Sustaining school improvement

A few points to note

Photo by Francois Olwage on Unsplash

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Although I am a Deputy Principal, I don’t write much about school leadership. This is partly because too much is written about it already and partly because I’m not really interested in leadership, at least as it is commonly understood. Typically, leadership advice consists of all-encompassing statements that can never be wrong such as, “You need to hold the line but you must also know when to give ground.” Such advice is horoscopic — its success derives from that proportion of recipients who project their own situation onto it and therefore perceive it to be insightful.

A few years ago, when I was still in London, I completed a National Professional Qualification for Headship. At that time, this was a necessary prerequisite for being appointed as a principal in a government school. As part of this experience, I was assigned a coach, an experienced former principal. However, as we progressed, it became clear we had become hamstrung by what I know realise was constructivist ideology. My coach was not allowed to offer me advice. All she was able to do was ask me questions as I fumbled my way to my own conclusions. The course leaders had worked hard to place me in proximity with someone with the experience to teach me useful things about school leadership and then had forbidden her from doing so.

I am therefore not into that kind of thing. Instead, I will offer a few explicit tips that you can take or leave. Specifically, I am going to address the things school leaders can do to initiate and sustain school improvement. I am leaving out the technical side, for once. It’s pretty clear that I think schools benefit from an explicitly taught knowledge-rich curriculum. You can explore that evidence elsewhere on this newsletter. Instead, this post addresses what you do when you know where you want to go.