Welcome to the

LCLL 15th Anniversary Annual Lecture

Celebrating 15 years of innovative

leadership

www.ioe.ac.uk/lcll

Building a Great School (and

a Great System)

Ben Levin

OISE – University of Toronto

Institute of Education, London

March 2012

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Outline

• Building a great school

• Challenges

• A system perspective

Perspective

• From Canada

– Senior official in government

– Policy researcher

– Political involvement

• England

– Ongoing view of education policy over last 20

years

– Evaluation of NLS/NNS

– NCSL council

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We Know a Lot

• Much knowledge about good policy and

practice

• Don’t use it all

• Requires doing many things all at once

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World Challenge

• Better outcomes than ever before

• In a broader range of areas than ever

before

• For more students than ever before

• With less inequity than ever before

• And within fiscal constraints

England

• Achievement appears quite good by

international standards

– TIMSS results high, improving

– PISA results good though not improving

• There is no education crisis

• Prime issue is equity

– Some evidence of improvement

– Large gaps remain

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What Causes These Gaps?

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Schools and Society

• Schools cannot do everything

• Social policy is also vital to good education

– Housing, employment, health, child care

• More equitable societies have better

outcomes

• Schools often less unequal than other

sectors

Schools cannot solve

social inequalities

- And should not be blamed for

them

But they can make an

important contribution to

reducing them

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How Much Could We Improve?

• Much of the variance is within schools

• Other countries do much better with

similar challenges

• Limits of improvement are not known

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Four Main Foci

• Improving teaching and learning

• Student support and care

• Curriculum and program

• Community outreach

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Teaching and Learning

• Teaching more than teachers

• Like other professions, based on best

available knowledge

• Practice owned by teachers as a

profession

• Teaching as a collective activity

• Continuous learning and adaptation

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Examples

• More formative assessment

• Building on students’ prior knowledge

• More student engagement

• More higher order tasks

• Less tracking

• Preventing failure as much as possible

• Second chances

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Student Support and Care

• Knowing every student

– Knowledge, respect, expectations

• Keeping track of every student’s progress

• Intervening early when problems occur

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Curriculum and Program

• Teaching matters more than curriculum

• Build on students’ knowledge and interests

• High expectations – avoiding tracking

• Reducing special education placements

• Self-directed learning

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Community Outreach

• Reaching out to parents and families

– To support children’s progress

• Building broader community relations

– Ethnic, religious, sports and other groups

• Working with employers

– Work experience, mentoring

• Community study

– Place as a curriculum area

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What It Takes to Do This

• A clear theory of action

• Relentless focus on the things that really

matter

– It is very hard to change people’s behaviour

• Building a positive, collegial, supportive

culture of high expectations for all

• Providing the supports people need to get

better at their work

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Challenges • Wrong policies

– Focus on competition, autonomy and blame

as central drivers of improvement

– Focus only on ‘failing’ schools

• Public beliefs

– Failure, tracking, selection as desirable

• Distractions

– Lack of focus on what really matters

• Professional beliefs

– Individual autonomy

– Blaming kids and families 37

The Importance of a System

• Each school improving on its own is not a

reasonable approach

– High performing systems do not do this

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Autonomy and Outcomes

Country Autonomy measure

UK +.83

Finland -.39

Canada -.39

Korea -.44

Japan -.18

Like the UK – Czech Republic, Hungary,

Netherlands, Sweden

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The Importance of a System

• Each school improving on its own is not a

good strategy

– High performing systems do not do this

– Does not provide enough support for

improvement in all schools

– Too many distractions for schools

• Key is the right balance between school

and system effort

• Collaboration more than competition

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Policy Needs

• More positive climate – support, not blame

• Working on improvement in every school

• Enough systematic supports to lead to real

improvement

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Implications for Leaders

• Keep focused on what really matters

• Build your own networks and supports

• Collaborate with others

• Work to influence public opinion and policy

– Importance of equity

– Need for support rather than blame

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Research

• Some good progress in UK

• Could be a much more important

contributor to better education

• Requires a more strategic approach

– Improvements in the research enterprise

– Improvements in the sector capacity to use

research

– Better mediation between the two

Vision, Optimism, Realism

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Thank You

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