School Networks as a Reform Strategy in the UK International Congress for School Effectiveness and I

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School Networks as a Reform Strategy in the
UKInternational Congress for School
Effectiveness and Improvement,Barcelona, 5th
January 2005

• Professor David Hopkins
• Chief Advisor on School Standards, DfES

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Brief history of standards in primary schools
11 plus dominated
Standards and
Professional control
"Formal"
accountability
"Informal"
NLNS
2003
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
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Policies to Drive School Improvement
Intervention in inverse proportion to success
Ambitious Standards
High Challenge High Support
Devolved responsibility
Accountability
Access to best practice and quality professional
development
Good data and clear targets
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Achieving the High Excellence, High Equity System
National Prescription
Schools Leading Reform
a b
c
Personalised Learning
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Five Drivers for Reform

• Personalised learning, enriched curriculum, whole
  child
• System wide focus on workforce reform and teacher
  professional development
• Strong institutions committed to excellence and
  equity
• The whole enterprise capturing the heads and
  minds of the nation
• A synchronised system of networks generating its
  own momentum for reform

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The 5 Priorities from the 5 Year Strategy

• Supporting the education welfare of the whole
  child
• Continuing the drive in primary education
• Widening choice increasing achievement in
  secondary Further Education
• Reducing the historic deficit in adult skills
• Sustaining an excellent university sector

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Networks and Innovation

• Networks support educational innovation by
• Providing a focal point for the dissemination of
  good practice and the agents of knowledge
  creation, transfer and utilisation.
• Keeping the focus on the core purposes of
  schooling in particular creating and sustaining a
  discourse on teaching and learning.
• Enhancing the skill of teachers.
• Building capacity for continuous improvement at
  the local level.
• Ensuring that systems of pressure and support are
  integrated, not segmented.
• Acting as a link between the centralised and
  decentralised policy initiatives.

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Local Government Response to the emergence of
school networksICSEI 2005Maggie FarrarGraham
HandscombSteve Morris
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The LEArning Project

• The project will enhance the learning and
  well-being of young people, adults, organisations
  and communities through learning networks that
  promote personal development and system-wide
  change.

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The Learning Project objectives

• To help Local Authorities to develop their
  capacity for facilitating and supporting networks
  of schools and multi agency partnerships
• To research and share knowledge about the most
  effective ways in which Local Authorities can
  support networking and collaboration
• To develop models and new practices within Local
  Authorities which will influence and shape policy

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Themes

• Creation of a widely owned contextual vision
• Engagement with networks of schools
• Co-construction of new learning networks
• Development of innovative leadership
• Exploration of new approaches to public service
  accountability
• Encouragement of networked deployment of staff
  and other resources

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Enquiry questions

• What are the more effective network
  configurations ?
• What are the most effective forms of leadership
  for networks ?
• How are networks best supported by Local
  Authorities ?
• How can learning and new practice from the
  project support the Change for Children agenda ?

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Being real

• Scope
• Cultural challenges
• Professional development
• Peer review, external facilitation, internal
  challenge
• Banking the learning and knowledge gained

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Kirklees

• The Project Focus
• To develop four collegiates from 24 secondary
  schools, 2 further education colleges, 2 sixth
  form colleges, work based learning providers and
  special schools to
• Make a radical change in the shape and operation
  of the 14 to 19 curriculum incorporating
  personalised learning and e learning
• Significantly increase the numbers of students
  achieving a Level 2 qualification and above
• Develop a local framework for 14-19 education
  The Kirklees Learning Passport

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Kirklees

• Why collaborate?
• Building on existing networks Excellence in
  Cities, LIG, specialist schools e.g common
  training day 2004
• No school or college can individually deliver
  much wider range of courses needed
• Need to break cycles of underachievement
• Three key principles
• Collaboration has to be voluntary issues of
  school autonomy
• Start small and grow collegiates are a 5 year
  strategy
• Put the learner at the heart of everything we do
  the student voice

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Kirklees

• Where now
• Project started March 2004
• Three collegiates fully operational now first
  students start September 2005. Fourth collegiate
  September 2006
• Twelve new courses being developed.
• Common VLE (virtual learning environment)
  established
• Five collegiate staff appointed
• Funding until 2007 secured national partners
• Where next
• Collegiates to become delivery structure for
  Every Child Matters

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Essex

• The Project Focus
• To enable 8 clusters of schools to engage with,
  and see what progress could be made on, specific
  Every Child Matters development
• The learning from this would inform the approach
  to
• Essex Every Child Matters development, policy and
  practice and
• Essex Cluster Strategy and practice.

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Essex

• The Enquiry Focus
• What is effective, and what are the barriers to
  progress on Every Child Matters through aspects
  of networking involving groups of schools, local
  authority and other agencies/organisations?
• Issues arising from the enquiry
• Taking time to hone and funnel the research
  question
• Establishing a research archive in a highly
  complex project
• Aligning the respective enquiries taking pace at
  various levels of the initiative.

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Essex

• Early learning gained, and issues raised
• The role of the Local Authority balancing
  leadership and clarity, with building commitment
  and co-construction
• Securing ownership and engagement in a number of
  different contexts
• Complexity of relationships in a multi-layered
  initiative
• The macro the international/national initiative,
  including LEA to LEA networking
• The mini-macro the Essex project
• The micro the clusters of schools (variety and
  inter-cluster relationships)
• The mini-micro the schools, teachers, and
  pupils.
• New environment (change for children) new
  learning new measures

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Two System-wide Network Reforms in the UK
Learning themes from the Networked Learning
Communities and Leading Edge Partnership
Programmes
David Jackson, Director NLG, NCSL
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Networks
A network..is a group of organisations
working together to solve problems or issues of
mutual concern that are too large for any one
organisation to handle on its own
(Mandell,1999).
Applied to schools, the idea of networks suggests
that schools working together in a collaborative
effort would be more effective in enhancing
organisational capacity and improving student
learning than individual schools working on their
own (Wohlstetter et al, 2003).
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Networks of schools
Geographical organisational networks (e.g.
NLCs)
Strategic organisational networks (e.g. LEPP)
Temporary
Permanent
Rational specialist networks
Informal (idiosyncratic) networks
Networks of people
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NLCs three core objectives

• The development of good networks
• Learning about networked learning
• Learning on behalf of the wider system

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NLC/LEP influence on policy is already evident
through

• Growth of national programmes predicated on
  networks/collaboration
• New universal offer to primary schools (PSLNs)
• Specific forms of evolving programmes (e.g.
  Foundation Partnerships)
• New LEA approaches and configurations
• Leaders and practitioners advocacy and voices
  in direct dialogue on policy
• Potential changes in the accountability models to
  support network purposes

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Six things we are confident that we know

• Effective networks expand access to good ideas
  facilitate knowledge sharing between members
• Voluntarism is an important feature of network
  success
• A compelling reason for working together - shared
  values and purposes is central to making the
  network work
• Effective learning networks build upon and invoke
  moral purpose they generate collective
  aspiration around the success of all children
• Like all organisational forms, network
  structures need to be tended - networks require
  internal facilitation or leadership
• External consultancy and critical friendship are
  important to the success of networks

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Four NLC findings

• NLCs have drawn rigour from working to an
  explicit model of learning a commonly held
  mental model of effective learning designs
• Co-leadership of networks has proved to be a
  highly successful model
• Ownership, reach and will are more crucial
  to network sustainability than financial
  resources
• The two most significant areas of unplanned
  activity have been
• collaborative enquiry and data analysis
• pupil voice (e.g. managing their own learning,
  taking increased responsibility, greater
  involvement in teaching and learning, learning to
  learn, increased dialogue with staff)

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Four joint NLC and LEP findings

• Learning networks spread leadership influence,
  distribute leadership and liberate new types of
  leaders
• Networks can create new units of engagement
  particularly for LEAs and other external agencies
  
• In organisational networks, new ways of working
  together emerge with difficulty and at high early
  transaction cost - because the new network
  works against the historical grain
• Networks surface professional reciprocity and
  generosity learning on behalf of

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Four apparent paradoxes

• Learning versus unlearning
• Voluntarism versus orchestrated participation
• Trust as foundation versus learnt trust
• Cost versus benefit

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and four recurring challenges

• Headteacher learning
• Variable commitment
• ICT
• The impact issue!
• causality and attribution

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• david.jackson_at_ncsl.org.uk
• maggie.farrar_at_ncsl.org.uk
• Steven.morris_at_kirklees.gov.uk
• Graham.handscomb_at_essex.gov.uk