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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      string(5655) "(2011) Leading a self-improving school system, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Hargreaves, D. (2012a) A self-improving school system in international context, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Hargreaves, D. (2012b) A self-improving school system: towards maturity, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Higham, R. Hopkins, D. and Matthews, P. (2009) System leadership in practice, Bucks: Open University Press. ■ Hill, R. (2008) Chain reactions, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Hill, R., (2015) ‘The rise and rise of Multi-Academy Trusts’, blog http://roberthilleducationblog.com/ posted on 31.8.15 accessed 18.1.16 ■ Hill, R. Dunford, J. Parish, N. Rea, S. and Sandals, L. (2012) The growth of academy chains: implications for leaders and leadership, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ House of Commons Education Committee (2013) School Partnerships and Cooperation: Fourth Report of Session 2013–14, Volume I. ■ House of Commons Education Committee (2013) School Partnerships and Cooperation: Fourth Report of Session 2013–14, Volume I. ■ House of Commons Education Committee (2017) Multi-Academy Trusts: Seventh Report of Session 2016–17. Report, together with Formal Minutes Relating to the Report. [online]. London: TSO. ■ Hutchings, M. Greenwood, C. Hollingworth, S., Mansaray, A. Rose, A. with Minty, S. Glass, K. (2012) Evaluation of the City Challenge Programme, London Metropolitan University/Coffey International Development for the Department for Education (Ref: RR215). ■ Hutchings, M. & Francis, B. (2017) Chain Effects 2017: The impact of academy chains on low income students. London: Sutton Trust. ■ Institute for Government (2012) The development of quasi-markets in secondary education. London. Jensen B, Downing P, and Clark A, (2017) Preparing to Lead: Lessons in Principal Development from High-Performing Education Systems. Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy. ■ Kamp, A. (2013) Rethinking Learning Networks: Collaborative Possibilities for a Deleuzian Century, Peter Lang Publishers. ■ Kee and Wespeiser (2017) Academies and maintained schools: what do we know? Slough: NfER. Available at: https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/FFEE06/ [Accessed 10 September 2017]. ■ Lubienski, C. (2009) Do Quasi-markets Foster Innovation in Education? A Comparative Perspective, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 25, Paris: OECD Publishing.  ■ Matthews, P. and Berwick, G. (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. (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. ■ OECD (2011) PISA In Focus 2011/9 (October).OECD (2015) Education Policy Outlook 2015: Making Reforms Happen, Paris: OECD. ■ Ofsted (2010) Evaluation of London Challenge, Ref: 100192.Popp J, Milward B, MacKean G, Casebeer A, Lindstrom R, (2014) Inter-Organizational Networks: A Review of the Literature to Inform Practice, IBM Centre for The Business of Government ■ Provan, K., Kenis, P. (2011) Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness.  Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 18 (2): 229-252. ■ Rea, S. Hill, R. and Sandals, L. (2011) System leadership: does school-to-school support close the gap?, Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. ■ Rea, S. Hill, R. Dunford, J. (2013) Closing the gap: how system leaders and schools can work together, London: National College for Teaching and Leadership/Department for Education.  Robinson, S. (2012) School and System Leadership: Changing Roles for Primary Headteachers.  Bloomsbury: London. ■ Rudd, P. Poet, H. Featherstone, G. (2011) Evaluation of City Challenge Leadership Strategies: London Area Report, Slough: NFER. ■ Sandals, L. and Bryant, B. (2014) The evolving education system in England: a ‘temperature check’, London: Department for Education Research report. ■ Supovitz, J. (2014). Building a Lattice for School Leadership: The Top to Bottom Rethinking of Leadership Development in England. Research Report (#RR-83). Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania ■ Vangen S, and Huxham C, (2006) Achieving collaborative advantage: understanding the challenge and making it happen, Strategic Direction, Vol. 22 Issue: 2, pp.3-5. ■ Wheatley, M. and Frieze, D. (2010) Leadership in the Age of Complexity: From Hero to Host.  Resurgence Magazine, Winter 2011. ■ Wilkins, A. (2017) Rescaling the local: multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185."
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Leadership Development

System leadership and collaboration – a new skillset for leaders?

18 Apr 2018

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      string(5755) "negatively or negatively on theirschools. Middle/senior leaders in particular (64 per cent), just under half of headteachers (45 per cent) andjust over half of chairs of governors (54 per cent), also felt there would be a negative/moderately negativeimpact from fewer government-commissioned professional development programmes. The marketisation ofschool improvement programmes was also an issue.On the local authority, there was a significant phase difference. Among secondary school headteachers, 41per cent saw the changing role of their local authority having a positive impact on their school, while 49 percent thought the impact would be negative. Among primary headteachers, only 23 per cent were positiveand 72 per cent were negative.On funding more generally, two-thirds of headteachers were positive about the impact of the Pupil Premium,and interview and case study participants had started to notice the Pupil Premium’s redistributive effects.Unsurprisingly, schools serving a high proportion of students eligible for free school meals (FSM) saidthey had experienced an increase in funding. A number of schools, however, particularly those with lowerproportions of FSM-eligible students, said they had experienced a reduction in funding and had alreadymade staff redundancies in consecutive years. In part these decreases resulted from the end of a number ofinitiative-based funding streams.On approaches to managing policy change, four main clusters of headteachers emerged through a latentclass analysis (this searches for underlying types of individuals, known as latent classes, so that the keypatterns among responses can be revealed).— Just over a fifth of headteachers (22 per cent) were strongly positive about current policy and wereactively pursuing new autonomies and system leadership roles.— About a third (34 per cent) were more cautious about engaging with policy while being moderatelypositive about its potential impacts.— Another third (32 per cent) were less positive, more apprehensive and hesitant about engaging with newpolicy opportunities, especially around school autonomy.10 © National College for School Leadership— The smallest group, about 1 in 8 headteachers (12 per cent), viewed policy negatively and wererelatively sceptical about its intentions and potential impact.While there was a relatively even spread of headteachers (by school type, phase, Ofsted category andcontext/FSM band) across the four classes, there were more academy principals (both primary andsecondary) and headteachers of ‘outstanding’ secondary schools in the first cluster: those most positive aboutand actively engaged in the new opportunities created by policy.The qualitative data reinforced differences in terms of headteacher attitudes and sense of readiness tomeet policy change. Overall, partnership and collaboration were viewed most positively but reforms to theinspection framework and curriculum change were perceived more negatively.Current models of leadership and future challengesOn current models of school leadership, the vast majority of headteacher survey respondents reported beingthe sole headteacher of a single school (91 per cent). A further 7 per cent reported working as an executivehead of two or more schools. (The 2011 School Workforce Census recorded 410 such heads.) The majorityof headteachers worked with a single governing body (83 per cent), and 15 per cent worked within acollaborative governance arrangement, either as part of a hard federation (9 per cent), a soft federation (5per cent) or an academy chain (1 per cent).The average number of senior leaders serving in a school’s core SLT was four (ranging from 0 to 15members), with just under two-thirds, mostly primary schools, not having a bursar or school businessmanager currently on the leadership team. As well as staff on leadership scales as deputy or assistant heads,many SLTs included other teachers who were seen as key to improvements in teaching and learning, suchas subject leaders for core subjects or advanced skills teachers (ASTs). 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Leadership

Review of the school leadership landscape

6 Jul 2017

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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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Leadership Skills

Time for Leaders: Putting Leadership First In Education

17 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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Leadership

Collaborating at the Top: Leadership techniques for managing multiple schools

23 Jan 2019