Educational leadership context, strategy and collaboration1
iNet Principal Supporter
Every school a
great school
Meeting the challenge of large scale, long term
educational reform
David Hopkins
HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership
Every school a great school
Meeting the challenge of large scale, long term educational reform
A lecture in the iNet series published to celebrate the launch of the London
Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education. Minister for London
Schools Lord Adonis formally launched the centre on 30 June 2005. The centre is
supported by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, London Challenge and
HSBC Education Trust.
The London Centre for Leadership in Learning, a school of the Institute of
Education, is an important new professional development facility for everyone
working with children, young people and adult learners in London. It is a
significant source of research and expertise on London education, and a hub for
professional partnerships of all kinds with a strong focus on international
networks. The centre will be a key provider of learning, professional development
and best practice in delivering education improvement in an urban context.
Author
Professor David Hopkins, HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership, London Centre for
Leadership in Learning at the Institute of Education, University of London
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rob Higham and Tony Mackay for invaluable assistance.
Mission
The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust works to give practical support to the
transformation of secondary education in England by building and enabling a world-class
network of innovative, high performing secondary schools in partnership with business and
the wider community.
© Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, 2006
Abstracting is permitted with acknowledgement to the source. For other copying or general enquiries
contact:
Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, 16th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 020 7802 2300 Fax: 020 7802 2345 Email: info@ssatrust.org.uk
Websites: www.ssat-inet.net www.schoolsnetwork.org.uk
Charity no. 296729 Registered in England. Company no. 2124695
Printed by Dexter Graphics, 3-5 Sandpit Road, Dartford, Kent DA1 5BU
ISBN 1-905150-34-2
Contents
2
Chapter 1
Meeting the challenge of large scale, long term
educational reform
7
Chapter 2
The English experiment in large scale reform
16
Chapter 3
Prescription or professionalism – the crucial
policy conundrum
19
Chapter 4
Four drivers for system reform
Driver one: personalising learning
Metacognition / learning how to learn
Assessment for learning
Driver two: professionalised teaching
Enhanced repertoire of learning and teaching
strategies to engage and stretch students.
Continuing professional development
Driver three: networks and collaboration
Best practice captured, highly specified and
transferred
Partnerships beyond the school
Driver four: intelligent accountability
A better balance between internal and external
assessment
A better balance between formative and
summative assessment
34
Chapter 5
Segmentation as the key to every school a great
school
39
Chapter 6
System leadership as the catalyst for systemic
change
47
Chapter 7
Coda: realising the vision of every school a great
school
1
Every school a great school
Meeting the challenge of
large scale, long term
educational reform
By background and temperament I am a school
improvement activist. Over the past 30 years or so I have
self consciously located myself at the intersection of
practice, research and policy. It is here that I felt I could
best contribute to the process of educational reform.
Reflecting back over this time, one of the initiatives I am
most proud of is the work I did with the school
improvement project, Improving the Quality of Education
for All (IQEA), in which we collaborated with hundreds of
schools in England and elsewhere in developing a model of
school improvement and a programme of support. The
IQEA approach aims to enhance student outcomes through
focusing on the teaching - learning process as well as
strengthening the school's capacity for managing change.
More recently however I have found myself as a national
policymaker concerned not just with regional networks of
schools but with a part responsibility for transforming a
whole system. These two sets of experiences have convinced
me that not only should every school be a great school, but
that this is now a reasonable, realisable and socially just
goal for any mature educational system. This is the
argument I pursue in this pamphlet.
Alan Bennett, in the introduction to his play The history boys,
reflects somewhat pessimistically on what both he and I would
most probably regard as being the true purpose of state
education.
2
‘I’m old fashioned enough to believe that private education
should long since have been abolished and that Britain has paid
too high a price in social inequality for its public schools. At the
same time, I can’t see that public schools could be abolished
(even if there was the will) without an enormous amount of
social disruption. The proper way forward would be for state
education to reach such a standard that private schools would
be under-subscribed, but there’s a fat chance of that,
particularly under the present administration.’
I agree wholeheartedly with the aspiration, that every school
should be good, but disagree profoundly with the prognosis,
that there is a fat chance of this happening. Ask any parent
about the goal of educational reform and the answer is simple –
why can’t every school be a great school? It’s a no-brainer.
The reason for my optimism is the recent success of large scale
reform efforts in a number of countries, most notably England.
As we shall see later there is still much to be done before one
could claim that the English educational system is transformed.
Progress however has been such, and the learning from the
experience sufficient, that there is now a high degree of clarity
over what needs to be done to reach this goal. Whether the goal
is achieved is, as Ron Edmonds1 asked in a different context,
more about professional and political will rather than strategic
knowledge. It is now 25 years since he asked his felicitous
question: ‘How many effective schools would you have to see to
be persuaded of the educability of all children?’ He continued:
‘We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or
not we do it, must depend on how we feel about the fact that
we haven’t so far.’
This aspiration, although easy to articulate, has implications that
challenge the resolve of many national and local governments.
• First, this is an avidly social justice agenda redolent with
moral purpose, and needs to be communicated as such.
Sadly many of our leaders feel uncomfortable talking about
values that have concrete outcomes, yet without this one
cannot build a consensus for social change.
• Second, it places the focus of reform directly on enhancing
teaching quality and classroom practice rather than
structural change. Government policy implementation has
most commonly used the school as the unit of intervention,
yet international research evidence shows that (a) the
3
classroom is key in raising achievement and (b) the range of
variation within any school dwarfs the difference between
schools in the UK by a factor of three or four times.
• And third, it requires a commitment to sustained, systemic
change because a focus on individual school improvement
always distorts social equity. The evidence from the charter
school movement in the United States and grant maintained
schools in England suggests that although such initiatives
may raise standards for those involved, they depress
standards in surrounding schools. This is not at all to argue
against school autonomy, but to caution that it should be
done within inclusive and collaborative settings.
Despite the political boldness required for an explicit focus on
large scale reform, the determination of the British government
to pursue education reform and bring about a marked change
in performance of the education service is not in doubt. Since it
was elected in May 1997, the present government has sought to
achieve high standards across an entire system of 24,000
schools and over 7 million school students. Landmark policies
such as the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in primary schools
and Excellence in Cities (EiC) for inner city secondary schools
have had a significant impact both on raising standards and
narrowing the achievement gap. In retrospect however there
were two weaknesses in the approach to educational reform
adopted by New Labour in 1997.
The first, which is a continuing theme of this pamphlet, is that
the reform programme was not conceived within a long term
policy framework. Predictably and understandably, in the early
heady years of a first term reforming government the question
of how to sustain reform after early success had been achieved
was not high on the agenda. I will argue that more thought
should have been given at the start of the reform process of
how to build capacity for sustained improvement and how to
manage the transition between national prescription and
schools leading reform. If this had been done, then the plateau
effect, the perverse effects of top down change and loss of
momentum would all have been minimised.
4
Secondly, it is surprising that despite New Labour’s
commitment to the ‘third way’ there was no overarching
strategy for large scale educational reform. Of course there
were the flagship policies such as the NLS, EiC and academies,
but these were essentially responses to presenting problems
rather than a vision for the future of education. It was not until
David Miliband2 gave his speech on a social democratic
education settlement in March 2003 that New Labour could
claim to have had a guiding philosophy for its educational
reforms. As Miliband noted, Labour had always been better at
knowing what it was against rather than what it was for, and his
signal contribution as minister of state was to fill that lacuna. In
brief the main contours of the settlement were:
• A vision of educational purpose and practice based on the
ambition of full and democratic citizenship for all
• A commitment to teaching as a thinking and developing
profession, with power devolved and accountability accepted
• A strategy to equalise life chances by tilting against inequality,
with innovation and collaboration to improve standards
• Sufficient funding, devolved to school level and allocated to
need
• An understanding that culture matters as well as structure,
and the dominant culture needs to support educational
advance.
He concluded the lecture by saying: ‘Equal worth. Active
learning. Informed professionalism. High expectations. These
are the foundations of a new education settlement. The
ultimate test is not that they hold firm for a few months, or
even a Parliamentary term, but that they endure.’ It will be
interesting to see whether the commitment to this settlement
will hold firm following his leaving the Department and endure
into the third term.
Keeping this background and these two concerns in mind, the
purpose of this pamphlet is to outline an approach to large
scale, long term reform that has the potential of realising high
standards for all students in all schools. In elaborating the
argument, I will set out:
5
Every school a great school
• The background to the success of the initial phase of
educational reform in England
• The crucial policy conundrum involved in achieving
sustained improvement
• The four key drivers that can build system capacity to deliver
on standards
• The approach to segmentation necessary to ensure every
school succeeds
• The concept of system leadership necessary to sustain such
an approach.
6
The English experiment in
large scale reform
Although the reform effort in England has involved both
primary schools (elementary education for 5–11 year olds) and
secondary schools (ages 11–16, or 11–18 for those schools with
sixth forms) the initial data cited in this section will reflect the
performance of students in the 5–11 year age range. The reason
is simply because it is here where the link between reform
strategy and student performance is most clearly seen.
In order to move from the evidently underperforming system of
the mid-1990s the government put in place a policy approach
best described as ‘high challenge, high support’. The way in
which these principles are turned into practical policies to drive
school improvement is summarised in the following diagram3.
The policies for each segment (starting at 12 o’clock) are set
out in the chart below. The important point is that the policy
elements were complementary and mutually supportive4.
Intervention
in inverse
proportion
to success
Accountability
Ambitious
standards
High
challenge
High
support
Access to
best practice
and quality
professional
development
Devolved
responsibility
Good
data and
clear targets
7
Every school a great school
Within the context of this large scale long term national reform
effort, the early focus on literacy and numeracy in primary
schools was an important and necessary first step. Performance
at age 11, at the end of key stage 2, is a key indicator.
Competence in literacy and numeracy are absolutely vital to the
life chances of children in our schools. They are the strongest
predictors of success at age 16 and beyond.
Ambitious standards
Access to best practice and
quality professional
development
• High standards set out
• Universal professional
in the national curriculum
development in national
priorities (literacy,
numeracy, ICT)
• National tests at age 7, 11, • Leadership development as
14, 16
an entitlement
Accountability
Devolved responsibility
• National inspection system • School as unit of
for schools and LEAs
accountability
• Publication annually of
school/district level
performance data
and targets
• Devolution of resources
and employment
powers to schools
Good data/clear targets
Intervention in inverse
proportion to success
• Individual pupil level data • School improvement grant
collected nationally
to assist implementation of
post-inspection action plan
• Statutory target-setting at
district and school level
• Monitoring of performance
by LEA (district)
The positive influence of the national literacy and numeracy
strategies on student performance attracted worldwide
attention. A graphic illustration of the impact that the strategies
have had on the system as a whole is seen in the following
8
series of maps. The first map reproduced below gives an
indication of the number of local education authorities in
England in 1998 where 75%+ of 11 year old students were
reading at their chronological age (the map for numeracy was
similar). This by itself provides enough justification for
LEAs achieving 75%+
level 4 English 1998
LEAs achieving 75%+
level 4 English 2002
9
Every school a great school
LEAs achieving 75%+
level 4 English 2004
4
introducing the strategies. The situation in 2002 is illustrated in
the second map and in 2004 in the third map. The picture for
numeracy in 2002 and 2004 was also similar. Although there is
still progress to be made, the transformation of the national
picture in six years is very striking.
The analysis of this success is however not entirely
straightforward. The percentage increase in student
performance in literacy and numeracy between 1997 and 2004
is illustrated in the following table.
Summary of key stage 2 results – percentage of pupils
achieving level 4+
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
10
English
63
65
71
75
75
75
75
77
79
Mathematics
62
59
69
72
71
73
73
74
75
What is significant about this data profile is that following a
significant increase over the first three years, performance
levelled off for the next three years, and only recently has
further progress been made. This trend has been noted in
virtually every large scale reform initiative. What usually
happens is that early success is followed by this levelling off
along with a lack of commitment to the programme of reform. I
suggest that the recent progress in England is because in 2003
the national literacy and numeracy strategies merged into a
national primary strategy, the design of which was underpinned
by many of the principles advocated in this pamphlet. The
argument here is that, to ensure that every school becomes a
great school, the plateau has to be turned into a platform for
further achievement.
Before explaining how this can be done, it is important to
recognise that there are further serious challenges to be met
before the goal of every school a great school becomes a
realistic expectation. In summary they are:
• Underperformance at all levels
• Slow progress in secondary education
• A focus on management rather than leadership
• Restricted nature of teaching quality
• Excellence and equity, with deprivation being the root cause
of low attainment.
It is important to take these challenges seriously as they contain
the key to building capacity for sustained improvement. Space
precludes a detailed treatment, but data is presented on each of
the challenges in order to illustrate the nature of the issue and
possible resolutions.
Underperformance at all levels: this is a persistent problem
for English schools. New Labour has been successful in
addressing absolute school failure, particularly in secondary
education. It is now the level of under performance that is
thwarting a further rise in standards. The diagram illustrates this
point powerfully. Every secondary school in the country is
represented and the underperforming schools are coloured
red. For these purposes they are defined as being in the lower
quartile of the value added distribution, and it is clear that these
schools are spread throughout the population. This means that
underperformance is not related to absolute performance and
11
Every school a great school
even schools that perform well in terms of published results can
be systematically disadvantaging their students. The
phenomenon of the coasting school is still a real drag on the
performance of the system overall, as well as preventing
students from reaching their potential. For example, if every
school in the bottom quartile of value added were to perform at
the current median, it is estimated that:
• their pupils would make, on average, an extra year’s progress
during their school careers
• about 13,000 additional pupils would gain 5+A*-C grades
each year
• the school’s average 5+A*-C percentage would rise by 10%
• their average KS3 point score would rise by 3 points.
Underperforming schools
data for KS3-KS4
100%
All other schools
Underperforming
Below 30% 5 A*-C
90%
80%
Actual 5 A*-C
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Underperforming schools
are those in the lowest
quartile value-added for
EITHER Capped Points
Score OR 5 A*-C
20%
10%
0%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Estimated 5 A*-C (from Pupil KS3 Data, Gender and School FSM)
Slow progress in secondary education: although there has
been consistent progress in standards at KS3 and GCSE since
1997, there has not been the breakthrough at either age level of
the type seen at KS2. The recent year on year increase of
between 1% and 2% at GCSE, although welcome, still leaves
40% of 16 year olds not meeting the levels required to continue
their education. The graph below illustrates the slow but
12
sustained progress at KS3. This is particularly concerning given
that performance at KS3 is the best predictor of GCSE results.
Too many 14 year olds are not effectively accessing the
secondary curriculum.
National performance at key stage 3
1995 - 2004
English
Science
Maths
90%
85%
85%
80%
80%
75%
70%
65%
65%
60%
55%
57%
56%
55%
57%
1995
1996
60%
59%
57%
56%
64%
65%
64%
66%
65%
67%
2001
2002
70%
68%
73%
71%
66%
59%
55%
50%
1997
1998
1999
2000
2003
2004
Prov.
2005
2006
2007
Leadership capacity: Ofsted evidence clearly illustrates that
the quality of leadership and management has improved year
on year since the mid nineties in both primary and secondary
schools. This too is welcome, and is testimony to the
effectiveness national leadership training programmes. The
problem for sustainability however is well illustrated in the slide
for secondary schools on the following page (the data for
primary schools show a similar pattern). Although management
scores well, the leadership qualities and capacities required for
schools to lead the reform process, such as overall effectiveness
and the quality of teaching, lag worryingly behind.
Teaching quality: there is a similar problem with the quality of
teaching, and although the slide overleaf illustrates data at KS4
the situation is similar at other key stages. Teaching quality is
high in traditional areas such as classroom management and
curriculum knowledge. The more adaptive behaviours required
for personalising learning however are obviously still not part of
the repertoires of most of the nation’s teachers.
13
Every school a great school
Leadership capacity
Ofsted overview of secondary schools
The leadership and
management of the
Headteacher and key staff
Behaviour, including the
incidence of exclusions
15
Teaching
15
8
29
7
63
18
40%
20%
8
24
49
0%
5
19
43
25
How well the pupils
achieve
15
40
34
Overall effectiveness of
the school
Excellent/Very good
36
44
60%
5
80%
100%
Good
Satisfactory
(OFSTED Annual Report 2003)
Unsatisfactory/Poor
Quality of teaching at key stage 4
% of schools with full inspections
Teachers’ knowledge and
understanding
Use of homework
0%
51
35
7
57
20%
40%
Good
60%
Satisfactory
3
10
54
32
Excellent/Very good
3
33
33
4
2
3
30
58
6
4
24
60
6
1
30
61
12
7
4
11
53
13
Effectiveness of teachers’
planning
Effectiveness of teaching
methods
Use of time, support staff
and resources
Quality and use of ongoing
assessment
15
66
22
Teachers” expectations
Teaching of basic skills
52
29
Management of pupils
9
80%
100%
Unsatisfactory/Poor
N.B These figures have been rounded and may not add up to 100%
OFSTED Annual Report 2002
Excellence and equity: unfortunately deprivation still
remains the most reliable predictor of academic success. Recent
analyses suggest that, as expected, higher performing schools
have a larger proportion of more affluent students; also, that
students of average socio-economic background do better in
these school environments. What is more disturbing is that low
SES students do equally badly in both high and low performing
schools. This long tail of underperformance has characterised
14
the English educational system for too long. It is this that
underlies England’s performance in PISA 2001: the OECD
characterised the English system as being one of high
excellence and low equity as demonstrated in the diagram
below.
The challenge of excellence and equity
560
High excellence
540
High excellence
Finland
Low equity
High equity
U.K.
520
Canada
Japan
U.S.
500
Belgium
480
Germany
Switzerland
Korea
Spain
Poland
460
440
Low excellence
Low excellence
Low equity
High equity
420
60
80
100
120
140
200 – Variance (variance OECD as a whole = 100)
Source: OECD (2001) Knowledge and Skills for Life
So the plateau effect characteristic of centrally driven change,
coupled with these five system wide problems, constitute the
challenge for making every school in England great. This
challenge presents us with a crucial policy dilemma that
provides the focus of the following section.
15
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Every school a
great school
Meeting the challenge of large scale, long term
educational reform
David Hopkins
HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership
Every school a great school
Meeting the challenge of large scale, long term educational reform
A lecture in the iNet series published to celebrate the launch of the London
Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education. Minister for London
Schools Lord Adonis formally launched the centre on 30 June 2005. The centre is
supported by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, London Challenge and
HSBC Education Trust.
The London Centre for Leadership in Learning, a school of the Institute of
Education, is an important new professional development facility for everyone
working with children, young people and adult learners in London. It is a
significant source of research and expertise on London education, and a hub for
professional partnerships of all kinds with a strong focus on international
networks. The centre will be a key provider of learning, professional development
and best practice in delivering education improvement in an urban context.
Author
Professor David Hopkins, HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership, London Centre for
Leadership in Learning at the Institute of Education, University of London
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rob Higham and Tony Mackay for invaluable assistance.
Mission
The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust works to give practical support to the
transformation of secondary education in England by building and enabling a world-class
network of innovative, high performing secondary schools in partnership with business and
the wider community.
© Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, 2006
Abstracting is permitted with acknowledgement to the source. For other copying or general enquiries
contact:
Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, 16th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 020 7802 2300 Fax: 020 7802 2345 Email: info@ssatrust.org.uk
Websites: www.ssat-inet.net www.schoolsnetwork.org.uk
Charity no. 296729 Registered in England. Company no. 2124695
Printed by Dexter Graphics, 3-5 Sandpit Road, Dartford, Kent DA1 5BU
ISBN 1-905150-34-2
Contents
2
Chapter 1
Meeting the challenge of large scale, long term
educational reform
7
Chapter 2
The English experiment in large scale reform
16
Chapter 3
Prescription or professionalism – the crucial
policy conundrum
19
Chapter 4
Four drivers for system reform
Driver one: personalising learning
Metacognition / learning how to learn
Assessment for learning
Driver two: professionalised teaching
Enhanced repertoire of learning and teaching
strategies to engage and stretch students.
Continuing professional development
Driver three: networks and collaboration
Best practice captured, highly specified and
transferred
Partnerships beyond the school
Driver four: intelligent accountability
A better balance between internal and external
assessment
A better balance between formative and
summative assessment
34
Chapter 5
Segmentation as the key to every school a great
school
39
Chapter 6
System leadership as the catalyst for systemic
change
47
Chapter 7
Coda: realising the vision of every school a great
school
1
Every school a great school
Meeting the challenge of
large scale, long term
educational reform
By background and temperament I am a school
improvement activist. Over the past 30 years or so I have
self consciously located myself at the intersection of
practice, research and policy. It is here that I felt I could
best contribute to the process of educational reform.
Reflecting back over this time, one of the initiatives I am
most proud of is the work I did with the school
improvement project, Improving the Quality of Education
for All (IQEA), in which we collaborated with hundreds of
schools in England and elsewhere in developing a model of
school improvement and a programme of support. The
IQEA approach aims to enhance student outcomes through
focusing on the teaching - learning process as well as
strengthening the school's capacity for managing change.
More recently however I have found myself as a national
policymaker concerned not just with regional networks of
schools but with a part responsibility for transforming a
whole system. These two sets of experiences have convinced
me that not only should every school be a great school, but
that this is now a reasonable, realisable and socially just
goal for any mature educational system. This is the
argument I pursue in this pamphlet.
Alan Bennett, in the introduction to his play The history boys,
reflects somewhat pessimistically on what both he and I would
most probably regard as being the true purpose of state
education.
2
‘I’m old fashioned enough to believe that private education
should long since have been abolished and that Britain has paid
too high a price in social inequality for its public schools. At the
same time, I can’t see that public schools could be abolished
(even if there was the will) without an enormous amount of
social disruption. The proper way forward would be for state
education to reach such a standard that private schools would
be under-subscribed, but there’s a fat chance of that,
particularly under the present administration.’
I agree wholeheartedly with the aspiration, that every school
should be good, but disagree profoundly with the prognosis,
that there is a fat chance of this happening. Ask any parent
about the goal of educational reform and the answer is simple –
why can’t every school be a great school? It’s a no-brainer.
The reason for my optimism is the recent success of large scale
reform efforts in a number of countries, most notably England.
As we shall see later there is still much to be done before one
could claim that the English educational system is transformed.
Progress however has been such, and the learning from the
experience sufficient, that there is now a high degree of clarity
over what needs to be done to reach this goal. Whether the goal
is achieved is, as Ron Edmonds1 asked in a different context,
more about professional and political will rather than strategic
knowledge. It is now 25 years since he asked his felicitous
question: ‘How many effective schools would you have to see to
be persuaded of the educability of all children?’ He continued:
‘We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or
not we do it, must depend on how we feel about the fact that
we haven’t so far.’
This aspiration, although easy to articulate, has implications that
challenge the resolve of many national and local governments.
• First, this is an avidly social justice agenda redolent with
moral purpose, and needs to be communicated as such.
Sadly many of our leaders feel uncomfortable talking about
values that have concrete outcomes, yet without this one
cannot build a consensus for social change.
• Second, it places the focus of reform directly on enhancing
teaching quality and classroom practice rather than
structural change. Government policy implementation has
most commonly used the school as the unit of intervention,
yet international research evidence shows that (a) the
3
classroom is key in raising achievement and (b) the range of
variation within any school dwarfs the difference between
schools in the UK by a factor of three or four times.
• And third, it requires a commitment to sustained, systemic
change because a focus on individual school improvement
always distorts social equity. The evidence from the charter
school movement in the United States and grant maintained
schools in England suggests that although such initiatives
may raise standards for those involved, they depress
standards in surrounding schools. This is not at all to argue
against school autonomy, but to caution that it should be
done within inclusive and collaborative settings.
Despite the political boldness required for an explicit focus on
large scale reform, the determination of the British government
to pursue education reform and bring about a marked change
in performance of the education service is not in doubt. Since it
was elected in May 1997, the present government has sought to
achieve high standards across an entire system of 24,000
schools and over 7 million school students. Landmark policies
such as the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in primary schools
and Excellence in Cities (EiC) for inner city secondary schools
have had a significant impact both on raising standards and
narrowing the achievement gap. In retrospect however there
were two weaknesses in the approach to educational reform
adopted by New Labour in 1997.
The first, which is a continuing theme of this pamphlet, is that
the reform programme was not conceived within a long term
policy framework. Predictably and understandably, in the early
heady years of a first term reforming government the question
of how to sustain reform after early success had been achieved
was not high on the agenda. I will argue that more thought
should have been given at the start of the reform process of
how to build capacity for sustained improvement and how to
manage the transition between national prescription and
schools leading reform. If this had been done, then the plateau
effect, the perverse effects of top down change and loss of
momentum would all have been minimised.
4
Secondly, it is surprising that despite New Labour’s
commitment to the ‘third way’ there was no overarching
strategy for large scale educational reform. Of course there
were the flagship policies such as the NLS, EiC and academies,
but these were essentially responses to presenting problems
rather than a vision for the future of education. It was not until
David Miliband2 gave his speech on a social democratic
education settlement in March 2003 that New Labour could
claim to have had a guiding philosophy for its educational
reforms. As Miliband noted, Labour had always been better at
knowing what it was against rather than what it was for, and his
signal contribution as minister of state was to fill that lacuna. In
brief the main contours of the settlement were:
• A vision of educational purpose and practice based on the
ambition of full and democratic citizenship for all
• A commitment to teaching as a thinking and developing
profession, with power devolved and accountability accepted
• A strategy to equalise life chances by tilting against inequality,
with innovation and collaboration to improve standards
• Sufficient funding, devolved to school level and allocated to
need
• An understanding that culture matters as well as structure,
and the dominant culture needs to support educational
advance.
He concluded the lecture by saying: ‘Equal worth. Active
learning. Informed professionalism. High expectations. These
are the foundations of a new education settlement. The
ultimate test is not that they hold firm for a few months, or
even a Parliamentary term, but that they endure.’ It will be
interesting to see whether the commitment to this settlement
will hold firm following his leaving the Department and endure
into the third term.
Keeping this background and these two concerns in mind, the
purpose of this pamphlet is to outline an approach to large
scale, long term reform that has the potential of realising high
standards for all students in all schools. In elaborating the
argument, I will set out:
5
Every school a great school
• The background to the success of the initial phase of
educational reform in England
• The crucial policy conundrum involved in achieving
sustained improvement
• The four key drivers that can build system capacity to deliver
on standards
• The approach to segmentation necessary to ensure every
school succeeds
• The concept of system leadership necessary to sustain such
an approach.
6
The English experiment in
large scale reform
Although the reform effort in England has involved both
primary schools (elementary education for 5–11 year olds) and
secondary schools (ages 11–16, or 11–18 for those schools with
sixth forms) the initial data cited in this section will reflect the
performance of students in the 5–11 year age range. The reason
is simply because it is here where the link between reform
strategy and student performance is most clearly seen.
In order to move from the evidently underperforming system of
the mid-1990s the government put in place a policy approach
best described as ‘high challenge, high support’. The way in
which these principles are turned into practical policies to drive
school improvement is summarised in the following diagram3.
The policies for each segment (starting at 12 o’clock) are set
out in the chart below. The important point is that the policy
elements were complementary and mutually supportive4.
Intervention
in inverse
proportion
to success
Accountability
Ambitious
standards
High
challenge
High
support
Access to
best practice
and quality
professional
development
Devolved
responsibility
Good
data and
clear targets
7
Every school a great school
Within the context of this large scale long term national reform
effort, the early focus on literacy and numeracy in primary
schools was an important and necessary first step. Performance
at age 11, at the end of key stage 2, is a key indicator.
Competence in literacy and numeracy are absolutely vital to the
life chances of children in our schools. They are the strongest
predictors of success at age 16 and beyond.
Ambitious standards
Access to best practice and
quality professional
development
• High standards set out
• Universal professional
in the national curriculum
development in national
priorities (literacy,
numeracy, ICT)
• National tests at age 7, 11, • Leadership development as
14, 16
an entitlement
Accountability
Devolved responsibility
• National inspection system • School as unit of
for schools and LEAs
accountability
• Publication annually of
school/district level
performance data
and targets
• Devolution of resources
and employment
powers to schools
Good data/clear targets
Intervention in inverse
proportion to success
• Individual pupil level data • School improvement grant
collected nationally
to assist implementation of
post-inspection action plan
• Statutory target-setting at
district and school level
• Monitoring of performance
by LEA (district)
The positive influence of the national literacy and numeracy
strategies on student performance attracted worldwide
attention. A graphic illustration of the impact that the strategies
have had on the system as a whole is seen in the following
8
series of maps. The first map reproduced below gives an
indication of the number of local education authorities in
England in 1998 where 75%+ of 11 year old students were
reading at their chronological age (the map for numeracy was
similar). This by itself provides enough justification for
LEAs achieving 75%+
level 4 English 1998
LEAs achieving 75%+
level 4 English 2002
9
Every school a great school
LEAs achieving 75%+
level 4 English 2004
4
introducing the strategies. The situation in 2002 is illustrated in
the second map and in 2004 in the third map. The picture for
numeracy in 2002 and 2004 was also similar. Although there is
still progress to be made, the transformation of the national
picture in six years is very striking.
The analysis of this success is however not entirely
straightforward. The percentage increase in student
performance in literacy and numeracy between 1997 and 2004
is illustrated in the following table.
Summary of key stage 2 results – percentage of pupils
achieving level 4+
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
10
English
63
65
71
75
75
75
75
77
79
Mathematics
62
59
69
72
71
73
73
74
75
What is significant about this data profile is that following a
significant increase over the first three years, performance
levelled off for the next three years, and only recently has
further progress been made. This trend has been noted in
virtually every large scale reform initiative. What usually
happens is that early success is followed by this levelling off
along with a lack of commitment to the programme of reform. I
suggest that the recent progress in England is because in 2003
the national literacy and numeracy strategies merged into a
national primary strategy, the design of which was underpinned
by many of the principles advocated in this pamphlet. The
argument here is that, to ensure that every school becomes a
great school, the plateau has to be turned into a platform for
further achievement.
Before explaining how this can be done, it is important to
recognise that there are further serious challenges to be met
before the goal of every school a great school becomes a
realistic expectation. In summary they are:
• Underperformance at all levels
• Slow progress in secondary education
• A focus on management rather than leadership
• Restricted nature of teaching quality
• Excellence and equity, with deprivation being the root cause
of low attainment.
It is important to take these challenges seriously as they contain
the key to building capacity for sustained improvement. Space
precludes a detailed treatment, but data is presented on each of
the challenges in order to illustrate the nature of the issue and
possible resolutions.
Underperformance at all levels: this is a persistent problem
for English schools. New Labour has been successful in
addressing absolute school failure, particularly in secondary
education. It is now the level of under performance that is
thwarting a further rise in standards. The diagram illustrates this
point powerfully. Every secondary school in the country is
represented and the underperforming schools are coloured
red. For these purposes they are defined as being in the lower
quartile of the value added distribution, and it is clear that these
schools are spread throughout the population. This means that
underperformance is not related to absolute performance and
11
Every school a great school
even schools that perform well in terms of published results can
be systematically disadvantaging their students. The
phenomenon of the coasting school is still a real drag on the
performance of the system overall, as well as preventing
students from reaching their potential. For example, if every
school in the bottom quartile of value added were to perform at
the current median, it is estimated that:
• their pupils would make, on average, an extra year’s progress
during their school careers
• about 13,000 additional pupils would gain 5+A*-C grades
each year
• the school’s average 5+A*-C percentage would rise by 10%
• their average KS3 point score would rise by 3 points.
Underperforming schools
data for KS3-KS4
100%
All other schools
Underperforming
Below 30% 5 A*-C
90%
80%
Actual 5 A*-C
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Underperforming schools
are those in the lowest
quartile value-added for
EITHER Capped Points
Score OR 5 A*-C
20%
10%
0%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Estimated 5 A*-C (from Pupil KS3 Data, Gender and School FSM)
Slow progress in secondary education: although there has
been consistent progress in standards at KS3 and GCSE since
1997, there has not been the breakthrough at either age level of
the type seen at KS2. The recent year on year increase of
between 1% and 2% at GCSE, although welcome, still leaves
40% of 16 year olds not meeting the levels required to continue
their education. The graph below illustrates the slow but
12
sustained progress at KS3. This is particularly concerning given
that performance at KS3 is the best predictor of GCSE results.
Too many 14 year olds are not effectively accessing the
secondary curriculum.
National performance at key stage 3
1995 - 2004
English
Science
Maths
90%
85%
85%
80%
80%
75%
70%
65%
65%
60%
55%
57%
56%
55%
57%
1995
1996
60%
59%
57%
56%
64%
65%
64%
66%
65%
67%
2001
2002
70%
68%
73%
71%
66%
59%
55%
50%
1997
1998
1999
2000
2003
2004
Prov.
2005
2006
2007
Leadership capacity: Ofsted evidence clearly illustrates that
the quality of leadership and management has improved year
on year since the mid nineties in both primary and secondary
schools. This too is welcome, and is testimony to the
effectiveness national leadership training programmes. The
problem for sustainability however is well illustrated in the slide
for secondary schools on the following page (the data for
primary schools show a similar pattern). Although management
scores well, the leadership qualities and capacities required for
schools to lead the reform process, such as overall effectiveness
and the quality of teaching, lag worryingly behind.
Teaching quality: there is a similar problem with the quality of
teaching, and although the slide overleaf illustrates data at KS4
the situation is similar at other key stages. Teaching quality is
high in traditional areas such as classroom management and
curriculum knowledge. The more adaptive behaviours required
for personalising learning however are obviously still not part of
the repertoires of most of the nation’s teachers.
13
Every school a great school
Leadership capacity
Ofsted overview of secondary schools
The leadership and
management of the
Headteacher and key staff
Behaviour, including the
incidence of exclusions
15
Teaching
15
8
29
7
63
18
40%
20%
8
24
49
0%
5
19
43
25
How well the pupils
achieve
15
40
34
Overall effectiveness of
the school
Excellent/Very good
36
44
60%
5
80%
100%
Good
Satisfactory
(OFSTED Annual Report 2003)
Unsatisfactory/Poor
Quality of teaching at key stage 4
% of schools with full inspections
Teachers’ knowledge and
understanding
Use of homework
0%
51
35
7
57
20%
40%
Good
60%
Satisfactory
3
10
54
32
Excellent/Very good
3
33
33
4
2
3
30
58
6
4
24
60
6
1
30
61
12
7
4
11
53
13
Effectiveness of teachers’
planning
Effectiveness of teaching
methods
Use of time, support staff
and resources
Quality and use of ongoing
assessment
15
66
22
Teachers” expectations
Teaching of basic skills
52
29
Management of pupils
9
80%
100%
Unsatisfactory/Poor
N.B These figures have been rounded and may not add up to 100%
OFSTED Annual Report 2002
Excellence and equity: unfortunately deprivation still
remains the most reliable predictor of academic success. Recent
analyses suggest that, as expected, higher performing schools
have a larger proportion of more affluent students; also, that
students of average socio-economic background do better in
these school environments. What is more disturbing is that low
SES students do equally badly in both high and low performing
schools. This long tail of underperformance has characterised
14
the English educational system for too long. It is this that
underlies England’s performance in PISA 2001: the OECD
characterised the English system as being one of high
excellence and low equity as demonstrated in the diagram
below.
The challenge of excellence and equity
560
High excellence
540
High excellence
Finland
Low equity
High equity
U.K.
520
Canada
Japan
U.S.
500
Belgium
480
Germany
Switzerland
Korea
Spain
Poland
460
440
Low excellence
Low excellence
Low equity
High equity
420
60
80
100
120
140
200 – Variance (variance OECD as a whole = 100)
Source: OECD (2001) Knowledge and Skills for Life
So the plateau effect characteristic of centrally driven change,
coupled with these five system wide problems, constitute the
challenge for making every school in England great. This
challenge presents us with a crucial policy dilemma that
provides the focus of the following section.
15
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