Leadership

Analysing The ‘Self-Improving School-Led System’ Agenda In England And The Implications For Schools

This NFER report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, focuses on the concept of the self-improving system and addresses the different forms and levels of accountability, collaboration, competition, system incentives and constraints within the parameters of autonomy. Fundamentally, it asks whether the English education system is self-improving and analyses those elements that facilitate or impede this intention.

The four-year study evaluated the government’s ‘self-improving school-led system’ (SISS), which has become an overarching narrative for education policy since 2010, making schools more autonomous and accountable for their own improvement.

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      string(6004) "IntroductionThis article explores the development of school to school support and partnerships in England.  These partnerships have become a defining feature of what the Government calls the ‘self-improving, school-led’ system (DfE, 2010; Sandals and Bryant, 2014).  Most schools engage in partnerships that are informal and emergent, based on shared interests, concerns, or simply personal relationships.  Even partnerships that do have a more formal basis face sometimes fraught political and inter-personal adaptive challenges (Kamp, 2013).  The focus here, however, is on more formal arrangements that are structured through a policy-driven process.  These generally fall into one of the following non-mutually exclusive categories:  structural governance models, such as multi-academy trusts/academy chains and federations; designations based on formal criteria, such as National Leaders of Education (NLEs) and Teaching Schools; role related partnerships, such as where an 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Executive Leadership

System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

18 Apr 2018

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Head oversees two or more schools (but not in a formal federation).  Key to this development has been the emergence of a cadre of what are called ‘system leaders’, broadly defined as leaders who work beyond their immediate school to support the improvement of the wider system (Fullan, 2005).  The need for such lateral school-to-school partnerships has become apparent in the face of evidence that neither top-down centrally imposed change, nor pure competition and marketization can achieve sustained improvement across school systems (see the article by Greany and Earley which is also in this issue).  Instead, the aim has been to ask school system leaders to work together in ways which transfer knowledge, expertise and capacity within and between schools, so that all schools improve and all children achieve their potential.  There is emerging evidence that such models can prove effective in addressing underperformance and improving outcomes, in particular in some of the most challenging 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Executive Leadership

System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

16 Apr 2018

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      string(3443) "interviewees welcomed the diversity of such groupings and suggested that it reflected ‘the way the world of education is’ (to quote one primary head teacher). Others felt that MATs would become the norm and a minority felt that completely new groupings would inevitably be created. Several leaders noted that while collaboration between schools was preferable to competition, there could be a time when competition between the collaborative groups itself became intense—indeed, some leaders felt that this had already begun.The challenge of ensuring effective accountability for how schools and their leaders perform remains, partly perhaps as part of the ongoing debate in the English education system about the heavy emphasis on measurable outcomes (tests and exams). We see this as linked to the degree of autonomy given to leaders and schools within groupings, as noted earlier. A quote from one principal of a school within a federation seemed to suggest a desirable way forward:‘I feel it’s very simple here—we are all equally accountable to each other in the group. If one fails, we all fail and so we all need to help each other’. ConclusionA final thought is that, while collaboration per se cannot be seen as any kind of panacea for improvement,3 we believe that what the most effective models of collaborative practice have in common is the capacity for those involved to learn from each other.4 This is as true of leaders as anyone else, but we would maintain that the best school leaders and indeed the best teachers have always been those who are always learning themselves. This feature of leadership is as true of collaborative school leaders as it is of any other school leader.  Collaborative School Leadership: Managing a Group of Schools by David Middlewood, Ian Abbot and Sue Robinson was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018.Find out more https://bloomsbury.com/collaborative-school-leadership-9781350009134/ and save 30% when you order a copy using discount code SLT2018.David Middlewood was a head teacher in England for nine years before working for three universities. He has published more than twenty books and researched in various countries across three continents.Ian Abbott was Director of the Centre for Educational Studies at Warwick University where he is still based for his research. He has published and researched widely on educational policy and CPD, both in UK and overseas.Sue Robinson was, until recently, Development Director of a major Educational Trust, is an associate tutor of Warwick University and has published a book on System Leadership.  Notes1	 Greaney, T. (2015). The self-improving school-led system in England: A review of evidence and thinking, EMAL 43(2), 222–241.2	 Fink, D. (2005). Leadership for mortals. London: Paul Chapman.3	 Muijs, D. (2015). Improving schools through collaboration: A mixed methods study of school-to-school partnerships in the primary sector. Oxford Review of Education, 41(5) 563–586.4	 Middlewood, D., Abbott, I., Netshandema, V. and Whitehead, P. (2017). Collaborative school leadership: The more heads the better. In Miller, P. (ed) Cultures of educational leadership: Global and international responses. London: Springer."
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Executive Leadership

Collaborating at the Top: Leadership techniques for managing multiple schools

23 Jan 2019

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      string(5859) "Leadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.WHOLE SYSTEM REFORM: ENGLAND’SSCHOOLS AND THE MIDDLE TIERKeywordsSystem reform,schools, middletier, regionalschoolscommissioners,high standards,fragmentedschools,accountability.SummaryThis IPPR report makes the case for appointing regional schools commissioners, responsiblefor commissioning schools and ensuring high standards, as a means of making theincreasingly fragmented schools system better coordinated and more accountable.The recent expansion in the number of free schools and academies means that the majority ofsecondary schools, and a significant number of primary schools, will operate outside of local authoritystructures by May 2015. While both this influx of new actors and the greater autonomy on hasgenerally been a force for good, a number of cracks are beginning to show in the school system,which is becoming increasingly fragmented.Poor performance among some academy chains often goes undetected for too long, and someacademy schools have become isolated from networks of support.This paper makes the case for locally appointed schools commissioners at the city- and county-regional level, responsible for commissioning and ensuring high standards at all schools in theirareas. This reform would keep schools in the driving seat in terms of raising standards, while creatinga better managed system at the local level that ensures that local needs are met. It would mean thatdecisions concerning the opening and closing of schools would take place in a transparent fashion,and that all schools work under a common framework and are accountable to local people for theoutcomes they achieve.Main Points:The rapid spread of academies and free schools has created a more fragmented school system, withcracks starting to appear in two areas: commissioning and school improvement.On commissioning, a number of gaps have emerged:■ Place planning has not been adequate, and this has led to a mismatch between supply anddemand in many areas. The reasons for this are because popular academies cannot be requiredto expand, free schools have been established in areas where there is already a surplus ofplaces, there is little local strategic planning of post-16 provision, and local authorities’ capacity tocarry out functions such as data analysis has been eroded due to funding cuts.■ There has been inadequate enforcement of quality assurance for new providers. The Al-MadinahSchool, the Kings Science Academy and the Discovery New School have all hit the headlines forWeek Commencing 20th October 2014http://www.ippr.org/assets/media/publications/pdf/Whole-system%20reform_Sept2014.pdfhttp://www.ippr.org/assets/media/publications/pdf/Whole-system%20reform_Sept2014.pdfhttps://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/359483/DFE-RR286_-_Are_free_schools_using_innovative_approaches.pdfLeadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.poor provision shortly after receiving government approval to open.■ The centralised process for appointing academy and free schools providers lacks transparency.■ There are concerns about value for money, as the government has tried to rapidly increase freeschool numbers.■ There are concerns that children with special educational needs are losing out, particularlybecause of the way in which some schools deploy covert selection, and because individualschools are often not best placed to commission specialist services.■ Too many schools are cut off from wider networks of support.■ There is a lack of local oversight of school performance. Even good schools need regular checksand challenges to help spot problems early and drive improvement. When these checks andchallenges are not in place there is a danger that schools can become complacent, and ‘coast’with mediocre results.A new middle tier is required if we are to build a self-improving school system. This paperrecommends the creation of locally accountable school commissioners, based on city-regional orcounty-regional areas.School commissioners should have the following responsibilities and powers:■ Running competitions for new school providers, based on clear national guidance, to ensure thatthe process is fair for different types of provider.■ Broker a change of provider where a school consistently falls below the national floor target. Theywould have a duty to consult local parents and follow a transparent appointment process.■ Renew the funding agreements of existing academies once they end.■ The power to force schools to expand to meet local demand.■ Decommissioning schools where they are no longer viable.■ In future, take on the commissioning of 16–18 provision across their area, working in partnershipswith local authorities, colleges and LEPs.■ Brokering collaboration by ensuring that every school is part of a school-led improvementpartnership or chain.■ Tracking performance and gathering local intelligence in order to identify and challenge schoolsthat need to improve. They would be required to report on performance to central government, aswell as local authority scrutiny boards.Leadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries"
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Leadership

Whole System Reform: England’s Schools And The Middle Tier

16 Oct 2014