Amidst the turbulent waves of change we must re-imagine what education and our system can be; it is the opportunity of now, because next matters. It is at this point in our maturing sector that we should venture for greater coherence, collaboration and connection. By embarking on shared quests, we can better navigate toward a new North Star for all places and plunder our shared capability for all children. We need to be more pirate.
“Pirates trouble the edges of society and make enough shock waves to influence the middle ground. Trouble is their tool, although it’s more accurate to call it good trouble.” Sam Conniff Allende
Next needs to be more collective, more adjoined, more than the sum of the present parts, because too often, we are in parts. The view from the crow’s nest reveals inequity and that our pieces rarely fit well to serve our places and the children that need us most. It is the incongruousness of our pieces, the dominance of ‘I’ over ‘we’ and conditions that drive isolationism and competition that is constraining our collective potential. As system altruists, and sector architects we should rise and act on and not just in our system; seeking good trouble.
“…acting on the system gives us an opportunity to think differently. We should think of leadership as the ability to shape the system.” Leora Cruddas
Charting new waters | shared mutinies of good trouble
There are times in history when a group of like-minded individuals chart new waters and from the fringes find new ways to live and be; creating a movement based on new rules, a new code. Pirates challenged the world-order and flipped the accepted shared truths about how things could be, they created a movement so successful and agile that their approach and thinking might just influence and provoke us into our next-phase; toward better. This is our time to be a little more Pirate to strengthen and connect Trusts, to rebel, rewrite, reorganise, redistribute and retell the hell out of what could be.
“Whilst pirates get a bad press, there is significant evidence that these merry men (and women) actually transformed the world and challenged the oppressive status quo. The golden age for pirating 1710-1740 was progressive and counter-establishment – it provided the basis and conditions for significant change. Now as it was then the need for change and a shift of ownership is required.” Sam Conniff Allende
We are the System | Charting new waters, re-finding old maps
There is a significant opportunity to re-imagine the future. There are waters, territories and opportunities, for plundering that could create an education system more aligned with the needs of all children and the places we serve. Whilst our educational landscape is fragmented, the forces that have pushed and pulled academies together have also created the conditions for leaders to better shape our system, to act on it, not just in it. And we must, because we are the system and these are our shared waters.
We exist in a period of uncommon opportunity, where there is now enough maturity in our system, beyond the stormy waters of early academisation, and within calmer waters, for greater horizontal collaboration and shared responsibility for all children and every place. There is no Armada coming over the horizon, so it is time to be more pirate and engage in good rebellion, small arrrrgh.
“I’d rather be a pirate than join the navy” Steve Jobs
The next phase requires greater alignment of the soft and hard power within our system. And more crucially secure a shift in our intrinsic motivation to collectively do better for all, attaching greater currency for collaborative place-based leadership. Stronger extrinsic motivators as part of the new code, held by us, alongside regulators will galvanise the change we seek.
Treasure worth seeking | next-phase thinking
Our sector needs to do more to address the inequity in our society and seek greater social justice. We must better balance the haphazard opportunities that are not evenly distributed in our communities or between peers even in the same neighbourhood. We need to be braver and bolder to build our system to liberate and empower those who find themselves adrift and stranded in life. A band of educators collectively motivated to apply equity and build provision for those that most need an anchor.
The next-phase must build ‘great Trusts’ driven by a Trust Improvement Model that places Trust and place-based improvement at the heart of our mutiny. As we seek to connect and collaborate for the good of all children and to ‘educate a place’ the increased openness and connection will concurrently build stronger Trusts within a more capable system. This is the real treasure worth seeking: Trusts, in partnership, unearthing and aligning much greater capacity for securing social justice and inclusion.
“A major benefit of effective ‘place-based’ reform is seen as the provision of essential “glue” or coordination, by mobilising a collective sense of responsibility to reduce competition which drives local hierarchies and decreases the effects of disadvantage.” Cousin and Crossley-Holland
A new look crew required | Pirating, banding and plundering more capacity
We need a new look crew, educators banding together, collectively questing, compelled by a stronger yearning for the endless immensity and possibility of the sea ahead of us.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Captains and crews must invest beyond the present boundaries, giving time and resource, committing to plunder and better directing the existing capacity towards those most adrift. New crews know that the real treasure is in levelling-up, in greater social justice for all, that is not constrained by our present boundaries. Re-finding geographic territories, places and communities across the land can offer greater opportunity and choice.
“There is one idea that whenever it has been applied has had the power to change the world. Cultures that shift from ‘I’ to ‘We’.” …restore the Common Good in divided times.” Jonathan Sacks
A new Pirate Code | seeking good trouble, a sector-led mutiny for our next phase
- “We, not I, Captain.” The next phase is one that must preference ‘We’ over ‘I’. To take shared responsibility for the education of all children across communities, not just those closest to us. A fundamental adoption of a ‘we’ mindset as the basis of our next phase.
- Build a values system that directs energy to that which is worth having. A sector that rewards those that connect and collaborate to achieve value beyond themselves and their time. A new values system that rewards those who close gaps for children and the gaps in our places, those who create coherence and partnerships to plunder resources and expertise for the greater good.
- Banding crews together. As system architects we must prioritise meaningful partnerships and collaboration between Trusts, Local Authorities and community partners. This is place-based collaborative leadership that connects crews who invest, across boundaries, in informal and formal alliances, releasing expertise. Place-based, because children grow-up in communities not in Trusts and their success and security is bound to that of their peers and their community.
- Unearthing old maps, seeking lost territories. We need to re-consider our boundaries, around the importance of ‘place’ to collectively “educate a city, a town, a county… a coherent locality.” By seeking to educate a locality we adjoin partners in shared endeavour to direct, release and use our collective resources and intelligence, to add more capacity and serve the whole. Kintsugi, repairing broken pottery by joining parts with gold, treating the repair as part of the history of a place, strengthening the whole; seeking gold.
- Captains and new crews needed. Into the next phase we need braver educators willing to navigate, beyond their waters, and venture into partnerships for the greater good of all children, in all communities. This requires stronger system leadership and collaborative structures that extend beyond settings and to depth, to educate a place.
- Connecting and strengthening Trusts. As Trusts work more in neighbouring waters, engaged in place-based improvement, with other crews, we have the basis for a Trust Improvement Model, a form of co-opetition. The next phase requires the development of great Trusts, improving in partnership, to secure greater social justice. Just as Roman concrete is strengthened by exposure to sea water, Trusts will improve through deeper connection beyond their waters: symbiotically.
- The treasure we seek, championing those unmoored and cast adrift. We should seek to win for all children. The success of our pirating and joint questing will be measured by how far we close gaps, particularly, the attainment and attendance of those under-resourced, lost at sea and those with needs that we are not yet meeting. Our children and communities need a system and a collective quest for inclusive excellence. We should deliberately apply equity to close gaps across communities and not just seek the escape of a few.
- The laws of the sea. We care about what we measure and reward. Our accountability structures and regulators must align to reward the new code. Only if we align soft and hard power toward this quest and re-orientate the laws of the sea to articulate a new North Star, will we create the conditions where educators who boldly navigate by these stars are encouraged.
Setting Sail | being bolder and braver
“The moment we turn outward and concern ourselves with the welfare of others no less than with our own, we begin to change the world in the only way we can, one act at a time, one day at a time, one life at a time.”Jonathan Sacks
So, we should set sail, hold ourselves and each other to the new pirate code, seek good trouble and venture for greater coherence, collaboration and connection, so that we better serve those children stranded in our system and under-served by our places.
Of course, we don’t need everyone, we just need enough. Movements and mutinies tend to require surprisingly few pirates, engaged in counterintuitively small actions to transform our territories and secure greater social justice.
Time to be more pirate and seek good trouble, it is our time at the edge…
“It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it … they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough. … We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.” Billy
Dan Nicholls | March 2025
Dan Nicholls 