Dear Colleagues,

My time in school this week has been at Sherford Vale, one of our larger primaries, talking school improvement with the head and our school improvement team. Between us we concocted a pilot project on lesson construction using a combination of people and AI, and I am very pleased to be working alongside a high-performing primary to pilot the effective use of AI for teachers, teaching assistants and admin support.

We are after two things. The first is to use AI as an expert alongside us. It has gained real capability in the last six months or so and has started to shed the hallucinations that marked its early days, to the point where a correctly configured agent can be an effective critical friend, almost like coaching, in a way that lets you develop your own thinking further. So the first side of the pilot is joint planning with staff, always remembering that teachers are the experts and that we never hand off control. There is scope for careful use of AI to improve almost every document we would ever work on. The second half is personal productivity and saving time. I have realised, with a sense of slight guilt, that I am now achieving what they call return on investment. It has taken a while. The technology has only just become good enough to save me more time than it costs me.

The big question is not about saving time. It is what you do with the time. This week, while my papers and research and the other bits and pieces every CEO has to do were being prepared by various agents, doing the first 70 or 80% so that I can apply my own judgement to finishing them, I took the opportunity to meet individually with a number of colleagues I would not otherwise have spent time with. That has been a massive privilege: to find out, without being as rushed as I have been, what makes them tick professionally and, where they chose to share it, a little about their lives outside work. It felt like they appreciated the time too. That is the heart of what we do with the hours the machines give back: spend them connecting with people on a human level, which no machine will ever accomplish, though machines might buy us the opportunity. I do still feel guilty about it. I have worked in education for 31 years now and I am slightly institutionalised, so any moment not focused on what I would call work makes me uneasy. It might well be time to lean into my own family a little more, and pay a little more attention to my wife and four children.

I can't have that and keep it to myself. I owe it to the staff who work in our organisation, and through them to the young people we serve, so I am doubling down on making sure all of our staff have access to useful, safe, governed and helpful AI, in a non-threatening way, that can give them some of their own lives back in the way it has for me, starting at Sherford Vale.

Callington's small, rural sixth form had good news in the DfE destinations data released yesterday: 53.8% of its Level 3 leavers went on to higher education, the second-highest rate of any WeST sixth form and well above the Cornwall figure of 40.2%, the South West at 38.5% and the national figure of 50.4%, and it does that with an inclusive intake. Ivybridge has been nominated for the Character Education Quality Mark Plus. The lead assessor, Gary Lewis, picked out the "my sentence" initiative, which has students and staff reflecting constantly on their aspirations and life goals, and students' comments that "all teachers will go the extra mile to provide support and guidance". The college thanked Charlotte Hanton and Nichola Offer in particular, and it is working towards becoming a Character Education Hub for the South West. I was at Ivybridge myself with Alison Evans, chair of the Westcountry Community Council, to look at the plans for the new building; South West Norse has produced a video of them, which is on the college website.

Twenty of Plymstock's A level biologists spent a day at St George's House Field Centre in Georgeham, North Devon, learning about zonation on the rocky shore and surveying Lee Bay with quadrats. Coombe Dean's lighthouse, made by students for St Luke's Guiding Lights project and on display at The Box for several months, is back and has taken pride of place in the school reception. Coombe Dean's latest Students of the Week were nominated by teachers and support staff largely for kindness, in the middle of the school's Positive Presence Fortnight, and each collected a certificate and a chocolate reward in Post 16. Eggbuckland's Year 11 to 13 mocks start today and run for two weeks, so good luck to them.

Glen Park welcomed Lisa from Plympton Library back into assembly to hand out 61 Summer Reading Challenge certificates. Those 61 children helped Plympton Library to second place in the league table of Plymouth libraries this summer. At Oreston, Year 3 arrived at the gate dressed as Egyptians for a day with Clive Pigg, the school raised £123 for Young Minds by wearing yellow on World Mental Health Day, and the newly elected School Council held its first meeting, with Children in Need, Anti-Bullying Week and Christmas charities on the agenda. The staff, meanwhile, are part way through a game of Oreston Traitors, and so far no traitors have been caught. 

Woodford's Anti-Bullying Ambassadors have been out on the playground at lunchtimes, offering younger children a friendly face and helping to settle minor worries. Woodlands Park has opened applications for Year 5 and 6 pupils to become Librarians, Lunch Club Leaders, Play Leaders and Peer Mentors, and its Year 5 and 6 have been to Morwellham Quay to see the Victorian world of Street Child for themselves. The school's Poppies group supports its service families, and Foxes class spent an afternoon in the Wild Tribe area learning to build and light a fire with cotton wool, Vaseline, sticks and flints.

Next week I begin with a visit to Ugborough Primary School, which I am looking forward to a great deal, and then go straight from one extreme to the other into a trust board meeting, where I will no doubt have my feet held closely to the fire on the proper expenditure of public money, the education of young people, and the moves our trust should be making, and is making, towards WeST 2030.

Warm regards,
Nat Parnell
CEO

Optimistic October