Working Together to Improve Schools

Working Together to Improve Schools

An evaluation of the Transforming Secondary Education initiative in Nottingham

Andy Howes and Mel Ainscow

January 2005

CONFIDENTIAL DRAFT

Confidentiality and anonymity

Anonymity is difficult to guarantee in a report about an educational initiative in a single city. We have anonymised school names (ie C1, c2, c3) and taken additional steps where that coding does not sufficiently protect either individuals or institutions. Given that the aim of this report is not to evaluate the performance of individuals (either people or schools) but to learn lessons about collaboration between the schools in a local authority, we have no interest in presenting individuals or institutions in ways to which they would take exception. We would be grateful for feedback on any sections of the report that readers feel require further care in relation to confidentiality.

Executive Summary

This report presents the findings of an evaluation of the Transforming Secondary Education (TSE) initiative in the City of Nottingham. Set up in 2002 following a period of concern about levels of student achievement in the city’s secondary schools, the project involved the development of partnership arrangements within four groups of secondary schools (known as the ‘quadrants’). Additional funding was provided to support the process by the DfES. There was also involvement of a private partner and another local education authority

Evidence

The evaluation was carried out by a small team of researchers from the University of Manchester over a period of almost two years. The evidence for the study was collected through interviews, statistical measures, observations, document analysis and attendance at relevant meetings. In addition, surveys of staff attitudes towards the initiative were carried out. Process and outcome data were analysed and compared in order to determine conclusions as to the effectiveness of the initiative. As far as possible, findings were validated with stakeholder groups prior to the publication of this report.

The findings

The study shows that school-to-school collaboration has an enormous potential for fostering system–wide improvement, particularly in urban contexts. Over a relatively short period, secondary schools in Nottingham demonstrated how such arrangements can provide an effective means of solving immediate problems, such as staff shortages; how they can have a positive impact during periods of crisis, such as during the closure of a school; and, how, in the longer run, schools working together can contribute to the raising of aspirations and attainment in schools that have had a record of low achievement. The data show that attainment levels increased between 2002 and 2004 in all four quadrants, and KS3 results suggest that they will continue to do so over the next few years. There was also strong evidence that collaboration helped reduce the polarization of the education system, to the particular benefit of those pupils who are on the edges of the system and performing relatively poorly, although impact was uneven.

The involvement of staff from another LEA was a positive feature during the early stages of the initiative, not least in raising aspirations as to what might be possible in urban schools. The private partner played an important role in working with headteachers and LEA staff in order to develop and implement the overall strategic plan.

TSE was broadly welcomed by schools and most of the key stakeholders had some say in its detailed design. At the same time, a small minority of significant players remained convinced that they had been coerced into participation. On the positive side, the commitment to involving all secondary schools kick-started the process of collaboration and put pressure on stakeholders to work together. On the less positive side, the feeling of coercion that did exist created a relatively negative reaction from a small group of influential headteachers.

Collaboration for school improvement

The study suggests five propositions about the role of collaboration for school improvement within the TSE project. These are as follows:

Firstly, collaboration was part of a process whereby more individual schools and more groups of schools felt a stake in the process of school improvement. As a result, they found themselves able to act together in various combinations to tackle complex and deep-rooted problems in schools.

Secondly, the accounts reveal how collaborating schools contributed to a wide range of improvements, whether in terms of resources for teaching and learning, the provision and preparation of teachers and other staff, the development of alternative curricula and activities, and the measures used to determine successful teaching.

However, thirdly, the evidence indicates that collaboration alone own does not provide the models for development, and the accounts show that when groups of schools are planning new developments, the stimulus of materials from other sources (such as the KS3 strategy and others) is extremely important. A lot of collaborative work went on in connection with the themes (such as questioning, and alternative KS4 opportunities) promoted through various national strategies – and, of course, this contributed to the successful implementation of those strategies.

In addition, and fourthly, there was an ongoing issue in relation to sources of challenge. It proved difficult for collaborating headteachers, working hard to share resources and build relationships, to address the pressing needs either of individual schools or within the system, without the assistance of outsiders to the group. The accounts demonstrate how important the role of LEA staff was in this regard.

Finally, since collaboration was about the active involvement of staff from different schools, there was a constant interaction at a level close to practice and to the context that schools are working in every day. Staff saw and understood each others’ issues much more clearly, and were able to contribute to resolving the tensions that necessarily arose with the implementation of improvement plans.

Drawing out the lessons

The report argues that these findings are a significant contribution to school improvement knowledge, particularly in relation to system-wide reform. However, the evidence indicates that the successful use of school-to-school collaboration is far from straight forward, particularly within the English context, where competition and choice continue to be the driving forces of national education policy.

The Nottingham experience points to certain conditions that are necessary in order to make school-to-school collaboration effective. These are as follows:

·  The presence of incentives that encourage key stake holders to explore the possibility that collaboration will be in their own interests;

·  The development of collective responsibility for bringing about improvements in all the partner organisations;

·  Headteachers and other senior staff in schools who are willing and able to drive collaboration forward;

·  The creation of common improvement agendas that are seen to be relevant to a wide range of stakeholders;

·  External help from credible consultants/advisers (from the LEA or elsewhere) who have the confidence to learn alongside their school-based partners; and

·  An LEA willingness and desire to support and engage with the collaborative process, exploring and developing new roles and relationships where necessary.

It is argued that the absence of such conditions will mean that attempts to encourage schools to work together are likely to lead to time-consuming talk, which sooner or later will be dropped. These conclusions are in themselves important for those national initiatives, such as the Leadership Incentive Grant and the networked learning communities sponsored by the National College for School Leadership, that invest resources in the idea of schools working in partnership.

Recommendations

Whilst the overall conclusions about what has occurred in Nottingham are very positive, the report recommends that there is still much to be done if the somewhat uneven progress that has been achieved can be turned to even greater effect. This will require further steps to widen involvement in the strategy and to deepen the levels of commitment across the education service, and, indeed, amongst the wider community in the city.

The issue of shared leadership is a central factor. More specifically, there is a need for forms of leadership that will involve many stakeholders in sharing responsibility for improving the achievement of learners in all schools in the city. This calls for further significant change in beliefs and attitude, and new relationships, as well as improvements in practice.

Policy implications

The study confirms other research that shows how what goes on at the district level has a significant role to play in respect to processes of school improvement. This implies the negotiation of new, inter-dependent relationships between schools, LEAs and their wider communities, of the sort that have begun to emerge in Nottingham. Introducing such an approach in the current context, with its cocktail of competing agendas and confusion about forms of governance, is, however, far from straightforward. Consequently, levers need to be found that will be powerful in encouraging the development of inter-dependence amongst groups of schools within districts.

The report argues that policy-makers would be naive to overlook the influence of what happens at the local authority level, particularly in urban districts. Local history, inter-connections between schools and established relationships are always there, even if they are overlooked. This being the case, it is argued that further progress towards a national education system that is geared to raising standards for all students, in all schools, requires the systematic orchestration and, sometimes, the redistribution of available resources and expertise at the local level.

Consequently, it will be helpful if national policy initiatives place further emphasis on the principle of collaboration as a fundamental strategy in efforts to raise standards across the education system; and if the regulatory frameworks that are used to determine effectiveness nationally also focus specific attention on this factor.

Contents

1.  Introduction

2.  Transforming Secondary Education In Nottingham

3.  Making sense of collaboration

4.  Sharing resources: an account of Quadrant A

5.  Becoming collegial: an account of Quadrant B

6.  Developing a strategic approach: an account of Quadrant C

7.  Barriers to collaboration: an account of Quadrant D

8.  Drawing out the lessons

9.  Implications

References

Appendix A: Timeline of events

Appendix B. Conditions for School Improvement Survey

1. Introduction

Over the last few years, the introduction of performance targets has brought greater pressure to increase levels of attainment amongst students in English schools, especially at 16+, where national GCSE examination results offer a yardstick that allows some aspects of school performance to be compared. However, despite continuing gains in overall attainment levels, there remain a number of schools, typically schools in difficult urban contexts, where progress has been difficult to secure. These contexts tend to be marked by social and economic disadvantage in major cities and post-industrial towns, where learners from economically poor backgrounds are most concentrated.

In such contexts the issue of sustainable improvement is a particular challenge. Whilst the literature provides accounts of schools that have brought about improvements in their work despite facing challenging circumstances, there are fewer examples of progress that has been maintained beyond a relatively short period of years (Maden, 2001; Harris et al., 2003; West, Ainscow &Stanford, 2005). It is also the case that many of the examples that are described involve schools that have chosen to participate in particular improvement initiatives (Ainscow & Chapman, 2005). By their nature such schools tend to be exceptional and it is, therefore, dangerous to build policies on the basis of such experiences.

It seems logical to argue, therefore, that the way forward must be to focus on systemic development. In this report we provide an evaluation on an attempt to use processes of networking and collaboration across an urban education system in order develop a more sustainable strategy. This leads us to explore the opportunities and challenges that are involved.

Specifically, we report on our evaluation of the Transforming Secondary Education (TSE) initiative in the City of Nottingham. TSE was set up in 2002, following a period of concern about levels of student achievement in the city’s secondary schools. The project, which was supported by additional Government funding, involved the development of partnership arrangements within four groups of secondary schools (known as the ‘quadrants’). It was, therefore, an interesting and important experiment, in line with Government policy for the reform of secondary education. It was also consistent with recent thinking in the school improvement field.

Changing relationships

In recent years, structures and relationships within the education service in England have been fundamentally reformed. These changes have been reflected most significantly in the evolving relationships between schools and their LEAs. This movement, from ‘dependency’ towards greater ‘independence’, has been consistently orchestrated through legislation and associated Department for Education and Skills (DfES) guidance. This shift was summarised in the Government’s 1997 consultation document, ‘Excellence in Schools’, which stated: ‘The role of LEAs is not to control schools, but to challenge all schools to improve and support those which need help to raise standards’.

Relationships between schools have also been influenced by national policy changes in recent years, in two main ways. On the one hand, competition between schools has come to be seen as one of the keys to driving up standards. This was encouraged by the introduction of grant-maintained status for schools (now known as ‘foundation schools’) and by open enrolment, supported by the publication of league tables of school results. Greater autonomy was intended to ‘liberate’ schools from the bureaucracy of local government and establish what has been described as ‘school quasi-markets’ (Thrupp, 2001), in which effective schools would have an ‘arms-length’ relationship with the LEA and, indeed, with each other. At the same time, various national initiatives, such as Excellence in Cities and the Educational Action Zones, have built on and developed traditions of networking and sharing between schools, focused on areas of relative social and economic disadvantage, and aimed to improve the provision of education for children and young people in those areas.

Overall, the move away from a dependent relationship between LEAs and schools, to ways of working that emphasise school independence has so far failed to provide the system-wide improvement in achievement of the sort required by the community. For example, our own earlier research has revealed how, within contexts that value certain criteria for determining success, moves towards competition can act as a barrier to the development of an education system that is effective in reaching out to all learners (Ainscow, Howes & Tweddle, 2005; Ainscow et al, 2005). It can be argued that the emphasis on school autonomy within an environment of competition and choice has been unable to bring about significant improvements amongst all learners in economically poorer urban contexts. At the same time it is recognised that leadership for improvement efforts does need to come from within individual schools. This suggests that attempts to move schools forward in a more inclusive way are likely to be very demanding. They will, we suggest, require an engagement with questions of principles and purposes within the education system and a greater emphasis on the sharing of expertise and resources.