Tag Archives: equity

Igniting identity | circumstance and happenstance

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Our self-identity forms over time, shaped by our experiences and interactions, particularly in our formative years. It is not a uniform development of self, but rather one that is punctuated disproportionately by high impact moments. These sit in our backstories, having ignited our identity and shaped who we have become.

These moments are often subtle, quiet experiences of awe and wonder: a sudden realisation, both unsettling and exciting, that the world and our role in it is not what we thought. In these moments of alchemy, brief serendipitous collisions create a hiatus between our old and new self-image.

“…in moments of alchemy, brief and serendipitous collisions, the beautiful texture of interwoven lives. There are many seeds of genius in the world, we must nurture as many as we can.” Helen Lewis

Circumstance and happenstance

The development of self is determined by our context, upbringing and by the influential adults and peers that we look to through childhood: an on-going influence of circumstance through our formative years.

But much, arguably, is happenstance, serendipitous moments that build our self-image. Brief events, often remarkably small, that disproportionately shape our lives. Rather awkwardly, they are often surprisingly quiet, private moments of self-realisation that are invisible to the provider.

“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.” Hannah Arendt

Yet for some children the vagaries of life’s happenstances are less frequent, less influential or much less accessible. It also depends on a child’s circumstance and their pre-disposition to act on these moments. Whilst our childhood sets the conditions and the circumstances that influence our predispositions, the brief moments, the happenstances, disproportionately explain who we become.

Predispositions

Will, Should, Might, Could, Won’t, Can’t

Our context and circumstance, whether consciously or unconsciously, determine our predispositions and the strength of our self-agency. For any given aspect of life we align to one of the following dispositions:

•I Will  …. I fully expect to do this, unswerving, predestined, locked in, self-fulfilling.

•I Should … Highly likely, people like me do things like this (reinforced by peer status).

•I Might … Entirely possible and within my gift, requires a step forward, focus and resourced adults.

•I Could … It is possible, but could be difficult to achieve – requires ignition, support and must be followed by resource.

•I Won’t … People like me don’t do this, locked out, keys hard to find, and not sought, no capacity or resource, unable to see the future or be part in it.

•I Can’t … Not possible, nobody like me does things like this, psychologically and materially forbidden.

If you are under-resourced and have experienced much less privilege, then too often your agency is limited to the bottom few dispositions. This offers a form of immunity to moments of ignition and even if ignited a lack of resource to follow your triggered passion. In a world of privilege, however, you occupy the top few dispositions: emboldened to accessible experiences and open to life-changing moments. And yet, ‘ambition’ is equally distributed, but enhanced or stifled from birth and perhaps before birth.

“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

Moments of wow… igniting identity

Regardless of who we are there are moments we witness that change our passions, our identity and motivation for what we wish to become…

“But the moment that changed everything came on 29 July 1992 … the Barcelona Olympics. Chris Boardman was about to go in the final of the men’s individual pursuit. I sat in front of the TV and watched him … Four and a bit minutes later, Chris had overtaken his German counterpart and become Britain’s first Olympic cycling gold medallist in 72 years. I was 12 and knew straightaway I wanted to emulate his feat. Another 12 years later I did just that.” Bradley Wiggins

…or influential adults who we are desperate to emulate…

“When I’m 13, my mum gives me a load of photos that she’s found. There he is, in his cycling kit, racing. It’s a definite “Wow!” moment, like he’s been brought to life in my hands. Those photos become my greatest treasure. The closest connection I could have with my father was by following in his footsteps” Bradley Wiggins

…or experiences that ignite our identity…

“My love for cinema began at a very early age, as early as I can remember… I was just a little kid in a darkened theatre, and I remember that beam of light just cut across the room and I remember looking up, and it seemed to just explode on the screen. … and suddenly, the world was so much larger than the one that I knew … it opened my eyes. It opened my imagination to the possibility that life could expand far beyond the boundaries that I then perceived in my own life.” Tom Cruise

“Making films is not what I do, it is who I am.” Tom Cruise

Owning the future

How far are children able to focus on the future? If you exist in an under-resourced world where you seek to survive the day, the week, your effective horizon is limited, perhaps irrelevant to you: there is no bandwidth to contemplate your future. This fundamentally forces you toward the weaker predispositions, I Won’t and Can’t, and breaks the connection between recognising that the efforts of now are an investment in next. The future will act on me.

Resourced children are able to make the investments now, fill their lockers and are typically compelled to do so, supported to strong dispositions, I Will and Should. I create my future.

To be or not to be

To be or not to be, that is the question that children wrestle with as they navigate the world. We know, though, that some children have much less capacity to be, forced into a not to be mindset. Growing in a world that tips the odds against you, denies a starting disposition, or ladder to, ‘Will, Should, Could’ and restricts the under-resourced to ‘Can’t and Won’t’. Only the application of equity can offer a ladder and break the cycle.

Lockers filled with belief

In every aspect of a child’s life, a child holds a locker of self-belief. Advantaged children have bursting lockers, filled by circumstance and opportunity, narrated by resourced adults, affirmed through experience. The lockers of under resourced children are sparse, short on belief, encouragement or affirming experiences. When they look to their lockers for self-confidence and self-belief they are encouraged, perhaps compelled, to step back, to not take risks and internalise the failure. We must be better at filling the lockers of under-resourced children.

“When you are born into wealth and privilege, you inherit a plan that outlines the paths ahead, indicating the shortcuts and byways available to reach your destination … If you enter the world without such a map, you are bereft of proper guidance. You lose your way more easily.” Elif Shafak

Chasing status

What you become depends largely on who you find yourself with. We measure status on those around us, typically the 5 peers that we spend time with that we look to and derive our own sense of status. Our belief in what is possible is shaped by our peers, and our schools are the crucible for these interactions.

Our verbal quota

“…we speak about 16,000 words a day, that is a lot of chances to tease, complain and criticise, but also to encourage, inspire and comfort. I know I can do a lot more good with my verbal quota.” Matt Woodcock

In every interaction, exchange and conversation our words are a powerful force for good (or ill). We never know for certain the weight of our words on a child, but we do know that children are adult-watchers, seeking to decode the world around them. Awkwardly or helpfully, in every interaction our words always carry weight and have influence, intended or otherwise. Often just 13 words deliver a self-belief that becomes unshakable and propels a dopamine-soaked desire to follow a passion:

“…I was introduced to a club coach, Stan Knight. Immediately he took hold of my wrist. “I’ve never felt a pulse like it,” he said. He looked me in the eye – “You’re going to be the best cyclist this country has ever produced.” … I liked the fact he had belief in me… Stan didn’t tell me I was special because of who my dad was. He told me I was special. Me.” Bradley Wiggins

Inspiring lives

“I began to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed, Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all else become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.” Roald Dahl

As educators we chose to inspire lives – and yet we spend little time understanding how children exist in the world or how their lives unfold through their circumstance and happenstance. How do we ensure that curiosity, hope and ambition is a feature of all childhoods not just those that are privileged?

Perhaps we should maintain a greater sense of awe and wonder, of possibility and back it with the application of equity and protect the flickering flames of hope, so that more children can embrace an interest with both arms. If we are to ignite a child’s self-identity, so that they have agency into their adulthood, we must create greater opportunity and apply the equity that will give all children the choice to follow their dreams.

...inspire lives with greater opportunity and choice.

Dan Nicholls | December 2025

Growing Human Beans

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We are in the business of growing human beans, and beans have dreams.

Some have dreams that are delicate, wispy-misty bubbles, but, more frightsome, some beans believe dreams are for others and not for them. So, whilst all kiddle beans have dreams, some are lost before they grow to be whunking. For the world has a habit of bursting the bubbles of beans.

“Dreams,” he said, “is very mysterious things. They is floating around in the air like little wispy-misty bubbles. And all the time they is searching for sleeping people.”  Roald Dahl

Tread softly | zozimus is fragile 

We grow beans and all beans spread their dreams under our feet.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams W.B. Yeats

So, tread softly, but do deliberately step and set the stage for dreams to appear, exist and grow. Dreams require our guardianship, for the moment a child ceases to believe, they step back and separate themselves from those whose dreams are well preserved and soundly protected. For the dreamless beans we are their only second chance: exunckly why we choose to be here, doing what we do.

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”  Peter Pan

Leaders of Dreams | dealers in dreams

“Leadership is communicating to (human beans) their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.” Stephen Covey

We must curate the conditions that convince beans of their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves. Leadership that deals in dreams and has the courage to apply equity, might just create the opportunities that change lives of human beans, because childhoods last a lifetime.

“Dreams is full of mystery and magic… Do not try to understand them.”  Roald Dahl

The land of less | surviving childhood

All human beans depend on supported opportunity to thrive. Opportunity, however, is largely a feature in the land of advantage. A place where beans go on quests, fueled by belief and held to high expectations. In their land, they stride sure-footedly, supported, resource laden, time enabled, in the direction of their dreams, with eyes affixed on the horizon.

Contrariwise, the land of disadvantage has less. Whilst, all beans are seeking to survive childhood, beans and often their grown-ups, in this land have less time, fewer resources and fleeting opportunity. Whilst ability and ambition are distributed equally in beans, dreams evaporate quicker in this land, quests revert to quiescence as under-resourced beans seek to survive, focused on the foreground, suspichy of their future.

Of course, the odd thing about the land of the less is that it is expensive to exist, to get by; there is a scarcity of money, and of resource and of time. But, we know this, and as educators we do have the resource and the expertise to offer the specific, targeted support that can lift horizons, to short cut and create cheat codes that close gaps and grow opportunity in the land of less. We are not yet brave or courageous enough to hack the system, one diddly and different bean at a time.

“Every human bean is diddly and different.” Roald Dahl

Igniting dreams | shifting self-image

Human beans are the sum of their experiences. Some of which are potent enough to ignite something deep inside making beans fall helplessly in love with their future passion. We are not yet experts in ignition; we pay too little attention to these life-changing moments and yet we are all shaped by them.

“Beneath every big talent lies an ignition story – the famously potent moment when a young person falls helplessly in love with their future passion.” Dan Coyle

All children are social beans, deeply sensitive to the words and actions of all adults. In every action, interaction and intonation we choose to construct or de-construct, to convey status, or not. Our role is to ignite and guard dreams, secure excellent provision and apply equity to gift beans a new notion of what is possible, daring them to dream, guiding them to look up and beyond.

“Once a student sees that he or she is capable of excellence, that student is never quite the same. There is a new self-image, a new notion of possibility.” Ron Berger

Fields of dreams | seeding serendipity

Only the application of equity in the right conditions can overcome the insidious influence and impact of having less. We must seed greater opportunity, deliberately to both specifically target and to increase the probability that unmoored beans will grow, flourish and accumulate advantage over time. For success is not a random act, it arises out of a predictable set of circumstances, more readily and typically evident in the advantaged realm.

“…success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities …replace the patchwork of lucky breaks, context and arbitrary advantages that determine success…with a system that provides opportunities and the conditions for all to feel success.” Malcolm Gladwell

To accumulate advantage for those with less, we should recreate the conditions of the land of more, being braver to give what is specifically needed so that beans do not feel unremarkable and separated from their world.

Full of Beans | inspiring lives with opportunity and choice

“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.” Matilda

We are full of beans, they are everywhere, and so are their dreams. Together, we have a responsibility, to grow both beans and dreams. To find that little bit of magic asleep inside each and everyone. In doing so we might just influence the lives of those who exist in the land of less, who carry more, who need, indeed rely upon, our expertise and our belief in them. As enthusiasts in life we can inspire the lives of those with less with greater opportunity and choice. But we should choose to close gaps at full speed, to embrace it with both arms, to become passionate about it, because lukewarm is no good.

“I began to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed, Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all else become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.” Roald Dahl

Dan Nicholls | January 2025

Poor | inspiring childhoods shaped by poverty

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Pause. Before we launch into the new term, we should check we are prioritising what matters… serving those who need us most.

Childhoods that are constrained by poverty are shaped by steep challenges, limited resources, and few opportunities. Children surviving under the weight of hardship, cope with more, with less help, are more vigilant, anxious, and mistrusting of the world they navigate. Childhoods that are shaped by poverty lead to adulthoods that never quite escape the impact of growing up poor, because childhoods last a lifetime (Floella Benjamin).

“Even as an adult the ripples of that (poverty) still affect me.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

As educators we must do more to understand what it is to grow up poor, to grasp some understanding of the lived experience and the visceral truth. We should cut through our own jargon, our own perceptions and assumptions to understand the barriers, the struggle and the occupying weight of what some children are forced to carry.

“‘Poor’ cuts through a lot of jargon – words like ‘disadvantaged’, ‘underprivileged’, ‘deprived’, ‘under-class’, ‘under-resourced’. Words that have their place but don’t capture the visceral truth of what it is to grow up the way I did. The way thousands of children are growing up right now.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

We need equity | inspiring lives with greater opportunity and choice

“We need equity in education, not equality. If someone can’t see straight because the world is falling in around them, we need to raise them up to clearer skies.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

In these times, as schools return, we must apply the equity required to enable all children to flourish, to clear their skies, and to not feel marginalised in their world. “We cannot keep pretending it’s an equal opportunities education system. It is not.” (Katriona O’Sullivan) Applying equity is giving what is needed, offering the opportunities for more children to thrive, to have greater choice in their lives, to open doors that let in the future.

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” (Graham Greene)

This is not about planning and plotting an escape for a few but creating the conditions for all children to feel success in their school and their community. Applying equity to create the opportunities and experiences that inspire lives and unlock doors.

Tipping the odds | valuing what matters

As educators, we need to choose to better use our power, to be braver, to tip the odds and create the conditions that enable more children to flourish in their lives, where they are. To do so requires us to value and measure what matters, high attainment and attendance for the most vulnerable. This reveals the quality of provision and the closing of gaps is the evidence of success. We can and should do better.

“I was lucky, the timing for me was right – I managed but so many others don’t. The world is less because of that. The education system can and should do better. We all should do better.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

Children living in poverty are not problems to be solved, the system is mis-aligned, lop-sided and intransigent. An uneven playing field that starts from birth and is exacerbated though childhood. Our system creates adverse conditions, fails to value diversity and has narrow success measures that perpetuate the present order and condemns those with the least. Poor assumptions and preconceived views of ability and ambition fail to unleash the potential and contribution of too many children. We need to re-engineer and reconfigure our system, avoiding the traps of meritocracy.

Our deficit discourse, language and vocabulary, both intended and unintended is deafening and maintaining the status quo, ensuring that a child’s poverty extends into all aspects of their lives. Only the deliberate application of equity addresses the a-symmetry of childhoods. Equity, tips the odds.

The deeper implications of poverty | levelling up

“Most of the time being poor felt like a sodden blanket was lying heavy across my shoulders, dragging me down into dark waters.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

Whilst poverty is fundamentally about having less money, the impact of poverty extends far beyond, eroding self-confidence and a sense of worth:

“… ‘poor’ for me was also feeling like I had no worth. It was poverty of mind, poverty of stimulation, poverty of safety and poverty of relationships. Being poor controls how you see yourself, how you trust and speak, how you see the world and how you dream.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

If we are to influence how children see the world, how they dream and how they build their future, we need to be bolder, to call out our unhelpful narratives, excuses, and assumptions that fixate on escape and tales of rags to riches. We must enrich their world, create more opportunity, more experiences, offer greater belief in individual children so that they feel more success and have stronger self-belief. You’ve got this.

“… opportunity, money and support. The middle classes are born with those three things in spades; the poor are born with none of them. And the truth is, we are losing some brilliant minds in the trenches of poverty.” (Katriona O’Sullivan).

Beyond the brilliant minds, there is considerable benefit to society when we create conditions that include, that value diversity and broaden access to success. Conditions that privilege all children disproportionately levels-up those who are traversing a world that is loaded against them.

“Sometimes, even these days, I feel like an interloper. I need reassurance sometimes that I am okay. Deserving. Worthwhile.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

The smallest act | surfing on the ripples of others

Our influence on those closest to us and those that depend on us is more significant than we believe. How we are, what we say, do, behave, deeply affect those around us; children particularly so, who seek clues and are vigilant of snakes…

“Are there snakes here? …you become hyperaware. Mistrust becomes a tool of survival. Whenever I met anyone in authority, I was instantly suspicious, instantly mistrustful… it is actually a safety meter.” (Katriona O’Sullivan)

We have an opportunity as educators, as schools and trusts to shape and inspire lives, to remove snakes, hold ladders, create the conditions for children to feel secure, to belong, to have status, to feel less anxious, less wired, more trusting and to grow in an environment that values the uniqueness of each child. And one of our greatest gifts is to give children their voice, the oracy to confidently contribute, to step forward, and stop their lives being narrated by others.

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.” (Tara Westover)

Sadly, not our present system, which is perfectly designed to create the reverse, to exclude children from and within schools. Schools need to be riddled with details, interactions, and sparks that pivot young lives.

“Every development in life pivots on small, contingent details, ad infinitum. We’d like to pretend it isn’t true, but reality doesn’t care what we think. We forever surf on the ripples of others.” (Brian Klass)

But, here is the thing, whilst our influence on others carries significant responsibility, humans are beautifully contagious; And, amazingly, importantly, thankfully, even the simplest acts, set of words, an acknowledgement, a moment of belief in another, changes every constellation, shapes a life and creates ripples for others to surf.

“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.” (Hannah Arendt)

Excellence | Expectation | Equity | Currency | Culture | …our identity

So, at the start of term, we should pause, and plan to create the conditions for more to flourish, to apply equity and build schools that privilege all children and disproportionately support those who need us most. Prioritising what matters…

…to seek excellent educational provision: the strongest curriculum, enacted well, inspiring thought and stalking awe, where assessment follows learning to meet need.

…to never lower our expectations of what a child can achieve, because if we let them off, we let them down. Focused on high attainment and attendance, to build belonging and gift agency so that all children possess the keys to thrive through childhood, into adulthood. Because there is no lack of ambition, and a significant desire for self-agency …

“We don’t need to waste time raising people’s ambitions. Idleness and low aspiration have never explained the lack of mobility. Presented with greater opportunity, most people grasped them …(seeking) the control over their lives and (the) choices that offered.” (Selina Todd)

…to apply equity, the permission to give what is specifically needed, to meet need, remove barriers, do different for those that need us most and give strong, timely, specific feedback, the golden thread of an advantaged upbringing. To need want to do different, to create the pathways and encouragement for children to ‘play on’ (Jemima Montag).

“I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you.” (Jo Boaler)

…to create incentives, currency, performance indicators that place value and reward the closing of gaps and gap-closers, so that no child is left behind, written off or able to be discounted. The attainment and attendance of disadvantage, reveals the true quality of provision.

…to build culture that privileges disadvantage and those in poverty, unswervingly never giving up on a child, because it is who we are and what we do. A commitment etched into our identity.

Perhaps then…

…we can create the conditions for colleagues to wittingly and unwittingly inspire lives with more opportunity so that we create the conditions for those living in poverty to prosper in their world, in these times. It is why we are here … to be the Myles for others.

“If not for Myles, I wouldn’t have been on that train. As distant as he was, his impact on my life was still tangible – only wishing I had the chance to thank Myles for the path he unwittingly set me on.” (Ashley John-Baptiste)

so, breathe, commit … and go inspire lives

Much of this piece is inspired by Katriona O’Sullivan, whose book “Poor” is an extraordinary exploration of what it is to grow up in poverty. Read it.  

Dr Dan Nicholls | The White Horse Federation | August 2024

Privileging disadvantage | Excellence, Equity, Culture

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Securing provision that privileges disadvantaged children requires a deliberate balance of Excellence, Equity and Culture. A system in 3 dimensions. An excellent education made accessible by the application of equity held within a culture of high expectation closes gaps into adulthood for under-resourced children.  Shifting the identity of schools and organisations to systemically privilege those that need us most, because it is who they are and what they do.

Privileging disadvantage and closing gaps is futile without excellent provision. Effective enactment of a progressive, sequenced curriculum, every lesson, every day, as a universal entitlement, offers far greater opportunity for all. Whilst our strongest lever is an excellent education, this alone, is not enough. Schools also need to apply far greater equity, to be braver and fiercer to do different for under-resourced children, so that they are empowered and able to exploit the excellent education. An alchemy of excellence and equity.

“One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it to take advantage of what others try to give you.” (Michael Lewis)

When schools secure an excellent education, allied with the deliberate application of equity, children are enabled to, supported to, and expected to take the opportunity. This creates the conditions that disproportionately advantage disadvantaged learners. A potent mix of excellence and opportunity.

“…schools remain one of the few remaining trusted institutions equipped to help create a fairer society. -explicitly thinking about how teaching can be genuinely inclusive to benefit all pupils, while relentlessly identifying, understanding and overcoming barriers to learning outside (and inside) school – are the interlocking foundations of equity-based education.” (Lee Elliot Major)

Privileging disadvantage in three dimensions.

Sustaining this potent combination of excellence and equity requires a strong culture, where colleagues take responsibility for enacting the very best provision and to unlock it for all children (psychologically and structurally). Cultures of high expectation, never give up on individuals, let them down or off, they meet them there, step (push) them forward, in an ‘advantaged-like’ environment, upheld by all. Creating a culture that changes the life chances of those that have had the least, because childhoods last a lifetime, and we may be their only second chance.

“4.3 million children, 30% are growing up in poverty in the UK.” (Department of Work and Pensions)

Closing gaps and privileging disadvantage requires Excellence, Equity and Culture:

Excellence | Securing an excellent education for all learners – our strongest lever.

An excellent curriculum, sequenced, progressive and enacted to secure powerful knowledge and understanding, with eye-wateringly high expectations of all children, is our strongest lever. It requires our full attention to be uncompromising in pursuing social justice, confer power and an entitlement to the strongest possible provision. 

“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)

To disproportionately support disadvantage learners, we need all teachers and leaders to really understand the architecture of each subject, the most fundamental substantive core concepts, the most powerful knowledge and the key disciplinary concepts. We need to not stray far from this spine of the curriculum so that we weave baskets and schema that fundamentally support children to make links and learn more in the future. Arbitrary subject wanderings is kryptonite for disadvantage learners, confirming it is not for them and too abstract to connect and engage with.

Seeking to bounce up and down through a spiral curriculum, often, reinforces the spine, increases the proximity of the presently known to new knowledge and reinforces over time what is the most important and fundamental for learning. Do seek to inspire, expect much, and be geeky about the subject spine.

Excellent teaching must invest in strong explanation and direct instruction that assumes less about previous knowledge and experiences, tethered closely to the spine of the curriculum. Don’t hide explanation in slides or complicated context. Exposition is teaching and learning. Prioritise human explanation, modelling and analogy, enacted in real time, in plain sight, in simple language, visually accumulates advantage. High quality teaching triggers attainment mobility and realises potential.

Enabling disadvantaged learners to find their voice requires an effective school-wide systematic development of oracy. When there is strong oracy we privilege disadvantaged learners, because…

“… it is utterly transformative. It changes the way we feel about ourselves. It changes the way in which other people see us. It changes the way in which we relate to friends and family members. It changes our ideas about what we might go on to do in the future.” (James Mannion)

Seek to prioritise the building of vocabulary, particularly tier 2 vocabulary. This is key for joining thoughts and ideas together, deepens oracy and enables deeper thinking. Also actively lift the quality of all conversations, in all interactions, all the time, in the school. All colleagues have influence and skin in this game.

Reading and the development of reading is fundamental for accumulating advantage. It is hard to over-state the importance of reading: it develops cultural capital, comprehension, vocabulary, thinking, empathy, inference, confidence, concentration, oracy, writing, esteem, unlocks the world, quality of life, belonging…

“I didn’t know words could hold so much.” (Kya Clark)

Nudging, narrating, and coaching is a feature of an advantaged upbringing. From formative years advantaged children receive constant feedback and commentary that supports growth and is the driver for accumulating advantage. Formative assessment needs to be an intentional and deliberate part of an excellent education, it is a strong expression of care. I am giving you this feedback because I believe in you. The strongest teaching seeks to hunt, not fish, being precise about where individual children are and offering specific feedback. Follow learning to meet need.

Creating a strong culture of professional learning, with colleagues engaged in incremental coaching, often and specifically on aspects of teaching creates classrooms of opportunity for disadvantaged learners.

Children taught by the most effective teacher in that group of 50 teachers, learn in six months what those taught by the average teacher learn in a year. (Hanushek & Rivkin)

Equity | to enable all children to take advantage of an outstanding education.

“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)

We tend to under-use equity, in favour of equality, which often stops us giving what individual children really need. Applying equity, fiercely, bravely and deliberately, enables children to access and take advantage of excellent provision, but it requires us to understanding children as individuals. To do so requires us to genuinely walk in their shoes and see the world through their eyes and then to remove barriers and create an optimal environment. Applying the disadvantaged lens.

“90% of my time is spent thinking about and watching people … (to) genuinely get inside their shoes and see the world through their eyes … (to) create an optimal environment where a human being is going to have the best chance of being the best they could possibly be.” (David Brailsford)

To grow up advantaged is to exist in a world of opportunity and high expectation, it is demanding. We need to have the highest of expectations for disadvantaged learners, if we let them off, we will let them down. Each time we lower the bar we are complicit in widening the gap. Disadvantaged learners are not less able, it is an economic label only… and labels are dangerous.

To grow up advantaged is to be held to high expectations and encouraged to participate in supported opportunities over time. A childhood that encourages risk taking, a low safety bar (with safety net), offers commentary of the journey through life and reaffirms a child’s internal locus of control. We need a system where all children have someone who believes in them, someone (maybe many) to meet them there.

“The biggest benefit in being the child of a scientist? Low safety bar. As soon as Mad could walk, Elizabeth (Zott) encourages her to touch, taste, toss, bounce, burn, rip, spill, shake, mix, splatter, sniff, and lick nearly everything she encountered… Nevertheless, she lived.” (Bonnie Garmus)

Focus on Attendance first, compelling and engaging all colleagues to drive up attendance of disadvantaged children, as the priority. If children aren’t in, our influence is zero, they need us to reach out and pull them in.

Mentoring and tutoring, in addition, is an overt expression of equity and a typical feature of an advantaged upbringing.  Schools must focus on careers and future planning, so that disadvantaged learners see and know what is possible, because disadvantaged children are not less ambitious.

We need to apply equity to every transition point, to step in, hold disadvantaged learners and build a secure sense of psychological safety. It is within transitions that advantaged parents step in, navigate, and support children over the multiple transitions of childhood. It is not just between schools, or years, or terms, or days, it is all the time; our lives are punctuated by transitions. We need to be the bridge, to be the ladder.

Beware of being complicit in creating schools within schools. Too often schools inadvertently create pathways, perfectly designed to widen gaps and exacerbate disadvantage. Alternate realities do not exist in schools that privilege disadvantage. We measure ourselves and our status against those we spend time with. We should seek to create conditions for attainment mobility and wide social connection.

Culture | Privileging into the long term is about culture change, seeking irreversibility.

“Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there… you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” (James Clear)

In schools where under-resourced children thrive the strength of culture and shared responsibility is evident and tangible, you feel it. These schools have systems that entirely privilege all children, subconsciously carved into the expected norms, habits, routines, language and behaviour as an irreversible commitment to educate and apply equity to all children. Disadvantage even over

Schools that privilege disadvantage have exothermic systems that generate their own energy and subconsciously (but by design) close gaps, rather than endothermic systems that require external energy, conscious focus, initiative, strategy and tables on websites. The first is a permanent shift in identity and values, the latter is ill-equipped to close gaps. Schools becoming what they repeatedly do.

Our interactions, language, and the attention we give to others defines our attitude towards themand influences the way children see themselves. Language really matters, it warrants deep consideration and development over time, it is the artefact of any culture.You belong here. Systems that privilege disadvantage call out behaviours, attitudes, actions, language and intent that widen gaps.

Schools that close gaps measure what matters, because and what we measure, we care about. The true measure of the effectiveness of an education is revealed in the attainment, progress, and attendance of disadvantaged learners. The best schools prime the conditions, reward gap closers and gap closing as part of the values, even over other metrics.

Closing gaps in 3D | In brief

Step one: Seek to secure an excellent education, where great teaching of a well sequenced, progressive, conceptually driven curriculum, disproportionately supports learning of disadvantaged children, every lesson, every day to close gaps.

Step two: Really understand all children, remove barriers, maintain very high expectations, and apply equity to secure full access for all children to an excellent education (over privileging and applying equity as necessary).

Step three: Build a culture that ensures the excellent education is accessible and unavoidable for all children by applying equity. Shift the identity, to one that privileges disadvantage in everything.

Then: stop talking about disadvantage, disadvantage strategies, PP Plans and initiatives, instead talk about high quality provision, accessed by all, because it is who we are and it is what we do for all.

If we do so, we just might create the conditions that disproportionately support disadvantaged learners to accumulate advantage and close the gaps that we currently perpetuate. An education, where all children belong and feel success because it privileges disadvantage.

Seek Excellence, Equity, Culture | close gaps in 3D.

Dan Nicholls | May 2024

Be Braver | heroes needed

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As educators, we choose to educate children, all children, and to make a difference to the lives of others; it is what brought us here. We do this surrounded by good people seeking to use the power of education, in darkening times, against the backcloth of a fracturing social contract and weak social justice, to do good. It is a noble quest, but for those that need us most, at this time, it is a quest that we are not winning, at least not collectively winning. We need to show greater courage, to be braver, to do more to close the gaps that tarnish our system; heroes needed.

Being Braver

Educators definitely do care, really care, about closing the disadvantage gap, we deeply do, and yet this care is not enough, because gaps are growing and our system is not working for too many children; far too many are becoming invisible. We are all involved, we all have skin in this game and we are all implicated in our inability to close the gap.

We could choose the comfort of an external locus of control, and say too big, too ingrained, too difficult and seek comfort in our personal insignificance, against the magnitude of the prevailing system; a resigned acceptance of how life is. Or we could choose to become braver, recognising that small (and big), deliberate strategies, the application of equity, advocacy and action, challenging norms, attitudes and behaviours can tip the system. Adjoined effort of collective strength to change and transform provision that privileges all children. To call out, build provision and influence a system so that it disproportionately advantages disadvantaged children; levelling the playing field, viewing our world through the disadvantage lens.

Whilst the forces that perpetuate the gaps, are insidious and part of the accepted fabric of schools and society, we have the power and agency to challenge our cultural norms, accepted truths, and attitudes that prevail in our system. We must be braver and bolder to build schools, provision and a system (including our accountability system) that addresses the chasm between those that have and those that have not; it will need to look and be quite different.

Being more Ferocious | An active not passive process.  

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 fiercely educate those that need us the most. 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. A shared endeavour to lift lives, one by one. Creating the conditions for a movement to lift-up a generation; a deeper, more ferocious, expression of care.

We are being braver and more ferocious in some schools that deliberately act to build cultures and approaches that successfully privilege disadvantage, that exercise equity and create the conditions that close gaps. Cultures that privilege all children and not just those who benefit from an education system “…which has been constructed and is maintained primarily in the interests of those who find learning easy*.” (Ben Newmark)

*an easiness born out of supported opportunity and experiences over time that present as more able (even talented).

Apply Equity | to give what an individual actually needs.

We must be braver and more courageous to apply equity, so that many more children get the care, focus, provision, resources, supported opportunities and experiences they, specifically, need. Adults willing to be braver, to question how things presently work to apply greater equity. This will require us to do different and feel happy to do differently; gaps are widening under the present conditions; equality achieved through equity, hunt don’t fish.

“Fair doesn’t mean giving every child the same thing, it means giving every child what they need.” (Rick Lavoie)

Privileging disadvantage | see through the lens, always.

We need to try harder to really understand what it is to be disadvantaged (in each setting and individual circumstance). Understanding the impact of the system, of attitudes, norms and beliefs that accumulate disadvantage. To privilege disadvantage everywhere and in everything requires us to prioritise disadvantaged learners in all decision making, in provision, in opportunity, a culture of ambition for all children, going beyond just caring. A system that firmly privileges disadvantage in all that it does, such that it becomes the norm; a system perfectly designed to close gaps. How we do anything has an impact, positive or negative, on disadvantaged learners. It is written deep in the ‘cultural fabric‘ of any organisation.

How we do anything, is how we do everything.

Measure what matters | attainment mobility.

“You should measure things you care about. If you’re not measuring, you don’t care and you don’t know.” (Steve Howard)

How far do we evaluate our provision and performance based on the attendance, attainment, and progress of disadvantaged learners; even over? This is the true test of the quality of provision, as advantaged children bring much of what they need to school, whereas disadvantaged learners rely on schools to close the gaps.

“…the evidence suggests that national education policy needs to be rebalanced to recognise the job many schools do in countering stark inequalities outside the school gates, while maintaining high expectations for under-resourced students.” (Lee Elliott Major)

We need systems and the system to motivate, give greater permission and reward provision that chases disadvantage attainment (and attendance); attainment mobility as the truest measure of the quality of provision. Attainment Mobility is the reversing of delayed attainment, linguistic under-privilege and lack of early opportunity,so that children self-select (not self-de-select) and accumulate advantage (not disadvantage) through life.

Attendance first | every day missed, widens the gap

“One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it to take advantage of what others try to give you.” (Michael Lewis)

One way to guarantee the gap widening, is to accept poor attendance, everyday a disadvantaged learner is not in school the gap grows, they cannot take advantage of what is offered to them. It takes a whole school to improve attendance, because it is a team sport, with an individual focus. Seeking preventative strategies based on really knowing our individual children and families, as well as our responsive actions, reaching out and building relationships that encourages/expects attendance. We must commit to persistently and insistently working to remove barriers to attendance. So that we, meet them there, apply equity, ensure that they are pushed and pulled to school, resisting the forces that encourage retreat.

Give Status | it is free.

Disadvantaged learners are more likely to have an external locus of control, to step back and to opt out of learning. Our sense of status determines how far we belong, connect, and ultimately whether we feel part of the game. 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.

As individuals, we have an un-ending well of status and to give status is a fundamental human gift. To give status is to be interested in every child, who they are, what they are doing, smiling, acknowledging, encouraging, noticing, being present. It costs us nothing, is a measure of our shared values and plays out in every interaction. How far are schools places of status how far are all colleagues truly on the side of children?

I believe in you | An invitation to dance (always)

Every child needs to have at least one adult who believes in them. Magic happens when all colleagues believe in all children.

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 supports them as they interpret life. Get up, go again, you have agency, you are always invited to dance.

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 be braver and apply equity to stage manage and connect children so they find (not lose) themselves in transition.

Curriculum is the key lever | Quality of teaching the determining factor

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 key substantive and disciplinary concepts and powerful knowledge required to achieve attainment mobility for all children; placing our chips on curriculum, the golden ticket. Securing the spine of the curriculum (and tight to the spine), the core concepts and powerful knowledge that weaves the warp and weft of children’s schema to accumulate more, later. Really understanding where children are and teaching the next bit, assuming less and adapting teaching to meet need. Measuring and targetting the attainment of disadvantaged learners (and progress) as the true (only) measure of teaching quality.

Being braver

Children need us to be braver, to be more ferocious, to use our power and agency to apply equity, to give status, to measure what matters, to build culture and curriculum that closes gaps; attendance first. And if we do so, we just might create the conditions that disproportionately support disadvantaged learners to accumulate advantage and close the gaps that we currently perpetuate.

Are we brave enough to re-think, to be unswerving in building provision (schools and our system) to apply the equity and give the resource required to those children who are under-resourced, who need us to be braver?     

A quest worth pursuing. Heroes needed.

Dan Nicholls | December 2023

Towards Social Justice

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“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 children transforming 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 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)

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 the normal; 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)

Dan Nicholls | October 2023

The Social Contract is fracturing

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“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 schools that 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 take greater 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)

Dan Nicholls | July 2023

Fiercely educate…

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… children who are presently disadvantaged.

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.”

Nelson Mandela

Dan Nicholls | May 2023