In her youth, Nicola Smith was a budding young musician and went on to study theatre and music technology before becoming a teacher.
For 20 years, she worked in the maintained sector, working with some of the most deprived children in the country, taking leadership roles with an emphasis on safeguarding work.
So it is perhaps not surprising, that when the job of vice-principal came up at the world-renowned Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester in 2018, she saw it as a chance to combine these interests.
Chetham’s had hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2013, as the scandal around historic child sex abuse at the school came to a head. The boarding school has worked tirelessly since then to both ensure such abuse could not happen again and to restore its reputation.
Two years ago, Smith was made joint principal of the school taking on the critical task of leading safeguarding, pastoral and wellbeing staff with musical director Tom Redmond leading on artistic matters. It is the first time the school has been run under a joint principal model but Smith believes “two heads are definitely better than one” given the complexity of Chetham’s operation.
“Our ethos has developed significantly, we talk a lot about children are children first.”
Her move highlights how seriously the school takes its role of looking after the children in its care, who are all promising and talented young musicians. Expectations of adults around them can sometimes be high.
She says: “It’s fair to say that our ethos has developed significantly, we talk a lot about children are children first.
“I think when people forget that they are children and fail to put the child first then there is a danger that decisions can be made around the child that can be driven in a way that is unhealthy.
“It’s important that they have fun and realise that music is a vital part of their curriculum and life but it isn’t the be all and end all.”
She stresses the importance of outside interests, a rounded education and the chance to develop other skills, such as laying a campfire in Scouts.
The move into the independent sector has been an interesting challenge, she says, and she appreciates the value independent schools tend to place on staff, the freedom and flexibility with the curriculum and the “unique environment” at Chetham’s.
“Independent schools’ reputations are so hard won and so easy to lose this can ‘muddy the water’ in terms of safeguarding.”
But in terms of safeguarding, she has noticed room for improvement in the independent sector more generally, in terms of some schools’ unwillingness to reach out for support from local authorities and services on behalf of their children.
Independent schools’ reputations are so hard won and easy to lose this can “muddy the water” in terms of safeguarding, she says, stressing this was not the case for Chetham’s because it had already been “forced to face the past with brutal honesty”.
She says: “Perhaps a school might not reach out in a way that they could do to third sector organisations, to working with their local authority in the way that they could, because I think there is that fear of whatever has happened getting out.
“But I don’t come from that world, I come from a world where most schools recognise they can’t fix every issue around every child and they use external support whether that’s from the doctor, the GP, CAMHS, drug and alcohol teams.”
But she appreciates it cannot always be easy for independent schools to access local services, even if they want to. It may have been easier for Chetham’s to forge links, she adds, because they are part-funded by the Government’s Music and Dance Scheme.
She says: “You do have to go out though and be a little bit bold and often make the case for why your school should be included…there were conversations that I had around funding but fundamentally the argument that we come back to is that when these children are in this boarding school they are the largest group of children in the centre of Manchster, they are Manchester children.”
“Schools need to give young people knowledge about how to handle the world that they inhabit, not the one we inhabit.”
So Smith works daily to ensure that safeguarding at Chetham’s is beyond reproach and that children are fully supported in terms of their wellbeing. But what new challenges lie ahead for schools in these respects?
The everchanging nature of safeguarding, she says, is a key concern.
She says: “The way that children communicate with one another has completely and utterly changed, and the way that people have access to children through their communication devices has completely changed.
Much of what schools need to do is inform young people, give them knowledge about how to handle the world that they inhabit, not the one that we inhabit which is a very different thing. The way I use social media is nothing like a 16-year-old child would do.”
She is also concerned that the polarisation of debates and discussions in wider society may make children afraid to ask questions, for example around gender or consent issues, out of fear of being labelled prejudiced in some way.
School should be “a safe space for honest conversation without children fearing they’re getting it wrong, or getting it wrong and being allowed to change your mind,” she says.
There was an important training opportunity for teachers in this regard, she says, as not all staff feel confident bracing these issues.
“School should be a safe space for honest conversation without children fearing they’re getting it wrong.”
“We worry so much around that that we don’t actually have the conversation,” she says.
This challenge aside, Smith is extremely pleased with the progress Chetham’s is making in terms of increasing diversity and lifting the barriers for talented children to develop musically. Ninety per cent of pupils receive some sort of support, and the school’s outreach schemes reach thousands of children.
She says: “Children can come not on their ability to pay but on their musical ability and that then opens up a real diversity of backgrounds, of ethnicity, of nationality and it makes it a very very vibrant place.
“Everybody is looking at their diversity and inclusion agenda for schools and that is something that for us is a real strength.”
