Wolverhampton Grammar School

It's always nice for me to come back to Wolverhampton Grammar School. How do you think it benefits the students to have alumni back in school to work with them?

It's just amazing because they're always looking for different career options and different things that they can do in the future, and to see that somebody that has sat in their seats has gone on to do that is really inspirational. Whatever we do in school, we always have a little bit of a “careers” think as well. Ultimately, this is the business that we're in - preparing them for their futures. So they were really, really excited to see alumni on stage and to see that something like acting, which sometimes can be given a bit of bad press as a career, can actually be really fruitful, enjoyable and make a difference to people's lives as well. It's brilliant.

Are there any main benefits the school get from having outside visitors as a whole?

I think it just makes it that little bit more special. They see it as a treat and get quite excited about it. It's really nice that it's another way for them to learn that feels different, that stands out, and that is memorable as well. I'm in my third year here now and year 11 have just had a [Safe and Sound] performance today, but they remembered what they had in year 10. They're like “Oh, is this actor coming back?” or “What is it about this time?” The actors are brilliant at engaging with the children.

I think it's just a different medium to learn. At school you are being given a ton of information. They have six lessons a day and what we're asking them to remember is huge. Children everywhere, not just at WGS, they've got a lot of pressure. They're going home and then they're still not getting the break from information because it's been poured into them all the time through their phones and devices. So it's just nice to do something really practical with them which is engaging.

Today, when they saw the character of a Zak getting really heavy with his girlfriend and the abuse building, you could see they were looking at me as if to say, “Are you going to step in and do something about this?” They are so engrossed and that’s something that we can't provide in a lesson. For me, it brings it to life, they become really invested in the characters, which is outstanding for a 35-minute performance.

You've mentioned some already, but are there any other benefits from having Loudmouth specifically?

For me, because I plot the DfE requirements in terms of PSHE and sex education, what's really good about Loudmouth is it fits in with what I need. I can cover a lot of content in a Loudmouth performance. The children have one lesson a week here of wellbeing, which is sort of PSHE with bells on, it’s a very lovely version of PSHE. So, I know, ‘yeah, this is covered, and this is covered, and this is covered’ just through one performance. It's a really good use of time as well, as a teacher and as a head of department.

I'm interested in the impact of our programmes and, having had Loudmouth for a few years, are there any impacts that you think it has had, or that you hope it has had?

I'm always really impressed with how open the students are with their conversations and the questions that they ask. I'm a really open person but even for me, I sit there and I think, ‘Wow! To put your hand up in front of your whole year group and ask some of the really sensitive questions – that’s brave!’ and we've seen a lot of that. We had an inspection last year, for example, and the inspectors commented on how articulately the children expressed their views on things such as relationships and consent, and that's definitely partly attributed to Loudmouth, so I definitely thank Loudmouth for that. It's not unusual, we have continued conversations about all of these topics. What I want to get away from is where you have one lesson and then you don't talk about it again for six months or a year so for me, that's a real positive. 


Like today (because it's fresh on my mind) in Safe and Sound, one of the boys said to me, “Miss, Miss, has he got consent?” And I'm like, ‘well, there you go!’, they're using the correct language and they're aware of what they should be looking for. I'm always really proud of them. The other thing is, I can assess their knowledge because at the end the actors always say, “where would you go for help?”, “what would you do?” and it's a way that I can assess if it's actually getting through to them, what we're doing in school. So that's really nice as well. It’s another way of assessing their understanding, their knowledge, ‘are they applying things?’ When kids put a hand up and say, “oh, actually, you can contact Childline” - Childline hasn't been mentioned in that performance, so I know that at some point in school, maybe outside as well, they've got that information and it's there. We had your mental health performance [Talking Heads] and I think one of the kids mentioned Kooth because we'd had Kooth assemblies from our mental health lead as well, and so I was like, “Yes! They've remembered!” and it’s just making those links with what they're doing around school.

Circling back to something that you mentioned earlier, do you think there are any other secondary impacts of our visits? For example, ‘access to the arts’, ‘different arts careers that aren't film or TV’?

For sure, and I think particularly as you're alumni, that raised a lot of discussion afterwards. One of the biggest benefits is our relationships that we have with our alumni and that they come back and show the children what they're doing, and we do that as much as much as we can. We've got a lot of careers stuff generally but we don't want careers to be ‘a careers fair’ and then if you're off that day you never hear about careers ever again, or you're forced to do ‘a careers interview’ where you’re told “oh, you want to be an actor? Okay, no, pick a proper job.” We've had that in the past and we don't want that. We want the kids to soar and we want them to dream big and do things. Also, we’ve got two productions this year; Matilda and Great Expectations, so it's good they can get little tips, and the actors are always happy to stay back and have a chat. We had a couple of kids go to the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre as BBC Young Reporters and they interviewed a couple of people in the pantomime and they said “yeah, we're going to come back and we'll come and see you in Matilda” which is so cute. You're always welcome to come and see the kids in Matilda, that would be really lovely, they'd love that. You know, you never really leave WGS, right? 


Is there any benefit of a Loudmouth session engaging learners that learn in a visual way; being taught these topics in one setting and then having a chance to see it in action?

It brings it to life, doesn't it? And the beauty of the performance is that it feels more real to the children. Sometimes PSHE topics can be a bit lecture-y, like what you should do and what you shouldn't do and don't take drugs and don't drink too much alcohol and don't have sex until you're this age and don’t don’t don’t don’t. So it's nice through the performances they make their own minds up about things, as they can see the characters making the decisions. We do use a lot of case studies in lessons. But again, it's a piece of paper, isn't it? The performance is really good. It brings it to life. 


Are there any other barriers that schools might face when wanting to bring in companies like Loudmouth?

So, obviously cost is difficult. So not a lot can be done about that really. I'm not saying it's not worth of money, it is, but even as an independent school, there's always budget constraints. So value for money is really important. But I think for me more, Loudmouth is probably my biggest investment of my budget throughout the year.

For me, it's probably timings; I really need flexibility. So, for example, our lessons are 50 minutes. So for somebody that doesn't work in a school, they might think ‘well, we really need the hour’. We can't have more than 50 minutes. Another 10 minutes goes into another lesson, it causes havoc and mayhem. So being able to work within our time constraints is really important. And then, of course, generally I would say that 50 minutes to an hour is the maximum that I would want anyway. So I know that you do workshops that follow on and that kind of thing, but you're taking kids out of their lessons. So today, year 11, we’re just out of English. That's a big commitment for a school. They've got mocks after Christmas. We really don't want them out for more than one lesson. So we want value for money but we also want the time to be used really carefully and not to exceed a lesson. I've worked in other schools as well and it would be the same. There are other organizations, competitors of yours, but they want at least two hours and we haven't got that time commitment. Is there anything else we could offer to that would make it even more attractive for Loudmouth to become regular visitors?

One thing that I would say is that a lot of schools, not just us, we're an iPad school. 
So some organisations that come in do little live surveys and that kind of thing afterwards and you can get feedback straight away, which is really interesting. That would be amazing if we could do that, that would be unreal. Like ‘what should this character do next?’, alternate endings, that sort of thing would be really cool. There's a lot of schools that have devices as part of their learning so I think a use of technology would be interesting.

The other thing is that it would be nice to see some different themes in the performances, things that are more current. So I've seen there's been adaptations to certain performances, but for example Saltmine, they have new performances for the year. They've got one about AI and deep fakes and that kind of thing that's really, really attractive to us because that's very current. Whereas Loudmouth seem to me to be really good for the sexual stuff, RSE themes, like relationships, that kind of things. And I think that, absolutely, some of the different performances will touch on some of that, like the use of mobile phones or being controlling with technology or sending images. But it would be nice to have something bigger particularly for that theme. I mentioned earlier to the actors, it would be really good to have something about drugs. I don't know of anything in the area on drugs.

We noticed that you've made radio and TV appearances about PSHE and wellbeing. When you do those interviews, are there any particular approaches or messages that you always try to put across or that you think are a particularly important when talking about PSHE and wellbeing?

Number one - there was new [RSHE] guidance in 2020, also Covid hit in 2020. So it has been very difficult for schools to manage time and think how they're going to do this. And also, I wasn't originally trained as a teacher of this [PSHE], so training packages are really important for staff, making sure that they feel comfortable. Before we made the big changes with my appointment and the subsequent change to the timetable and how we taught the subject, if you talked to the students here they would say, ‘PSHE was taught by such-and-such teacher who really didn't want to be there, who was stood there with the condoms at the front of the lesson, just dying inside.’ If the teacher is not passionate about it there's really not point in them delivering it, so it deserves to be taught well. But to do that, when you used to be a teacher you were not taught any of these skills. Even now, they don’t teach about pastoral care. They teach you about safeguarding,100% they teach about safeguarding, but we're having a lot of conversations all the time with children and how powerful that is, actually. Because it doesn't matter how beautiful your school is or what amazing opportunities you have, if you you're in an abusive relationship or your parents' mental health is bad or all of these subsequent issues that can occur in life. If you haven't got the toolbox to deal with those or know where to go for support, it really doesn't matter because you won’t access education. And so we see it as not just a moral thing, to actually look after the children at this school and not just a tick’box exercise of all the DfE says we need to do. We do it because, ultimately, it will impact their achievement and I think that that's a really strong message. I've also written a book that's going to be published. It's written but it’s been delayed. My publisher is the education part of Houghtons, but it's been delayed because, with the change of governments, they're reviewing the guidance at the moment so we can't publish.

If you are interested in booking Loudmouth into your school then call 0121 446 4880 or email enquiry@loudmouh.co.uk