System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

In this article, Toby Greany describes the development of school-toschool support, networks and partnerships, focussing in particular on recent developments in England. He explores the leadership practices associated with these and argues that school leaders must become adept at working in an environment that incentivises collaborative competition.

This 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:

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(2013) Teaching schools: first among equals?, Nottingham: National College for Teaching and Leadership. ■ Matthews P, and Headon M, (2015) Multiple Gains: an independent evaluation of Challenge Partners’ peer reviews of schools. London: IOE Press. ■ Mathews, P. and Hill, R. (2008) School leading schools: the power and potential of National Leaders of Education, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Mathews, P. and Hill, R. (2010) Schools leading schools ii: the growing impact of National Leaders of Education, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Muijs, D. 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Executive Leadership

System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

18 Apr 2018

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      string(5923) "Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, the Lithuanian system of education has seen major reforms in curriculum, school structures, testing of students’ achievement and the decentralization of governance. Education is one of the major priorities for further development, along with innovation and the knowledge economy. To fully embed these social changes, Lithuanian education needs to be radically reformed and given new objectives. Over the last three decades major changes have been implemented addressing the structure of the Lithuanian educational system; quality and the creation of the necessary conditions for social-pedagogical self-development and strengthening of relations between educational institutions. 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To do this the government proposed that strategic planning should be introduced at all levels (p 7) with a view towards community self-governance. When in place it should give increased openness and collaboration between schools and their communities. But, to do all of this there needs to be a change of understanding about the leadership of Lithuanian Schools and The Time for Leaders Project has provided that resolute focus.Time for Leaders projectThe national project Lyderių laikas: Time for Leaders (1) aimed to develop leadership capacity of all educators: teachers, formal leaders of school, municipality and state level and stakeholders (2). The project began in 2009 and has provided the opportunity to develop a variety of professional development opportunities: MA studies in educational leadership, long-term informal programmes on educational leadership, national and international study visits, short-term training programmes, group and individual coaching, and creative project-based work. As part of the project these opportunities were offered firstly to 15 out of 60 municipalities in Lithuania. At 2017 the new stage of the project was started involving the rest of 45 municipalities. 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Inclusion

Time for Leaders: Putting Leadership First In Education

17 Apr 2018

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      string(5892) "This report by the Future-Ready Skills Commission calls for the government to expand the entitlement to a first full Level 2 and 3 qualifications to all ages, including local flexibility to determine provision. Published in September, it contains nine policy recommendations designed to build an adult skills and training system better able to meet the needs of local economies, and future challenges and opportunities in the workplace.  The Future-Ready Skills Commission was launched in 2019 to undertake a review of the post-16 landscape in England as one of the most centralised systems in the UK and indeed the world. The review had an explicit focus on designing a blueprint for a devolved skills system – with the ability of local areas and regions to have the powers and funding to respond to what is needed in the local labour market is critical for the economic prosperity for all. Key recommendations of its final report are now to be adopted by government. This includes a universal entitlement to a first, fully-funded Level 3 qualification – or A-Level equivalent – in almost 400 courses to help adults gain in-demand skills.Mayoral Combined Authorities will play a central role in identifying the skills needed in their local labour market and delivering courses and training to make this happen.Currently, funding for a first Level 3 qualification is only available to those aged under 23. The government has announced that this entitlement is now extended to adults of all ages with be able to study to gain a first, fully funded Level 3 in qualifications that are valued by employers.Funding for the Level 3 adult offer will be delivered through the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) in non-devolved areas, and delivered through Mayoral Combined Authorities and the Greater London Authority, which will also be able to submit additional courses to the list where they are able to provide evidence that they should be funded.It follows the announcement in Autumn by the Prime Minister of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, to help people train and retrain at any stage in their lives with a flexible lifelong loan entitlement to four years of post-18 education.This closely mirrors the Future-Ready Skills Commission’s recommendation to universal skills entitlements from school-leaving to retirement, with a right to minimum qualification levels, and funding to support people’s ambitions. The Future-Ready Skills Commission is an independent, national commission supported by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and made up of experts and leading thinkers from business, education, local government and think tanks. The Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership and West Yorkshire Combined Authority have also agreed to implement key recommendations from the Future-Ready Skills Commission. The Commission’s findings will be used to inform the creation of the region’s new Employment and Skills Plan for 2021-25, as well as addressing digital skills needs in West Yorkshire.As the Combined Authority takes responsibility for West Yorkshire’s Adult Education Budget (AEB) from August 2021, it will expand the successful use of delivery agreements with FE colleges as recommended by the Commission, to make the skills system more responsive to local needs.The Commission’s findings have also been incorporated in the West Yorkshire Economic Recovery Plan to identify the priorities for employment and skills in the short, medium and long term.At the latest meeting of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, the region’s leaders agreed to use £13.5 million of funding secured through the West Yorkshire devolution deal to help over 10,000 people in the region, who have been made redundant or are at risk of redundancy, to build new skills and access training or find work, over the next two years.Key Points:10 things that need to change:Careers  information needs to be relevant to the local labour market and empower individuals to make informed decisions. 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Leadership

Future-Ready Skills Commission - a Blueprint for a Future-Ready Skills System

16 Dec 2020

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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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