's because of our Uh... our reputation, but it's mostly because the council closed the school on the other side of the river and didn't ask anyone. [chuckles]

Slide 2: 212 new Year 7s

0:55Tonight I want to do three things. Tell you how the first week works, tell you the one rule I actually care about, and give you the phone number of a woman called Jan, who runs the office, and who is more important than I am.

Slide 3: Three things tonight

1:09The first week. Your child will arrive on Wednesday at eight thirty, no, eight forty, not eight thirty like the older ones, so that they've got ten minutes in a building without anyone taller than them. They'll get a timetable, a planner, a map, and a Year ten buddy whose job is to walk them to every lesson for five days and then disappear.

Slide 4: The first week

1:30The map is accurate. The building is not. We've got three staircases that go to the second floor and one that doesn't, and nobody has ever explained to me why, and every September about fourteen children end up in the art cupboard. They are found. They're always found. One of them is now a teacher here. [laughs]

1:51He teaches geography. I don't make the joke. He makes the joke, every open evening, and it gets a laugh every time, and I've stopped fighting it. He's very good, by the way. Knows exactly where everything is now. Right. Where was I. Lost property.

Slide 5: Label everything. Label the labels.

2:07Lost property. I mention this because by October we'll have a mountain of it, and every item in that mountain will be unlabelled, and every one of you will tell me your child's jumper was labelled, and I'll trust you, and the jumper will still be in the mountain. Label everything. Label the labels.

2:26Phones. Phones go in the bag at the gate and come out at the gate. Not confiscated. Not locked away. In the bag.

Slide 6: Phones

2:34We did, we trialled, look, we trialled... We trialled this for a year with the Year nines, and the thing that changed wasn't grades, although grades went up a little, it was noise. The corridors got louder. Children started talking to each other at lunch, because there was nothing else to look at, and the lunch supervisors, who've seen everything, came to me and said, it's like two thousand and nine in there, and they meant it as a compliment, meant it as a compliment. [chuckles]

3:04Right, the rule. We've got a behaviour policy, it's thirty-one pages, it's on the website, and I've read it, so you don't have to. But here's the one rule I actually enforce, and I enforce it with everybody, including staff, including me.

Slide 7: You do not make another person feel small

3:21You do not make another person feel small.

3:26That's it. You can be late, you can be loud, you can fail a test and you can forget your uh, your P E kit for the sixth week running, and we'll deal with all of it, and we'll deal with it as a mistake. Making another person feel small isn't a mistake. It's a choice, and it's the only choice in this building that I won't treat as a learning opportunity. [sighs]

3:50I had a headteacher, when I was eleven, who did that to me, once, in front of a class, about my reading. I can tell you the date. I can tell you what the weather was doing. I've run this school nine years on making sure nobody leaves with a date like that. That's it. That's the rule.

4:08Jan's number is on the sheet on your chair.

Slides 8-9: If something is wrong: Jan / Tea and biscuits in the hall

4:11Tea and biscuits are in the hall, your child's form tutor is standing under a sign with their name on it, and the dads at the back may now sit down, because the quick part is over. Jan's also by the biscuits. That's not an accident. [laughs]