Leading Major System Change in Education

Leading major system change in education – George Berwick, 2015

Leading major system change in education

Introduction

These notes are designed to provide background information for the presentations I am making for SBA’s 2015 Annual Education Dialogue. This years dialogue focus is on “driving great teaching in all schools through a highly effective instructional system based on rigorous evidence of what works in schools.” My contribution is to describe what I have learnt from leading major system change in education over the last twenty-five years and how that currently manifests itself in Challenge Partners.

Content

Lessons learnt from leading major system change in education
Theory of Action
Challenge Partners - a description
Challenge Partners - our Theory of Action in practice today.

1.Lessons learnt from leading major system change in education

I have used the word led to describe my role but it has been more of a collaborative approach, the sum of the parts being far more effective than any individual. For the last fifteen years, when I have led teams developing school to school work, my main collaborators in England have been Dame Sue John, Rita Bugler and Richard Lockyer, and in Quebec, Ruth Ahern and Mike Dubeau.

Our learning has two strands – how to lead major innovations in education and how to improve the performance of teachers and school leaders so that their students receive an outstanding education. In both cases we have gone outside of education to look for solutions and continue to do so. Our major influences outside of education have been the UK health service – teaching hospitals/teaching schools, business consultancy/National and Specialist Leaders of Education (NLE/SLEs) – Australian Institute of Sport and British Cycling / evidenced based decision making and marginal gains, Apple / product design, Waitrose – John Lewis and Best Western / Challenge Partners and effective knowledge management in business – school to school work.

We have also looked to learn from other education systems. In the early days this meant mainly Canada and Sweden. However, increasingly over the last few years the globe has become our source of knowledge. Through all of this our key learning has come from working within the system as practitioners and from our peers. We have been responsible directly for the outcomes of our decisions and have at first hand seen how they have benefited our students.

We evaluate our success on the impact of our work on our students and how far the work is adopted by the system at large. This means we are constantly seeking to change the performance of all practitioners in our schools rather than the interested few. All we have learnt we have come to encapsulate in what we refer to as our Theory of Action. To support our decision making of what works and what doesn’t work, this theory has a rigorous public and internal audit trail. These decisions are enshrined in a set of non-negotiables or degrees of freedom. Some of these are highlighted in the section that describes our Theory of Action today. We use models and concepts to bring an intellectual rigour and coherence to our work. The concepts we have used include the Upward Convergence, Virtuous Learning Community and the Four Capitals. We have created new roles and organisations – NLEs & SLEs, consultant leaders, systemic leaders and Teaching Schools, National Support Schools and Hubs. Finally, a new language has emerged as the work has spread beyond our area of responsibility.

I have described our current Theory of Action as realised in a local and national collaborative of schools working together through challenge and support to provide their students with an education that represents the wisdom of the education community. We have called this collaborative Challenge Partners.

2. Theory of Action

This template was provided for the head teachers of the latest National College systems leaders programme.

3. Challenge Partners

Challenge Partners is a charity, owned and led by schools which work together to lead school improvement. We believe that when schools are working in partnership to continually improve their practice, then an excellent education for students will be achieved.

The Partnership has grown from 64 schools in 2011 to 350 in 2015. The schools all come from different backgrounds across the country, we recognise that we are stronger together and that collaboration is the key to continued success. We exist to support schools in that role by facilitating constructive collaboration and challenge between them and providing a platform for activities that would not be possible for a school to undertake on its own. Together we aspire to become a world class, knowledge sharing community, which leads the way in school improvement and raises the standards of education for all.

Challenge Partners follows a rich history of school improvement and collaboration, not least in the work of the London and City Challenge programmes. Developing models of school-to-school support, which broke great practice out of schools and shared that knowledge and practice between schools and local authorities, brought about the success of these Challenge approaches. When the London Challenge ended in 2011 many of the school leaders who played a role in that work committed to developing a self-funding and sustainable way, through Challenge Partners, to continue and develop this approach nationally.

We are committed to four aims which impact on the young people we serve:

1. Improve pupils' examination results at a rate above the national average and accelerate the progress of the disadvantaged

2. Enable all schools to improve at a rate above the national average

3. Create more national leaders and outstanding schools that fulfill the Teaching School criteria

4. Develop a world-class, self-improving and sustainable system that contribute to national research and policy making.

Our activity is run through the Hub model. These are local partnerships of schools, often Teaching School Alliances, which come together to pool their knowledge and resources. Our role is to help make these Hubs more effective, as well as create new Hubs. In effect, this means that the aim is to reduce the disparity in performance of the schools in the Hub whilst increasing the performance of the Hub overall.

Our Theory of Action to achieve this is called Upwards Convergence:

Through upward convergence, not only does the number of staff and schools in the system, which can deliver best practice, increase, but best practice itself increases. Our approach to achieving this is through developing in schools the key components of effective knowledge management, which we define as the 'Four Capitals':

Creating the moral climate for knowledge sharing between staff and schools (Moral Capital).
Identifying those that have the knowledge of effective school practice and capturing it (Knowledge Capital).
Equipping the staff and schools with the social skills to share their knowledge effectively (Social Capital).
Setting up the organisational systems for them to share this knowledge with those who need to learn (Organisational Capital).

Partners

Benefits of being a Challenge Partners member:

4.Our Theory of Action in practice today -

Our Theory of Action for an effective collaborative of schools and other educational organisations has at its heart a moral purpose. It ensures that all of the students we serve, especially the most disadvantaged, receive an education that represents the current wisdom of the education community. We actively seek to support schools that serve disadvantaged students, wish to be transformed by working with others and/or feel isolated.

By building moral capital through the ways our members challenge and support each other we drive our moral purpose. Our challenge is based on agreed progressive professional standards and is construction and inclusive. The standards represent an amalgam of political policy, the outcome of research, emerging effective innovation and the best practice of our schools. We challenge all our schools to do better. An annual quality assured peer review is central to this process. Support is provided both locally and nationally by our members, resulting in a nation wide brokerage service. We use evidence to determine what support works where, when and by whom. This takes into account the stage of development of the teachers involved and the capacity of the leadership team to manage change.

Through our constantly updated knowledge audit we know what knowledge we need, who owns it (within or outside of our collaborative) and how best to use it to improve our students and teachers/leaders learning. We do not leave knowledge transfer to chance. Instead we have created a collaborative learning model that allows for tacit knowledge to become explicit and for learning opportunities to be provided which reflect

the degree of complexity of the learning to be undertaken by the learner. Whilst developing our members’ social skills, we also provide the organisational capital to ensure that this knowledge becomes embedded.

Specifically, we identify, challenge, support and develop catalysts that energises the links between and within the many networks engaged with our collaborative. The collaborative itself is lead by leaders who can reconcile their own ambitions for the good of their peers, ensure the process is quality assured, police the edges of the culture and recognise the positive contribution others make beyond their own responsibilities. This is not a static situation. Our knowledge of how to run an effective collaborative is constantly improving from research, emerging effective innovation and best practice in schools.

Our collaborative is based on relationships, and as a result, our schools and groups of schools and their staff adapt to this process at varying speeds. Thus growth tends to be organic. The greater the physical contact between members the more effective the collaboration so Hubs tend to be locally based. In addition, the capacity of the schools to effectively engage and then contribute to the three areas of knowledge affects their rate of development. As well as sharing knowledge, they may also be formed to play a local political role but this is not an inclusive requirement. We do, however, require that initially our Hubs of schools have at their center an outstanding school (Teaching School) with the capacity to challenge and support others. We have found that in time the leadership and support provided will become more distributed (a hub or dock).

The development of our collaborative is strategic. Selection and induction of both new Hubs and new members has to be rigorous as considerable valuable energy can be lost focusing on the disaffected. Initially, the activity between schools is directed at improving the quality of teaching and learning and leadership. To obtain buy-in, interventions that are low cost/high impact are initially used. We work quickly with new members to develop their capacity to provide support as well as receive it. As the collaborative develops so do the members so that in time they can:

Use shared data to provide real depth to the challenge they offer each other.
Take responsibility for the success of all of the schools involved.
Provide long-term support for each other such as Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and succession planning.
Rationalise out their involvement in effective emerging innovation.
Use their collective power to gain resources they could not access on their own.
Take a rationalised approach to their involvement in effective emerging innovation.
Provide resources, often on a reciprocal basis, for other members.
Effectively induct new members and succession plan.

It is essential that at the center there is a team that facilitates this process and which ensures that it is encapsulated in a Theory of Action. Our small team ensures that we retain our moral purpose by monitoring the nature of the membership and its impact on student outcomes. It also ensures that the latest research findings and emerging research is made accessible to our schools by identifying and locating current best practice and accrediting and mobilising programmes which have the capacity to improve the performance of our students and teacher/leaders. We engage with our major stakeholders, such as the Social Business Trust, Education Endowment Fund and Institute of Education/University College London, in order to seek influence where necessary and also to access resources. We constantly research the effectiveness of collaboratives as a configuration for school improvement and adjust our Theory of Action accordingly.

Finally, as part of our moral purpose, we take responsibility in using our collective power to bring a positive influence to bear at all levels of the education system. We do this by publishing research and reports such as this, having members on most major decision making bodies both locally and nationally and using social media.

Overview of Challenge Partners

Growth of the Partnership
Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3 / Year 4 / Year 5 (current)
Number of schools / 72 / 179 / 238 / 259 / 312
Percentage growth / n/a / +149% / +33% / +9% / +21%

Locations of schools

Types of schoolsPhases of schools

Bibliography

Argyris, C and Schon, D., (1978) Organisational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley

Barber, M and Mourshed, M., (2007) How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, McKinsey and Company

Berwick, G. T., (2001), Building Success: A school’s Journey of Improvement, GTB Assoc.

Berwick, G. T., (2004), Proposal for a National Network of Teaching Schools – Submitted to the Cabinet Office

Berwick, G. T., (2006), From Good to Outstanding – Ensuring London has the Leading Urban Education System in the World by 2010, DFE, London

Berwick, G. T., (2006) Strategy Roadmap: Urban leadership, National College, Nottingham

Berwick G. T., (2009) A Virtuous Circle, National College, Nottingham

Berwick G. T., (2011) The Approach: Engaging in Excellence, Volume One, GTB Assoc.

Berwick G. T., (2013) Moral Capital: Engaging in Excellence, Volume One, GTB Assoc.

Berwick, G. T., (2014), The Four Capitals: The key components of effective knowledge management, 2014, Challenge Partners, London,

Berwick, G. T., (2014), The Olevi Collaborative Learning Model: A framework to support knowledge mobilisation, 2014, Challenge Partners and Olevi, London,

Berwick, G. T., (2015), Upwards Convergence, Challenge Partners, London,

Berwick, G. T., Blanchard, T., Farrelly, J., and Gahan, R., (1998), Sustaining School Improvement, Funding Agency for Schools

Berwick G. T. and Matthews, P., (2007), The Concept of a Teaching School: A Discussion with George Berwick, GTB Assoc.

Brighouse, T. M. and Woods, D. C. (2005), London Challenge Schools Improvement Butterflies, London, DfES

Challenge Partners, (2012), Annual Report April 2011 to August 2012, 2013, Challenge Partners and Olevi, London,

Challenge Partners, Annual Report (2013), (2014), Challenge Partners, London,

Challenge Partners, (2014), Making the most of the QA Review, Challenge Partners, London.

Challenge Partners, (2014), Peer Reviews: The Emerging Picture, Challenge Partners, London,

Challenge Partners, (2013), Early Years Best Practice, Challenge Partners, London,

DfES, (2003), Transforming London Schools, DfES

Dubeau, M., (2005), Beyond the IEP: opening all doors to success, Quebec- The Quebec Ministry of Education.

Dubeau, M., (2006), Best practice for school success: Four principals share their views, Quebec- The Quebec Ministry of Education.

Hutchings, M. et al. Evaluation of the City Challenge Programme, (2012), Department for Education

Kidson, M. and Norris, E. (2014), Implementing the London Challenge, Institute for Government/ Joseph Rowntree Foundation

OFSTED, (2006), Inspection Report on London, OFSTED

OFSTED, (2010), Inspection Report on London Challenge, OFSTED

Matthews, P., (2009), Twelve Outstanding Schools, Ofsted

Matthews, P. and Berwick, G. T., (2013), Teaching Schools: First amongst equals?, National College

Matthews, P., Sammons, P.,, Day, C., Gu, Q., and Smith, P., (2006) Supporting Leadership and Securing Quality: an evaluation of aspects of the London Leadership Strategy, School of Education, University of Nottingham for the London Leadership Strategy/National College for School Leadership

Woods, D., Gyte, G. and Berwick, G. T. (2007), London Challenge 2: Creating World Class Schools in London, DfES

Woods, D., Edit. (2015), The Story of London Challenge, London Leadership Strategy