Connected leadership Extended schools and ECM National Middle Schools Forum 9th October 2006 Maggie

1
Connected leadershipExtended schools and
ECMNational Middle Schools Forum9th October
2006Maggie FarrarNCSL
2
Connected leadership

• Look at trends why are we where we are ?
• Explore issues of leadership ECM extended
  schools and services
• Focus on relationships students matter

3
Synchronicity

• Standards plateau well being, standards and
  social justice
• Social context learning context
• User customer focus parents, children and
  young people
• Personalisation spaces , places and times
• PISA study high excellence and low equity
• Schools federated / extended / core social
  centres / learning hubs
• New professionals remodelling
• Making a difference locally 5 outcomes
• Schools as public spaces

4
Its a challenge .

• How do you define need? How do establish the
  school at the heart of the community?
• How do you collaborate effectively?
• How do you ensure that services are sustainable?
• From bonding to bridging inward and outward
• How do you measure impact what value do you
  create ?
• How do you lead for sustainability
• How do you marry the standards and the ECM
  agenda ?

5
Sustainability need for long term support

• We can see differences now but I think its
  going to be five to ten years before you can see
  the real differences and people dont like that
  because theyre putting money in and want results
  quick, quick, quick.
• Primary headteacher

6
Developing a model of leadership

• Managing complexity
• boundaries / extent of authority and influence /
  interdependence / the long view
• Building leadership capacity
• Encouraging ownership and distributed leadership
• Conversations not meetings / creative
  approaches
• Skills and attributes
• Visionary Morally led, committed
• Flexible Culturally open focus on bridging
• Entrepreneurial Political
• Locality leadership
• Meaning making importance of trust
• Promoting bridging not bonding
• Local learning guarantees of which school is
  one part
• School and leader as agent of change
• Generating environment / building skills set /
  local solutions

7
Relationships matter ..If relationship
building is central to success, why is the
principle of change violated so often ?Michael
Fullan
8

• Start with students..
• Students relationships with students
• circle time / buddy / peer tutoring
• Students relationships with teachers
• negotiated learning / extra curricular / first
  fridays
• Students relationships with content
• Enquiry / learning2learn / intelligences /
  evaluating
• Students relationship with community
• Citizenship / volunteering / ambassadors

9

• Extended Learning a bridging space and place
• Ownership students, families, communities
• Social entrepreneurship effect can be
  multiplied
• Fosters engagement in learning
• Promotes and practises shared accountability and
  responsibility from consumers to contributors
• Exists at the margins of formal schooling
• Connects young people within the community not
  exclusively those who attend a specific school
• Encourages active engagement with the community
  through volunteering and active citizenship
• Builds confidence in the capacity of the
  community to engage in the learning and well
  being of young people

10

• Communities with high social capital have
• A focus on relationship building
• Shared norms and values
• Sophisticated social networks
• High level of trust
• High civic engagement and involvement
• Interdependence and reciprocity
• Volunteering and community action
• What characteristics can a school help to foster ?

11

• In sum social capital appears to have a large
  impact on educational attainment. On the face of
  it, and from what we know, the impact of social
  capital dwarfs that of the factors the
  governments and education professionals normally
  argue about such as financial resources, class
  sizes and teachers salaries
• Halpern Social Capital (Cambridge Ed Press)

12
Unique environment of middle schools

• Relationships student / adult
• Social capital trust / networks
• Student leadership responsibility and authority
• Public spaces open / surprising / co opted by
  the public
• when young people are no longer children, but
  do not yet know what adults they will become

13
The next stage of reform .interdependence

• As long as we use very different terms for
• explaining good schools and good communities, we
  risk talking about how schools can be improved or
  transformed as if this could be done
  independently of the community. This is in
  defiance of the facts and can generate inflated
  expectations of what school leaders can achieve
  alone
• David Hargreaves 2003

14

• Advice ..
• Someone dancing inside us
• Learned only a few steps
• The do your work in 4-4 time
• The what do you expect waltz
• She hasnt noticed yet the woman
• Standing just away from the lamp
• The one with black eyes
• Who knows the rhombi
• And strange steps in different rhythms
• From the mountains
• If they dance together, something unexpected will
  happen
• If they dont the next world
• Will be a lot like this one
• Bill Holmes