Transcript The current state of school leadership: review of key

Connected leadership
Extended schools and ECM
National Middle Schools’ Forum
9th October 2006
Maggie Farrar
NCSL
Connected leadership
• Look at trends – why are we where we are
?
• Explore issues of leadership – ECM &
extended schools and services
• Focus on relationships – students matter
Synchronicity
Standards plateau – well being, standards and
social justice
Social context & learning context
User ‘ customer’ focus – parents, children and
young people
Personalisation – spaces , places and times
PISA study – high excellence and low equity
Schools – federated / extended / core social
centres / learning hubs
New professionals – remodelling
Making a difference locally – 5 outcomes
Schools as public spaces
It’s a challenge ….
• How do you define need? How do establish the
school at the heart of the community?
• How do you collaborate effectively?
• How do you ensure that services are
sustainable?
• From bonding to bridging : inward and outward
• How do you measure impact – what value do
you create ?
• How do you lead for sustainability
• How do you ‘marry’ the standards and the ECM
agenda ?
Sustainability:
need for long term support
“We can see differences now but I think it’s
going to be five to ten years before you can
see the real differences and people don’t like
that because they’re putting money in and want
results quick, quick, quick.”
Primary headteacher
Developing a model of leadership
Managing complexity
boundaries / extent of authority and influence / interdependence / the
long view
Building leadership capacity
Encouraging ownership and distributed leadership
Conversations – not meetings / creative approaches
Skills and attributes
• Visionary
• Flexible
• Entrepreneurial
Morally led, committed
Culturally open – focus on bridging
Political
Locality leadership
• Meaning making – importance of trust
• Promoting bridging not bonding
• Local learning guarantees – of which school is one part
School and leader as agent of change
Generating environment / building skills set / local solutions
Relationships matter …..
‘If relationship building is central to
success, why is the principle of change
violated so often ?’
Michael Fullan
Start with students…..
Students relationships with students
circle time / buddy / peer tutoring
Students relationships with teachers
negotiated learning / extra curricular / ‘first
fridays’
Students relationships with content
Enquiry / learning2learn / intelligences /
evaluating
Students relationship with community
Citizenship / volunteering / ambassadors
Extended Learning – a bridging space
and place
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Ownership – students, families, communities
Social entrepreneurship – effect can be multiplied
Fosters engagement in learning
Promotes and practises shared accountability and
responsibility; from consumers to contributors
Exists at the margins of formal schooling
Connects young people within the community – not
exclusively those who attend a specific school
Encourages active engagement with the community
through volunteering and active citizenship
Builds confidence in the capacity of the community to
engage in the learning and well being of young people
Communities with high social capital
have:
• A focus on relationship building
• Shared norms and values
• Sophisticated social networks
• High level of trust
• High civic engagement and involvement
• Interdependence and reciprocity
• Volunteering and community action
What characteristics can a school help to
foster ?
‘In sum – social capital appears to have a
large impact on educational attainment.
On the face of it, and from what we know,
the impact of social capital dwarfs that of
the factors the governments and education
professionals normally argue about such
as financial resources, class sizes and
teachers salaries’
Halpern : Social Capital (Cambridge Ed Press)
Unique environment of middle
schools
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Relationships – student / adult
Social capital – trust / networks
Student leadership – responsibility and authority
Public spaces – open / surprising / co – opted by
the public
‘ when young people are no longer children, but do
not yet know what adults they will become’
The next stage of reform ….
interdependence
‘As long as we use very different terms for
explaining good schools and good
communities, we risk talking about how
schools can be improved or transformed
as if this could be done independently of
the community. This is in defiance of the
facts and can generate inflated
expectations of what school leaders can
achieve alone’
David Hargreaves 2003
Advice …..
Someone dancing inside us
Learned only a few steps
The ‘ do your work’ in 4-4 time
The ‘ what do you expect’ waltz
She hasn’t noticed yet the woman
Standing just away from the lamp
The one with black eyes
Who knows the rhombi
And strange steps in different rhythms
From the mountains
If they dance together, something unexpected will happen
If they don’t – the next world
Will be a lot like this one
Bill Holmes