Giggleswick School in Yorkshire redefines education by focusing on both academics and personal development #partnercontent
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00:00Just to start with, could you introduce yourself and sort of give me a bit of your background
00:04and the background of Giggleswick? My name's Sam Hart. I've been headmaster of Giggleswick
00:09School since 2022. I started off in a very different career. So I was a military helicopter
00:16pilot for the first 12 years of my life, serving with the Army Air Corps. And I left the military
00:22in 2008 and became a physics teacher at Winchester College. And then during my time,
00:28I had quite a mixed bag where I was director of sport. I was head of the combined cadet
00:33force. I was a boarding house master whilst teaching my main subject of physics. And then
00:40from there, I moved to Giggleswick and I found this wonderful school in North Yorkshire that
00:46was really aligned with me in the sense that it had the academic purpose, but actually
00:49it had this real breadth of the co-curricular programme that I've been able to subsequently
00:53put a lot of effort into shaping and directing further to the maximum benefit of the pupils.
00:58And as I say, I've been headmaster for the last three and a bit of years.
01:02Lovely. Well, let's touch on that co-curricular programme. And can you just give me a bit
01:06more information about what students could expect from that?
01:09So we've got the kind of the core bits of the programme that I think you'd expect everywhere.
01:14But we also have this thing called CASE, which is Creative Active Service Enrichment.
01:17And that runs four afternoons a week. And all of the pupils sign up for four clubs in their
01:23younger years and three clubs in the sixth form. You could be doing anything from crochet club
01:27through to kayaking, through to cooking, through to, there's even a case at the moment where
01:33they're redeveloping the mountain biking track. The pupils see it as an enjoyable outlet in
01:37their day, but I see it as a mechanism for developing the skills that they'll need later on in life.
01:43So, you know, problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, communication, empathy,
01:48all those sorts of things that come through doing that kind of that broad co-curricular.
01:52And the great thing about it is that if you're a pupil who has an ambition and direction,
01:57you can use it to shape your direction. So if you are really keen on, for example,
02:03going to study medicine, you can choose the enrichment activities that support the pathway
02:07towards medicine. And you can do some service options, perhaps with our youngest children,
02:12as well as external volunteering at other times in the week to develop that, that empathy,
02:16that understanding, that communication. If you're not somebody who knows the direction you
02:20specifically want to go in, it might offer you the opportunity to find that direction,
02:25to find things you really enjoy, to then work out perhaps where you want to look in the future.
02:29Where do I sign up? That's brilliant. And you sort of mentioned the sort of younger students. So
02:36how do you support the sort of transition from primary school into not just a high school,
02:42but a boarding school setting?
02:44We have a separate house for our seven and eight pupils. So it's a co-ed boarding house. They have
02:50different areas of the house where the boarders live. It's a slight middle ground between the
02:54prep school and when they move into senior schools, when they move into senior houses,
02:57and the senior houses have pupils ranging from year nine to 13. But in that two year period,
03:02we're able to support them, really develop the foundations that they need for the GCSE learning,
03:09gently introduce them to the senior houses by enabling activities. So for example, when you join the
03:14seven and eight house, you join as a member of Paley or Knoll or Morrison, which is one of the
03:21senior houses. So when we do things like sports day, they'll go up and they'll join all the older
03:25pupils. They'll have time with them. They'll compete for their senior house. So you build those
03:30relationships in seven and eight ready to move into nine, 10. And that works very, very nicely.
03:35Looking at the sort of nitty gritty aspects of the actual boarding, what could students expect in
03:40terms of like living quarters and who they're rooming with and whatnot? So the living quarters
03:45are, they're modernised, they're nice. They're very much like you'd expect, I suppose, in any
03:52boarding house. We've got really nice communal spaces where they come together. We've got areas
03:58where they can, you know, kind of relax and watch the TV. And that happens across all the houses.
04:03And then off from there, you've got all the dormitories. I think the key thing with boarding is it's about
04:08building relationships. And that's building relationships with your peers, but also with
04:12the staff. And the central person in their life would be the housemaster or housemistress who
04:17looks after their house. And they get to know them really well. And they'd be the kind of person that
04:20they'd be able to go and engage with on anything. And what I discovered as a housemaster is, you know,
04:25if you know things, you can sort things out. And therefore, we really encourage the pupils to have the
04:29confidence to come and talk to their house staff, because once a problem's known, a problem can be dealt
04:33with. And it could be something really small, but if you don't deal with it, it can escalate.
04:37So we're really focused on building those relationships, supporting all of the housemaster
04:43and housemistress. There are either one or two other members of resident staff in the boarding
04:48house. That depends which boarding house it is in the structure of the house. But those other
04:52resident staff, similarly to the housemaster and housemistress, will get to know the pupils
04:56really well. And there's somebody else they can go and talk to. And sometimes you'll find that
04:59pupils are really comfortable talking to one member of staff about some things and a different member
05:03of staff about different things. And I certainly found that with my matron and myself when I was
05:07a boarding housemaster. And then on top of that, every house has a team of tutors. And those
05:13tutors will very specifically look after a group of pupils from within the house. They'll spend two
05:19periods of time with them each week, as well as their duty evening when they're in the house.
05:22So they get a real good chance to know those individual pupils really well. And one of the things
05:27I find really interesting as a headmaster is that when I talk to tutors, sometimes about their
05:31individual tutees, they're really insightful, they really understand and they get them,
05:35they understand where they want to go. And therefore, they're really well placed to advise
05:37and support them as they go through their learning journey. So that, I think, is kind of the most
05:43important bit is those relationships. Now, when they come in, we work really hard on fostering
05:48the friendships within their peer group, but also the peer groups ahead and behind them.
05:53The sixth formers in the house have a real responsibility in the senior houses for the community,
05:58for looking after everybody, for being a compassionate voice that the younger pupils can talk
06:03to constantly, our sixth formers are constantly talking to younger pupils, and then they can go
06:09back and talk to the house staff about things they're picking up on or ideas they've got or ways
06:14that we might be able to better support somebody. So it really is about, you join a kind of thriving
06:19little community within the bigger school community.
06:23Sounds like a really supportive environment. Have you got any Manx students at Gigglesworth?
06:28We do, yeah. We've had a number over the years. The one that springs most obviously to mind at the
06:33moment is my head girl, who came over for her sixth form, has absolutely thrived, has been incredibly
06:40impressive and was chosen to be the head of school this year. And she's got a very good friend in her
06:46year group who also came over from the Isle of Man. They've been a real positive addition to the school.
06:51I can think of pupils in years 10 and year 8, who also come from the Isle of Man, and their parents
06:59pop over reasonably regularly and come and see them in school.
07:04And if someone is watching this interview and they're kind of on the fence, like it's something
07:08they might want to try, but they're unsure as to sort of where to begin, what advice would you give
07:13to those students or parents?
07:15So my advice would be get in touch. It's very easy for us to speak to you online these days.
07:21So allow you to ask any specific questions you've got or anything you want to understand.
07:27From there, then it is very manageable to set up a visit. And during that visit, they would have a
07:33conversation with me. They would meet one of the housemasters or housemistresses. They get a good tour
07:39of the campus and a chance to chat to some of our pupils. And therefore, we give them a really good
07:43insight into the community we are, the opportunities we offer, but also most importantly, a chance to chat
07:49to some of our pupils who will give you that real first-hand experience and show you how they've
07:53used that strong academic programme plus the border co-curricular to shape their time at the school.
08:00Well, those are all the questions I've got, but is there anything else you would like to talk about?
08:03We took a very different approach to VAT than a lot of schools.
08:08We decided that actually we wanted to be an affordable boarding school that offered an outstanding programme.
08:17So we did a good deal of work to work out which levers we could pull to make the savings to make sure
08:22that our pupils still had an outstanding, broad and exciting experience, but we didn't pass the cost
08:28on to parents. And we've now been successfully running with that model for two terms.
08:34Our parents are brought into it. The programme is working extremely well.
08:38And I think it was a sensible decision. So I think we've done a lot to make sure that we have remained
08:45as affordable as possible to encourage parents to come and have a look and see what our offering is.
08:50I think the second thing really is the academic side. For the last two years, our academic results have increased
08:57each year. We have a range of pupils, a range of abilities in the school, and therefore, really for us,
09:02it's about the value we add to each pupil. When we look at our kind of A-level and B-tech results
09:07from last year, so for our sixth form, we managed to achieve a 0.7 value added for each pupil,
09:12which is, you know, pushing towards a grade of added value per child, which I think was really positive.
09:18So we put a lot of emphasis on making sure that every pupil who leaves here has the academic qualifications
09:24they need to follow their pathway, because I think everybody wants to do something different,
09:28that we've got to support them to do a range of things, but also those broader skills.
09:33And I think one of the things that's reflected that this year is, and last year, is we've had some
09:37really outstanding success with things like degree apprenticeships. So last year, we had Land Rover,
09:44Jaguar, BAE Systems, and I'll stop my home ahead. What's the other one? But anyway, this year,
09:51we've already got Amazon looking at another Land Rover, Jaguar one, hopefully we've got ones with
09:56chartered surveyors, et cetera. So I think that's a really important part where you're taking the
10:00breadth of experience you gained from the sixth form to be able to channel it into very,
10:04following very specific directions post-school.
10:06Amazing.
10:07Amazing.