“Every School a Great School”
Strategies for School Transformation in
London
Presentation to the SSAT
Every School a Great School
Strategies for School Transformation in London Workshops
Friday 6th November 2008
Professor David Hopkins
formerly HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership
Overview of Workshop
8:45 – 9:15
Registration and Refreshments
9:00 – 9:30
Welcome and Introductions
9:30 – 10:50
Session 1: Every School a Great School
Prof David Hopkins
10:50 - 11:15
Refreshments
11:15 – 12:30
Session Two: Personalising Learning, Professionalising Teaching
Prof David Hopkins
12:30 – 1:15
Lunch
1:15 – 2:30
Session Three: A case study , SWOTAnalysis
Prof David Hopkins
2:30 – 2:45
Refreshments
2:45 – 3:30
3:30
Session Four: System Leadership and the Transformation of Schools
Prof David Hopkins
Close
Session 1
Every School a Great School
Moral Purpose of Schooling
I know what my
learning objectives are
and feel in control of
my learning
I get to learn lots of
interesting and
different subjects
I can get a level 4 in
English and Maths before
I go to secondary school
I know what good work
looks like and can help
myself to learn
I know if I need extra
help or to be challenged
to do better I will get the
right support
My parents are
involved with the
school and I feel I
belong here
I can work well with and
learn from many others
as well as my teacher
I enjoy using ICT and
know how it can help
my learning
I know how I am being
assessed and what I need
to do to improve my work
I can get the job that I
want
All these …. whatever my background, whatever my abilities,
wherever I start from
The G100 Communique
A group of 100 principals from fourteen countries
(G100) met at the National Academy of Education
Administration (NAEA) in Beijing, China 16-19
October 2006 to discuss the transformation of and
innovation in the world’s education systems.
They concluded their communique in this way We need to ensure that moral purpose is at the fore of all
educational debates with our parents, our students,
our teachers, our partners, our policy makers and our
wider community.
We define moral purpose as a compelling drive to do
right for and by students, serving them through
professional behaviors that ‘raise the bar and narrow
the gap’ and through so doing demonstrate an intent,
to learn with and from each other as we live together
in this world.
Mean performance in reading literacy
High Excellence High Equity –
Raising the Bar and Narrowing the Gap
560
540
High excellence
Low equity
U.K.
520
High excellence
High equity
Finland
Canada
Japan
U.S.
Korea
Belgium
500
Germany
480
Switzerland
Spain
Poland
460
Low excellence
Low equity
440
Low excellence
High equity
420
60
80
100
120
140
• 200 – Variance (variance OECD as a whole = 100)
Source: OECD (2001) Knowledge and Skills for Life
‘Every School a Great School’
as an expression of moral purpose
• What parents want is for their local school to be a great school.
(National Association of School Governors; Education and Skills Select Committee 2004).
• The three system leadership commitments:
• primacy of student learning and achievement;
• relentless focus on reducing within school variation;
• collaborative working to eradicate between school variation
and enhance social equity.
Towards system wide sustainable reform
Prescription
Building Capacity
Professionalism
National Prescription
Every School a
Great School
Schools Leading Reform
System Leadership
Four key drivers to raise achievement and
build capacity for the next stage of reform
i. Personalising Learning
ii. Professionalising Teaching
iii. Building Intelligent Accountability
iv. Networking and Collaboration
(i) Personalising Learning
‘Joined up learning and teaching’
• Learning to Learn
• Curriculum choice &
entitlement
• Assessment for learning
• Student Voice
‘My Tutor’
Interactive web-based
learning resource
enabling students to
tailor support and
challenge to their needs
and interests.
(ii) Professionalising Teaching
‘Teachers as researchers,
schools as learning communities’
• Enhanced repertoire of
learning & teaching strategies
• Evidence based practice with
time for collective inquiry
• Collegial & coaching
relationships
• Tackle within school variation
‘The Edu-Lancet’
A peer-reviewed
journal published for
practitioners by
practitioners & regularly
read by the profession
to keep abreast of R&D.
(iii) Building Intelligent Accountability
‘Balancing internal and external accountability and
assessment’
• Moderated teacher assessment
and AfL at all levels
• ‘Bottom-up’ targets for every
child and use of pupil
performance data
• Value added data to help
identify strengths / weaknesses
• Rigorous self-evaluation linked
to improvement strategies and
school profile to demonstrate
success
‘Chartered
examiners’
Experienced teachers
gain certification to
oversee rigorous internal
assessment as a basis
for externally awarded
qualifications.
(iv) Networking and Collaboration
‘Disciplined innovation, collaboration and building
social capital’
• Best practice captured and
highly specified
• Capacity built to transfer and
sustain innovation across
system
• Keeping the focus on the
core purposes of schooling
by sustaining a discourse on
teaching and learning
• Inclusion and Extended
Schooling
‘Leading Edge
Practice
Partnerships’
Schools develop
exemplary curriculum
and pedagogic practices
and share with others
4 drivers mould to context through
system leadership
Personalised
Learning
Professional
Teaching
SYSTEM
LEADERSHIP
Networks &
Collaboration
Intelligent
Accountability
System Leadership: A Proposition
‘System leaders’ care about and work for the
success of other schools as well as their own. They
measure their success in terms of improving
student learning and increasing achievement, and
strive to both raise the bar and narrow the gap(s).
Crucially they are willing to shoulder system
leadership roles in the belief that in order to change
the larger system you have to engage with it in a
meaningful way.’
Leadership as Adaptive Work
Technical Solutions
Adaptive Work
System Leadership
Technical problems can be solved through applying existing know how - adaptive
challenges create a gap between a desired state and reality that cannot be closed
using existing approaches alone
The Nature of Adaptive Work
An adaptive challenge is a problem situation for which solutions
lie outside current ways of operating.
• Adaptive challenges demand learning, because ‘people are the
problem’ and progress requires new ways of thinking & operating.
• Mobilising people to meet adaptive challenges, then, is at the heart
of leadership practice.
• Ultimately, adaptive work requires us to reflect on the moral
purpose by which we seek to thrive and demands diagnostic
enquiry into the realities we face that threaten the realisation of
those purposes.
From Ron Heifetz – ‘Adaptive Work’ (in Bentley and Wilsdon 2003)
Three Phases of Educational Change
Institutionalisation
Initiation
Implementation
“The Implementation Dip”
Time
The ‘Iceberg Model’ of
Educational Change
Content &
Structures
Behaviours
Values and Beliefs
The Experience of Educational Change
 change takes place over time;
 change initially involves anxiety




and
uncertainty;
technical and psychological support is crucial;
the learning of new skills is incremental and
developmental;
successful change involves pressure and
support within a collaborative setting;
organisational conditions within and in
relation to the school make it more or less
likely that the school improvement will occur.
Turnaround Schools – Emerging Themes
Develop a narrative for sustained
improvement :
•
•
•
•
•
The ability to determine the capacity needed to
undertake improvement activities
An understanding of the regularities needed to sustain
improvement in a school
To identify and transfer best practice internally, with
the potential to work externally
The creation of an ethos of high expectations
To work and negotiate with a range of stakeholders
and other schools
A Framework for School Improvement
Priority for School
Development
Conditions for
Classroom
Development
Strategy
Enhanced Student
Learning and Teacher
Development
Conditions for
School
Development
A Three Phase Strategy for School
Improvement
• Phase One: Establishing the Process
• Phase Two: Going Whole School
• Phase Three: Sustaining Momentum
Phase One: Establishing the Process
• Commitment to the School Improvement Approach
• Selection of Learning Leaders and School
Improvement Group
• Enquiring into the Strengths and Weaknesses of
the School
• Designing the Whole School Programme
• Seeding the Whole School Approach
Preparing for School Improvement
Pre-conditions
 Commitment to
School
Improvement
 General
consensus on
values
 Understanding
of key
principles
School Level
Preparations
 Shared values
 A mandate from
staff
 Leadership
potential
 Identification of
change agents
 Willingness to
make structural
changes
 Capacity for
improvement
Unifying Focus
Improvement
Theme
An enquiry into
Teaching and
Learning
Means
School
Improvement
Strategy
The School Improvement Group
The school improvement group is essentially a
temporary membership system focused specifically
upon enquiry and development. This temporary
membership system brings together teachers (and
support staff) from a variety of departments within the
school, with a range of ages or experience and from a
cross-section of roles to work together in a status-free
collaborative learning context. One teacher has
described it as the educational equivalent of a
research and development group.
The school community need to make a
number of tacit commitments:
• To support each partnership in whatever way possible – time,
•
•
•
•
resources, visits to centres of good practice, the adoption of
recommendations etc.
To agree to remain informed about the progress of each area of
enquiry in order to maintain collective ownership of the directions
being travelled.
To support the implementation of new practices, new structures, or
new ways of working.
To be open to the research process by contributing ideas,
responding to research instruments, opening up our classrooms
for observation, offering our professional support in whatever way
required.
To engage in workshop activity within full staff meetings, staff days
or other school meetings in order to contribute to the on-going
knowledge creation and learning process.
School Improvement Group Development
Phase 1 - Uncertainty about focus
• What is School Improvement?
• What is the role of the SIG group?
• Where is it all going? It’s hard to make things happen.
Phase 2 - Clearer about focus
• Using existing structures in new ways, e.g. department meetings with
single item research agendas.
• New ways of working.
• Beginning to shift from staff development mode to school improvement
mode.
Phase 3 - Change/renewal of the SIG group
• Establishment of research culture within the school
• Involvement of students as researchers
• The school generates its own theory
Phase Two: Going Whole School
• The Initial Whole School PD Day(s)
• Establishing the Curriculum and Teaching Focus
• Establishing the Learning Teams:
− Curriculum groupings
− Peer coaching or ‘buddy’ groups
• The Initial Cycle of Enquiry
• Sharing Initial Success on the Curriculum Tour
Curriculum Tour
WHOLE SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY
An Enquiry into Teaching and Learning
Stage
I
Dept. A
(Inductive
Teaching)
Dept C
(Inductive
Teaching)
‘Curriculum Tour’
Stage
II
Stage
III
Dept. B
(Inductive
Teaching)
Group Work
Memory
Synectics
WHOLE SCHOOL WORKING TOWARDS REPERTOIRE OF
TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES
The Range of Staff Development
Activities
• Whole staff PD days on teaching and learning and school
•
•
•
•
improvement planning as well as ‘curriculum tours’ to share
the work done in departments or working groups;
Inter-departmental meetings to discuss teaching strategies;
Workshops run inside the school on teaching strategies by
Cadre group members and external support;
Partnership teaching and peer coaching;
The design and execution of collaborative enquiry activities,
which are, by their nature, knowledge-generating.
In addition, SIG members are involved in:
• Out of school training sessions on capacity building
•
•
•
•
•
and teaching and learning;
The pursuit of their own knowledge in support of their
role – about leadership, the management and
implementation of change, the design of professional
development activities etc.;
Planning meetings in school;
Consultancy to school working groups;
Observation and in-classroom support;
Study visits to other schools within the network.
Structuring Staff Development
Workshop
• Understanding of Key Ideas and Principles
• Modelling and Demonstration
• Practice in Non-threatening Situations
Workplace
• Immediate and Sustained Practice
• Collaboration and Peer Coaching
• Reflection and Action Research
Peer Coaching
• Peer coaching teams of two or three are much more
effective than larger groups.
• These groups are more effective when the entire staff
is engaged in school improvement.
• Peer coaching works better when Heads and Deputies
participate in training and practice.
• The effects are greater when formative study of
student learning is embedded in the process.
Phase Three: Sustaining Momentum
• Establishing Further Cycles of Enquiry
• Building Teacher Learning into the Process
• Sharpening the Focus on Student Learning
• Finding Ways of Sharing Success and Building
Networks
• Reflecting on the Culture of the School and
Department
Enquiry-driven School Improvement
Schools which recognise that enquiry and reflection are
important processes in school improvement find it easier to
sustain improvement effort around established priorities,
and are better placed to monitor the extent to which policies
actually deliver the intended outcomes for pupils.
• Systematic collection, interpretation and use of schoolgenerated data in decision-making.
• Effective strategies for reviewing the progress and impact of
school policies and initiatives.
• Widespread involvement of staff in the processes of data
collection and analysis.
• Clear ground rules for the collection, control and use of
school-based data.
Moving to Scale
Cohorts of 6 - 8 Schools
6 - 8 Members of School Improvement Group
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
PLAN
Cohort A
Cohort B
Cohort C
|
| ……………………….
|
|
|
………….........
| ………….....
Activity
SWOT Analysis
• What are the preconditions of improvement in a
•
•
•
•
•
school?
How does a school organize for improvement?
What are the key strategies employed to raise
achievement?
How does professional learning take place?
How are cultures changed and developed?
How effective is your own school’s approach to
improvement?
Coffee!
Session 2
Personalising Learning
Professionalising Teaching
System Leadership and Student Achievement
To sustain improvement:
• the leadership develops a narrative for improvement
• the leadership is highly focussed on improving the quality of
•
•
•
•
teaching and learning (and student welfare)
the leadership explicitly organises the school for
improvement
the leadership creates:
• clarity (of the systems established)
• consistency (of the systems spread across school), and
• continuity (of the systems over time)
the leadership creates internal accountability and reciprocity
the leadership works to change context as a key component
of their improvement strategy
The Key Question
What teaching strategies do I and my
colleagues have in our repertoires to
respond to the student diversity that
walks through our classroom doors?
‘Seven Strong Claims about School Leadership’
• School leadership is second only to classroom instruction as an
•
•
•
•
•
•
influence on student learning.
Almost all successful (school) leaders draw on the same repertoire of
basic leadership practices.
It is the enactment of the same basic leadership practices – not the
practices themselves – that is responsive to the context.
School leaders improve pupil learning indirectly through their influence
on staff motivation and working conditions.
School leadership has a greater influence on schools and pupils when it
is widely distributed.
Some patterns of leadership distribution are much more effective than
others.
A small handful of personal “traits” explain a high proportion of the
variation (such as being open minded, flexible, persistent and
optimistic) in leader effectiveness.
Leadership for Learning
Setting direction
• Total commitment to enable every learner to reach their potential
• Ability to translate vision into whole school programmes
Managing Teaching and Learning
• Ensure every child is inspired and challenged through personalized learning
• Develop a high degree of clarity about and consistency of teaching quality
Developing people
• Enable students to become more active learners
• Develop schools as professional learning communities
Developing the organization
• Create an evidence-based school
• Extend an organization’s vision of learning to involve networks
CURRICULUM
POWERFUL
LEARNING
TEACHING and
LEARNING
STRATEGIES
ASSESSMENT FOR
LEARNING
I wrote (with Bruce Joyce) some time ago
that:
Learning experiences are composed of
content, process and social climate. As
teachers we create for and with our
children opportunities to explore and
build important areas of knowledge,
develop powerful tools for learning, and
live in humanizing social conditions.
Three ways of thinking about Teaching
Teaching
Skills
Teaching
Models
Reflection
Teaching
Relationships
Teaching Skills
•
Active teaching
•
Engaged time – ‘time on task’
•
Structuring information
•
Effective questioning
•
Consistent success
•
And … ???
Teaching Relationships
Expectation effects on student achievement are
likely to occur both directly through opportunity to
learn (differences in the amount and nature of
exposure to content and opportunities to engage in
various types of academic activities) and indirectly
through differential treatment that is likely to affect
students' self-concepts, attributional inferences, or
motivation.
Good, T.L. and Brophy, J.E. (1994)
Looking In Classrooms (2nd ed)
Teaching Models
Our toolbox is the models of teaching, actually models for learning,
that simultaneously define the nature of the content, the learning
strategies, and the arrangements for social interaction that create
the learning contexts of our students. For example, in powerful
classrooms students learn models for:
•
Extracting information and ideas from lectures and presentations
•
Memorising information
•
Building hypotheses and theories
•
Attaining concepts and how to invent them
•
Using metaphors to think creatively
•
Working effectively with other to initiate and carry out co-operative
tasks
Whole Class Teaching Model - Syntax
• Phase One: Review
• Phase Two: Presenting Information
• Phase Three: Involving students in discussion
• Phase Four: Engaging students in learning activities
• Phase Five: Summary and review
Cooperative Group Work Teaching Model
- Syntax
• Positive interdependence
• Individual Accountability
• Face-to-face interaction
• Social skills
• Processing
Cooperative Group Work Teaching Model
- Examples
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Numbered Heads
Jigsaw
Twos to fours or snowballing
Rainbow groups
Envoys
Listening triads
Critical Friends
Inductive Teaching Model - Syntax
•
•
•
•
•
•
Phase One: Identify the domain
Phase Two: Collect, present and enumerate data
Phase Three: Examine data
Phase Four: Form concepts by classifying
Phase Five: Generate and test hypotheses
Phase Six: Consolidate and transfer
Number of students
Reaching for the “Double Sigma Effect”
Achievement of students
Effect Size of Teaching Strategies
• Information Processing – a mean effect size over
1.0 for higher order outcomes
• Cooperative Learning – a mean effect between
0.3 to 0.7
• Personal Models – a mean effect of 0.3 or more
for cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes
• Behavioural Models – a mean effect between 0.5
to 1.0. Best representatives are for short term
treatments looking at behavioural or knowledge of
content outcomes
Effect Size of Teaching
Student
Performance
McKinsey & Company, 2007:11
100th
percentile
90th
percentile
53 percentile
points
50th
percentile
37th
percentile
0
percentile
Age 8
Age 11
Powerful Learning …
Is the ability of learners to respond successfully to the tasks
they are set, as well as the task they set themselves In
particular, to:
• Integrate prior and new knowledge
• Acquire and use a range of learning skills
• Solve problems individually and in groups
• Think carefully about their successes and failures
• Accept that learning involves uncertainty and difficulty
All this has been termed “meta-cognition” – it is the
learners’ ability to take control over their own learning
processes.
A Typology of Skills
These skills fall into three categories:
Functional Skills: literacy, numeracy and ICT.
Thinking and Learning Skills: are the skills young people need to
acquire in order to become effective learners. Gaining mastery of these
skills equips students to raise their achievement by developing their
ability to:
• improve their achievement by applying a wide range of learning
approaches in different subjects;
• learn how to learn, with the capability to monitor, evaluate, and change
the ways in which they think and learn;
• become independent learners, knowing how to generate their own ideas,
acquire knowledge and transfer their learning to different contexts.
Personal Skills: are the skills young people need to acquire in order to
develop their personal effectiveness. Gaining mastery of these skills
equips students to manage themselves and to develop effective social
and working relations.
The Dialectic between Curriculum, Learning and Teaching
Curriculum
Development
Evaluation
Group
Investigation
Synectics
Elaborate
Role
Playing
Simulations
Explain
Inductive
Thinking
Concept
Attainment
Explore
Mnemonic
Inductive
Thinking
Engage
Mnemonic
Simulations
Models of Learning –
Tools for Teaching
Curriculum
Development
Assessment for Learning
The Given
• A detailed map of a given curriculum with precise
knowledge of how best to teach to the learning
objectives in regular classroom settings.
What Else is Needed
• A set of formative assessment tools for each lesson
• Formative assessment that is not time-consuming
• Using the assessment information on each student
to design and deliver differentiated instruction
• A built-in means of systematically improving the
effectiveness of classroom instruction
If classroom instruction could be thus organised,
then for the first time, teaching would follow the
student.
Issues for Discussion
1. How do you develop a repertoire of teaching
models in your school?
2. What exactly is the role of the teacher?
3. What are the implications for staff development?
4. What are the monitoring mechanisms
implemented so as to ensure the effectiveness of
the model?
Activity
Classroom Diagnostic
• Authentic Relationships
• Boundaries and expectations
• Planning for Teaching
• Teaching Repertoire
• Pedagogic Partnership
• Reflection on Teaching
LUNCH!
Session 3
A case study
SWOT Analysis
The whole point of schools is that children come first…
…and everything we do must reflect this single goal
“Students First”
In this case study,
leadership for learning
involves…
1. Setting Direction
2. Managing Learning
and Teaching
3. Developing people
4. Developing the
organisation
1. Setting Direction
Total commitment to enable every
learner to reach their potential…
Enable every learner to reach their
potential?
Quality in the Classroom
Student
Curriculum
Design
Monitoring and
Intervention
Quality in the
classroom
“The quality of teaching and learning is outstanding. This is because th
school has exemplary systems in place to ensure all lessons are planne
very carefully and delivered using the most effective teaching technique
Ofsted 2006
Curriculum
Design
“Students are able to
select an individual
route and work at their
own pace, across a
range of subjects that
suits their ability and
their interests, confident
in the knowledge that
each pathway will lead
them
to further opportunities”
Ofsted 2006
2. Managing Learning and Teaching
Ensure every child is inspired and
challenged through personalising
learning
Pathways
Develop a high degree of clarity about and
consistency of teaching quality…
The Executive Principal meets:
Every Tuesday with all Vice-Principals (electronic meeting)
Every Thursday throughout the day:
All Heads of Department (SEF, 4xImodel & Development Plan)
All Learning Managers (Praising Stars© & 4xI model)
All SLT (All the above plus the first 2 agenda items are always
students/curriculum & monitoring/performance; 1hr minimum)
In addition, every Tuesday after 2:30pm:
A whole college Learning and
Performance session (2hrs) where we:
• reiterate the vision
• share good/next practice
• develop pedagogy
• focus on performance / 4 x I model
• Target the needs of all students by
developing high quality lessons
“The Praising Stars© student monitoring and
assessment system ensures a very inclusive approach
to student’s support and guidance.” Ofsted 2006
Using specialism to raise
standards (About spec. schools
cntd)
3.
Developing
people
More active
learners
“Work based courses offer
a more practical approach,
whilst accelerated
programmes enable some
students to move on
quickly to higher levels of
academic study” Ofsted
2006
Developing People…
…not just teachers
Develop schools as professional learning
communities…
Develop schools as professional learning
communities…
New leadership structures & talent spotting
• Building capacity
• In-house programmes
• Training school- staff as
tutors/presenters
• SLT must presentx2
• SLT presentation to the
SLT at meetings as part
of agenda
Training
School
“First class
continuous
professional
development of
staff makes a
significant
contribution to
driving the
school
forward.”
Ofsted 2006
CPD
CPD
Lesson
4. Developing the Organisation
Creating an evidence-based school?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Student voice continues to develop
Stoll’s analysis helps to drill down into departments
Engaged in research- similar to previous DCSF
Commissioned data-base for observations
SSAT programmes for own staff
SEF, FFT,CVA, ALPS, Conversion rates etc
CVA 1024
Activity
SWOT Analysis
• What are the preconditions of improvement in a
•
•
•
•
•
school?
How does a school organize for improvement?
What are the key strategies employed to raise
achievement?
How does professional learning take place?
How are cultures changed and developed?
How effective is your own school’s approach to
improvement?
Session 4
System Leadership and
the Transformation of Schools
Act as a
Community
Leader
Work as a
Change Agent
Managing
Teaching and
Learning
Developing
Organisations
Personal Development
Lead a
Successful
Educational
Improvement
Partnership
Moral Purpose
Strategic Acumen
Developing People
Lead and Improve a School in
Challenging Circumstances
Partner
another
School
Facing
Difficulties
and Improve
it
System Leadership Roles
A range of emerging roles, including heads who:
• develop and lead a successful educational improvement partnership
across local communities to support welfare and potential
• choose to lead and improve a school in extremely challenging
circumstances
• partner another school facing difficulties and improve it. This
category includes Executive Heads and leaders of more informal
improvement arrangements
• act as curriculum and pedagogic innovators who develop and then
transfer best practice across the system
• Work as change agents or experts leaders as National Leader of
Education, School Improvement Partner, Consultant Leader.
Supporting a school in Special measures
The Head teacher as a consultant leader
Support an acting head rather than ‘take over’
•
•
Draw detail plans for improvement which included:
a) Diagnosis of the key practices the neighbouring school needed to
develop
b) Clarity on Robert Clack’s teaching and learning and behaviour
systems
c) A visit to Robert Clack for 20-30 staff in early September to witness
the behaviour management, assemblies, and teaching and learning
in action so as to give an insight into what was possible in very
similar circumstances
d) The export and refinement of these systems from one school into the
other, employing key staff from Robert Clack to deliver, in particular,
Ofsted demands for immediate improvements in behaviour
A 2 days a week consultant leadership to support implementation of
the behaviour systems
The school got out of Special Measures!
Benefits for the Robert Clack School
•
Confidence for the leadership to know what needed to be
done to get a school out of special measures
•
A committed contribution for staff both
a) To help another school through a situation they
had faced themselves and
b) To gain unique professional development
•
An experience which now underpins Robert Clack’s roles
as a mentor school for the London Challenge and a lead
school for an SSAT network
The flip side: personal reputations and the school’s
resources were put to the test
The Logic of System Leadership
Learning Potential of all Students
Repertoire of Learning Skills
Models of Learning - Tools for Teaching
Embedded in Curriculum Context and Schemes of Work
Whole School Emphasis on High Expectations and
Pedagogic Consistency
Sharing Schemes of Work and Curriculum Across and
Between Schools, Clusters, Districts, LEAs and Nationally
POWERFUL
LEARNING
EXPERIENCES
Methods of School Improvement (1-4)
• Teaching & learning: is consistently good
− Classroom ethos of high expectations, shared ‘good lesson’ structure, high
proportion of time on task, good use of AfL to plan lessons and tailor to need.
• Curriculum: is balanced and interesting
− Strategic planning to integrate basics, breadth and cognitive learning, with
KS3 interventions in basic skills, grade enhancement classes and mentoring.
• Behaviour: promotes order and enjoyment
− Consistent rules for conduct and dress, with consistent implications for
infringement consistently applied
• Student attitudes to learning:
− Attendance is high, pastoral care is accessible, achievement is
acknowledged, students have a voice in school decision making.
Methods of School Improvement (5-9)
• Leadership:
− Clear vision is translated into manageable, time bound and agreed objectives,
commitment is established, data is used to tackle weaknesses and internal variation.
• Professional learning community
− Dedicated time for a range of CPD opportunities to share experience of improving
practice, with focus on identifying individual need especially for weak / poor teaching.
• Internal accountability: ‘empowers through a culture of discipline’
− Agreed expectations for teaching quality and Quality Assurance and peer observation.
• Resources and environmental management: is student focused
− Use of funding streams, whole school team, and the environment all supports learning
• Partnerships beyond the school: creating learning opportunities
− Parental engagement is encouraged, & support agencies are used effectively.
School Improvement Journeys
• Tactics – these schools comprise the ‘common curriculum’ of
school improvement. Tactics are powerful performance of low or
slowly achieving schools up towards the (regression) line, but no
further.
• Strategies – these school employ strategically the tactical
responses but they also:
• all engaged in a co-ordinated response to the challenge of school
improvement.
• the focus of their work was explicitly at the classroom or ‘learning’
level.
• Capacities (for further improvement) - these schools are
already at relatively high levels of effectiveness and build on this
as:
• they collectively understand the causes of positive change and the
areas of resistance in the school; and
• they have developed a willingness to go beyond the incremental
approach to restructuring and genuinely see school improvement as a
way of life.
Processes of School Improvement
• The journey of school improvement
− A clear reform narrative is created, and seen by staff to be consistently applied, with: a
vision and urgency that translates into clear principles for action.
• Organizing the key strategies
− Improvement activities are selected and linked together strategically; supported by
robust and highly reliable school systems with clear SMT roles in key areas.
• Professional learning at the heart of the process
− Improvement strategy informs CPD; knowledge is gained, verified & refined by staff to
underpin improvement; networking is used to manage risk and discipline practice.
• Cultures are changed and developed
− Professional ethos and values that supports capacity building are initiated, implemented
and institutionalized, so that a culture of disciplined action replaces excessive control.
The Challenge of Public Sector Reform
“One Size Does not Fit All”
A3
B2a,2b
Differential Strategies for School Improvement
• Type 111 strategies are those that assist effective schools to become
even better. Exposure to new ideas and practices, collaboration
through consortia or 'pairing' type arrangements seems to be common
in these situations.
• Type 11 strategies are those that assist moderately effective schools
become effective. These schools need to refine their developmental
priorities and focus on specific teaching and learning issues, and build
the capacity within the school to support this work. These strategies
usually involve a certain level of external support.
Type 11a strategies are characterised by a strategic focus on
innovations in teaching and learning that are informed and
supported by external knowledge and support.
Type 11b strategies rely less on external support and tend to be
more school initiated.
• Type 1 strategies are those that assist failing schools become
moderately effective. They need to involve a high level of external
support. These strategies have to involve a clear and direct focus on a
limited number of basic curriculum and organisational issues, in order
to build the confidence and competence to continue.
Segmentation of the Secondary School System
100
90
N = 3313
Actual 5+A*-C % 2003
80
70
Low Achieving
Below 30% 5+A-C
N = 483
60
Underperforming
50
N = 539
40
Progressing
N = 1495
30
High Performing
20
N = 696
10
Leading the System
0
N = 100
Estimated 5+A*-C % from pupil KS3 data
5+A*-C >=30%, lower
quartile value added
5+A*-C >=30%, 2575th percentile value
added
5+A*-C >=30%, upper
quartile value added
Networking and Segmentation:
Highly Differentiated Improvement Strategies
Type of School
Key strategies – responsive to
context and need
System Leadership Role
Leading schools
- Become curriculum and
pedagogical innovators
- Formal federation with lowerperforming schools
- Leading Edge
- Consultant Leaders and
National Support Schools
Succeeding
schools with
internal variation
- Regular local networking
- Subject specialist support to
particular depts.
- Education Improvement
Partnerships
- 14-19 partnerships
Underperforming
schools
- Linked school support
- Consistency interventions
- Raising Achievement
Transforming Learning
- School Improvement
Partners
- Formal support in a Federation
structure
- New provider
- Consultant Leaders and
National Support Schools
- School Sponsored
Academy
Failing schools
Collaboration – the offer to schools
• Every school will have the opportunity to benefit from and
contribute to network learning
• The focus of collaboration will be on student learning and
achievement and the creation of professional learning
communities in schools
• Networking arrangements will be based on the twin
principles of inclusivity and local accountability
• Regional Offices will co-ordinate, support and encourage
collaboration and network to network learning
• Regional, State and Federal levels will actively support
networking for specific purposes – Federations,
Achievement Zones …
Segmentation requires a fair degree
of boldness …
• Schools should take greater responsibility for neighbouring schools so
that the move towards networking encourages groups of schools to
form collaborative arrangements outside of local control.
• All failing and underperforming (and potentially low achieving) schools
should have a leading school that works with them in either a formal
grouping Federation or in more informal partnership.
• The incentives for greater system responsibility should include
significantly enhanced funding for students most at risk.
• A rationalisation of national and local agency functions and roles to
allow the higher degree of national and regional co-ordination for this
increasingly devolved system.
Responsible System Leadership
• System leadership at the school level – with school principals
almost as concerned about the success of other schools as they
are about their own
• System leadership at the local/urban level – with practical
principles widely shared and used as a basis for local alignment
(across a city) so that school diversity, collaboration and
segmentation – that all schools are at different stages in the
performance cycle on a continuum from “leading” to “failing” –
are deliberately exploited and specific programmes are
developed for the groups most at risk
• System leadership at the system level – with social justice,
moral purpose and a commitment to the success of every learner
providing the focus for transformation.
Coherent System Design
Hardware
Operating system
Software
Infrastructure
Reform model
Teaching and learning
Recurrent funding
Personalised Learning and
Professionalised Teaching
Leadership and
School ethos
Physical capital
Human capital
Knowledge creation and
management
Intelligent accountability,
Governance and
Segmentation
Qualifications
framework
Curriculum
High quality
personalised
learning for
every student
Teaching quality
Innovation, Networking
and System Leadership
U
N
I
V
E
R
S
A
L
S
T
A
N
D
A
R
D
H S
I
G
H
The Systemic Agenda
The future reform agenda is about schools supporting
each other in a new educational landscape:
• Schools exist in increasingly complex and turbulent environments,
but the best schools ‘turn towards the danger’ and adapt external
change for internal purpose.
• Schools should use external standards to clarify, integrate and raise
their own expectations.
• School benefit from highly specified, but not prescribed, models of
best practice.
• Schools, by themselves and in networks, engage in policy
implementation through a process of selecting and integrating
innovations through their focus on teaching and learning.
• Schools use the principles of segmentation to transform the system
Discuss how you do this
Hope
Hope is definitely not the same thing as
optimism. It is not the conviction that
something will turn out well, but the certainty
that something makes sense, regardless of
how it turns out. It is hope, above all, that
gives us strength to live and to continually try
new things, even in challenging conditions.
Vaclav Havel
Professor David Hopkins
David Hopkins is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Education, University of London,
where until recently, he held the inaugural HSBC iNet Chair in International Leadership.
He is a Trustee of Outward Bound, holds visiting professorships at the Catholic University
of Santiago, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Universities of Edinburgh,
Melbourne and Wales and consults internationally on school reform. Between 2002 and
2005 he served three Secretary of States as the Chief Adviser on School Standards at the
Department for Education and Skills. Previously, he was Chair of the Leicester City
Partnership Board and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Nottingham.
Before that again he was a Tutor at the University of Cambridge Institute of Education, a
Secondary School teacher and Outward Bound Instructor. David is also an International
Mountain Guide who still climbs regularly in the Alps and Himalayas. His recent books
Every School a Great School and System Leadership in Practice are published by The
Open University Press.
Website: www.davidhopkins.co.uk
David is represented by Slater Baker: www.slaterbaker.com