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Successful School Improvement Strategies
forSchools Facing Extremely Challenging
Circumstances

• A Presentation made to the
• 15th International Congress for
• School Effectiveness and Improvement, Copenhagen,
  Denmark, 3-7 January 2002

David Hopkins
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Successful School Improvement Strategies

• Common Contexts
• Characteristic Responses
• School Effectiveness and Improvement Processes
• A Framework for School Improvement
• A Three Phase Strategy for School Improvement
• This presentation is based on the booklet
  prepared for the DfEE in April 2001 Meeting the
  Challenge an Improvement Guide for Schools
  Facing Challenging Circumstances by David
  Hopkins. Electronic copy available from
  david.hopkins_at_nottingham.ac.uk

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Common Contexts

• Competition from other schools
• Low literacy attainment
• Student turbulence
• Staff turbulence - recruitment and retention
• Very low SES background
• Effect of media, league tables and community
  expectations
• Differential funding to schools
• Pressure of OFSTED

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Characteristic Responses

• Strong management and systems, orderly climate
• Emphasis on image, ethos, appearance and
  buildings
• Enhance the culture of caring and respect
• Concentration on behaviour and attendance
• Efforts to stabilise staffing and build on core
  of very committed staff
• Focus on consistency of basic teaching and
  learning practices
• Some key appointments
• Importance of leadership
• NB These responses may well be limited by
  contextual factors

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A Two Stage Approach to School Improvement -
Stage One

• Devise a programme around these core values
• Every school can improve
• Improvement is assessed in terms of enhanced
  pupil outcomes
• Every individual in the school has a contribution
  to make
• Start from where the school is, but set high
  goals
• Help schools help themselves, but guard against
  dependency
• Model good practice
• Raise expectations of what is possible.

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A Two Stage Approach to School Improvement -
Stage Two

• Encourage schools to work with external partners
  to
• Take early firm intervention to secure effective
  management and leadership
• Help the school identify core issues through
  survey and data analysis
• Gain whole school staff commitment
• Introduce models of leadership and teaching
  quality
• Focus on dealing with issues in a phased manner
  in order to achieve a track record of success -
  OFSTED issues, environment, pride, attendance etc
• Keep an unrelenting focus on teaching and
  learning.

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Public
Middle Years
Education
Reform
Programme
Review
Collaborative
Enquiry
Planning
Curriculum
Student Learning Progress Attainment
Teaching
Development
Staff Development
Involvement
Review
Early Years
of Post
Numeracy
Compulsory
Programmes
Education
and Training
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The Six Steps to School Improvement

• The school sets itself a clear and unifying focus
  for its improvement work.
• Collect data on performance as a precursor to
  initiating an improvement strategy.
• At an early stage identify a school improvement
  group.
• The SIG subsequently receive specific training in
  the classroom practices most crucial to achieving
  the schools developmental goals.
• The whole school emphasis is vital to ensure
  consistency of practice and high expectations.
• The range of staff development activities
  involved includes
• Workshops run inside the school on teaching
  strategies by Cadre
• Whole staff inservice days and curriculum
  tours
• Inter-departmental meetings to discuss teaching
  strategies
• Partnership teaching and peer coaching.

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The Role of the SIG

• A Think-tank
• A Learning group
• Learning from each other
• Learning about the school
• Learning from the knowledge-base
• Learning about leading School Improvement
• A Planning team
• An Action team
• to makes things happen
• to mobilise others
• to undertake enquiry activity
• A Reflective group - to interpret and make
  meaning from data
• A group that Shares and Communicates with others
• A Change Agent group - to support the whole staff
  to improve the school
• A group that will inevitably make policy
  recommendations or suggestions for structural
  changes
• An implementation Group
• A group that embraces, too, the Professional
  Development needs of their work - for
  themselves and others

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The Experience of Educational Change

• change takes place over time
• change initially involves anxiety and
  uncertainty
• technical and psychological support is crucial
• the learning of new skills is incremental and
  developmental
• organisational conditions within and in relation
  to the school make it more or less likely that
  the school improvement will occur
• successful change involves pressure and support
  within a collaborative setting.

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The School as a Professional Learning Community

• Build in time for collective inquiry
• Collective inquiry creates the structural
  conditions for school improvement
• Studying classroom practice increases the focus
  on student learning
• Use the research on teaching and learning to
  improve school improvement efforts
• By working in small groups the whole school staff
  can become a nurturing unit.
• Staff Development as inquiry provides synergy and
  enhanced student effects

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Why Focus on Teaching?

• The quality of teaching has a direct impact on
  student achievement and learning.
• Teaching strategies provides the common
  denominator between external policy initiatives,
  between curriculum areas, and between phases of
  schooling.
• The enquiry into teaching and learning and the
  specifications of models of teaching provide
  the focus for developing a discourse about
  teaching and learning.
• The enquiry into teaching refocuses the
  profession on the reasons why they came into
  teaching in the first place.

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The Key Question

• What teaching strategies do I and my colleagues
  have in our repertoires to respond to the student
  diversity that walks through our classroom doors?

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IQEA
CURRICULUM
POWERFUL LEARNING EXPERIENCES
TEACHING
COGNITION/SKILLS
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Research on Curriculum and Teaching

• There are a number of well-developed models of
  teaching and curriculum that generate
  substantially higher levels of student learning
  than does normative practice.
• The most effective curricular teaching patterns
  induce students to construct knowledge - to
  inquire into subject areas intensively. The
  result is to increase student capacity to learn
  and work smarter.
• Importantly, the most effective models of
  teaching are also models of learning that
  increase the intellectual capacity of all
  students.
• These models achieve their power through the
  thorough integration of instructional strategy
  within curriculum content.

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Three Ways of Thinking About Teaching
IQEA
Teaching Models
Teaching Skills
Reflection
Teaching Relationships
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A Three Phase Strategy for School Improvement

• Phase One Establishing the Process
• Phase Two Going Whole School
• Phase Three Sustaining Momentum

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Phase One Establishing the Process

• Commitment to the School Improvement Approach
• Selection of School Improvement Group or Cadre
• Enquiring into the Strengths and Weaknesses of
  the School
• Designing the Whole School Programme
• Seeking Partners
• Seeding the Whole School Approach

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Means
Pre-conditions
School Level Preparations
Unifying Focus

• Commitment to School Improvement
• Concurrence with the values of the approach
• Understanding of the principles behind the model

• Shared values
• A mandate from staff
• Leadership potential agents
• Capacity for improvement
• Willingness to make structural changes
• Critical mass support
• Self-knowledge

Improvement Theme
Model
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Establishing the Process

• During this early phase strategies need to
  involve a clear and direct focus on a limited
  number of basic curriculum and organisational
  issues, in order to build the confidence and
  competence to continue. These include
• provision of early, intensive outside support
• surveying staff and student opinion gathering
  and disaggregating data on student achievement
• a focus on managing learning behaviour, not on
  behaviour management
• intensive work on re-skilling teams of teachers
  in a limited but specific repertoire of
  teaching/learning styles
• progressive restructuring to generate new
  opportunities for leadership, collaboration and
  planning.

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Phase Two Going Whole School

• The Initial Whole School INSET Day(s)
• Establishing the Curriculum and Teaching Focus
• Establishing the Learning Teams
• Curriculum groupings
• Peer coaching or buddy groups
• The Initial Cycle of Enquiry
• Sharing Initial Success and Impact on Student
  Learning on the Curriculum Tour

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Going Whole School

• Developmental activities at this stage include
• The use of whole school training days to focus on
  practical teaching and learning strategies.
• The allocation of dedicated time for school
  improvement activities.
• The organising of staff into critical friendship
  groups.
• Monitoring progress through a focus on student
  learning.
• Generating an on-going dialogue about values
  across staff and with key groupings such as heads
  of faculty.

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Phase Three Sustaining Momentum

• Establishing Further Cycles of Enquiry
• Building Teacher Learning into the Process
• Sharpening the Focus on Student Learning
• Finding Ways of Sharing Success and Building
  Networks
• Reflecting on the Culture of the School and
  Department

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Learning Potential of all Students
Repertoire of Learning Skills
Models of Learning - Tools for Teaching
Embedded in Curriculum Context and Schemes of Work
Whole School Emphasis on High Expectations and
Pedagogic Consistency
Sharing Schemes of Work and Curriculum Across and
Between Schools, Clusters, LEAs and Nationally
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Sustaining Momentum

• The point has already been made that this
  approach to school improvement is not another
  project but more a way of working. As such it
  needs building into the fabric of the school, its
  structures and culture, and the ways in which
  teachers work together and think about their own
  development. This involves
• new understandings about learning and the
  management of change
• more flexible and creative use of space, time,
  communication structures and people
• widespread use of collaborative ways of working
  and
• the redefinition and adaptation of ideas through
  the use of evidence.
• When these ways of working are internalised then
  not only will student attainment have risen but
  also the school will have established itself as
  an effective learning organisation.

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Why Does It Work?

• Encourages the questioning of existing practice
• Supports a collegiate approach - the cadre
• Focuses improvement on the classroom but also
  acknowledges the need to work on the conditions
  within the school - staff development,
  leadership, planning etc
• Stimulates ideas
• Focuses on the main purpose of schools - teaching
• Transforms the culture of the school

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What has IQEA Achieved?

• IQEA has established professional learning
  communities in virtually all associated schools
  and in so doing has developed the conditions to
  support school improvement.
• IQEA has created networks of learning schools
  throughout England and Wales and in other
  countries.
• IQEA has according to participating Heads
  contributed to the sustained rise in GCSE scores
  in their schools and the learning repertoire of
  their students.
• IQEA has provided an alternative national
  approach to school improvement and has helped
  focus the debate on school reform on teaching and
  learning and the conditions that support them.
• IQEA has contributed to the development of
  national (KS3) and international policies (OECD).

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For more information on our approach to teacher
development and school improvement

• Hopkins D (2001) School Improvement For Real.
  London Routledge / Falmer.
• Hopkins D (2002) Improving the Quality of
  Education for All. London David Fulton
  Publishers.
• Hopkins D (2002) A Teachers Guide to Classroom
  Research (3rd Ed.). Buckingham Open University
  Press.
• Hopkins D and Harris A (2000) Creating the
  Conditions for Teaching and Learning. London
  David Fulton Publishers.
• Joyce B, Calhoun E and Hopkins D (2001) Models of
  Learning Tools for Teaching (2nd Ed.).
  Buckingham Open University Press.
• Joyce B, Calhoun E and Hopkins D (1999) The New
  Structure of School Improvement. Buckingham
  Open University Press.

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Presenter Note

• David Hopkins is currently Professor of Education
  at the University of Nottingham, where between
  1996 and 2001 he served as both Head of the
  School and Dean of the Faculty of Education. He
  is also Chair of the Leicester City Partnership
  Board and a member of the Governing Council of
  the National College for School Leadership.
• David Hopkins professional interests are in the
  areas of teacher and school development,
  educational change, teacher education, and policy
  implementation and evaluation, and he has
  published over thirty books on these themes.
  Among the most recent are School Improvement For
  Real (Routledge / Falmer, 2001) A Teacher's
  Guide to Classroom Research (Third Edition, Open
  University Press, 2002) Models of Learning -
  Tools for Teaching (with Bruce Joyce and Emily
  Calhoun, Second Edition, Open University Press,
  2002) and, Improving the Quality of Education
  for All (Fulton, 2002).
• David Hopkins becomes Director of the Standards
  and Effectiveness Unit at the Department for
  Education and Skills in February 2002 , and in
  that position succeeds Michael Barber as the
  Chief Adviser to the Secretary of State on
  standards issues. He is also an International
  Mountain Guide and has climbed in many of the
  world's great mountain ranges.