Do Sweat the Small Stuff
A Case Study of One School’s Improvement Journey.
Completed During Principal’s Sabbatical
Dr Sheila Grainger
October 2010
Notes
• This is a powerpoint summary of a 41
page paper prepared during the Principal
Sabbatical of Dr Sheila Grainger
• The full paper is being prepared for
publication in a relevant academic journal
• For further information email
Sheila.grainger@buller.ac.nz
History
• Serious concerns about the school’s performance began
to be identified by the Education Review Office (ERO) in
1992, finally leading to statutory intervention in
December 2005.
• Rapid change and improvement characterised the
statutory intervention period, and by December 2009, the
statutory intervention was withdrawn and the school
returned to a “normal” 3 year cycle of ERO monitoring.
• In 2009, the ERO team talked about the “turn around” of
the school, and their questions led the school’s
leadership to reflect on how this had been achieved
Sustainable Improvement
• Fullan, 2006, reports that many school
turnarounds have been short-lived. The
problem with many turnaround strategies
he says, is that they focus on external
interventions. He says current turnaround
policies and practices generally move
schools from awful to adequate but no
further, failing to achieve long-term
sustainable improvement.
•
Fullan, M. (2006). Turnaround leadership. San Francisco: Jersey-Bass.
Key to Sustainability
• As long as school decision making continues to
be based on shared understandings about
valued student outcomes, and has the tools to
ensure its decision making and strategic
planning is informed by evidence of student
achievement, progress should be maintained.
• The key to its sustainability lies in the leadership
of the school aligning its decision making to the
values it wants to promote, and ensuring that
every decision it makes, however small,
consistently reflects those values.
Examples of Sustainablity
•
•
•
•
Pathways Department
Provison for the Less Academic
Study Periods
Classroom Behaviour and Student Work
Pathways Department
• there were no shared understandings amongst
stakeholders, of how career education could make a
huge difference in students’ lives, lifting their
expectations and bridging the gap between their limited
view of their future and the potential they could aspire to.
• This lack of shared understandings about what counted
as valued student outcomes in terms of career planning
and course selection, created a vacuum into which
teacher centric and timetable centric considerations
could creep, allowing school decision making to be
subverted. One example of this, the shortened English
and Maths courses at year 11, is discussed in detail
below.
Pathways Department
• The Department’s brief is to connect students to their future potential
right from year 9, and find innovative ways of helping students to set
and review their career goals, making informed choices about study
pathways as they progress through school.
• The Head of Pathways tracks credits attained and still needed by
students; co-ordinates STAR Gateway and Distance Learning
provision; enrols students in interest rich courses which broaden
their horizons; and develops individualised pathways for students
who do not thrive in traditional academic subjects.
• The valued student outcomes achieved through the pathways
approach include, enhanced student expectations, a wider range of
student achievements with more students succeeding and enhanced
targeting of school resources where the need for extra student
support is identified.
•
Provision for the Less Academic
• Those in year 11 with the lowest skills in literacy
and numeracy were channelled into an
alternative class which provided 2 terms tuition
in alternative maths and 2 terms tuition in
alternative English, instead of 4 terms in each.
• In this way, those students most needing to
improve in these two essential learning areas,
received only half the standard tuition time
enjoyed by other students.
Provision for the Less Academic
Increased value added in NCEA
English
CEM Englis h vs NCEA Le ve l 1 Englis h pas s Rate s
80
Dip in value added in 2009 NCEA
English
70
60
50
English
40
NCEA L1
30
BUT still high literacy attainment.
=
20
10
The need to more closely
interrogate our student
achievement data in NCEA Level
1 English.
0
2004
2005
2006
2007
Year 9 Intake
Level One Literacy Final Results
2009 Final
100
80
60
%
L1 Literacy BHS
L1 Literacy Nat
40
L1 Literacy Decile 3
20
0
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
L1 Literacy BHS
55.8
64.3
63.5
57.8
75
90.9
78.8
L1 Literacy Nat
70.6
69.9
72.5
75.2
76.7
77.3
77.6
L1 Literacy Decile 3
58.5
60.6
66.3
69.6
71.8
74.8
74.8
Year
Identified the need for more focus
on preparation for the NCEA
external assessments in
English.
English programme revamped to
ensure that the pursuit of the 8
Level 1 literacy credits is not at
the expense of achievement in
the externals.
Study Periods
• ERO reports since 1992, had commented on
inconsistent attendance and absence monitoring, lack of
student engagement, poor quality and organisation of
student work, low achievement and low teacher
expectations.
• These, coupled with environmental factors, such as the
low value which some sectors of the community
traditionally placed on academic study and schooling,
were all contra indications for exempting these students
from attending school during their study periods.
• It was, in fact, a management centric solution to the
problem of what to do with students during those times,
and the school had by default absolved itself of
responsibility for them.
Study Periods
• Since a more student centric approach has been
taken, with the staffing and monitoring of a study
room where all seniors must spend their study
time, senior attendance and work ethic has
improved.
• The expectation of regular supervised study has
improved the learning culture both for seniors
and, through their modelling, for junior students.
Classroom Behaviour and Student Work
• Successive ERO reports had reported poor quality and
disorganised work in many classes in the junior school.
• My own observations in classrooms during term one
2008 confirmed that in many junior classes teacher
expectations were low and student work was low in
quantity and quality.
• Many exercise books were marred by graffiti, sexual
innuendo and scrappy pages, with set tasks often at a
low level, failing to challenge students.
• In many students’ books there was a striking lack of
teacher feedback and feedforward on their work, and
little evidence that teachers were valuing students’ work
and passing on that sense of value to students.
• Storage of students’ books in some classes was
disorganised and counter productive to the valuing and
tracking of student work to monitor progress and guide
students’ next learning steps.
Classroom Behaviour and Student Work
• School wide professional development sessions on the Best
Evidence Synthesis on Teaching and Learning (Robinson, Hohepa,
& Lloyd, 2009)
• Sessions on student data showing how few students were actually
“below average” and how many were well above on their entry data
• Checking all junior student work in the four core subjects English,
Social Studies, Maths and Science on a regular basis
• Increased monitoring of credit attainment and analysis of NCEA
results in the senior school
• Written feedback to teachers and their HODs on the quality of work
observed, with any requests for improvement rigorously followed up
with the department concerned.
• School wide professional development sessions addressed the
importance of teacher expectations and the use of student data in
planning
• School targets reflected the desired quality of work
• Principal reports to the Board of Trustees.
• Student “buy in”
Classroom Behaviour and Student Work
Total Timeouts
as at end of Term Three 2010
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Totals
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
1504
1265
1498
1218
2050
1583
932
715
712
594
Learning From Reflection
• Shared understandings of school purpose and what
constitutes valued student outcomes need to be
established in order to successfully drive school decision
making and school improvement
• An evidence base of valued student outcomes needs to
be established and constantly interrogated for monitoring
and tracking progress so that decision making can be
student centric not teacher or management centric
• Tools for self review and self improvement need to be
accepted and embraced by all staff, so that a culture of
high accountability can sit comfortably with a culture of
high professional trust
• School leaders do make a significant contribution to
school improvement and success but this would be
unsustainable without the support of a skilled
management team. On the other hand, school leaders
can also pose the biggest risk to school success and
early identification of this risk could avoid school failure.
Learning From Reflection
• Where problems are repeatedly identified at both school
governance and management levels personnel changes
at one or both of these levels are probably needed
before school improvement can begin
• The highly complex work which principals do is enacted
through a chain of tasks which are often mundane and
trivial, but each one offers the opportunity to pursue the
strategic change agenda and embed shared
understandings about valued student outcomes
• Educational change often needs to be achieved through
“sweating the small stuff” because the small stuff is what
dominates a principal’s day, and there may never be a
time when only the “big stuff” can be addressed
Conclusion
Teachers and Leaders can
make a difference.