By Bob Harrison
It must have been a challenge for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) to pick a title for this year's gathering of more than 1,500 school and college leaders. The change of government had come at a critical time, with no detail of emerging policies except for a few ideological mantras about freedom and autonomy for schools and teachers and less intervention from the state and local authorities.
Raised expectations must have made conference themes, and speaker and workshop selection a nightmare for the SSAT organisers. But they pulled it off with style – by keeping the focus on learning. Maybe the learning genie is truly out of the bottle – and beyond the reach of the politicians. Welcome to "21st Century Schooling: Excellence for All".
The White Paper was only announced in Parliament the day the conference opened (despite being leaked in the Financial Times a few days earlier), which forced education secretary of state Michael Gove MP to withdraw from his keynote address and send schools minister Nick Gibb MP instead. Conveniently, there was a three-line whip so he was only able to stay for two (filtered) questions.
Nevertheless the contents of the White Paper became almost secondary as inspirational speaker followed stimulating workshop to address three key, timeless questions:
- How should students learn?
- What should students learn?
- How can we remove the barriers to learning?
Professor Sugata Mitra (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) set the scene wonderfully with how the learning from the “hole in the wall computer” project nearly 10 years ago is now influencing the learning in the schools around the world and here in the north east of the UK where he is a professor with the University of Newcastle. Given the attention his notion of pupils' self-organised learning has been given by UK educators, has this jarred with the White Paper's focus on teaching?
Sugata Mitra’s research has been well publicised of late (see "Sugata Mitra steals the show...") but he was keen to remind headteachers of the wise words of Arthur C Clarke, who told him: “Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be.”
Ironically, Olympic gold medal winner David Hemery shared his belief about the importance of school sport, and the legacy that should be left by the 2012 Olympics, at exactly the time parliamentary questions were being tabled about education secretary of state Michael Gove's decision to scrap the school sports partnership funding.
Tanya Byron 'flirty, witty, passionate, challenging, inspirational and funny'
Professor Tanya Byron's presentation and style proved a welcome contrast to the prosaic White Paper insights from schools minister Nick Gibb (now revealed as minister for ICT – tellingly after the Comprehensive Spending Review, which clearly took place free from a strategic ministerial view of the education savings possible through wise implementation of ICT). Flirty, witty, passionate, challenging, inspirational and funny, she informed us that she has been granted an audience with Michael Gove on December 16.
She hopes to impress upon him, as she did the audience, that new technologies should be embraced, embedded and used to enhance learning – as soon as we get over the panic which surrounds discussions about Facebook, YouTube and mobile phones (at the podium she defiantly brandished her own mobile phone).
Professor Byron is clearly planning to use evidence that “e-mature” schools can improve pupils' learning by up to two grades at GCSE. But, given the air of scepticism about the value of ICT expressed by Nick Gibb in a recent response to Naace, and Michael Gove’s decision to rifle £100 million from the Harnessing Technology grant and shut down Becta, she may well have a battle on her hands. But oh to be a fly on the wall for that meeting!
Daniel Pink was as eloquent and inspirational as you would expect from an ex-Washington DC speech writer and business guru, who is a leading author of bestsellers on the changing nature of work, motivation leadership and learning.
Sir Bob Geldof prowled the stage like a tiger as he bemoaned the current economic challenges and their implications for young people, schools and not least his own Teachers TV company (9 per cent of whose viewers are students). TTV's cancelled contract means significant income and job losses, and a rich insight into the importance of education with a global perspective.
The heavyweight academic inputs came from Erica McWilliam, from Queensland University (who I introduced to Twitter in one of the breaks), and Professor Dylan Wiliam, formerly of the Institute of Education. He suggested that we can learn a lot from Weight Watchers – we all know the facts about losing weight (ie eat less and exercise more) but it is the behaviour change we find challenging. It was a clear parallel with teaching and learning. He suggested that we should adopt the Pareto principle and ”make at least one person better off without making anyone worse off”.
Dylan William drew on his years of research to distill a few pearls of wisdom for education leaders which might have influenced Gove's choice for the title of the white paper, “The importance of teaching”. He argued that high-impact learner outcomes will only come from a relentless focus on improving teacher performance by consolidating and embedding good practice.
He suggested that teachers are “best when they are themselves, not when they are trying to be clones of other teachers”. He also thought Beckett's words worked well for teachers – they should “fail every day but next day fail a bit better”.
Rules and fallacies of sustainable leadership from Andy Hargreaves
Professor Andy Hargreaves is just completing a study commissioned by the SSAT and the National College, entitled “Beyond Expectations”. Teams of researchers from Boston College in the US and the UK's Institute of Education have studied 18 successful business and sports organisations in the public and private sectors to try and identify the common features of their leadership and who could do “a lot more with less”.
"The choice of the Monarch butterfly as the project logo symbolises that concept”, said Andy Hargreaves. The research findings suggests that 90 per cent of successful leadership is common across organisations and sectors..
This report is timely, given the economic circumstances we face, and given that some of those who have gone from the the public sector to private now perceive the 'flabby' upper reaches of education management as fruitful areas for savings.
Andy Hargreaves’ initial findings also suggest there are five fallacies surrounding sustainable leadership:
- Speed – Leaders cannot bring success overnight and if there are immediate “spikes” in improvement they are likely to be deceptive or unethical.
- Replacement – Continually changing the leadership seldom brings sustainable results; stability is more effective. Charisma is good but avoid false prophets, decapitations and neutron bombs!
- Over reliance on numbers and spreadsheets – Number crunching and measurement have their place but they are not the whole story as we have measured what can be measured and not what we value.
- Prescription – Mediocrity is usually the outcome of prescription. What is needed is not standardisation but flexibility, innovation and creativity.
- Competition – On-field competition and off-field co-operation are best; collaboration beats competition every time.
Andy concluded with four golden rules of successful, sustainable leadership:
- Don’t go with the flow;
- Sustained improvement and results take time, three to five years;
- Surround yourself with people of difference, with diverse skills and perspectives;
- Aim and work at your own obsolescence.
'By schools for schools' a stand-out feature of SSAT event
One of the strengths of the SSAT conference is its “by schools for schools ” strand, and the dozens of school showcases were inspirational. But a few ICT workshops stood out.
Despite the 8am starts, John Davitt’s sessions on active learning and the use of digital technologies proved popular and his Twitter “school of everything” reached out into cyberspace despite the woeful wifi in Birmingham's International Convention Centre (which surely needs to create a learning environment relevant to the 3rd millennium?).
Dan Roberts chickensaltash to the Twitterati) was the perfect person to present “Can Facebook and mobile phones help or hinder learning”, but it was the students from Saltash.net Community School who joined the workshop on Skype who really deepened the learning for delegates when responding with their own solutions to questions from some sceptical headteachers.
Teachers as co-learners and pupils as leaders were the major themes emerging from Kristian Still, from Hamble College, and Daniel Stucke, of Stretford High, who outlined their experiment to create a network of “Digital Leaders” within their schools. The Toshiba award for most innovative use of ICT went to Heathfield Community Primary School, Bolton.
ICT integral to SSAT efforts – heartening contrast to the White Paper
There is no doubt that the next few years will be challenging for schools, teachers, heads, governors and local authorities as they grow into the new found freedoms and autonomies they have been granted. Indeed the SSAT itself is already attempting to adapt to the new world of a changed political landscape.
If it continues to attract world-class speakers, showcase and celebrate learners and learning, and tap into the energy of the young people who inspired the opening of every session with their music, dance and performances, it should have a secure future.
The need for schools to celebrate and share their learning will always be present and if schools minister Nick Gibb MP is to be believed, the Government's policies will “be based on evidence of what works”. Who else is going to produce it? The problem that's becoming evident is that the Government is highly selective in its sources for evidence. "21st Century Schooling: Excellence for All" managed to make ICT absolutely integral to its approach to learning, and the evidence it shared, which was a heartening contrast to the Government's White Paper, with its single, parochial reference to ICT.
More information
White Paper: "The importance of Teaching"
SSAT
Nick Gibb's keynote
Bob Harrison is an education consultant who works with the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) and Toshiba UK. You can read his blog on the Futurelab Flux website. He runs Support for Education and Training.
