incerts network launch - 'school improvement: how collaboration can play a vital role' by...
TRANSCRIPT
Robert Hill Consulting
What drives school improvement?
“The quality of leadership in a school is second only to teaching in its impact on student outcomes”The Hill report 2013
2. The quality of school leadership
Quality leadership in schools is about more than having effective headteachers: it also involves developing and empowering senior, middle, classroom and student leaders
Robert Hill Consulting
So how does collaboration help improve the quality of teaching and learning and school leadership?
Robert Hill Consulting
It helps a school to know itself
• Benchmarking performance • Moderating assessment • Running joint lesson observations
and learning walks • Conducting peer reviews • Jointly investigating common
areas of concern • Sharing school development plans • Learning from student voice
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It helps a school to develop expertise
• Deploying lead practitioners
• Training and using classroom coaches across groups of schools
• Sharing subject experts
• Buying in joint programmes to improve outcomes in specific subject areas – e.g AfL
• Enabling joint curriculum and lesson planning
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It helps a school develop its staff
• Holding joint inset/training sessions
• Linking joint training to coaching and classroom review
• Setting up action research or lesson study to address common challenges
• Sharing NQT development
• Sharing middle and senior leadership programmes
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It helps a school develop a leadership pipeline
• Appointing executive heads
• Providing emerging leaders with opportunities for assignments and secondments
• Using experienced heads as coaches and mentors
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It helps a school improve its governance
• Holding joint training and development sessions
• Opportunities to observe each other’s meetings
• Sharing data and practice
• Picking up new ideas
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Good rescue partnerships – phases of supportSorting the basics
• Provide intensive coaching for weak teachers & support the best • Show what good and excellent teaching looks like • Use capability procedures where necessary • Insist on basic systems – especially for behaviour & attendance • Amend curriculum where necessary • Set individual and collective targets for improvement • Improve the school environment and sort out finances
Developing capacity
• Develop critical mass of good or better teaching and learning • Share schemes of work, lesson plans, observation and coaching • Organise shared insets, CPD and middle leadership development • Empower teachers and leaders with potential • Share and compare data
Train governors jointly and observe each other’s meetingsSustaining improvement
• Ensure that progress and attainment is rising • Ensure leadership at levels of the school is working well • Agree long-term arrangements for support of the school
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The form of collaboration depends on context
• Is it a rescue mission? !!
!• Is it about accessing specialist
support?
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Partnerships providing specific support
From its self-evaluation or development plan School A may identify that it needs: • Coaching for the head or senior leadership
team
• Middle leadership development
• Coaching support for specific teachers
• Subject expertise
• Support to develop the curriculum or improve assessment
• Business management support
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Partnerships providing specific support
School B has the
necessary expertise
School A requiring support
• It is usually better for the support to be provided in School A – i.e. in situ so that practice can be developed in the context of School A’s challenges
!• However, some observation of
outstanding practice in School B may also be appropriate
Robert Hill Consulting
Partnerships providing specific support
School B has the
necessary expertise
School A requiring support
The support should be structured and commissioned in a proper way with inputs, expected outcomes and reimbursement formally
agreed
Robert Hill Consulting
Partnerships providing specific support
School B has the
necessary expertise
School A requiring support Over time the relationship
between the schools may develop to the point where expertise is
flowing both ways and the partnership is more akin to a
mutual aid arrangement
Robert Hill Consulting
The form of collaboration depends on context
• Is it a rescue mission? !!
!• Is it about accessing specialist
support? !!
• Is it about mutual aid?
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Ten lessons1. Build on existing partnerships and relationships
Source: David Hargreaves for National College, 2012
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Ten lessons
2. Keep local partnerships geographically focused
If a partnership is large it will need to consider splitting into small localised clusters for key aspects of its work
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Ten lessons3. Develop strong relationships, shared values and commitment to each
other
• Thinking strategically • Communicating well • Developing a shared purpose • Being honest in relationships • Celebrating others’ successes • Facilitating group processes • Involving others • Understanding impact of change • Learning from each other • Mediating conflict
• Setting direction
• Commanding authority
• Being accountable
• Championing an institution
• Persuading through vision
• Understanding different organisations
• Making trade-offs
• Modelling collaboration
Leadership of an institution
Leadership in a partnership
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Ten lessons
4. Be clear about governance, funding and accountability
Overall governance arrangements for partnership
School governance exercised by local governing bodies (Focused more on the local school community)
• Formal schemes setting out in detail respective responsibilities and accountabilities for funding, polices and performance
• Mechanisms for consultation and dialogue
• Joint development and training
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Ten lessons
5. Involve middle leaders in the leadership of partnerships
Individual lead
Individual lead
Task group
Task group
Task group
Formal governance
Individual lead
Strategic leadership and co-ordination
Operational leadership and co-ordinationDeputy and assistant heads and middle
leaders
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Ten lessons
6. Use business plans and action plans to prioritise what partnerships will do together
• Have you identified your key priorities? • Do your projects reflect your key priorities and help to deliver them? • Have you assessed how you will jointly deliver your project – and the
level of support, input or resources that will be required? • Have you agreed your success/impact measures? • Have you established how you will track and monitor progress? • Is there a clear structure for reporting back on outcomes and
evaluating impact?
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• Data openly shared and benchmarked – in-year as well as end of year
• Shared lesson observations linked to evidence on effective classroom practice
• Peer and external reviews • Joint investigations of subjects,
departments and issues • Student voice • Tracking measures for partnership
programmes
Ten lessons7. Focus partnership activity on improving teaching and learning
through teacher-to-teacher and pupil-to-pupil engagement
Robert Hill Consulting
Ten lessons7. Focus partnership activity on improving teaching and learning
through teacher-to-teacher and pupil-to-pupil engagement
50%
25%25%
75%75%
50%
Joint practice development (Coaching in class, lesson study, joint lesson planning and action research)
Continuous professional development (Seminars, courses, conferences and insets)
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Using mentors and coaches is a powerful driver of improvement
• Share understanding of what is meant by mentoring and coaching
• Train and accredit mentors and coaches – particularly middle leaders
• Develop open classrooms and use of video technology
• Encourage peer mentors, student mentors and use of external coaches
Ten lessons7. Focus partnership activity on improving teaching and learning
through teacher-to-teacher and pupil-to-pupil engagement
Robert Hill Consulting
School-to-school working develops and deepens the more there is a dense web of interaction between staff and pupils
Joint insetsCoaching
Lesson study
Shared lesson observations
Action research
Student voice
Joint curriculum & lesson planningLeadership
development
Lead Practitioners
Governor developmentNetwork
nights
Ten lessons7. Focus partnership activity on improving teaching and learning
through teacher-to-teacher and pupil-to-pupil engagement
Digital contact
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Ten lessons8. Allocate some resources to pay for some dedicated leadership
or project management time
Individual lead
Individual lead
Task group
Task group
Task group
Formal governance
Individual lead
Strategic leadership and co-ordination
Operational leadership and co-ordination
Executive head/lead head/partnership co-
ordinator and all heads
Deputy and assistant heads and middle
leaders
*May only be one or two days a week
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Denton
Grantham Rural Schools Village
Partnership
Strategic Partner in EOS Teaching School Alliance
Collaboration with Huntingtower
Community Primary Academy
Extended School Partnership led by local secondary
school
Denton and Harlaxton Federation
Harlaxton
Ad hoc support for other schools
Support from bursar at local
academy
Ten lessons9. Be prepared to be engaged in multi-partnership activity and for
the form and membership of partnerships to evolve over time
Robert Hill Consulting
Ten lessons
9. Be prepared to be engaged in multi-partnership activity and for the form and membership of partnerships to evolve over time
• Is partnership mainstream or add-on?
• Depth takes time to achieve and comes as partners build trust and work together more extensively
• Depth is linked with hard-wiring how partnerships work together
Source: David Hargreaves for National College, 2012
Robert Hill Consulting
Ten lessons
10. Monitor and evaluate the impact of partnership activity
• Quality of teaching and learning • Leadership development and sustainability • Staff motivation • Pupil engagement – as measured through
attendance, behaviour, homework completion, marking of books
• Pupil attainment and progress – both within year and at end of year
• Ofsted outcomes
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Questions for discussion with your neighbour
• What one thing most excites you about the opportunities this agenda presents?
!
• What one thing most worries you about the challenges this agenda presents?
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Partnerships in general – it can be doneIt requires: • Shared moral purpose • A ‘can do’ culture • Planning, timetabling and
backfilling • Communication – so that
everyone knows (governors, staff, students and parents) what is happening
• Reinforcing the benefits
Yes, you can!