The Intelligent School

Barbara MacGilchrist, Jane Reed, Kate Myers

`This is a challenging book and makes for uncomfortable reading at times because one realises that there is so much more to be accomplished in education. How can the teacher who wants to follow this further find out more? Barbara MacGilchrist, Jane Reed and Kate Myers have given the next step: each chapter has a conclusion and "questions for discussion and activities" which are very open and will lead to considerable introspection? - Education Review

`I have rarely been so enthusiastic about a book. Reviewers are supposed to highlight some imperfections - I am at a loss. Recommend this book to all you meet? - Mervyn Flecknoe, Improving Schools

`This book would be an invaluable read for all who work in schools including LEA advisors, inspectors and consultants. It contains a chapter on teachers? learning and has some excellent questions for discussion at the end of each chapter that could usefully stimulate ideas for staff development sessions. It would be great if this book were read and taken seriously by those who make policy as well as those who try to put it into practice? - Escalate

`The book is easy to use, clear, well organized, full of practical examples and equally practical questions. It could be a signpost to the future - if the days of educational diktat are really almost over? - Michael Duffy, Times Educational Supplement, Friday Magazine

`This Second Edition of The Intelligent School offers a concise and accessible insight into the key aspects of educational leadership. In my view, it ought to be read by anyone who is keen to develop their understanding of theoretical frameworks expertly illustrated through practical examples? - Neil Saunders, Primary Phase Inspector - Hampshire LEA ,(Doctoral Student - The University of Hull)

`This is an excellent book. I will use its insights and the wealth of practical questions it offers to help with my present politically driven imperative - the transformation of London?s secondary schools. If I have this book at my elbow and make sure it?s well thumbed, there is every chance that we can create 411 intelligent schools across London.

The new insights in The Intelligent School are a testament to the extraordinary proficiency of these three authors. As the waiter in the restaurant says when serving the meal "Enjoy"? - Tim Brighouse, Times Educational Supplement

Barbara MacGilchrist, Kate Myers and Jane Reed have written a masterpiece. The First Edition of the Intelligent School in 1997 was an outstanding book and it is no surprise that a Second Edition has followed relatively quickly to share more good news for practitioners, policymakers, researchers and scholars. The First Edition shaped my thinking more than most in the late 1990?s and I cited it in scores of presentations in different countries around the world. It was a perfect complement to our work on the self-managing school.

In this Second Edition, the concept of the Intelligent School is expanded and the different kinds of intelligences are carefully explained and illustrated. The authors are able to draw on more than five years of implementation in the field and further and broader work in the research and development centres with which they are associated. They offer the best synthesis of the international literature on school effectiveness and school improvement that I have seen. They have performed a great service in making this literature accessible to the profession. I recommended the First Edition as essential reading for all the work in schools. Those who did not do so should certainly acquire the second, but it is important that policymakers and academics do the same.

`This book will quickly gain recognition as the leader among an increasing number of books that provide hope that all students in every setting can achieve a high quality education. It is one of the truly outstanding features of this book that it also conveys an unbridled spirit of optimism? - Brian Caldwell, Professor & Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne

In writing The Intelligent School, Second Edition, the authors offer a practical resource to schools to help them maximise their improvement efforts. The aim is to help schools to be intelligent organizations; to be the type of school that can synthesise different kinds of knowledge, experience and ideas in order to be confident about current achievements, and to be able to decide what to do next.

This Second Edition has been fully revised and updated particularly in terms of new research evidence about how to improve the quality of learning and teaching in classrooms. The authors set out fresh thinking about the nine intelligences and provide a new framework for school improvement which includes the exploration of spiritual, ethical and emotional intelligence. The book also includes examples of Intelligent Schools in action.

1
The intelligent school in times of change – setting the scene

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• Political change – the educational reform agenda in England and Wales
• The information and communication technologies revolution
• Socio-economic changes and inequalities

We have entered a new millennium with sophisticated science and spectacular technology but still without the knowledge of how to educate all our children. (MacBeath and Mortimore, 2001, p. 1)

At the beginning of the twenty-first century ‘school’ still remains the ‘place’ where the vast majority of our young people are formally educated. Although, even at this point in time, access to school cannot be taken for granted. This was evidenced by the plight of girls in Afghanistan at the turn of the century and remains the reality for several million young people in Africa for whom there is still no formal schooling. Time therefore in school is precious and for pupils it cannot be repeated. Yet, as the quote from MacBeath and Mortimore reminds us, all is not well. They are making the point that in the context of an agenda that promotes education for all, the learning needs of all children are still not being met. This concern was highlighted in a report by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector (OFSTED, 2002, p. 20) in which he stated that: ‘Inclusion will be truly successful only if we recognise the achievements and progress of all pupils’.

Schools serve the needs of the present and the future. They have a crucial role to play in the lives and learning of their pupils now and as they inherit the daunting and exciting tasks that face them as citizens in the twenty-first century. Schools also have a responsibility for their future students. Roland Barth (1988) summed this up when he described schools as ‘four walls surrounding the future’.

The key lesson from research about effective schools is that schools can make a difference for the better (Edmonds, 1979; Rutter et al., 1979; Mortimore et al., 1988) or even for the worse (Myers, 1995). This is a very powerful message, probably the most powerful that has come from this area of literature. It both empowers and challenges practitioners, bestowing the possibility of making a difference to the life chances of children alongside giving them responsibility for doing so. It heightens the imperative to ensure that our education system meets the needs of all pupils.

In the school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) literature there has been general acceptance that an effective school can be described as: ‘one in which pupils progress further than might be expected from consideration of its intake’ (Mortimore, 1991, p. 9), and one which ‘adds extra value to its students’ outcomes in comparison with schools serving similar intakes’ (Sammons, Hillman and Mortimore, 1995, p. 3). However, the assumptions about the purpose of education underlying these definitions of effectiveness are rarely challenged and explored. Schools serving very similar intakes can give their pupils very different experiences and achieve different outcomes for their pupils, and there is growing evidence that this is the case (Gray et al, 1999; MacBeath and Mortimore, 2001). But we would argue that there is now an urgent need to reconsider these definitions of effectiveness in the context of reconsidering what it means to be an educated person. Significant changes have taken and are taking place in the UK and on a global scale that have a direct bearing on the future of education. These changes raise serious questions about the appropriateness of the ways in which schools and schooling are currently conceived, organized and judged.

In particular, there are three significant changes to which we want to draw attention:

• unprecedented large-scale educational reform being undertaken in the UK and in many other parts of the world;
• the revolution occurring in information and communication technologies (ICT);
• fundamental social and economic global changes.

In the sections that follow, we take a look at some of these significant changes because they provide a crucial context for considering the whole concept of the intelligent school now and in the future.

Political change – the educational reform agenda in England and Wales

New Labour came to power in 1997 after 18 years of Conservative rule. ‘Education, education, education’ was placed at the top of the agenda. They embarked on what they called a ‘crusade’ to modernize schools and the profession as a whole. It soon became clear that central control over education was to be significantly increased. A succession of Green and White Papers, along with the creation of a Standards and Effectiveness Unit within the Department for Education and Employment, heralded the changes to come. An unprecedented system-wide education reform agenda was initiated. There was a sense of urgency to demonstrate that schools must be and can be made more effective and held publicly accountable for what they do. The message to schools and to local education authorities (LEAs) was one of ‘zero tolerance of failure’. The culture of ‘naming and shaming’ underperforming schools and LEAs, begun by the previous government, became the order of the day along with getting tough on teachers.

Despite warnings from school effectiveness researchers and from those critical of school effectiveness research, New Labour cherry-picked some of the findings of school effectiveness research and interpreted the basic message that ‘schools can make a difference’ in a simplistic way. Similarly, warnings from the school improvement literature that ‘change takes time’, is ‘complex’ and that a ‘one-size-fits-all model’ is inappropriate were ignored.

Improving the quality of school leadership and the teaching of the basic skills of literacy and numeracy in primary schools were seen as key levers to combating underachievement and putting the performance of English schools on a par with their international counterparts. Of particular significance was the rapid introduction of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. The content of literacy and numeracy lessons throughout the primary years and how that content was to be taught were prescribed. For the first time, ambitious literacy and numeracy targets were set for pupils leaving primary schools and the then Secretary of State put his own job on the line by promising to resign if these targets were not met.

The assessment of pupil performance through a significantly enhanced testing regime, particularly in the early years and throughout the primary years of schooling, was put in place. Schools became much more publicly accountable for the performance of their pupils and this accountability was ensured through the publication of inspection reports on individual schools by OFSTED. At the same time, the publication of LEA inspection reports heightened their accountability too.

These changes were accompanied by a range of initiatives to target, in particular, inner-city underachievement and encourage the private sector, especially the business community, to become much more heavily involved in education. The initiatives included Education Action Zones, Excellence in Cities programmes, summer schools and encouraging the establishment of an increasingly diverse range of schools, for example, specialist schools, City Academies and faith schools. Between 1997 and 2001, £120 million of business sponsorship had been made available for the government’s education agenda. The involvement of the private sector has resulted in some schools and some LEAs being run entirely by private companies.

The government also looked to the private sector to conduct educational research. For example, HayMcBer secured an unprecedented grant to develop a new Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers and to conduct research into the characteristics of teacher effectiveness. The latter research was used as the basis for the introduction of a national performance-related pay scheme for practising teachers in 2000.

These substantial changes in the education system in England were achieved in a very short space of time. They were accompanied by a change in morale within the profession. The euphoria within the education world at the removal of the long-ruling Conservative Party with memories of the introduction of the National Curriculum and the related Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) was short-lived. Many teachers and LEA personnel were taken by surprise at New Labour’s determination to crack down on low standards and weed out underperforming schools and teachers by diktat rather than consultation. For example, the Literacy and Numeracy strategies and the accompanying compulsory in-service training was an unprecedented challenge to primary practice. Whilst some schools welcomed the initiative, others felt undervalued and that their professionalism was being undermined.

A related increase in bureaucracy took its toll particularly in relation to target-setting and inspection. The naming and shaming of schools continued to attract relentless press coverage, which was fuelled by the high profile of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector at the time. The government’s continuous focus on poor schools and poor teachers overshadowed their efforts to recognize and celebrate good practice. The use of slick phrases such as the need to eradicate ‘bog-standard comprehensive education’ used by Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications and Strategy in 2001, were seen within the profession as yet further attacks on teachers trying to do their best in often very challenging circumstances, particularly for those working in schools serving very disadvantaged communities. There was concern that policy-makers and practitioners appeared to be growing further and further apart. MacBeath and Mortimore (2001) reminded us that: ‘Politicians and policy makers have a specific interest in the here and now and are constrained to work within the boundaries of what their constituents expect of an educational system’ (ibid., p. 1).

While all of this was happening, many would argue that a not unrelated change was gathering momentum. By the turn of the century, teacher shortage in England was a serious issue although at first it was concealed by the use of supply and temporary teachers increasingly recruited from overseas. There was a plethora of government initiatives to stem a haemorrhaging of teachers from the profession and to encourage new recruits. Training salaries were introduced, as were financial incentives to encourage teachers of shortage secondary subjects, such as science and mathematics, to enter and stay in teaching. Quick routes into teaching along with fast-track promotion were also opened up. At the time of writing recruitment has improved but retaining high-quality teachers remains an urgent challenge.

Reflecting on large-scale educational reform, Elmore (2000, p. 4) argues that:

Standards-based reform has a deceptively simple logic: schools and school systems should be held accountable for their contributions to student learning. Society should communicate its expectations for what students should know and be able to do in the form of standards, both for what should be taught and for what students should be able to demonstrate about their learning. School administrators and policy makers, at the state, district and school level, should regularly evaluate whether teachers are teaching what they are expected to teach and whether students can demonstrate what they are expected to learn. The fundamental unit of accountability should be the school, because that is the organisational unit where teaching and learning actually occurs. Evidence from evaluations of teaching and student performance should be used to improve teaching and learning and, ultimately to allocate rewards and sanctions.

He describes how this logical approach to reform has become a fundamental part of American education. He argues that this type of reform is essential to counteract the ‘loose-coupling’ model of school that has been endemic in the school system in the UK and in the USA. By loose-coupling he means the autonomy that class teachers have traditionally had to decide what and how to teach. He suggests that this autonomy has been directly or indirectly supported by headteachers who have acted as a buffer to protect teachers from external control. He describes how ‘standards-based’ reform is often greeted with dismay and disbelief by experienced educators, who are battle-worn veterans of past educational reform campaigns.

Elmore reminds us that: ‘The logic of standards-based reform is fundamentally at odds with the logic of loose-coupling’ (ibid., p. 8). He identifies three reasons for this. The former reform touches directly on teachers in classrooms by determining the content of what is to be taught and how it is to be taught and by setting performance standards. It introduces a cause-and-effect relationship between teaching and pupil outcomes. As a result it explicitly localizes accountability for student learning. In other words, it places responsibility firmly at the door of schools and those who work in them. In principle, this is perfectly reasonable. In practice, however, the complex issues underlying this principle are rarely taken into account as we discuss in detail in Chapters 2 and 3.

Elmore goes on to comment that:

It carries the increasingly explicit message that students learn largely as a consequence of what goes on inside schools. Hence, schools are being asked to account for what students are actually taught and what they learn as a consequence of that teaching. And whatever one may think about this theory – that students generally learn what they are taught, if they are taught with skill and understanding – it has a strong political, economic and social appeal. (Ibid., p. 9)

As Myers and Goldstein (1998) have argued, it neatly shifts the blame for failure from central and local government to the individual school. Also, what ‘standards-based’ reform tends to ignore is the complexity of schools and schooling and the complex relationship between learning and teaching. It looks for quick fixes and creates a culture of blame in which teachers and schools are held responsible for a narrow set of prescribed pupil outcomes. It focuses on performance rather than the development of pupils as learners. It sets teacher autonomy on a collision course with reform that is externally initiated and controlled, and creates the impression that the latter is superior and more effective than the former. It is perceived as ignoring the professionalism of teachers and assuming that teachers will ‘de facto’ take ownership of someone else’s change agenda. Bringing about change brings with it tensions and possible contradictions. These need to be addressed to ensure that those responsible for learning and teaching at the ‘chalk face’ can exercise their professional judgement, albeit in the context of a local or national education policy framework.

Caldwell and Spinks (1998) have identified three different stages, or tracks, as they call them, in educational reform.

• Track 1: Building systems of Self-Managing Schools
• Track 2: Unrelenting Focus on Learning Outcomes
• Track 3: Creating Schools for the Knowledge Society

Track 1 involves putting in place a dual strategy for reform. The first concerns establishing a centrally controlled curriculum, a common system of assessment and a means of holding schools accountable for student outcomes. The second involves devolving responsibility to schools particularly in respect of the local management of resources. In England and Wales this was the strategy adopted by the Conservative government through the Education Reform Act in 1988. This put in place a National Curriculum and a national testing system to assess standards at ages 7, 11, 14, 16 and 18. The Act also introduced Local Management of Schools (LMS) whereby schools found themselves for the first time responsible for the management and use of a range of resources including staffing, staff development and premises. A few years later in 1993 a framework for the national inspection of schools was introduced by transforming Her Majesty’s Inspectorate into the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED).

Underlying LMS was a different kind of loose-coupling from that described by Elmore. MacBeath and Mortimore (2001, p. 23) describe the premise upon which this aspect of the reform was based:

The vision is of a loosely coupled, or entirely uncoupled, system of self-managing schools, founded on three essential premises:

1)	that governors and headteachers are better placed to determine priorities than their education authorities;
2)	that schools should be the unit of improvement and accountability;
3)	that good schools will survive and the best schools will thrive in a market opened to parental choice.

Caldwell and Spinks’s second track concerns improving teaching and an unrelenting commitment to improving the learning outcomes of all students. It includes advances in technology to support learning. New Labour adopted this strategy through its emphasis on the high stakes literacy and numerac...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The intelligent school in times of change – setting the scene
• 2 Reflections on school effectiveness
• 3 Reflections on school improvement
• 4 Learning about learning
• 5 Teaching for learning
• 6 Teachers’ learning
• 7 The nine intelligences – a framework for school improvement
• 8 A postscript
• References
• Index