About Leyton Sixth Form College

Many positive changes have been brought about since the appointment of Leyton Sixth Form's current Principal, almost five years ago. Kevin’s style of leadership is very open, transparent and inclusive. His ethos and vision for the organisation has been very well-communicated to all staff and he welcomes comments and input from every area of the college workforce. Communication has played a key part in the transformation of their college and Kevin’s own personal approach to this had led the way. For example, he will always choose to speak face-to-face where possible, if not then by telephone, with e-mail as a last resort option. Kevin has introduced, via their Ten Key Features document, the idea of a ‘Sense of College’ and this is now fully embedded across the college in everything from how they recruit their staff (staff and students are always involved in this process) through to their weekly all-staff briefings and monthly social gatherings over a cup of tea and a bun. Kevin has placed a lot of emphasis on the benefits of ‘growing your own’ staff and even in difficult financial times, has continued to allocate a generous staff development budget. He has also encouraged the promotion and development of internal professional learning communities where staff, both teaching and non-teaching, share ideas and best practice. Having now moved from ‘Satisfactory’ to ‘Good’ in Ofsted terms, Kevin has introduced a real sense that the college has the capacity to be ‘Outstanding’ within a relatively short space of time.

The range of training and personal development opportunities available to staff at the college is outstanding. Leyton Sixth Form College are committed to the principle of ‘growing their own’ and their approach to staff development has been recognised by their achieving the Investors in People Champion status. In the past year alone. The overwhelming majority of their 200+ staff completed a person QIP (Quality Improvement Project), 12 staff completed a Level 2 Counselling Award, 8 staff worked towards an MA in Leadership, 1 staff member completed Masters units, 2 staff worked towards their PGCE qualification, 8 staff achieved a PTLLS qualification (Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector), 1 staff member worked towards a DTLLS qualification, 1 staff member worked towards a Diploma in Marketing, 6 staff undertook an ‘Aspiring Senior Leaders’ course, 1 member of staff achieved her CIPD (Personnel) professional qualification. Dozens of staff took part in teaching and learning focus groups either within college or as part of their local collaborative partnership. Dozens more became members of internal working parties addressing key issues within college.

This is the first whole-staff survey Leyton Sixth Form College have undertaken in about five years and so the results are very important to them. It also comes at a time when they are celebrating the progress made by the college on lots of different levels and there is very much a sense that morale is high and staff are very positive about the future of the organisation. Despite this, they accept that they are not perfect and so the survey results will be used to explore any aspects of the organisation that staff have expressed dissatisfaction with and to act upon these to bring about improvements. They have worked hard to establish a culture where staff feel they can approach any manager about any concerns they may have, in the knowledge that their concerns will be listened to and taken seriously. Taking part in the Best Companies Survey is not intended to be a substitute for an effective and supportive organisational culture, but rather has provided an opportunity to formally canvass the whole-staff on a variety of employment issues. It will also be very useful to be able to benchmark their college against other similar organisations and to draw some comparisons from the survey findings. In the first instance, the results will be considered by their senior leadership team and then disseminated via their managers’group.