futures thinking in action
Next Practice in System Leadership
Valerie Hannon
Director, The Innovation Unit
OECD/Japan seminar, Hiroshima
November 2006
1
Some initiating questions …
1. How to bring insights from trend analysis and
futures thinking to support innovation in
leadership and governance, which might
impact upon the recruitment challenge?
2. How do you move from ‘best practices’ –
sharing current knowledge – to ‘next practices’
– orchestrating new ways of working, which
can impact upon policy?
2
Many headteachers are nearing retirement age and
the challenge will be most acute in 2009-2011
Age profile of teachers: maintained mainstream schools
2006
20,000
2016
18,000
16,000
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65
Source: DfES Analytical Services Teacher Flows Presentation 2002
3
At current rates, only a small portion of middle leaders
will become headteachers
PRELIMINARY:
CURRENTLY UNDER DISCUSSION
100
Middle
Leaders
10 Head
Teachers
Convert
Graduate
Ambition
84% of
candidates
graduate
28% of middle
leaders plan
to take NPQH
43% of NPQH
graduates are
head teachers
within 5 years
Source: MORI “State of School Leadership” Survey Results (RR633) 2005; NCSL research (not in public domain)
4
Other developed
countries face similar
challenges
England
Germany*
France
Canada**
U.S.
New Zealand
Australia
Sweden
Scotland
Netherlands
% 25
20
15
Opportunity
for sharing
knowledge
10
5
0
25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59
60+
* 2 largest states
** Ontario
Source: DfES Analytical Services Teacher Flows Presentation 2002; US Department of Education; National Centre for Education statistics;
Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) 1999–2000; Australia Dept Education Science & Training-Government Schools Staffing Survey
2004; German state statistics offices; France Ministry for National Education; Scotland national statistics, Statistics Sweden, SBO
Yearbook, New Zealand Ministry of Education, Statistics Canada
5
Why Next Practice?
Good / best practice asks: what is working?
Next Practice asks what could work – more powerfully?
Addresses pressing national issues
6
The Innovation Unit Model
(not a linear process!)
STEP 1
Needs Analysis
STEP 4
Creative &
Generative
STEP 2
Horizon
Scanning
STEP 5
Field Trials
STEP 3
Mobilisation
Scale Up Project
Effective
mechanisms to
transfer practice
(work already
commissioned by
Innovation Unit and
underway)
Scale Up
7
What do we mean by Next Practice?
• Next Practice:
– is aware of conventional ‘good’ practice, its strengths and limitations;
and explicitly sets out to take it to a quite new level or disrupt,
profoundly evolve, or revolutionise it
– by implication it is conducted by very able, informed practitioners
– is located in an environment scanning, futures-informed ethos;
seeking out alternative expert perspectives
– is directed at serious, contemporary problems
– is not (yet) officially sanctioned or endorsed; and therefore does
entail some risk.
8
Why ‘system leadership’? - the drivers
•Support for schools causing concern
•Spread high quality leadership across primary schools
•Deliver ECM ‘five outcomes’
•Deliver ‘all-age’ learning
•Develop 14-19 curriculum provision
•Develop ‘whole town’ services
•Deliver shared services more efficiently
•Resolve headteacher succession issues
How has thinking about ‘next practice’ advanced?
9
The ‘offer’ to 16 identified field trials
• Access to a wider ideas pool (through tools, events and online)
• Access to practice of interest
• Creative space (to incubate ideas)
• Safer space (to legitimate experimentation)
• Obstacle removal (e.g. Power to Innovate)
• Social capital and connection (between schools and beyond)
• Gateway to Departmental Teams
• Confidence and moral support
• Resourcing to support the change and development process
• Real time learning and enquiry support
• Co-design of evaluation
10
Every Child
Matters
Groups of
Schools
14-19
Other than
School
11
Field Trials – Example 1
A cross-phase collaborative of 5 schools
seeks to deliver integrated services by
forming a hard federation with one governing
body drawn from multiple services –
including parents and pupils. An overall
Executive Director will be supported by five
Directors who lead on Community, Inclusion,
Teaching and Learning, Business Strategy
and Pupil Involvement and Choice. All senior
personnel work across all institutions.
Holistic approaches to
multi-service delivery
Enabling personalised
& extended
opportunities for 14-19
education
‘Chain’, ‘franchises’,
developed federations
or formal networks of
schools
12
Learning taking place
outside formal
institutions
(‘not
school’)
Field Trials – Example 2
Strategic leadership for a federation of 6
secondary schools is offered by an Executive
Federation Principal, who does not have
headship responsibility in any of the schools
and may not be educationalist. Heads of the 6
schools take overall responsibility for a key area
across all the federation schools: e.g.
attendance, CPD, 14-19, curriculum
development, behaviour, student voice etc An
Executive Board is established which holds all
heads to account for their federated leadership.
Holistic approaches to
multi-service delivery
Enabling personalised
& extended
opportunities for 14-19
education
‘Chain’, ‘franchises’,
developed federations
or formal networks of
schools
13
Learning taking place
outside formal
institutions
(‘not
school’)
Field Trials – Example 3
A cross-phase partnership of 7 schools wishes to
evolve ‘not school’ provision for all their students
governed by a Strategic Board. All students
experience some of their learning within this
personalised, ‘not school’, community-based
provision – some in workplaces, community and
voluntary organisations, or at home online.
Leadership of the ‘not school’ provision is through
the Strategic Board made up from three
headteachers and a number of expert, not school
educators with experience of home schooling, elearning and community placements.
Holistic approaches to
multi-service delivery
Enabling personalised
& extended
opportunities for 14-19
education
‘Chain’, ‘franchises’,
developed federations
or formal networks of
schools
14
Learning taking place
outside formal
institutions
(‘not
school’)
Field Trials – Example 4
By establishing a Trust (a commissioning agency),
a group of five urban secondary schools seek to
offer coherent and highly personalised 14-19
provision for all their students. The headteachers
agree to hand over responsibility for 14-19
students to the Trust. At 14, students become the
full responsibility of the Trust, which designs and
commissions, from the schools and other
providers, a 14-19 offer on behalf of the students.
The students become clients of the agency. All
resources follow the student and go to the agency.
The leadership of 14-19 provision becomes the role
of a Strategic Group of the Trust (the heads, FE,
LSC, Business representatives)..
Holistic approaches to
multi-service delivery
Enabling personalised
& extended
opportunities for 14-19
education
‘Chain’, ‘franchises’,
developed federations
or formal networks of
schools
15
Learning taking place
outside formal
institutions
(‘not
school’)
16
New Tool
Around system leadership
18
The project trajectory….
• 16 field trials running until March 2008
• Continuous development through incubation and
acceleration
• Knowledge management techniques to surface
and share learning
• Lateral learning through a community of interest
• Policy engagement, use of Power to Innovate.
19