Transcript System Leadership for School Transformation ‘Dean’s

Every School a Great School
Realising the Potential of System Leadership
Keynote Presentation
RTU Building Leadership Capacity
Co-Constructed Leadership Project
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Tuesday 2nd October 2007
Professor David Hopkins
HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership
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.
The need for a systemic response …
We aspire to a society that is not merely civil but is good. A good
society is one in which people treat one another as ends in themselves.
And not merely as instruments; as whole persons rather than as
fragments; as members of a community, bonded by ties of affection and
commitment, rather than only as employees, traders, consumers or
even as fellow citizens.
The vision of a good society is a tableau on which we project our
aspirations, not a full checklist of all that deserves our dedication. And
the vision is often reformulated as the world around us changes, and as
we change.
The Third Way is a road that leads us toward the good society.
However, it should be acknowledged at the outset that the Third Way is
indeed fuzzy at the edges, not fully etched.
Amitai Etzioni – The third way to a good society
‘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).
• Test of resolve:
− An educational system that enables every individual to
achieve their potential and enhance their learning skills;
− a stress on moral purpose and social justice in order to
equalise life chances ;
− enhance teaching quality rather than structural change;
− commitment to sustained, systemic change since a focus
on individual school improvement distorts 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’
• Metacognition
• Curriculum choice &
entitlement
• Assessment for learning
• Co-production
‘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
• Professional development to
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
• Greater responsibility taken for
neighbouring schools
• Inclusion and Extended
Schooling
‘Autonomous
Federations’
Groups of schools opt
out of LEA control but
accept responsibility for
all students in their area
4 drivers mould to context through
system leadership
Personalised
Learning
Professional
Teaching
SYSTEM
LEADERSHIP
Intelligent
Accountability
Networks &
Collaboration
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.’
System leaders share five striking
characteristics, they:
• measure their success in terms of improving student
•
•
•
•
learning and strive to both raise the bar and narrow the
gap(s).
are fundamentally committed to the improvement of
teaching and learning.
develop their schools as personal and professional learning
communities.
strive for equity and inclusion through acting on context and
culture.
understand that in order to change the larger system you
have to engage with it in a meaningful way.
Evidence from OFSTED suggests that teaching is
still a relatively weak area
The leadership and
management of the
Headteacher and key staff
44
Behaviour, including the
incidence of exclusions
34
Overall effectiveness of
the school
15
Teaching
15
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory/Poor
0%
15
40
25
How well the pupils
achieve
Excellent/Very good
Good
36
19
43
24
49
20%
40%
7
18
60%
80%
8
8
29
63
5
5
100%
(OFSTED Annual Report 2003)
‘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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
The Dialectic between Curriculum, Learning and Teaching
Curriculum
Development
Group
Investigation
Synthesis
Simulations
Concept
Attainment
Analysis
Inductive
Thinking
Concept
Attainment
Application
Inductive
Thinking
Concept
Attainment
Comprehension
Mnemonic
Inductive
Thinking
Knowledge
Mnemonic
Simulations
Synectics
Models of Learning –
Tools for Teaching
Curriculum
Development
Role
Playing
Evaluation
Inductive
thinking
System Leadership and Student Achievement
To sustain improvement:
• the leadership develops a narrative for improvement
• the leadership explicitly organises the school for
•
•
•
•
improvement
the leadership is highly focussed on improving the quality of
teaching and learning (and student welfare)
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
Teacher performance – Determinants
Pj = f (Mj, Aj, Sj)
P=
teacher’s performance
M = teacher’s motivation
A = teacher’s abilities, professional
knowledge and skills
S=
work settings and features of
their school and classroom
Effects of School Leadership on Student
Learning
Capacity
***
*
School
Leadership
**
Motivation
***
Altered
Practices
**
*
Setting
Pupil
Learning
System leaders share five striking
characteristics, they:
• measure their success in terms of improving student
•
•
•
•
learning and strive to both raise the bar and narrow the
gap(s).
are fundamentally committed to the improvement of
teaching and learning.
develop their schools as personal and professional learning
communities.
strive for equity and inclusion through acting on context and
culture.
understand that in order to change the larger system you
have to engage with it in a meaningful way.
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 pracatice across the system
• Work as change agents or experts leaders as National Leader of
Education, School Improvement Partner, Consultant Leader.
Networking and Segmentation:
Highly Differentiated Improvement Strategies
Type of School
Key strategies – responsive to context and need
Leading Schools
- Become leading practitioners
- Formal federation with lower-performing schools
Succeeding, selfimproving schools
- Regular local networking for school leaders
- Between school curriculum development
Succeeding schools with
internal variations
- Consistency interventions: such as AfL.
- Subject specialist support to particular depts.
Underperforming schools
- Linked school support for underperforming depts.
- Underperforming pupil programmes, e.g. catch-up.
Low attaining schools
Below floor target
- Formal support in Federation structure
- Consultancy in core subjects and best practice
- Intensive Support Programme
- New provider: e.g. Academy.
Segmentation requires a fair degree
of boldness …
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
POWERFUL
LEARNING
EXPERIENCES
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
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 School Improvement Group or Cadre
• Enquiring into the Strengths and Weaknesses of
the School
• Designing the Whole School Programme
• Seeking Partners and Seeding the Whole School
Approach
Establishing the Process
During this early phase, strategies need to be clear and direct
focusing on a limited number of basic curriculum and
organisational issues, to build the confidence and competence:
• provision of early, intensive outside support;
• surveying opinion; disaggregating data on student achievement
• identify a school improvement group (SIG), who receive specific
training in classroom practices crucial to achieving school’s goals:
− focus on managing learning behaviour, not behaviour management;
−work on re-skilling teams of teachers in specific repertoire
• progressive restructuring to generate new opportunities for leadership,
collaboration and planning.
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
Phase Two: Going Whole School
• The Initial Whole School INSET 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
Going Whole School
Developmental activities at this stage include:
• The use of whole school training days to focus on practical
teaching and learning strategies.
• The allocation of dedicated time for school improvement
activities.
• The organising of staff into critical friendship groups.
• Monitoring progress through a focus on student learning.
• Generating an on-going dialogue about values across staff
and with key groupings such as heads of faculty.
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
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
Sustaining Momentum
School improvement is not another project. It needs to be
built into the fabric of the school & the ways teachers work
together.
• new understandings about learning & change management;
• more flexible and creative use of space, time, and people;
• widespread use of collaborative ways of working; and
• redefinition & adaptation of ideas through the use of evidence.
When these are internalised then not only will student attainment
have risen but also the school will be a learning organisation.
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
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iNet’s Mission
“to create powerful and innovative networks of
schools committed to achieving systematic,
significant and sustained change that ensures
outstanding outcomes for all students in all
settings”.
OECD Trends
•
•
•
•
The nature of childhood and ‘extended adolescence’
The knowledge economy
Inequality and exclusion
Changing family and community life
And more broadly:
• Alarming increase in the inequalities between rich and poor
countries
• Patterns of population growth
Why Scenarios?
• Scenarios translate trends into imagined probable futures,
helping us to:
• understand more about our current direction of
travel, our values and our principles;
• imagine the preferred future we hope to shape
together;
• explore how school leaders and policy makers
can work to make this a reality.
Six OECD Scenarios
• Maintaining the Status Quo
• 1. Bureaucratic school systems continue
• 2. Teacher exodus, the ‘meltdown scenario’
• Re-schooling
• 3. Schools as core social centres
• 4. Schools as focused learning organisations
• De-schooling
• 5. Learning networks and the network society
• 6. Extending the market model
1. Bureaucratic School Systems Continue
• strong pressures towards uniformity
• schools as distinct institutions, knitted together by complex
administrative arrangements.
• media commentaries frequently critical in tone, but radical
change is resisted.
• fear that change will not address fundamental tasks of
guardianship & socialisation, alongside cognitive development
& equality of opportunity.
2. Teacher Exodus - ‘Meltdown Scenario’
• crisis triggered by a rapidly ageing profession, exacerbated by
low teacher morale and buoyant opportunities in graduate job
market
• large size of the teaching force makes improvements in
relative attractiveness costly, with long lead times for tangible
results
• disparities of the crisis by socio-geographic, as well as subject,
area.
• creates vicious circle of retrenchment & conflict
3. Schools as Core Social Centres
• schools enjoy widespread recognition as the most effective
bulwark against social, family and community fragmentation.
• extensive shared responsibilities exist between schools and
other community bodies, expertise and institutions of further
education, shaping, not conflicting with, high teacher
professionalism.
• generous levels of financial support meet demanding
requirements for quality learning in all communities, elevating
the esteem of teachers and schools.
4. Schools as Focused Learning Organisations
• schools are revitalised around strong knowledge agendas
(rather than a social agenda), in a culture of high quality
experimentation, diversity and innovation.
• new forms of evaluation and competence assessment flourish.
• ICT is used extensively alongside other learning media,
traditional and new.
• knowledge management moves to the fore, and the very large
majority of schools have extensive links to tertiary education
and other organisations.
5. Learning Networks - Networked Society
• dissatisfaction with institutionalised provision & diversified
demand leads to the abandonment of schools in favour of
multiple learning networks.
• networks are founded on extensive possibilities of powerful,
inexpensive ICT.
• deinstitutionalisation of school systems becomes part of the
emerging ‘network society’.
• various cultural, religious and community voices come to the
fore in the socialisation and learning arrangements for
children.
6. Extending the Market Model
• governments encourage diversification in a broader environment
of market-led change,
• many new providers are encouraged by reforms of funding
structures, incentives and regulation.
• flourishing indicators, measures & accreditation arrangements
start to displace direct public monitoring and curriculum
regulation.
• Innovation abounds, as do painful transitions and inequalities.
The iNET Scenario
Breaking with the past
Preferred future
Transmission model
Learning focussed
Jack of all trades
Islands of excellence
Secret gardens
Supported professionalism
Networking
Social centres
Critical path: how do we get there?
Personalised
Learning
Professional
Teaching
SYSTEM
LEADERSHIP
Intelligent
Accountability
Networks &
Collaboration
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, LAs and Nationally
Paulo Freire once said…
“No one educates anyone else
Nor do we educate ourselves
We educate one another in
communion
In the context of living in this world”
Professor David Hopkins
HSBC Chair in International Leadership
David Hopkins is the inaugural HSBC Chair in International Leadership, where he supports
the work of iNet, the International arm of the Specialist Schools Trust and the Leadership
Centre at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is also a Professorial Fellow
at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. 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. Before becoming a civil servant he outlined his
views on teaching quality, school improvement and large scale reform in Hopkins D. (2001)
School Improvement for Real, London: Routledge / Falmer. His new book Every School
a Great School has just been published by The Open University Press.
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.davidhopkins.co.uk