“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”
Our education system is perfectly designed to secure and maintain the conditions that accumulate disadvantage over time. A system so ingrained and accepted that we unwittingly perpetuate it and see the results as inevitable. Against the backdrop of the fracturing social contract, the aftermath of the pandemic and in darkening times, the cogs of the system continue unabated, galvanised and renewed to further widen gaps and disenfranchise an ever-larger number of children.
“To not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider.” (Owen Eastwood, 2021)
The system is strengthening, forging greater division in society precisely at a time when individual agency and mobility is decreasing. A system that has powerful ways of telling children that they do not belong, playing out asymmetrically to make life precarious and insecure for far too many. A national crisis rages, children are becoming more invisible, opting out of education and they are being pushed to the edges. Those who most need school are not there, absent and missing from the very place that could offer social justice and opportunity.
We need to create a system that is for all children, a system of opportunity that is on their side, a place to belong, where equity gives them what they need. A system where we go beyond just caring about closing gaps. Recognising that the system and our accepted norms often exclude children whose experience of multi micro-exclusions, accumulate disadvantage and erode self-agency.
Using our architecture to tilt the system towards social justice
What if we have more power in this system than we think, than we have come to accept? What if we were to use the architecture of our system, the maturation of groups of schools connected within Trusts to tilt the system, to re-align and re-engineer the system? Taking braver, more courageous decisions that unswervingly seek social justice and challenge the status quo. We choose to do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard; a loonshot.
“Never tell me the odds.” (Han Solo)
What if Trusts, engage in deep(er) connection and collaboration, offering the security and permission to go after something that really matters? Trusts working together for all childrentransforming and re-aligning the system to secure greater social justice for disadvantaged learners.
It is not that we don’t care, it is that we do not care enough
… because if we did we would seek to influence, adapt, re-orientate the very system that we are part of, that we are responsible for; understanding the we are the system. What we presently do as educationalists is not working, gaps are growing, we are getting no closer to social justice.
Ubuntu – a quality that includes the essential human virtues; compassion and humanity: I am what I am because of who we all are
We need greater expressions of compassion and humanity to overcome the forces in our society and schools that insidiously widen gaps. We need to be more ferocious, more tenacious in creating the conditions that enable our disadvantaged learners to flourish. This requires educators to be more honest, to ask uncomfortable questions and make braver decisions to enact greater equity: a deeper expression of care.
Social justice as the aim, social mobility as an outcome.
“Social mobility” is about escaping disadvantage, whereas social justice is about eradicating that disadvantage in the first place. Education as a tool for social justice ought to be the goal of any civic-minded (society) university, and indeed our collective goal as a sector for our widening participation efforts to be capable of actually producing meaningful change.” (Claire Sosienski Smith)
Seeking social justice and how our system increases participation, connection, opportunity and experience is better placed than initiatives focused on mobility, which seek to enable relatively few individuals to escape the system, to defy the odds. We need a bottom-up investment in all individuals; we need to change the rules of the game with social justice as the goal and social mobility as an outcome.
Social justice: Access, Equity, Diversity, Participation, Human Rights
Seeking social justice requires us to work in the system at an individual-level to integrate and engineer connection between all attainment bands and groups, and through this deliberate act of inclusion, create supported opportunity, participation and experiences that close gaps. Reaching in and applying equity to lift lives; counterintuitively, one by one. A redistribution of esteem to increase the number of those that see they are able to live lives of decency and dignity.
“…we need aredistribution of esteem… to live lives of decency and dignity, winning social esteem. …(to) travel the road to 2045 with purpose, dignity and accomplishment.”(Peter Hennessy)
We need educators and leaders to act within the system, as agents of change, tilting our system to achieve greater social justice. Leadership from the inside to enact the equity required to create paths that have heart and secure social justice; heroes wanted.
“Look at every path closely. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, the question: does this path have a HEART?” (Carlos Castenada)
Equity over Equality | giving what individuals actually need
We are baffled and compelled by equality, but equality is a brilliant way to maintain our perfect system. Equity in contrast is not offering the same to all, but securing what individuals actually need. This means that we need to be more comfortable with doing different, doing more and meeting the ‘actual’ needs of individuals so we give ourselves a chance at closing gaps and match fixing the system. Turning, where we can the system on itself.
The system is so ingrained, accepted and normalised that we are often blind to the influence of the system, and complicit in it. We do have a choice and the agency to actively disrupt the system, to apply equity and redirect the power of the system to level the playing field.
The multiplying effect of small acts | the power of the crowd
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margret Mead)
The power of the crowds and the accumulation of small acts, of heroes who are alive to the system, call it out and tilt it with small and large actions towards those that need it most. Seeking to privilege disadvantaged learners in all that we do, redesigning our system for social justice.
“It is a matter of shared purpose and sustained application.”(Peter Hennessy)
Every child needs at least one person who believes in them | advantaging the disadvantaged
We need a system where all children have someone who believes in them. To grow up advantaged is to have adults who deeply believe in you, hold you to high expectations, encouraging (demanding) participation in supported opportunities over time. A childhood that encourages risk taking, whilst holding a safety net and offering commentary, narrating the journey through life, reaffirming and strengthening a child’s internal locus of control incrementally, day by day.
And in this we see what must be done, to re-design the system to enable disadvantaged to participate, to have supported opportunity and wider social connectivity, with a back stop of someone who believes in them, who creates a safety net and support them as they interpret life. Get up, go again, you have agency, you are always invited to dance.
Help me, Obi Wan, you’re my only hope
Educationalists need to work together to propagate a movement that re-engineers and re-aligns our system, increasing our impact on the everyday experience of every child, bottom up; great schools in strong Trusts, meeting need. So that together we realise and enhance a collective Trust Dividend that offers hope and achieves greater social justice for all children and particularly those presently or previously experiencing disadvantage.
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.” (Howard Zinn)
We need to seek greater collective endeavour that goes upstream in search of social justice for the many, demonstrating through our actions our deeply held desire to do more than just care, to be braver and to join in a quest that accumulates advantage. A quest that enacts equity through education to lift up disadvantaged children and make a difference, one life at a time, knowing that this collective sector wide effort might just tilt the system to something that befits our personal values and the collective desires for our sector.
What if we decided to seek greater social justice and re-engineer our system to…
Privilege disadvantage everywhere and in everything? Prioritising disadvantage learners in all decision making, in provision, in opportunity, a culture of ambition for all children, going beyond just caring. A system, Trusts and schools that firmly privilege disadvantage in all that they do, such that it becomes the norm; a system perfectly designed to close gaps.
Measure what we really care about, what really matters?Securing the attainment and attendance of disadvantaged learners. Measure it, target it, expect it, publish it, reward it, make it the accepted and expected currency of our sector. Securing high attainment because grades really matter and attendance because there is no point in any other actions if they are not there; disadvantage even over, attendance first.
Apply Equity through education? Shaking the shackles of equality to give children what they specifically need. Doing differently by individuals, securing this as thenormal; using the advantaged upbringing as a measure for the amount of equity required to tilt the system.
Seek deep and sustained participation for all children? Measure it, prioritise it, demand it and invest in it. Using the sharp elbows that create the supported opportunity for advantaged children and over-match for disadvantaged learners. Beyond enrichment, this is about entitlement for those who presently feel the opposite of entitled.
Mix all attainment bands and create a strong system of inclusion for all children? Actively addressing the school within a school phenomenon, that creates alternate realities and routes. Individuals measure status and standards against those that we are closest to. We must create the connections and influences that close gaps.
Deeply understand individual lives?Working to understand each child so that they connect, belong, participate, feel success, thrive. Every child needs to have at least one adult who believes in them. Magic happens when all colleagues believe in all children.
Seek bottom-up mobilisation, a movement?Focus at the level of individual and mobilise the many in this shared endeavour to lift lives, one by one. Creating the conditions for a movement to lift up a generation. A counterintuitive focus on individuals and schools, in Trusts, to re-engineer our system toward social justice, seeking irreversible change in our society.
To do so is to be a bit more pirate and seek good trouble, rather than conform to the system and remain in the Navy. If not now, when, if not you, who?
“I’d rather be a pirate than join the Navy.” (Steve Jobs)
“Everyone participates in the social contract every day, and we rarely stop to think about it. Yet social contracts shape every aspect of our lives, including how we raise our children and engage in education.” (Minouche Shafik)
We live in difficult and darkening times. The growing gloom is becoming oppressive, encouraging retreat and reducing belonging. The social contract that shapes and guides every aspect of our lives is fracturing. For far too many children and families this is fundamentally altering their relationship with society, authority, and how we value and engage in education.
The “social contract” is a theoretical agreement between individuals and society wherein people relinquish certain freedoms and abide by agreed-upon rules and norms in exchange for social order and mutual benefits.
These are dark ages, characterised by challenging economics and social inequity, that are presenting both a psychological and material challenge. This is infecting and altering the narratives we tell ourselves and each other about what is important and what our contributions to society should be.
“We all … listen for an account of who we are and where we stand.” (George Monbiot)
Increasing numbers of children and adults are opting out from a world that finds multiple ways of challenging their sense of self, place, and agency. Whilst for some the light is not fading, for too many others, often the most vulnerable, the gloom is encouraging retreat from the agreed contract. Schools are at the heart of the maelstrom, open, available, and trusted enough for some families to fight against, because few others are listening, available or there. Schools stretch and respond to the needs that walk into school every day, attempting to fulfil their duty of care, often without the resource or expertise.
For increasing numbers of pupils and families, school is seen as optional, far from being irresistible or a place of opportunity. The prevailing narrative is replacing long held norms around the value of education, driven by a weakening social contract and the entrenched inequities in society. The disadvantage gap, on any measure, is wide and widening, embarrassingly so. Fundamentally, the social contract is built on trust– when the returns from society diminish or disappear, or where we become increasingly priced out of life, we see the contract weakening and the trust we hold erodes.
“Trusting others puts us in an inherently vulnerable position… the proof of the importance of trust is the intense emotional pain that accompanies it being broken.” (Owen Eastwood)
We need a revised and reinforced social contract that seeks greater cohesion, strengthens belonging and places education at the heart of this nation. This needs to secure far greater equity through education and a much stronger architecture of opportunity. An architecture enacted by stronger trust and system leadership, greater connectivity and purposeful collaboration between trusts and schools so that we take collective responsibility and stewardship for our sector. All Trusts working together for all children.
“It is only through building a connected system that we will be able to address the multiple challenges facing our communities” (Leora Cruddas)
Building the effectiveness of our trust, civic and system leadership to build an education system that is able to address the multiple challenges, redistribute esteem and enable many more children to live lives of decency and dignity.
“…we need a redistribution of esteem… to live lives of decency and dignity, winning social esteem. …(to) travel the road to 2045 with purpose, dignity and accomplishment.” (Peter Hennessy)
Seeking together to build strong trusts with great schools that meet need. Enabling more children and families to belong and benefit from a renewed social contract, gaining a greater sense of agency in their lives and contributing towards the common good.
“Agency gives us control over our time, and it encourages us to choose what our contribution looks like.” (Seth Godin)
In the eye of the storm
The lines between school and society have blurred. Schools are trying to respond to the fracturing of the social contract. Where deprivation bites and societal problems leak into schools, colleagues can become overwhelmed. They take increasing amounts of time to support, resolve, and cope with difficult and widening societal issues of children and families, obligated to fulfil their deeply held duty of care for the communities they serve.
The present level of attendance, suspensions and disenfranchisement, particularly of those presently disadvantaged, is a national crisis – a social epidemic. As the narrative falters, individuals are making pragmatic decisions around survival and choosing to opt out, to not conform, to challenge authority, avoid commitment and to escape the perceived risk of failing in class.
If life is a game, too many are deciding not to play.
Fracturing built on entrenched inequity
It is not that the social contract has suddenly fractured, it has been creaking over time and is evident in the inequalities that characterise our society. Just as there are triggers for climate change, where it becomes irreversible and the impact is catastrophic, the same is true of the social contract. Multiple factors have triggered descent to this crisis point with our social contract.
Strong Trusts, Great Schools, Meeting Need | An architecture of opportunity
“There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children.” (Kofi Annan)
The present architecture of opportunity in our sector, exists within a developing Trust landscape. It is timely, urgent and imperative for Trusts and groups of schools to work together within stronger collaborative structures to build strong trusts capable of supporting more great schoolsthat are well placed to meet need. The sector should grasp the opportunity to create a stronger architecture of opportunity that addresses the societal challenges and particularly the widening disadvantage gap. Trusts and schools need to work much more collaboratively to realise the promise of academisation and to secure greater equity through education.
We are the system
The development of great schools across the sector that enable all children to lead full, flourishing lives is at that heart of the renewal we seek.
“We need a broader and more ambitious vision of what a good life is. Human flourishing and dignity for all, requires us to have a wide set of success measures. Placing greater value on things such as contribution, difference, common values, and the process of learning and work itself.” (Ben Newmark, Tom Rees)
The collaborative structures we need to build within and across the sector are required to secure a greater dividend, one that rises the tide for all children. Schools need to grow good humans through strong culture and inspire young minds through great teaching held within a progressive, sequenced curriculum that liberates agency and meets the needs of children now and for their future. This requires us to develop leaders(hip) that understands how to improve schools within the collaborative structure of Trusts, accelerated by Trusts working closer together. This will demand a move from silos to deliberate collaboration, so that we, together, take greater collective stewardship of our sector.
The deficit narrative in society is reflected within our sector and in our schools. It is no accident that the current recruitment and retention challenges, the catastrophic decline in ITT applications and weakening working conditions are linked to the deficit narrative around schools and the value that our nation places on education. It is not that there isn’t an appetite to meet and reverse the challenges of the failing social contract, it is that it feels progressively more futile given the available funding, resourcing, staffing, and expertise that is required to meet the ever-increasing demand.
Stewardship and Longtermism
The investment in education needs to be long-term and it requires a commitment over generational timescales that inconveniently span timescales longer than political terms of office. We are prone to shortermism and this struggles to keep up with the complex needs of a growing number of children and families.
“We should shift our energies upstream: personally, organisationally, nationally and globally. We can, and should, stop dealing with the symptoms of problems, again and again, and start fixing them.” (Dan Heath)
This is urgent; it is not just about now, it is fundamentally about the future and the future health of our society and the standing, place and importance of education. Great schools are the hope, and increasingly the only hope, but they are exposed and creaking under the weight of the failing social contract. Schools and Trusts need to consider deeply their role in society and the educational offer that will better meet the needs of all children, now and into their adulthood.
The weather is oppressive
The prevailing climate is increasingly oppressive and characterised by profound uncertainty.
“How to live in a world where profound uncertainty is not a bug, but a feature?” (Yuval Noah Harari)
Our response to this uncertainty and the challenges of our time has influenced the national psyche and altered our narratives. So much has shifted in our lived experience…
The global pandemic, Brexit, standards in public life (Nolan Principles), high inflation, high interest rates, energy costs, mortgage rates, loan rates, cost of living, AI, inaccessible first homes, decline in living standards, shifting employment types and longevity, climate change, political turmoil, social media, conflicts across the world (including Europe), long waiting lists, funding crisis, erosion of local services and multi-agency services, mental health challenges, public service strikes, recruitment, retention…
… disconcerting, oppressive, challenging; encouraging retreat and a deafening backdrop to life.
All of which play out unevenly across society. Except that, this is not true for everyone. These oppressive conditions tend to maintain the status quo for those who have means and power.
The shifting locus of control; retreating from the noise
“Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves.” Ben Okri
Our society has always been divided into those who have and those who have not. Typically, the most disadvantaged in society have an external locus of control, one that encourages retreat, and one that negates a sense of agency. The current challenges are pushing more children into believing and acting as if they have an external locus of control. When this happens, they look to the contract that is meant to hold them, meant to say to them that they belong, and they pragmatically choose retreat and make decisions about their contribution to society; becoming more invisible.
Ubuntu: “I am a person through other people; my humanity is tied to yours.” (Zulu proverb)
We must reinforce, redesign and improve the social contract. It is fractured and faltering. We must not stand-by and in doing so collude with this erosion. We need a society and an education system that builds back the social contract for the common good and creates an architecture of opportunity, so that more are invited to dance.
Architecture of Opportunity | an invitation to dance
1. We need to renew the invitation to dance, so that individuals contribute and benefit from the social contract. We need a new national and educational narrative around schools that places education at the heart of social renewal. This should seek to create a greater sense of belonging, status and esteem, a more just society and communities where children and families flourish.
“Those who imagine the ground beneath their feet is solid are probably managing the present, not leading into the future.” (Tracey Camilleri, et al.)
2. We are the system. As educators we have an opportunity and responsibility to make a difference, to tell a stronger narrative and to influence the national position of education. We need to review the present paradigm and ensure that we are keeping our side of the contract. We need to ensure that Trusts and schools develop organisational leadership to build a sector that rises the tide. Strong Trusts with Great Schools that Meet Need.
“You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one. Whether the systems that emerge from this rupture are better or worse than the current dispensation depends on our ability to tell a new story.” (George Monbiot)
3. We need to invest more in education; an investment that yields a long-term dividend to our society and nation. The pay off will not just boost the economy, but it will improve well-being, mental health, community cohesion and deliver social justice. This investment will support schools to fulfil their duty of care and create an architecture of opportunity where the power of education will secure greater equity. Not for us, for them.
4. We need to take a longer-term view on the role of education in society, as the moral priority of our time. Taking greater stewardship of the future, building collaborative structures where all educationalist can share responsibility for all children. It is what we owe their future.
“Longtermism is about taking seriously just how big the future could be and how high the stakes are in shaping it. We need to act wisely.” (William Macaskill)
5. We need to invest more in the first 1001 days from conception and in readying children for school. This lights the fire, sets the stage and reinforces, at the earliest possible moment, that education and investing in human potential is part of the fabric of our social contract. This includes educating and influencing parenting and the nations understanding of key developmental stages. We need to follow through on that investment into early years to give the best possible start in life, to secure the importance of school, where children belong and where we genuinely work upstream to prevent downstream problems.
“We have the opportunity to help people become significant… build a culture of affiliation and status.” (Seth Godin)
6. We need more great schools that meet the needs of all children. Schools that secure strong culture and great teaching to build great humans and bestow the very best curriculum, for our children in these times. Trusts need to work together to develop system leadership and purposeful collaboration that accelerates our impact on the everyday experience of every child. So that together we realise and enhance the collective Trust Dividend on children and society. We should seek to secure greater attainment mobility, to close gaps for those presently disadvantaged, and meet the needs of those with SEND.
“There should be a national strategy to close the attainment gaps that have opened since the pandemic. Addressing these gaps should be a national priority, with a long-term plan in place, based on evidence.” (Sutton Trust)
7. We need to urgently address the attendance crisis in this country. Seeking to tackle the entrenched challenges of our time, to strengthen our narrative around the importance of education and build back the social contract. Improving attendance is urgent; the damage and implications for this generation will play out across society and over decades.
“Culture can change. And it is schools and school systems that have the power to change it.” (Lucy Crehan)
8. We need to invest in ‘place’, work in strong partnerships and fulfil our civic responsibilities. We need Trusts and schools to collaborate and develop civic leadership to takegreater stewardship for the places that we educate. Without these collaborative structures in place, we will not create the architecture of opportunity and the multi-agency working required to serve the communities where children grow up.
“Civic leadership is about the protection and promotion of public values and addressing issues of place …creat(ing) the conditions for collective impact by addressing complex issues affecting children … that require different actors to work together.” (Leora Cruddas)
9. We need to invest in wider services, and find ways to effectively work in closer partnerships with others, including social care that sit in and around schools – renewing and reinforcing the broken contract, as an expression of care and duty. Taking greater opportunity to understand and meet the needs of all children and adults. Funding and supporting schools to realise their civic duty, with enough resource and expertise to meet demand and fulfil our duty of care.
10. We need to be clear on where the boundaries of the social contract sit between schools and society. This clarity is required to understand where responsibilities sit and to reduce the flow of societal issues into schools. We need to either rebuild the agencies, services and expertise in our communities or significantly invest in schools as community hubs to meet the needs of society.
Through joint enterprise and shared responsibility we can build a society and an education system that renews the social contract for the common good and create an architecture of opportunity so that more are invited to dance.
“It is a matter of shared purpose and sustained application.” (Peter Hennessy)
If we are to overcome the forces in our society and schools that insidiously widen gaps, between those that have and those that have not, we need to be more ferocious, more tenacious in creating the conditions that enable our disadvantaged learners to flourish. This requires educators to be more honest, to ask uncomfortable questions and make braver decisions to fiercely educate those that need us the most.
Photo by Efe Yagiz Soysal on Unsplash
To fiercely educate is to replicate the stage-managed, high expectation and sharpened elbows of an advantaged childhood. Being fierce means guarding a child’s education, expecting much, staying alongside, pushing from behind, consistently and persistently championing individual children.
An advantaged childhood holds, expects and elevates children, who are fiercely loved and as a result feel more secure.
“Okay, well, Eleanor has this mother. She intimidated me at first actually because she just – she’s fierce. Fiercely loving. … but I could tell she felt safe in that house. She grew up feeling safe and fiercely loved.”
“And you and I didn’t get that, not because we didn’t deserve it, we just got dealt something else. But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure.”
Coco Mellors | Cleopatra and Frankenstein
To be fiercely loved* is to be challenged, extended, stretched, to reach and risk, and at the same time, to be held tightly, more secure. “You will be brave, I have got you.”
*the emphasis is on fiercely rather than loved. Families who are socio-economically deprived do not love their children less, often quite the opposite, but the time, money, space to create opportunity and supported experiences to translate that love, ferociously, is compromised at every turn.
Advantaged families interpret the world for their children, translating experiences and interactions to maintain their sense of security and renew their agency. Setting and re-setting a desired narrative of what it is to be and feel successful, to step forward once more, even when the randomness of life and experiences intrude beyond the home. There is always an ongoing invitation to dance. Sitting out is not an option.
To grow up advantaged is to step forward through a life punctuated by opportunities, reaching, risking and stepping forward, it is a secure pursuit. These are childhoods, with guide ropes and safety harnesses, that see failure as an obstacle on the path to eventual success.
“If you are lucky enough to be born in a world made in your image, you probably think of a failure as an obstacle on the path to eventual success. If you are a marginalised person in any way you internalise that failure more closely.”
Elizabeth Day
Without a deep sense of security, a disadvantaged child is far more likely to internalise failure more closely. It is precisely this self-reflection, the connection of failure with self that perpetuates over time and maintains an inhibiting mindset that convinces that it would be safer not to try. Without the ferocity of expectation, the unwavering (taught) belief in their own agency, a child’s hand goes up fewer times, they step back rather than stride forward and live with a constraining belief that the world is not built in their image or for their circumstance.
If we step forward less we tend to surround ourselves with others who are also less likely to step forward in life. It is the five closest individuals with whom you measure your status, the ones that set the bar, the ones we compare against. And where we create schools within schools we set expectations of what is possible (and not possible). We must work harder to cross-connect social circles, orchestrating and intervening to be more inclusive.
“Each starling is only ever aware of five other birds,” she said. “One above, one below, one in front and either side, like a star. They move with those five, and that’s how they stay in formation.”
“Who are your five then?” asked Cleo. “The ones you watch?”
Coco Mellors
It is an inconvenient truth that schools create these self-fulfilling groups, reinforce the conditions for advantage and disadvantage to accumulate. We are the problem more often than we admit, more often than we see, more often than we realise. To see the conditions we create, those that we have come to accept, we must apply the disadvantage lens on ourselves and our schools, be more honest and evaluate what we are willing to accept, what we hold up and measure as success. This is about confronting and tackling the perpetuating inequity, seeking to halt social fractures at a time when society is fracturing.
Hope: to want something to happen or to be true, and usually have a good reason to think that it might.
A childhood of advantage is one of agency and hope; a life on an exciting journey of opportunity, where what is wanted, sought after, is within reach and based on previous experiences, have a good reason to think it might be achieved. And if it does not, any failure slides off, it does not define. After all, the failure is not about me reaching out, because I act on the world. And yet for our disadvantaged children each failure is another hit on self-belief, self-image, another example of the world acting on them. “This world is not for me.”
An advantaged childhood also has purpose (one insisted on, and then internalised by the child), a beacon that directs effort and demands persistence. We must work harder to create, expect and articulate purpose so that it fuels the persistence required to close gaps.
“When we have a purpose, we are able not only to endure and persist but also to provide a beacon that reminds us of what’s important and to make the right decision at the right moment.”
Steve Magnus
Too many journeys through school are riddled with children being let off, in conditions of low expectation where interactions are compromised by collusion. We are prone to making poor assumptions about background, present levels of attainment, context, aspiration, resilience; missing the fact that we are both the problem and the solution.
We need to be more honest and braver as educationalists, guarding each child’s education and building great schools that deliberately step in to create pathways for disadvantaged learners to thrive and flourish. It takes the whole team to maintain provision that privileges disadvantage everywhere, only shared endeavour has any chance of systematically closing gaps; culture over lists of good intentions/interventions.
So:
There is little in this world more powerful than someone who deeply believes in you; educators have that power. An unconditional acceptance from a trusted adult gives a child the warm sense of belonging; a psychological safety that says we believe in you. Unpicking disadvantage is a team sport, focused on individuals to apply equity.
We are disproportionately influenced by those that we spend time with (sometimes chosen, sometimes destined, sometimes orchestrated); schools need to remove the school within school phenomenon – our choices around setting, staffing, curriculum either perpetuates disadvantage or removes it.
To fiercely educate is to have educational provision that reaches those that need us most. We need to measure what matters: the attendance and attainment of disadvantaged learners. Attendance first… we cannot fiercely educate any child we cannot see.
Our journey through education is disproportionately shaped by small acts; these are rare, often serendipitous experiences that shape us the most. How far do we purposefully engineer and create these moments of ignition within a child’s education so that they see themselves differently?
The disproportionate influence of five sentences within the novel of our lives.
Our interactions, language and the attention we give to others defines our attitude towards them and influences the way children see themselves. It is easy to understate the importance of culture and collective attitude in schools.
A child’s self-belief, self-confidence and self-image can be so fragile that inconsequential comments, experiences and actions can erode any belief that exists. As educators we can choose to fill or not fill these lockers. Removing deficit and neutral discourse in our shared language really matters; our words make a difference, both ways.
Simply adding “I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you,” changed students’ learning trajectories significantly (Cohen & Garcia, 2014).
“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
Carl Buehner
We need great teaching in great schools to understand where children are in their learning and teach the next bit. Seeking to hunt not fish and to apply the equity that disadvantaged learners need. Weaving nets to catch the curriculum.
We are hard-wired to see success as talent and gift and not the expression of supported opportunity and accumulated hard work over time; it is the latter that disadvantage learners need, it is the former that perpetuate poor attitudes to individual potential and widens gaps.
We may well be witnessing a significant shift in the social contract. The contract held between families and school is eroding, relationships and attitudes are shifting. Whilst we wrestle with a whole range of challenges we must not forget, rather increase our investment in the individual children that walk into our schools everyday.
… you have the power to change lives, to weave a future for children, just as the threads of society are unravelling for too many children. You are the hope, for many the only second chance.
“History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”
A sense of belonging: is one of humanity’s most basic needs; feeling an affinity with a group, that accepts you.
Enabling colleagues to feel a sense of belonging is an exercise in leadership. Leadership that creates the conditions for colleagues to feel psychologically safe and able to engage in meaningful work. It is under these conditions and when the climate is right, that colleagues feel a sense of belonging, that they have status and are empowered to use their agency to add value. When colleagues are encouraged and empowered they feel the protected and secure sense of being an insider.
“To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people… to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider.”(Owen Eastwood, 2021)
Organisations that seek to be as amazing as the colleagues within, actively create the conditions for belonging. Under these conditions colleagues feel an affinity to the group and to the mission, they feel the security and acceptance that gives them the mandate to bring themselves to others and to their work. Where leaders create these conditions there is an alchemy of purposeful engagement that is self-sustaining and creates momentum; the momentum of the many on a mission.
Enhancing belonging requires nuanced leadership that understands the complexity of humans and human motivation to empower and align collective effort; freeing capability and capacity. It is this nuanced leadership that deliberately leads, makes decisions, upholds values, sets parameters and direction to a compelling future that empowers colleagues. Under these conditions colleagues feel the security of deliberate leadership that both holds and frees colleagues to make good decisions, more often and aligned in the pursuit of meaningful work.
“…an organisation is not a machine – it is a collection of individual human beings. …built on normal, everyday human relationships, and it will work so much better for us if we approach its design from a human-level perspective …understanding the “cultural magic” that makes an organisation feel truly human and creates a sense of connection and belonging.” (Tracey Camilleri, et al., 2023)
The following identifies the conditions required for connection and belonging.
Relationships, relationships, relationships
“It is difficult for us to realise how much information is socially transmitted, because the amount is staggering and the process is largely transparent.” (Pascal Boyer)
Treat people well. If belonging is an exercise in leadership, then leadership is an exercise in relationships. Leaders who engage with, listen to, seek to understand, learn, connect colleagues and at the same time make decisions, bring clarity, lead and set direction, create the climate for belonging. Be a host, not a guest.
Strong leaders use time to listen, learn and build relationships. This is about ensuring colleagues are known as individuals, individuals with a unique story, a story that is heard. Understanding an individual’s story allows colleagues to weave collective stories into the future; creating insiders, who feel and believe that they each belong.
“Isn’t it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside.” (Charlie Mackesy)
Taking time to build relationships and understanding what is on the inside is not just about securing belonging, it is also a matter of status and esteem.
Belonging that is alive in the DNA
Creating the conditions for belonging is not accidental, it is a deliberate attempt to influence the climate in which colleagues thrive. The organisation’s values, explicit and implicit, are the antecedent conditions for creating the climate for belonging. Values are never achieved just in words. Values need to be lived, to be meant, to be evident in artefacts, actions, behaviours, routines and language; our words matter, a lot, they are the window into the soul.
“…your culture is… (the) assumptions your colleagues use to resolve the problems they face every day …how they behave when no one is looking. If you do not methodically set your culture, then two thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.” (Ben Horowitz)
Values that are just written, cliché ridden or tokenistic will erode, not build, belonging. Colleagues want to feel part of something bigger than themselves, something tangible and meaningful. Building culture is the result of all interactions and actions, over time, secured in years not months. Strong organisations invest deeply in values, they map values through the organisation, challenge anti-value behaviours and seek to nudge and reinforce values over time; it is what we do, it is what we are, it is how we come to be.
“Integrity is doing the right thingeven when no one is watching.” (C.S. Lewis)
Connect peers with purpose | describe a compelling future
Life is too short not to do something that matters. Connecting peers with purpose, encourages joint enterprise and individuals to have skin in the game, in the shared pursuit of something bigger, triggering a greater sense of belonging. Strong leaders paint pictures of what could be; building loyalty to the joint mission, rather than the leader.
Communication from set pieces to seemingly inconsequential comments, constantly set tone, reinforce culture and create the lived experience of what it is to be a member of this group. The art of leadership is revealed in meaningful communication, which connects colleagues to a shared purpose; knowing why we exist, gives us identity and something to belong to.
Belonging evaporates in a vacuum. Colleagues are cast adrift and feel a reduced sense of belonging where leaders fail to make decisions, set rules and implement well. Colleagues are not well held in an environment of constant initiative and u-turn or one that lacks direction or purpose. Place a few bets well; bets that all colleagues have a stake in, long term investments.
…and connect peers with each other. Build collaborative structures, give permission, provide mandates and expect colleagues to collaborate in a shared quest that adds value. This is at the heart of a learning organisation, one that frees colleagues to explore together, to learn together, to support each other and to make a difference.
“To be successful beyond the very short run, all organisations must incorporate moral purpose, respect, build, and draw on human relationships; and foster purposeful collaboration inside and outside the organisation.” (Michael Fullan)
Give away the ending, step away from the plot and the characters.
Leaders should give away the ending of the story/quest/mission in technicolour detail. They should also begin the story with the truth of the present situation, setting the scene, the baseline for the quest to follow. With the start and the end in place, leaders need to empower others to develop the plot, the twists, the character development that create the story; empowering others to find the way.
“…people rise to the occasion when they are helped by leaders who develop others to do something that is individually and collectively worthwhile. Such leaders tap into fundamental virtues of humans – and when they do, improvement happens quickly.” (Michael Fullan)
Leadership is not a passive activity, it is deliberate, seeking to empower colleagues, giving permission to exercise agency within the bounds of the shared values, headed toward our compelling, shared future. Colleagues thrive when they have purpose and the autonomy to seek mastery (Dan Pink).
Clarity is kindness. Colleagues need to understand the rules of the game and to understand what constitutes success in this team; how they belong. Without clarity, there is an uncertainty in action and a risk in expressing agency. Humans like rules, it is this clarity that creates safety.
Resist the temptation to simplify the complex.
Leave room for colleagues to express their agency. The dance between leading/directing and empowering drives the dividend, the value an organisation adds. The sweet spot between directing and empowering, enables more to contribute to the mission. Over directing, stifles contributions and agency, it denies professionalism and local decision making.
“When we build a culture of people who eagerly seek out and take responsibility, we build a culture that enables a special kind of resilient freedom.” (Seth Godin)
Feel the tension, leaders need to live and be happy with cognitive dissonance. Holding ideas in tension and resisting simplifications, or the urge to codify too far into the professional space. Whilst being clear about how we do things here is important (for the complicated), where provision is complex, leaders must invest in professional learning and the professional judgement of those closest to the action. We tend to be compelled to simplify, when many areas in education are in tension and require nuance; strong leaders live with and exploit this tension.
As a general rule people do not simply do what they are told to do (or at least not well or over time). Creating the conditions for colleagues to bring art to their work creates the climate for ownership, experimentation to get excited about the work.
Creating places of belonging is an exercise in nuanced leadership that invests deeply in human relationships. Leadership that influences the daily weather to create the long term climate that builds organisations as great as the colleagues within.
“In the end, all that matters is how we feel about the places we spend most of our time in. It is the sense of belonging that defines our experiences.” (Rob Carpenter)
When the weather conditions in our sector seem to be decreasing belonging, it is reassuring that belonging is typically situational, built, grown and strengthened locally with leaders building havens that we need to deliberately nurture more widely for our sector; a sector worth belonging to and where more feel that they belong.
Please hold while we try to connect you, your life is important to us
dis: the lack of, not…
We live in a time when increasing numbers of children are becoming disconnected from their world. Too often, circumstances and events act to disconnect disadvantaged learners, who become increasingly disillusioned and disenfranchised from society and school; pushed to the fringes. As children become disconnected their status, sense of belonging and self-esteem diminishes, encouraging retreat.
We live in a time of increased disconnection and social inequality, that is tipping life and opportunity away from increasing numbers of children who are presently disadvantaged. Disconnection is an ever-present thread, a process, through life, accentuated by key events that chip away at a child’s belief in what is possible. This is an on-going and sometimes catastrophic erosion of agency over time that encourages children to step back and not forward into opportunity.
“Disconnection is a fearsome state for a social animal to find itself in. It is a warning that its life is failing and its world has become hostile: where there’s no connection, there is no protection.” (Will Storr)
Looking through the lens of disadvantage we can see the circumstances and experiences that create disconnection and accentuate disadvantage. Almost none of it is purposeful, but we are inconveniently complicit through our actions and collude with practices that disconnect. The failure of a child to connect positively time after time, increases the likelihood of disconnection that drains the joy, the ambition and colour from life, profoundly harming well-being. Once disconnection leads to disillusionment, children find themselves on the outside, where return is possible, but rare. The powers of education are weak at this distance, too often any existing connection irretrievably snaps.
“…loneliness can quite literally make us sick? Human beings crave togetherness and interaction. Our spirits yearn for connection just as our bodies hunger for food.” (Rutger Bregman)
We can counteract and remove these “forces of disconnection” and create better climates and cultures that enable children to grow, to belong and to have more agency. Only then will children feel like the hero in their story through life. Heroes that need equity for their quest, to be privileged, to not be let off and to be held by high expectations worthy of hero-status. We do, however, need to meet them there and up the bandwidth of connection to reach out and say you belong here.
The pandemic is the greatest “disconnection event” of our time and it has entrenched and exposed a world that is already riddled with disconnection. A world where connection systematically weakens over time for increasing numbers and gaps become chasms between those that have and those that have not. The following explores just a few examples of disconnection.
Alternate realities | schools hidden within schools
Alternate reality: a self-contained separate world, coexisting within the real world.
Schools are navigated entirely differently by each child. We may like to generalise provision, but children are the only real experts of their experience. The reality for too many is that they attend a school within a school, disconnected and parallel to the best provision. These alternate realities hinge on a range of factors: levels of attainment, timetable, staffing, setting, banding, reputation, pathways, peers, groupings, pre-conceived ideas, expectations. Typically, high attaining children experience a privileged route, whilst lower attaining children endure a less privileged route; different reality, same school.
“The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.”(Ralph Linton)
The decisions we make about how we organise provision, have consequences for learners, that create or deny connection, systematically over time. We have come to accept the alternate realities, where those presently disadvantaged are disproportionately represented in the less connected, lower performing, under ambitious, alternate reality. They do not often feel the privilege of the high attaining reality.
“What provokes our outrage depends on what surrounds us – on what we consider normal.” (Cass Sunstein)
Lost in Transition | mind the gap
Children navigate many transitions as they move through their education. Advantaged children leap confidently across these transitions, whilst disadvantaged gingerly and uncertainly step across; this is not for me. Whether it is the summer break (any break), moving schools, moving years, options or pathway choices, advantaged families step forward, stage manage, resource and guide readiness and decision making. At the same time disadvantaged learners get lost in transitions and lose connection, disconnected from seizing opportunities. In these transitions they are reminded that this is a world that happens to them, they step back, not forward and the gap widens, on repeat. We need to stage manage and connect children so they find (not lose) themselves in transition.
We assume too much | pedagogy and teacher that connects children to what is possible
Classrooms should build connection, not just between peers or with adults, but also with the joy of learning and the richness of subject. A connection that enables children to feel clever, to build knowledge and understanding that opens their eyes and inspires them to feel enfranchised and empowered; connecting and giving them access to the world.
Too often we make assumptions that erode connectivity and deny access, particularly for disadvantaged learners. Each time we assume knowledge, cultural capital, language, vocabulary, ability to attend to verbal and written instruction, resilience, persistence in seeking to understand… we limit accessibility and the ability to connect. Assuming too much over time, disenfranchises learners; there is a limit to how often a child will go back and try to connect.
“Making good use of school time is the single most egalitarian function that schools perform, because for disadvantaged children, school time is the only academic learning time, whereas advantaged students can learn a lot outside of school.” (Hirsch)
Enhancing connection in classrooms:
Invest deliberately in a Reading Strategy; perhaps the most important enabler for learning, connecting to the best that has been written. Literally connecting a child, forever, to learning and the world around them; fundamentally enhancing quality of life.
Invest in vocabulary, the keys to language, to comprehension, discussion, building fluency and falling in love with words.
Invest in oracy; supporting children to find their voice to articulate, apply and explore their understanding out loud, connect to others and have a voice that is heard.
Tell stories that bounce up and down through the curriculum, reducing assumptions, inspiring, connecting knowledge and understanding in rich retrieval spaces.
Weave schema nets: really understand the architecture and structure of subject. It is this spine, these key organising concepts that create the net or holding baskets for future learning.
Keep the curriculum tight, spiralling and bouncing not far from the core spine of the subject. Too much unconnected breadth or arbitrary content disconnects disadvantaged learners; who are much more likely to blame themselves than the quality of teaching.
“The curriculum should whisper to our children, you belong. You did not come from nowhere. All this came before you, and one day you too might add to it.” (Ben Newmark)
Connection lost | attendance first
Looking for the disconnected? they aren’t in. Everyday too many children are physically disconnected from school. If we do not consider attendance first and reach out to reconnect we reinforce disconnection. In our endemic world the forces disconnecting children from their education are strong. There is a growing sense of wider disconnection that is shifting attitudes and weakening the contract held between families and schools. Children need to feel like they belong, that they can succeed, that it is worth attending and that we deeply care if they are in. Belonging is rarely achieved through compulsion or penalty.
Small moments of prestige | interactions can have serious repercussions for the future
“Anything you do could have serious repercussions on future events. Do you understand?” (Doc Brown, BTTF)
Tread carefully, you know not where your influence will lead. Each interaction or experience can trigger a child to connect or disconnect to a new self-image a new sense of whether this is for them; whether they step forward and persist or step back and dissociate. Each positive connection fills a child’s “confidence locker” stacking evidence that they can do.
“An ignition story … when a young person falls helplessly in love with their future passion … a tiny, world shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be them” (Dan Coyle)
Small moments of prestige, give status. We all need to feel clever, to achieve something, to be acknowledged, to be truly listened to, to be invested in, to see yourself in the learning, to build belonging and status over time. Every interaction, word, comment, response, expectation, experience builds or breaks a child’s sense of what is possible (often stickily into adulthood). It is too easy for individuals to grow disconnected and to feel the insecure sense of being an outsider.
“To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen, to feel included.. to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider“(Owen Eastwood)
Our language and expectations are an expression of our attitudes towards others. Deficit language erodes connection, we need to invest in specific language, in high standards and expectations; if we let you off we let you down. High expectations are an expression care, that connect and include individuals. To grow up advantaged is to be shaped by high expectations.
“My expectations about you define my attitude towards you.” (Rutger Bregman)
“some of us may need to start with bubbles of safety.. when we belong and where we are encouraged or at least allowed to make a contribution, the magic happens.” (Jon Alexander)
Building a sequenced, coherent, cumulatively sufficient and spiraled curriculum from 3 to 19 is perhaps the most important bet we can place for disadvantaged learners
The world is an increasingly challenging place to be a child; the compounding combination of the pandemic, economic hardship and political uncertainty has exposed and entrenched disadvantage in society; threatening to define and harm a generation. Without stronger leadership and greater action, our legacy may reflect that we did not do enough for those who needed us most.
This think piece explores our best bets for closing the disadvantage gap. Whilst far from exhaustive, it highlights the central and critical role that curriculum (and the enactment of curriculum) needs to play as the key lever; a bet that accumulates advantage year-on-year and is best placed to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage. (and all children)
How … do we privilege those presently and previously experiencing disadvantage … (and) apply a lens (to) ask searching questions about what we should value and how we must act. Now is the time to use the expertise and experience across our region to make a discernible difference? from: what if we are the hope and we fail
Placing the curriculum under the disadvantage lens allows much greater specificity in response to this challenge. Identifying the connected best bets that will secure the circumstances and opportunities for children to accumulate advantage in our schools; disproportionately supporting disadvantage learners so that we (upwardly) close the disadvantage gap…
“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities…” (Malcolm Gladwell)
Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.” (G.K. Nielson)
The curriculum, and particularly what we choose to value, how we structure it and how we enact it, is the key lever and our best bet for disadvantaged learners.This long term investment seeks to secure the irreversible conditions required to achieve attainment mobility for all children and prepare disadvantage to thrive in an uncertain world; placing our chips on curriculum.
The impact of disadvantage on learning is not static. It is a long-term process, not a moment or an event. (Marc Rowland)
Give the golden ticket: As educators what we choose to include and how we sequence and curate the curriculum confers or denies power for our disadvantaged learners. Designing the curriculum as the golden ticket to the world for all children is a weighty ethical responsibility. We must think hard about what is in and what is out; what of all that has been thought, written and said gives the very best chance for disadvantaged children to thrive and have self agency throughout their lives. Not everything is of equal importance; we need to seek deep subject domain expertise to consider, identify and curate the key substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge and powerful necessary knowledge wrapped together in a well-conceived curriculum; as an ever-onward investment.
Curriculum is all about power. Decisions about what knowledge to teach are an exercise of power and therefore a weighty ethical responsibility. What we choose to teach confers or denies power. (Christine Counsell)
The potential of a progressive, sequenced, cumulatively sequenced Curriculum is our best bet for securing greater…
Social justice: Theequal access to wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.
Social mobility: The ability of individuals, families or groups to move up or down the social ladder in a society. Social mobility is often used to describe changes in wealth, but it can also be used to describe general social standing or access to education.
Equity: Ensuring that everyone receives what they need to be successful. In short, equality is not enough to combat disadvantage. “While the world in which we live distributes talent equally, it does not equally distribute opportunity,”
…as well as systemically and upwardly closing the disadvantage gap year-on-year.
Think hard about the Conceptual Backbone of the curriculum. Prioritise, as our most important bet, a progressive, cumulatively sufficient curriculum that has a well-conceived conceptual backbone; the key substantive and disciplinary concepts that provide the conceptual fabric and holding baskets (Mary Myatt) for future learning. Weaving vertical threads through subject ropes.
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist. (Stephen Pinker)
We know that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric of the subject. Thinking hard about the conceptual backbone and how this identifies the Big Ideas/Substantive Concepts to be considered through a disciplinary approach, imprints and builds the cognitive architecture. Onto this backbone substantive concepts are thrown into sharp relief and brought to life by judiciously selected necessary, powerful (subject) knowledge, seeding the ground, weaving the nets, creating the Velcro for future learningand for remembering more.Schema sticks knowledge.
It is precisely this schema development, this access to the organising concepts, that is the nurtured gift that advantaged learners bring to our schools as the consequence of experience and supported opportunity over time. It is why the year-on-year progression and securing of the substantive concepts, as threads through the curriculum, is so essential for disadvantaged learners to connect and create conceptual holding baskets for powerful knowledge that self-perpetuates in the future… creating precisely the Mathew Effect that has given an advantage to advantaged learners from birth (and before).
It is this conceptual architecture, schema and backbone that secures the big ideas, makes sense of and holds necessary, powerful knowledge that develops disciplinary understanding to build historians, authors, mathematicians, geographers, artists… who develop their states of being over time (…and with it their identity, self-esteem, sense of place, agency and belonging).
Concepts are sitting in every part of the curriculum and they cannot be left to chance, because they are acting as holding baskets for a lot of information. (Mary Myatt)
See the Curriculum as the progression model; it raises the tide. It is the year-on-year progression through a cumulatively sufficient curriculum that is the biggest opportunity and the best bet for disadvantaged learners to close the gap.
Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily. (Bruner, 1960)
Constructing and curating the curriculum and the enactment of it is a long term bet that requires a long term investment – it is precisely the coherence and sequence built progressively over time that lifts and raises the tide for all and particularly disadvantaged learners. As educationalists we need to give the capacity, space and time for subject experts to carefully craft, curate and develop curriculum. Children get one chance, one opportunity to experience a coherent, progressive curriculum; incoherence and arbitrary knowledge is leaving the guesswork to chance and children.
The curriculum requires an infinite mindset; one that requires educators to plant trees for the future. The development of curriculum through a child’s lens lasts at least from age 3 (although we also know the first 1001 days from conception is a significant determinant) to age 19 and beyond; approaching two decades. A daunting, yet helpful perspective. If the power of curriculum is its cumulative coherence and sufficiency over time – regular revolution and change of curriculum is detrimental for learners; and particularly disadvantaged learners. (how often has curriculum changed in the last 15 years? how has this lack of continuity and coherence impacted on the progress of disadvantaged learners?)
The curriculum should not be half baked. Random curriculum (or poorly conceived curriculum), can present the prospect of multi-serendipitous findings for advantaged learners to make sense of within their well-connected schema, an opportunity to meander and make meaning. For disadvantaged learners it feels more like a trek into an abstract unknown, poorly structured and sequenced, day on day struggle to work out how this bit fits. This cognitive conflict and dissonance gradually erodes confidence and shifts the blame onto themselves, reaffirming that they do not belong. (Discontinuity and incoherence is damaging for disadvantaged learners; hence the presently widening gap as the impact is not felt evenly).
Stay close to the backbone– its strength isrealised over time; it holds, supports and directs the curriculum, but it is an investment that should be viewed in years… decades (resist mission creep into a world of arbitrary knowledge, topics, lists, whims… ). Too much curriculum and teaching steers too far from both the substantive concepts and disciplinary approach to deliver arbitrary knowledge not held by the conceptual/big ideas of the subject or supported through the development of disciplinary knowledge and states of being.
Staying close to the backbone requires teachers to consider less content and to deepen teaching that hangs around on the big ideas, concepts and the judiciously selected necessary knowledge that catalyses and provides the stickier holding baskets for future learning; covering what matters most, better.
Beware the noisy, content heavy, multi-topic curriculumthat is bursting with arbitrary knowledge – chasing that which is not worth having (or that which will not stick in the absence of a conceptual backbone or secure holding baskets, or because ultimately much detail is forgotten in the long term).
Arbitrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system ‘an arbitrary decision’
Instead judiciously select necessary knowledge that exposes, simplifies and exemplifies the organising concepts and big ideas of our curriculum; think networks of knowledge held by concepts and less about facts and lists. Understanding that it is the substantive concepts and the disciplinary understanding that is the goal of the curriculum, which is brought to life through judiciously selected knowledge; gifting the thrill of insight and knowing more to disadvantaged learners.
Arbitrary knowledge, content and topics selected randomly or as a personal (or historic) whim is kryptonite for disadvantaged learners. Understanding the organising concepts gives the thrill of insight and the ‘feeling of being clever’ that super-charges curiosity; as disadvantaged become advantaged and see the world differently and are then in turn increasingly motivated to test new experiences and information against their new view of the world. Gifting how subjects are organised and the concepts that define it not only tackles disadvantage in the present, but also into the futurewithin and beyond the subject – setting the type of schema and conceptual awareness that many advantaged learners bring to school.
Subject is King. Curriculum is enacted through the lens of subject. These domains organise and structure our curriculum into distinct realms. Only deep investment over time on how subjects are constructed will provide the insight that teachers need to teach (not present) the substantive concepts, build disciplinary understanding and secure the pertinent and president knowledge that allows pupils to know more, remember more and do more. (understanding that much will be forgotten, but that the organising concepts will live on to allow learners to know what to do when they do not know what to do, throughout their lives). Pushing wide open a door for colleagues to think deeply and celebrate widely the unique aspects of their subject; to get their subject geek on(but not in the undisciplined pursuit of content, but in the underlying structure that is so important to learning).
There is significant‘polymathic’ demand on primary teachers and schools. To realise the intention of the new framework and to invest deeply in curriculum and subject requires significant subject domain expertise… unlikely to exist within a single primary. Educators from across 3-19 must work together altruistically across our sector to think hard about and curate accessible and understood subject curricular for teachers (and pupils). Groups of school creating the collaborative structures and subject knowledge expertise to curate curriculum that will disproportionately support those presently experiencing disadvantage.
There is a reverse problem in secondary, where the degree-level expertise tends to lean towards content-heavy curricula that are prone to ‘arbitrary’ knowledge, whims and a breadth of curriculum that is too noisy and not efficient enough to secure and deepen understanding of the conceptual framework; placing responsibility for drawing connections across subjects with students. For some learners, this autonomy leads to meaning making and mastery and for others the incoherence leads to dislocation and disconnection. We need much greater debate and discussion on what it means to be a teacher of…
Sequence matters; really matters within learning episodes. Learning happens when we think hard and where we can connect new ideas securely into our existing schema. When disadvantaged learners meet new learning in our classrooms they really need it to be enacted in a sequence that is coherent and cumulative. Whilst advantaged learners have cultural capital and developed schema that is more resistant to poorly sequenced learning, disadvantaged learners are much less able to make sense of poor sequence; the curriculum literally becomes out-of-order (and out of reach) for disadvantaged learners if it is enacted out of order.
Disadvantaged learners are likely to have less well developed schema, which makes them far more sensitive to learning that is out of sequence. Given that disadvantaged learners often need to structure and re-structure schema as opposed to accrete or tune schema it really matters the order in which areas are taught. Learners with limited or less stable schema are more likely to reject (fail to resolve cognitive conflict) new learning that is not well sequenced and sensitive to previous knowledge and existing schema.
Sequencing that achieve an hours-worth of learning for an hours-worth of input will close the gap for disadvantaged learners. Typically, disadvantaged learners are far more likely to assume that they alone do not understand when learning/teaching is out of sequence; “that does not make sense, it must be me,” compared to advantaged learners who are self-confident enough to recognise poor sequence, “this is a bit odd, but I am confident with what I already know, I’ll tolerate the learning and assimilate as I go.”
Give Status; Small Moments of Prestige, that say you belong. Disadvantaged learners are more likely to have an external locus of control, to step back and to opt out of learning. Our perceived status drives are sense of belonging, our connectedness, our value and ultimately whether we are part of the game (and entitled to be…). The Pandemic has driven far greater disenfranchisement in education; if you do not see yourself as part of the game, you will opt out and protect yourself from further status harm by playing a different game or cutting losses to avoid playing and failing.
It is easy to forget we have status to give, that it costs nothing and it never runs out. …Allowing others to feel statusful makes it more likely they’ll accept our influence. (Will Storr, 2021)
It’s probably not a surprise to discover that feeling deprived of status is a major source of anxiety and depression. When life is a game we’re losing, we hurt. …To our brains, status is a resource as real as oxygen or water. When we lose it, we break. (Will Storr, 2021)
As humans we seek status, typically measuring against those that we are closest to. Classrooms are on-going status games, one that reflects a key aspect of being human.
…our curriculum should whisper to our children, “You belong. You did not come from nowhere. All this came before you, and one day you too might add to it.” (Ben Newmark)
Create learning spaces where all children belong. Without psychological safety we cannot attend to what is to be learnt. Within these spaces how do we gift Small Moments of Prestige and build every learners status, how do we have greater awareness of how we give status and build a fully inclusive space for all and particularly those learners experiencing disadvantage.
To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people… to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider. (Owen Eastwood, 2021)
Build schema by weaving (conceptual) nets. Do not presume previous knowledge, weave conceptual nets, stop throwing fish at broken nets. We are the sum of our memories (and opportunities and experiences) over time. This means that each individual is unique; be wary of working to the average. This uniqueness is to be celebrated and yet it provides the wickedest of problems for teaching. Each of us bring a range of schema to our learning; some advanced and deep, others beginning and shallow.
People are not born with fixed reserves of potential; instead potential is an expandable vessel, shaped by the various things we do throughout our lives. Learning isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential but rather a way of developing it. We can create our own potential.” (Anders Ericsson)
Our understanding of the world and our place in it is built over time through the development of schema.
“…our brains do something vastly more impressive, forming neural nets from billions of cells, each connected to thousands of others. And these networks are organized into larger structures, … and so on, in a complex hierarchical scheme..” (Leonard Mlodinow, 2018)
When we meet new information (and when we are primed to attend to it) we typically do one of four things:
Accretion: Add it into existing schema with little cognitive conflict, like inserting a new puzzle pieceinto existing puzzle.
Tuning: Tweak and reshape what is already known or understood in light of new insight. The puzzle picture shifts to reveal a new truth or connection.
Restructure or structuring: New information is acquired by thinking hard about it and securing a few connections together that can hold fast. New puzzle under construction (without repeating or see in other contexts, learning likely to be insecure).
Rejection: New information is beyond proximal zone, cannot resolve the cognitive conflict. No puzzle to add too, starting a new puzzle is too abstract or teaching not made the leap to existing puzzles.
Deepening the wicked problem; the importance of the proximal zone a space that is typically narrower for disadvantaged learners. Understanding where children are in their learning and the scope of previous knowledge is particularly important for disadvantaged learners who have much less scope to wrestle with learning that is beyond schema.
Disadvantaged learners typically have less developed schema supported by cultural capital and opportunities and experiences over time. This is not linked to innate ability. Whilst advantaged learners typically spend time in the accreting and tuning space, and within their proximal zone much more often, disadvantaged learners typically spend more time structuring or restructuring, wrestling often beyond the proximal zone to build understanding and retain exemplifying knowledge. Careful structuring of learning episodes to systematically build in the fundamental and foundational concepts and the introduction of ‘necessary knowledge’ gives a greater chance for cognitive dissonance to be resolved.
“The sweet spot: that productive, uncomfortable terrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds our grasp. Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it’s about seeking a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions.” (Dan Coyle, 2009)
In this way we can build conceptual nets that allow more knowledge and understanding to be caught by disadvantaged learners; levelling-up the playing field towards advantaged learners who drag thickly woven nets (conceptual fabric of the subject) that are steeped in cultural capital and understanding that collect much of what is available in classrooms (even where it is poorly taught). It is why advantaged still make progress with poor teaching and why poor teaching has a disproportionately negative impact on the progress of disadvantaged… (Helpfully the reverse is true, highly effective teaching secures greater progress for disadvantaged compared to advantaged).
Consistent, insightful formative assessment, that allows teachers to build conceptual understanding and to teach the next bit, disproportionately advantages disadvantaged learners. We need to consider particularly the pre-work and the structure of sequences of learning to address previous conceptual and knowledge gaps and at the same time consistently build learning with one eye on future learning.
Seek subject domain experts to inform, curate, collaborate and evolve the conceptual backbone of the curriculum (as an ever-onward); those who will know and understand the threads that weave vertically through the subject. Subject Communities and Subject Groups who together curate an efficient curriculum that enables all learners to secure the substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge, meaning and understanding through the judicious selection of powerful knowledge. Where subject is celebrated and seen as an academic pursuit, where the discussion and talk is deep, expert and about how subjects are uniquely structured and organised, revealing the conceptual backbone essential for holding and accelerating learning over time…
“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and want to learn how to do it better by interacting regularly.” (Etienne Wenger)
Double down on and build deep understanding of the conceptual backbone with teachers and other colleagues. Teachers and colleagues often engaging in deep professional subject specific discussion and debate on the nuances and peculiarities of concept development over time. So that against this backcloth and architecture we can identify and judiciously select the necessary powerful knowledge, Tier 3 vocabulary, and secure understanding and meaning to allow all learners to know more, remember more and do more. We must create the conditions for collective endeavour, the pursuit of subject and collaboration; creating Communities of Practice in each subject/department, where teachers deliberately plan, sequence and play with pedagogy that will best enact the shared curriculum. A powerful alchemy is created when colleagues discuss practice on aligned curriculum across schools and evaluate often.
Teachers ensure that pupils embed key concepts in their long term memory and apply them fluently (Ofsted Framework)
Create much more space for teachers to debate, discuss, test and evaluate the pedagogy and teaching that is most efficacious in every way for the delivery of the specific subject necessary knowledge and conceptual framework; this can only be done in the consideration and shared planning of specific sequences of learning that fit the curriculum backbone and are an exploration of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy. We should deeply invest in Communities of Practice; the result of these curriculum conversations are our disadvantaged learners best chance of experiencing teaching that is efficient, effective and focused on what matters most.
Deeply consider and discuss Pedagogy. Teachers teach, presenters present. The careful selection of pedagogy in planning sequence and in response to following learning to meet need within learning episodes is the determining factor on the quality of the curriculum. Where the teacher habits, skills, strategies and approaches are highly aligned to the subject content and disciplinary nature of the subject we will accelerate learning, year-on-year. Whilst it is important to build habits and skills of teachers, particularly those that maximise learning time, secure routines and create climates that maximise attention and attending to learning, these are just the starting point of establishing the climate for learning. Those habits and skills that are deeply linked to the specific subject knowledge acquisition and for developing subject conceptual understanding and the disciplinary aspects of the subject will secure greater learning now and in the future. Matching the pedagogical choices to the particular curriculum item, subject nuance and specific desired learning over time.
Don’t build Knowledge in a vacuum; curriculum is not a list it is a network. We learn and remember knowledge and build understanding in relation to what is already known and understood. We compare and contrast and attempt to resolve/assimilate what is new with what we already know.
“The importance of knowledge is not in question, but knowledge alone is not enough.” (Mick Waters)
Stacking knowledge in isolation of context and concept slows learning. Acquiring knowledge and building understanding in context accelerates learning.
The large amount of school time spent in direct word study is not being spent on systemically becoming familiar with new knowledge domains, where word learning occurs naturally, and up to four times faster, without effort. (Hirsch, 2017)
…we should be wary of assuming stacking vocabulary in a list for some quick quizzing offers anything like the deep understanding and rich connections pupils need to make between words, phrases, concepts and big ideas. (Alex Quigley)
We also need to balancing another wicked problem: how do we judiciously introduce new knowledge and new understanding in and within context, without increasing noise and surplus information far beyond the conceptual scope of some disadvantaged learners?
We need to offer insight and examples to embed learning so that learners wrestle with co-occurrences, varied examples and contexts to secure connections and deepen understanding. Using analogy, explaining and modelling expertly so that we explore the multi-faceted richness experienced when growing up advantaged.
By paying attention to vocabulary growth at the micro level, we can better understand it, we can go to cultivating it and in so doing every child will be gifted a wealth of words.” (Alex Quigley, 2018, Closing the Vocabulary Gap))
Seek rich retrieval. Retrieval practices should seek rich context based retrieval in preference to memory tests; teaching should seek to be memorable more than a test of memory. Engaging, rehearsing, exploring, discussing, explaining, defending… are far richer for memory than fact checks and quizzing.
It is inefficient to learn facts, vocab, knowledge in the absence of the conceptual fabric of the curriculum. Tier 3 vocabulary for example requires anchoring in learner’s schema. Where necessary knowledge is built within context and where it is judiciously selected to reinforce the conceptual fabric of the curriculum backbone the new information is stickier and retained up to four time faster. Where this is linked to a strong narrative and mental model we have an opportunity to disproportionately enable disadvantaged learners to close gaps efficiently and more precisely.
Investing deeply in debate, discussion and oracy. We have an opportunity to accelerate the learning of those experiencing the most disadvantage through effective oracy practice. As we support our learners to discover and use their voice as part of their learning and as a result of their learning, we enable them to develop more deeply their own sense of belonging and sense of self, with significant impact on mental health and well-being – not as a tokenistic sidebar, but as an embedded pedagogy upon which the curriculum rides. The very thinking needed as children journey through our curriculum can in many cases most effectively be done as part of dialogic learning, using subject as the ‘grammar’ and talk as the vehicle to develop critical thought. (Neil Phillipson, Dialogic Education: Mastering Core Concepts). Understanding that the development of individual and collective oracy as curriculum is essential for accelerating advantage for disadvantaged learners.
Tell Stories to tap into what makes us human. Dan Willingham highlights that, “our brain privileges story.” Fortunately, stories exist across the whole curriculum and yet our enactment of the curriculum can often revert to something far colder and transactional.
“…stories perform a fundamental cognitive function… when we encounter a complex issue and try to understand it, what we look for is not consistent and reliable facts, but a consistent and comprehensible story.” (from Out of the Wreckage, George Monbiot, 2017)
There are many things that attract and hold the attention of brains. Storytellers engage a number of neural processes that evolved for a variety of reasons and are waiting to be played like instruments in an orchestra: moral outrage, unexpected change, status play, specificity, curiosity and so on. By understanding them, we can more easily create stories (curriculum and sequences) that are gripping, profound, emotional and original. (Will Storr, 2019)
Tell stories about words. Etymology offers the opportunity to discover the roots of words that build stories around each word that makes them stickier (connection-wise) in the brain and offers further capacity for future learning. Mary Myatt insightfully highlights that this taps the curiosity of children (something innate in humans) and makes them feel clever. This disproportionately benefits disadvantage who go deeper into the learning and secure the necessary knowledge that will close the disadvantaged gap as well as giving status to learners, empowering them and give them the ticket to culture.
Seek to support learners to use Tier 3 vocabulary with the ease, confidence and fluency that more befits Tier 2 vocabulary. A significant passport not just to the world but also to conceptual understanding that creates the holding baskets for future learning.
Provoke, even anger learners, make them care about learning. Curriculum that provokes, that challenges is one that is much more likely to persuade the brain that this is important enough to encode, that this is important enough to release chemicals to secure connections and wrap myelin, that this is important to me and my life and my future. Curriculum that has provoking questions/hypotheses/conjectures, demands a response and tap emotions. Emotionally linked experiences, both positive and negative, are encoded much more quickly and secured in the longer term; if learning through the curriculum feels more like a quest or a mission it is more likely to be both coherent, memorable and remembered.
Make it irresistibly important, give a sense of urgency. We learn what we care about. Cognitive science has highlighted the chemical changes that happen when we code new learning. If the content of what is to be learnt is not deemed important enough, if it is not compelling enough to think hard about, it does not trigger the emotional/chemical response to connect and encode it.
Inside the brain, this relevance is expressed through widely reaching systems that release chemicals called neuromodulators… releasing with high specificity (to) allow change occur (in the brain) only at specific places and times. … The presence of acetylcholine… tells it to change… they increase plasticity in the target areas. When they’re inactive, there’s little or no plasticity (learning). (David Eagleman, 2020)
So when we attend to something, whether by free will, a burst of emotion, under coercion or by finding meaning in it, we hugely increase our chances of remembering it. (Alex Beard, 2018)
Clearly teaching is not about performance, but it is about moving learners to care enough to trigger chemical and attention cues so that new information is encoded and wrestled with. To this end making learning irresistible, provocative and conflicting is vital.
We learn what we attend to, what we think hard about. Unless the classroom climate enables such focus, particularly for disadvantaged learners who may become distracted in class (because if you bring less into the classroom, or you have other things on the mind, it is harder), and by events out of class (because we need both psychological safety as well as being able to park ‘the multi-distractions of life’ at the door), then learning is slowed and the gap widens. We learn when we attend to the information at hand, when we enhance it into focus, released neurotransmitters to encode, create connections, wrap connections and stick long enough at it to secure connections.
It is my fear there are a great many struggling children who believe they are colluding in a game in which their role is to be physically present in a classroom and to make a pretence they are learning in it, but that nobody really believes anything meaningful is ever accomplished and this doesn’t really matter. (Ben Newmark)
Make learning compelling and irresistibly important. We are competing for attention and convincing other humans (disadvantaged learners) that this is too important to be ignored. Allied with the award of status across the class and judicious issuing of small moments of prestige; learners feel valued, empowered to learn more and to take risks.
You couldn’t learn something you didn’t pay attention to. Yet the process of paying attention to something was complex, and not always under our control. It could be enhanced… in a few ways: things that created an emotional reaction were much more likely to be remembered; repetition helped a little; wanting to remember didn’t help much; reflecting on meaning had a positive effect, such as knowing where something fitted in a story or schema, whether personal or general.” (Alex Beard, 2018)
What if learning and our understanding of the world is more catastrophic than we think? Our view of what we are capable of, of how we understand the world, a subject, a concept often progresses catastrophically and not in a linear way. Once we have seen what we are capable of (or see the world differently) we are never the same. Teachers and the curriculum should create fertile grounds for this insight, born out of the curriculum, opportunity, feedback, modeling, explaining etc.
Great teaching create serendipity fields for all learners, but particularly disadvantaged learners who need to have experiences and supported opportunities that grow and intertwine understanding that is the structure for powerful knowledge that needs to accelerate learning if we are to close the gap.
Whilst the world is an increasingly challenging place to be a child, we have an opportunity as educators to address the embarrassing inequality that exists and work together to close the disadvantage gap. Our collective capacity and shared expertise applied to the development and enactment of curriculum is our best bet, or set of linked bets, to advantage disadvantaged learners. This is the key lever that accumulates advantage year-on-year and is best placed to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage.
Our best hope is to adopt a laser like focus on disadvantage. We can then shine a light on those left behind at school and find ways to ignite their minds. (Lee Elliott Major, 2022)
Dan Nicholls | February 2022
This is significantly influenced by the insight and expertise of colleagues from across the Cabot Learning Federation.
Pre-reading for the South West Disadvantage Network | 18th February 2022
How can Multi Academy Trusts realise their potential in a rapidly changing educational landscape so that they become more than the sum of their parts and make a contribution to system leadership that transforms education as we know it?
1 + 1 = 3
It is probably true that education is going through rapid change through Academisation and the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs); the temporarily weak academies get sponsored, the perceived stronger ones seek to form and grow their MATs. What happens within MATs and in particular their effectiveness at driving and sustaining academy improvement will determine the success of this educational transformation. Will the system become self-improving?
It is also probably true that there are key strategies and opportunities afforded by the scale and connection within MATs that have real potential to transform leadership, teaching, professional development, assessment, learning, outcomes and ultimately the life chances of children in our communities.
What if.. the following provides a useful framework and description of the key approaches, mindsets and strategies that will enable MATs to add value and raise standards beyond what was possible when the individual partners in a MAT stood alone…
In a changing educational landscape stand-alone Academies can become increasingly isolated, organisationally blind and vulnerable to dips in performance. At the same time there is increasing evidence of the significant benefits and security that comes with being part of a group of Academies within a Multi Academy Trust. The last half-decade has seen an acceleration in the establishment of new MATs as well as the rapid expansion of the pioneer MATs. Whilst this has fundamentally altered the educational landscape, most MATs are presently immature and rapidly exploring the potential benefits of deep collaboration and collegiality. Additionally, maturing MATs are beginning to exploit system leadership to secure a wider impact and are seeking MAT to MAT collaboration to secure greater provision, opportunity and outcomes for our young people.
“The new generation of campaigners must be collaborative in a way their predecessors were not, and had far less need to be.” (Hayman and Giles, 2015)
There is an urgent need to understand this new dynamic and exploit the opportunities that this evolving landscape is providing. This considers eight areas and approaches that have the potential to add significant value to Academies within a MAT and ensure MATs secure greater impact and improvement.
“System leaders focus on creating the conditions that can produce change and that can eventually cause change to be self-sustaining.” (Senge et al., 2015)
What if.. there is a deepening of moral purpose and the motivating notion of improving the system, with other Academies; influencing and improving the educational provision for a greater number of individuals. Reinforcing this shared purpose, collective goal and deeper ambition provides the fuel for collaboration and system-focused altruism required to add greater value to the system.
The attraction of joint initiative and collaboration, carefully fostered within a MAT, exploits the useful tension between co-operation and competition. Supported through regular connection and transparent performance data, academies push and pull each other to achieve greater success against this shared purpose to uplift communities and have an impact and this generation and those that follow.
“There are many strategic benefits…from aligning joint effort, and for combining collective investment for competitive gain. Uplifting leaders know that these (collaboration and competition) are the yin and yang of enduring success.” (Hargreaves et al., 2014)
What if.. the development and use of data across a MAT provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast performance?
Matthew Syed considers Black Box Thinking (2015) and the benefit of deeply understanding and investigating performance. Where quantitative and qualitative data across all functions of Academies within a MAT are compared there is an opportunity to identify bright spots and positively deviant behaviours that have impact (Dan and Chip Heath, 2010). Centralised, shared and transparent data trawling, scrutiny and analysis allows greater focus on what matters as well as deepening accountability. As Jim Collins (2001) states, you cannot do anything without first confronting the brutal facts of your reality. For MATs this is the basis of a self-improving system and for the identification of trails, both at MAT and individual Academy level. Black box thinking and transparency of key indicators is a key advantage of collaboration for individual Academies within MATs, particularly where they…
“…have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (Collins, 2001)
What if.. well-connected Academies within MATs have a unique opportunity to reduce organisational blindness and to bust silos? Gillian Tett, considers the impact of working in Silos, suggesting that:
“If we become blind creatures of habit our lives are poorer as a result.” (Tett, 2015)
There is significant value gained from leaders, teachers and wider staff moving between Academies within a MAT (permanently, seconded, temporarily or for reviews) that supports improvement and is a tangible element of deep collaboration. Importantly this supports Academies to learn from, evaluate, assimilate and adopt practices that are shown to have had impact in other Academies. Where fluidity of movement is high there is increasing alignment of practices across the MAT that can reduce the need for direct standardisation or imposition of practices. As MATs mature, this movement is increasingly strategic and increasingly extends through the organisation to balance resources and intervene to accelerate improvement. In a fragmented educational landscape this connection and collaboration afforded within a MAT allows for the removal of organisational blindness and a widened view that better informs improvement.
“Collaboration occurs when people work with others … to achieve a clearly understood and mutually beneficial, shared set of goals and outcomes that they could not achieve working by themselves.” (Sanaghan and Lohndorf, 2015)
What if.. Collaboration with purpose within MATs, particularly within networks is a key element for driving improvement? Collaboration is often only effective where it achieves a clear commitment and triggers action. Whilst it is typical for Principals to meet regularly within a MAT, deeper networks have a greater impact on middle leadership, teaching and the wider work of Academies. This is supported by John Kotter who describes the need to create duel operating systems, that maintain the hierarchy, whilst maintaining, cross-organisation groups that connect and innovate.
“The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance each other.” (Kotter, 2014)
Subject networks provide a good example, particularly where these go beyond the sharing of effective practice, which can ultimately either be adopted, or otherwise admired and left behind in the room. In a MAT scenario such networks develop a profundity that lead to staff sharing best practice and also syllabi, planning and resources, as well as having Mock Exams that are marked, moderated and followed with examiner style feedback. Adam Grant (2014) highlighted the advantages of propagating and rewarding strategic-altruism within these networks that need to support and generate a culture that rewards strategic givers and giving.
“If you share your best ideas with your competition, it will stimulate you to keep inventing new ones in order to stay on the leading edge of innovation.” (Hargreaves, 2014)
What if.. growing Leadership Capital is a key catalyst for Academy improvement and central to deriving impact within a MAT and across the system? Whilst getting the right leaders on the bus is key, either internally or externally sourced, it is also important that leaders are in the right seats, at the right time. MATs enable the strategic movement, training and development of leaders that support accelerated improvement. The ability to develop, promote and second leaders and middle leaders between Academies provides the opportunity to balance skills and experience to intervene for the good of the wider community. As Fullan (2010) describes these leaders become influential change agents within the MAT.
“The fact is, most effective leaders want to make a contribution beyond their own borders….they are humble. But they want to learn more, and they want to think that they have something to offer that will benefit others…they make perfect change agents, because they push upwards and laterally.” (Fullan, 2010)
What if.. securing a deep and unswerving focus on effective Pedagogical leadership as central to turning the key educational flywheel of Academy improvement? It is this aspect that Academies and MATs need to be the “best in the world (at)” (Collins, 2001). This is an unswerving mission and drive that has the greatest leverage on outcomes and increasing the life chances of children. This is the standing item for all cross-MAT networks and groups.
What if.. strategic system leadership needs to intervene to secure improvement? In any MAT each Academy performs differently and will be progressing on their own improvement journey. Where performance is strong a level of earned autonomy provides a level of freedom to an Academy. However, where performance dips or where an Academy underperforms there is a need to impose strategies and approaches that are shown to be effective. With high trust within a MAT there is an opportunity for executive leadership, scrutiny, review and peer challenge to disrupt and provoke improvement. The best MATs use this to seek a self-improving system that delivers discernible difference.
“(when) Schools pull together and share their best ideas, while simultaneously employing peer pressure to achieve more for the sake of all students (and the whole community).” (Hargreaves et al. 2014)
What if.. for the system to become self-improving there is a need to scrutinise, evaluate and to pursue discernible difference on the things that matter? This type of leadership seeks to execute change and tell narratives of improvement that propagate the shared moral purpose, grows bright spots and secures alignment and improvement that raises standards across the MAT.
Maybe then.. Taken together the eight areas interact to provide a description of system leadership within a MAT; a system that seeks to be self-improving and to add more value than its constituent parts. The Educational landscape has shifted through system-wide academisation to a point where MATs are forming and growing rapidly and with few parameters. Whilst this may require some rationalisation in the future there is presently a growing movement where MATs are collaborating and taking responsibility for their wider communities; forging MAT to MAT relationships which need to grow if we are to realise the potential of system leadership and to create a self-improving and self-regulating education system.
“The role of the leader is to enable, facilitate, and cause peers to interact in a focused manner…but still only a minority of systems employ the power of collective capacity.” (Fullan, 2010)
Dan Nicholls 