The Gradual Art of School Improvement

A Practical Guide

Richard Steward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367136918
• eBook ISBN: 9780429648045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

School improvement in recent years has largely focused on rapid improvement and quick fixes. Yet, genuine and sustainable school improvement is complex, gradual and incremental. It requires developing a culture and focusing relentlessly on teaching and learning.

The Gradual Art of School Improvement is a comprehensive practical guide to school improvement, covering aspects such as improvement planning, staff development, the learning environment, dealing with outside pressures including inspection, curriculum design and the role of leaders at all levels. It includes:

• Detailed accounts of the steps that can be taken to create a positive learning culture over time
• Case studies and worked examples, concentrating on the practical aspects of school improvement from the perspective of an experienced and successful head teacher
• Ready-to-use practitioner resources that readers can adapt and use in their own settings

Accessibly written and entertaining, this book is an invaluable resource for leaders at all levels and stages of their career.

1 Creating a learning culture

Acceleration

We live in an age of acceleration. Thanks largely to technological innovation, changes in society seem to take place at an ever-increasing rate. We sweep through our days in a constant state of panic, clutching our smartphones just as tightly as Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit hangs on to his pocket watch. Sophisticated communication devices have created a world where we can communicate instantly but where finding time to think or simply switch off is becoming harder and harder. A phrase I hear more and more often lately is ‘I’d really like to think about that, but I simply don’t have the time.’

In all walks of life, things are changing faster than they have ever done before, but it could convincingly be argued that in education the pressure to accelerate is even more evident. Education deals with the future, with young people who have grown up in the digital world and for whom constant change is a given. School leaders have to keep up, respond to the needs of their students and learn to deal with changes which seem to happen at an ever-increasing rate.

In addition to dealing with changes in society generally, school leaders now find themselves working in an environment of extreme accountability. Their work in schools and colleges is driven by performance tables, exacting inspection regimes and the increasingly high expectations of parents. Successive governments have made education a key feature of their manifesto pledges and promised parents the ability to choose only the very best schools for their children. Anything less than the best is not good enough. Consequently, very few schools are considered good enough, and change is not only expected but demanded. Policy after policy is rolled out from the centre, and schools are expected to respond. School leaders now exist in what can only be described as a state of permanent revolution, something S.J. Ball has described as the ‘unstoppable flood of reform’¹ or, as Benjamin Levin put it, ‘a policy epidemic.’² Ian Stronach went one step further and called it ‘policy hysteria.’³

School leaders, therefore, are forced to focus on rapid improvement. The short-termism of the political world, where governments have only a few years to effect change, is now played out in education where improvements have to be immediate and changes put in place straight away. It is the job of the school leader to drive up standards as quickly as possible. But are rapid changes really effective, and will they last?

League tables and inspection grades have undoubtedly led to a quick-fix culture where schools deemed to be failing are subject to rigorous scrutiny and required to move from inadequate to good in a matter of months. And, of course, school leaders have become good at this. There are dozens of examples of schools where standards have risen rapidly and a whole panoply of school improvement techniques has been introduced, if not perhaps perfected, and these have been marketed to enable other school leaders to emulate such successes. How effective many of these techniques are in the long term remains to be seen, but it is becoming increasingly clear that too many schools where rapid improvement has taken place quickly slide back to where they were before.

Increasing fragmentation in the system is often blamed for the poor performance of many schools, even if policy makers insist that the introduction of academies and Free Schools has led to more choice and better outcomes for pupils across the country. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of academization, but it is undoubtedly true to say that the new systems are more fluid and less stable than previous local authority provision. This, too, has had an accelerating effect. Schools which are deemed to be failing are taken over by academy sponsors, and if they continue to fail, sponsorships are re-brokered and another quick-fix regime instituted. In my visits to other schools, I have seen this scenario played out far too often.

The effect of all this is a professional development culture which encourages school leaders to focus on learning how to bring about rapid change. The notion of gradual development is almost inimical to a system which demands instant results. Moreover, the head teacher, with the emphasis on the word teacher, is becoming a thing of the past. The first step on the way was ‘principal,’ but now we have CEOs and ‘system leaders,’ titles which almost seem to exclude ‘teaching’ so that teaching becomes something of an outmoded concept not really worthy of the attention of those who, like powerful spiders, sit at the heart of the system webs.

The culture of rapid improvement could well be as illusory as Alice’s Wonderland. Genuine and sustainable school improvement is complex, gradual and incremental. It is about developing a culture and focusing relentlessly on teaching and learning. It is not about systems; it is about what goes on in the classroom.

Quick fix versus slow burn

The rapid improvement toolbox is becoming something of a cliché and its contents surely familiar to everybody. It can easily be caricatured.

First, change the name of the school. The switch from Dotheboys Hall to The Elysian Academy serves two purposes: to announce the arrival of a new regime and to imply that pupils will be entering an unfamiliar world of academic excellence. The aim is to create an impression of sparkling novelty, even if the change of name hides the obvious fact that, in essence, the school is exactly the same. The appointment of a new leadership team is the second step. If part of a multi-academy trust, there will be a CEO or an executive head, the titles giving an appropriate sense of gravitas to the new undertaking. Since both posts will involve hours and hours of committee meetings and time spent travelling between schools, a head teacher, or more often a head of teaching and learning, will be required. It is this person’s job to ‘turn around’ the school as quickly as possible.

So, quick wins are vital. Uniform is usually the place to start. A smart, new uniform underpinned by a strong uniform code gives the school a new sense of pride and signals a new ethos to parents. Such changes inevitably lead to endless conflicts with those who find it hard to adapt to much stricter rules, but this is where the discipline code is brought to bear. If children are to make progress, discipline must be strict. This is an idea which is always supported by parents and the wider community until the rules begin to bite. Children are sent home, detentions soar and exclusions become endemic. For a while, newness and novelty preside, but when the blazers become torn, the skirts are hitched back up and the ties shortened; cracks begin to show in what was clearly a model discipline policy.

Much is made in the media of the excessive use of exclusions, but the easiest way to establish a new era of calm in a school is to lose those pupils who cause the most trouble. It is not uncommon to see a change of leadership which results in 20 or 30 children excluded almost immediately. Such exclusions inevitably have the support of the staff, and they send a message to the community which says that the new team means business. However, excluded children have to go somewhere, they have to be taught and more often than not, they end up back where they started. Problem children do not always go away. Exclusion is quick, but it may not always be the answer.

The multi-academy trust approach is often based on the principle that what works in one school is bound to work in another. Although, as we shall see, this ignores complexities such as local context and, to some, the awkward notion that not all children are the same, nevertheless the pre-prepared school improvement package is often regarded as highly effective and sure to bring about rapid change.

With the addition of new buildings, an option seemingly only available to Free Schools nowadays, the quick-fix package is complete: a new name, a new uniform, a set of policies and practices borrowed from another school and an executive head.

This is obviously an extreme caricature, but it is a caricature many school leaders and educationalists may recognize. However, it is not hard to see that the model, although appealing, is fundamentally flawed. Making rapid change stick is very difficult indeed and changing the culture of a school is a complex undertaking. A new culture cannot be bought in and imposed; it takes years to develop. It depends on local context, on the nature of the pupils, on the support and attitudes of parents, on economic circumstances and, above all, on approaches to learning and the attitudes to learning shared by everyone in the school.

Schools where teachers have been working steadily for a number of years to bring about gradual improvements, and those which, in the language of inspection, can be described as consistently good or better have become the Cinderellas of recent educational thinking. They rarely make the news, and they are rarely made the subject of case studies or journal articles, but they are often the places where the most effective examples of genuine school improvement are to be found. They may not have an executive head, nor can they evidence a sudden transformation from good to outstanding, but they are clearly getting a lot right and therefore having a profound impact on the children in their care. These are the ‘ordinary schools.’ They are certainly not the ‘bog standard schools’ of the Blair era because many of them are remarkable – but they are quietly remarkable and largely ignored by politicians and academics. It is in these schools where the effectiveness of the ‘slow burn’ is most apparent. In these schools, staff have been improving and refining their methods and practices over a number of years; it is in these schools where strong learning cultures have really taken hold, cultures which are complex, sophisticated and, unfortunately for those who seek to categorize the essential elements of successful school cultures, exceptionally hard to define. What is obvious in all of them, however, is an intense, unremitting focus on teaching and learning.

Towards a definition of a learning culture

Critics and philosophers struggle to agree on a clear definition of culture. A learning culture is perhaps even harder to define.

The critic Raymond Williams, in Keywords, writes that culture has three divergent meanings: there’s culture as a process of individual enrichment, for example when we say that someone is ‘cultured’; culture as a group’s ‘particular way of life,’ when we talk about French culture, company culture or multiculturalism; and culture as an activity, pursued by means of museums, concerts, books and films.⁴ These three versions of culture are actually quite different, and as Williams writes, they compete with one another. He explains that each time we use the word culture, we incline toward one or another of its aspects: the ‘culture’ that’s imbibed through osmosis or the ‘culture’ that’s learned at museums, the ‘culture’ that makes you a better a person or the ‘culture’ that just inducts you into a group. In schools, the tension among these three definitions is at the heart of the learning culture.

Pupils attend school for individual enrichment; they are there to learn. For teachers and parents, becoming ‘cultured,’ in the sense of learning how to access key works of literature, important historical facts, a good understanding of science, an appreciation of art and music and so on, is an important element of the school experience. For children in school, however, the most significant feature of school life is group culture or, more basically, interaction with their peers. Parents and teachers are often very disappointed to learn that the most powerful influence on teenagers is other teenagers.

A successful school achieves a balance among Williams’s three cultures: individual enrichment is the goal, but the complex dynamics of school life are acknowledged, while a shared belief in the power and importance of developing children as cultured individuals in the traditional sense is carefully retained.

It is almost impossible to codify the essential elements of a successful school culture; its constituents are many and varied, and they differ from school to school. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, however, and a key part of a successful school improvement agenda involves discussing what makes the school work, what makes it different, and what needs to change. These are discussions which involve all aspects of school life and discussions which must be underpinned by an appreciation of the impact of the various aspects of school life on teaching and learning. What goes on in the classroom is powerfully influenced by what goes on outside of the classroom. Learning will be at the heart of any sophisticated school culture, but it will be surrounded and supported by a complex web of activities which together form part of the experience of attending school.

It is important for leadership teams to spend time considering the extent and nature of the school’s activities beyond the classroom and to assess their impact on learning as part of the wider, ongoing discussion of teaching and learning in the school.

Beyond the classroom

Let us begin, therefore, by discussing what goes on beyond the classroom before addressing directly the role and importance of classroom practice. Schools often create lists of activities to impress parents or present to inspectors but how often are these lists considered as part of the school improvement agenda? It is all too easy to regard extra-curricular activities as something other, as beyond the curriculum and therefore having only a minimal impact on school culture. In reality, they play a vital part: instead of extra-curricular, a better name might be co-curricular as they sit alongside the academic curriculum, supporting and enhancing it. Any genuine discussion of the learning culture in school must attempt to address the co-curricular aspects of what goes on in school as they often have a significant but sometimes hidden impact on academic progress. They should not be simply regarded as something that happens in school but questioned and discussed. Sometimes the results are surprising.

Sport is a good example. What is the impact of sport in school? It is easy to enumerate the number of clubs and fixtures which take place but how often do leaders consider the ethos of the physical education (PE) department and its impact on the school as a whole. Does competitive sport engender feelings of competitiveness in the classroom; does fair play and sportsmanship influence behaviour? Do pupils spend enough time exercising, and does their fitness make them ready to learn? Such a discussion could well uncover less positive features of sports provision: Is there an ultra-competitive environment which alienates some pupils and pushes them towards isolation or withdrawal? Above all, does the approach of the PE department support the academic and social aspirations of the school, or does it subtly undermine them? In too many schools, the notion that sport is a good thing is a given. How often is its impact openly explored? I have had dozens of conversations with middle and senior leaders who have never really questioned the value and importance of PE in school. It is one of the subjects we must accept as a ‘good thing.’ It may well be a good thing but that shouldn’t stop us thinking about it.

Similarly, most schools offer a wide range of trips and visits, and again, these are used as evidence to present the school as a vibrant and exciting place. However, do they all add to the ethos of the school? Do some of them have a deleterious effect or are there simply too many of them? An objective analysis of the number of trips, their nature and duration and the time spent out of the classroom for the pupils who take part can result in really challenging discussions about what the school is trying to achieve and what really is in pupils’ best interests.

Simple matters like the nature of the displays around the school can have a profound impact on learning. Many of us will have had experience of visiting schools where there is nothing to see but bare walls or carefully curated display boards used for information purposes, and the effect of such places can be quite chilling. Primary schools generally work hard to create bright and stimulating environments, but secondary schools are often guilty of assuming that colourful displays are for younger pupils only. When Specialist School Status was first introduced, the first step taken by schools that chose to become arts colleges was often to cover the walls in artwork. Despite the warnings of the doom-mongers on the staff that the work would quickly be ruined by passing crowds or simply vandalized, it quickly became evident that, in the majority of cases, pupils responded incredibly well to their new surroundings, not only valuing the displays but also protecting them.

How pupils respond to display work is well worth exploring. Is it simply a matter of bright displays which improve the atmosphere, or is it their nature which matters most? A drab corridor enlivened by some dazzling artwork is bound to lift the spirits, but how often do leaders consider how much attention is paid to the artwork itself? Do pupils look and learn, do they read the work proudly displayed by other classes and how do they respond? Leadership teams ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Creating a learning culture
• 2 Leadership for learning
• 3 Real improvement planning
• 4 Staff development
• 5 The curriculum
• 6 The myth of governance
• 7 Inspection
• 8 Pupils, not systems
• Appendix
• Endnote
• Index