21st Century Governance
By
David
Cameron
Harris
Who am I??
Formed a 3-18 school by amalgamating a secondary,
junior & infants in record time
Formed an innovative academy with a university
Author of “Are You Dropping the baton?”
Author of “Brave Heads”
Writing “Leadership Dialogues” with Prof. John West
Burnham
Ex-chair of CATS – working across the world on
improving transition
Managing Director of Independent Thinking
Believe that work without passion is pointless
st
21
Century Governance
What’s new?
Clue……
It’s not the sherry and cake
Nor the Kumbaya
•
•
•
•
Comparisons at what?
We can agree on SOME of the problems
We need to agree on ALL of the problems
We need to agree on the possible solutions
•
•
•
•
Do we know the standard?
Or how to use the freedom?
Is it in the curriculum or is it in the tests?
“the soft bigotry of low expectations”
Aged 7
• Children in the top quartile
have 7100 words; children in
the lowest have around 3000.
• The main influence is parents.
DfE Research Unit
Aged 16
• 1 in 12 have a working
vocabulary of 800 words.
• Whose responsibility is that?
What challenges are we all responding
to?
• The changing world - technology, globalism,
uncertainty
• The changing context - policy, frameworks,
expectations and priorities
• Changing relationships
• Dealing with uncertainty
The Pendulum of education
The Pendulum of education
Eric Hoffer
• In times of change, the learners shall inherit
the earth while the learned will remain
beautifully equipped for a world that no
longer exists
David Cameron
• And the learners who can create and innovate,
who can identify opportunity and manage risk
will shape that inheritance and define the
future
The Passionate Teacher
‘Of some of our teachers, we remember their foibles and mannerisms, of
others, their kindness and encouragement, or their fierce devotion to
standards of work that we probably did not share at the time. And of
those who inspired us most, we remember what they cared about, and
that they cared about us, and the person we might become. It is the
quality of caring about ideas and values, this fascination with the potential
for growth within people, this depth and fervour about doing things well
and striving for excellence, that comes closest to what I mean in describing
a ‘passionate teacher’.
Robert Fried
Why teachers and books matter
“I was supposed to be a welfare statistic……. It is because of a teacher that I
sit at this table. I remember her telling us one cold, miserable day that she
could not make our clothing better; she could not provide us with food; she
could not change the terrible segregated conditions under which we lived.
She could introduce us to the world of reading, the world of books and that
is what she did.
What a world! I visited Asia and Africa. I saw magnificent sunsets; I tasted
exotic foods; I fell in love and danced in wonderful halls. I ran away with
escaped slaves and stood beside a teenage martyr. I visited lakes and
streams and composed lines of verse. I knew then that I wanted to help
children do the same things, I wanted to weave magic.”
(From evidence submitted to ‘The National Commission
on Teaching and America’s future’, 1999.)
The big ten classroom factors?
• having a positive attitude
• the development of a pleasant social /
psychological climate in the classroom
• having high expectations of what pupils
can achieve
• lesson clarity
• effective time management
• strong lesson structuring
• the use of a variety of teaching methods
• using and incorporating pupils’ ideas
• using appropriate and varied questioning
[Reynolds]
What do learners need?
• Basic skills – literacy, numeracy
• The specific skills required by subjects or
vocational choices
• The skills to access knowledge including the
skill of questioning
•
•
•
•
The capacity to think, learn and adapt
The ability to innovate and create
The commitment to sustained enquiry or task
The ability to choose, and use, the tools for
learning, life and work
• Attainment and capacity
What sort of learning?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Based on the gifts not the deficits
Active
Letting the learner find meaning
Varied
Motivated
Respecting subjects but not dominated by them
Assessed in terms of breadth, depth and application
What makes a difference
There are at least four important ingredients for
improving education. The first are the
professional skills of those who work with
children.
Research has shown that factors like national or
regional policies are less influential on pupils’
achievements than factors within each school
Of the school factors, the skills of staff came top.
• The most important of these was effective
classroom management
The other factors
• The second vital ingredient is the raising of aspirations
and expectations.
• Third, staff morale and attitude to their craft. It is hard to
improve what you do through clenched teeth.
• Fourth is the climate within the school..a positive
attitude to improvement in which people look at what is
happening in classrooms, reflect on it and implement
judicious change
Making the Shift
Effective
Ineffective
Traditional
Forward Looking
What the research is telling us
1. Shared Values
2. Trust
3. Professional Learning
4. Learning centred Leadership
5. Move from find and fix to Predict & Prevent
Is this what you are asking your head to do?
Thought!!!!!!
• Data is important but so is the narrative
• How it feels as well as what it shows
• Asking questions is not adversarial in a culture
of shared self-evaluation
• A culture of trust trumps a climate of
suspicion
“School leaders and teachers need to create
school, staffroom and classroom
environments where error is welcomed as a
learning opportunity, where discarding
incorrect knowledge and understandings is
welcomed and where participants can feel
safe to learn, re-learn and explore knowledge
and understanding.”(Hattie, 2008)
Key Principles
 Change should only be driven by selfevaluation, provided that self-evaluation is
realistic and takes account of economic and
social changes
 If all learners were experiencing the best
practice in our schools, we would not be
talking about system change
 We need to build on strengths in care,
commitment and practice
Key principles
• People work best when they are enthusiastic
about what they are doing
• ….. and who they are doing it with and for
• Otherwise it makes no real difference
Effective Qualities
• Sharing the management of learning with
pupils
• Promoting the belief that attainment can
improve
• Using a wide range of sources of information
• Identifying a range of needs
• Responding to needs
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Using a range of sources of support
The 4 big questions
• What are you going to do to improve your
practice?
• What help or support will you need to make
that improvement?
• What outcomes will you expect your young
people to achieve as a result of the
improvement?
• What evidence will you look at to determine if
the improvement has been made?
Why are Governors so important?
•
•
•
•
•
The voice of the child
The voice of the community
Source of support
Source of questions/challenge
A link
Increasing or reducing?
Meet
Jamie
Drug Exposure
Mental Health
Family Life
Behavioural
Issues
Peer Pressure
Legal Problems
The Present
Getting it Right for Every Child
Clarity of Purpose
Purpose is not simply a target that an
organisation chooses to aim for - it is an
organisation’s reason for being. It needs to
express what the organisation wants to
accomplish in providing value to its
stakeholders - and describe how these
accomplishments can be measured.
FOCUS ON THE LEADERSHIP OF PEOPLE
People
People
Leadership
Management
Leadership
Management
Systems
Systems
Some thoughts
“Smart kids pass tests”
It’s the last question that holds the key to high
achievement
Attainments are only for entrance, they don’t
guarantee success in the world you enter
It is not our job to enable young people to
fail, it is our task to give them the tools to
succeed
• A culture of trust trumps a climate of
suspicion
• Asking questions is not adversarial in a culture
of self-evaluation
“Self similarity is achieved not through compliance to an
exhaustive set of standards and rules, but from a few
simple principles that everyone is accountable for,
operating in a condition of individual freedom”.
The Lacuna
Their white dresses swirled like froth, with
skirts so wide they could take the hems in
their fingertips and raise them up to make
sudden wings, like butterflies, fluttering as
they turned…..
“Indian girls,” she spat……”A corn eater will
never be more than she is”
The dancers were butterflies. From a hundred paces
Salome could see the dirt under their fingernails, but
not their wings
Sometimes the weight of living in this
atmosphere of responsibility, work and
weariness seems almost more than I can
bear. I feel like a bird in a cage, beating
against the bars, longing to be free, but
baffled everywhere
He dreamed of breaking through the
monotony and the grind of teachers lives,
the treadmill of constant preparation and
ceaseless evaluation, which are so apt to
dry up and narrow mind and spirit
The Real David Cameron
• therealdavidcameron@gmail.com
• @realdcameron
• 07825654326
www.independentthinking.co.uk
daveharriseducation@gmail.com
@bravehead