6) Michel Laurent Regisse - System Leadership: What if?

System Leadership

What if …….?

Michel Laurent-Régisse

What We Know

Knowledge of those involved. What we bring

to the table

What Is Known

Knowledge from theory, research

and best practice

New Knowledge Knowledge

created together through

collaborative processes

The Three Fields of Knowledge

What if ….?

• ...schools weren't organised in traditional ways?

• ...leadership was pooled across schools?

• ...schools agreed a town-wide / area-wide timetable?

• ...primary and secondary schools merged?

Polestar Educational Consultancy

• Across the country today, the landscape of school leadership is being transformed

• One of the most striking and important trends is leadership beyond a single institution.

• This development is profoundly altering our long-standing models of school leadership.


System Leadership enables the system to:

• spread high quality leadership across several schools • support a school or schools which are 'causing concern' • deliver the 'five outcomes' of the Every Child Matters

agenda • deliver 'all-age' learning • develop 14-19 curriculum provision • develop 'whole town' services • deliver shared services more efficiently; and • resolve headteacher succession issues.


Task 1 – what’s the picture?• Look at Baseboard 1 – please do not write

onto the board!• Think from the perspective of your own

school• Each partner uses a different colour post-it

to add information – identify the leader by first name and role only - Jayne, Deputy, 4 yrs; Wayne, SLT; 1 yr

• What’s the picture? • Where are the gaps?


Task 2 – what’s the picture?• Look at Baseboard 2 – please do not write

onto the board!• Think from the perspective beyond your

own school• Each partner uses a new different colour

post-it to add information – identify the leader by first name and role only - Jayne, Deputy, 4 yrs; Wayne, SLT; 1 yr

• What’s the picture? • Where are the gaps?


Leading more than one school

• Co-leading in partnerships and federations;

• leading schools in close collaboration with other agencies,

• or schools are providing a range of services themselves, giving children access to much more than education - healthcare, for example, and other services.


Why leadership beyond a single institution?

• Why isn’t ‘current practice’ good enough?

• How has thinking about ‘next practice’ advanced?


Virtual schooling

De-schooling

Supported home-

schooling

Go on then! Why isn’t it?Feed forward your thinking for the whole

group

Some issues• Contours and boundaries of current best practices• Establishing a conceptual frame/typology• Models and directions of travel• Identifying leaders and emergent practice sites• Research

– National/International

– Education/Other sectors

• Field trials– What do they look like?

– Propitious sites?


Forms and contours of current best practice


Shared Leadership

User-drivenLeadership

Leadership of more than one school

Multi-agency Leadership

•Leaders & sites of practice•Other sectors•International leaders & sites of practice•Key theorists•Research

A radical new future

• Most radically, perhaps, we are beginning to glimpse a future in which the whole idea of 'school' is re-imagined.

• Headteachers are already guiding education beyond school walls, as ICT opens up new possibilities for schooling that needs no 'school'.


New thinking and new practice"Our proposed new system of governance has three distinct layers - a strategic partnership including a wide range of partners who will be involved in formulating policies and providing strategic direction for the new system, federations of two or more learning centres and individual learning centre committees which involve pupils, parents and community members. The local authority whilst currently providing strategic leadership and direction in supporting the establishment of the new system will have a different role in the future. The new system will be self managing and self directing whilst the local authority will be a strategic commissioner of services with a responsibility for Quality Assurance."


Horizon scanning – four domains of focus

1. Leadership of institutions which deliver or provide access to multiple services.

2. Leadership of programmes which enable personalised and extended opportunities for 14-19.

3. Leadership of 'chains', 'franchises', developed federations or formal networks of schools.

4. Leadership of learning which takes place outside formal institutions (such as supported home-based learning or part-time schooling which involves new technology).


A direction for travel


1. A typology and a range of next practice models that have the potential (from theory, research and field trials) to be transformative

2. A system that is able effectively to utilise and deploy next practice models as appropriate to context, capacities & capabilities.3. The capacity for system

utilisation to: succession manage; make transitions; deploy and appoint; find incentives and drivers; remove disincentives & inhibitors

Next practice

‘Practice that is aware of conventional 'good' practice, its strengths and its limitations; and which explicitly sets out to move it to a new level, or even in some cases radically to change it.’

Valerie Hannon, Director, Innovation Unit


In practice means?

• Conducted by very able, informed practitioners

• Informed by scanning of the environment, to stimulate new approaches

• Directed at serious, contemporary problems

• Not (yet) officially sanctioned and maybe entailing some risk


Entails reviewing

• STRUCTURES

• ROLES

• STRATEGIES

• BEHAVIOURS

• PURPOSES


The flow of the process …


PROBLEM (RE)FRAMING

HORIZON SCANNING

CREATIVE SPACE

FIELD TRIALS

FOCUS on innovative leadership approaches and experiences from other sectorsCHALLENGE our assumptions about leadership beyond a single institution

OPEN thinking about possibilities

Three areas of focus

• Leadership beyond a single institution (with LA, consultancy,NCSL)

• Innovative use of resources(working with several organisations on different aspects of the content)

• Workforce reform and higher level teaching skills (with Training and Development Agency for Schools)


Key challenge - 1Clarity on what Next Practice is for their

site and on their change leadership role– This ranges from understanding Next

Practice as a concept to how it impacts their site.

– Finding their place and role as a leader within a field trial that extends beyond any leader’s formal responsibility has been difficult for many.


Key challenge - 2

Lack of confidence and skill in working with a group of other leaders– The perceived hierarchies within some groups

appear to make it harder for younger/less experienced heads to feel empowered.

– Distributing leadership and working collectively across systems does not appear to come easily to all groups of headteachers.

– Partnerships with local authorities, governing bodies and other agencies appear fragmented or unhelpful in many cases.


Key challenge - 3

Staying Innovative– The pressure of managing the day-to-day

alongside the challenge to innovate and experiment creates a real tension.

– Not all sites have the depth of leadership capacity within their own organisations to free the key leaders up with the necessary time and space to innovate and manage change.


Key challenge - 4Staying compassionate for themselves & others.

– Coaches have picked up a sense of loneliness from some leaders with limited support from within the wider leadership group.

– The Transactional drivers ‘be strong and be perfect’ are very evident in the type of leadership present or expected, resulting in a culture of ‘prove’ rather than ‘improve’

– Having to be seen to be professional at all times can get in the way.

– There appears amongst some to be a reluctance to let go and bring more personality into their leadership.


What helps / hinders? 1Anxiety about being part of emergent processes• A number of people assume they should know

more or be more effective and feel unable to be open about this within the group.

• There seems to be a sense that some people know what's going on and that those who don't know, should. Emergent processes are messy and it helps if the groups can discuss their anxieties and offer reassurance but, more often than not, individuals are not comfortable about discussing their discomfort or concerns openly.


What helps / hinders? 2Unclear role definition within the Next

Practice groups

• Quite often, the energy and commitment towards Next Practice does not appear to be gathered and galvanized. Unclear roles have left people wondering how they can add value. This might be helped by clearer contracting of one another between the group members at the beginning of the pilot and regular check-ins.


What helps / hinders? 3Meeting effectiveness

• Meetings in the educational settings generally appear to be unproductive - either too many people or too much documentation so they end up being just a "report-back" rather than really effective and dynamic.

• Politeness and pleasing seems to be the meeting culture rather than effective support, challenge and decision making.


What helps / hinders? 4

Confidence and self-belief is generally quite low

• The Next Practice work is challenging and requires those leading to be bigger than the day-to-day frustrations and juggling of responsibilities.

• Many do step up and try new behaviours.

• They have found talking to someone external to the system really helpful.


What we know now ….

• People are ‘up for it’• Need to revise some initial assumptions• Moving from ‘good/emerging’ to ‘next’

practice is tough• We must work together to create the

accelerator• The conceptual framework conditions

what you do


Next practice could include

• globalisation - and the resulting requirement for universal proficiency

• the media's pervasive impact on our deep culture

• the Web, especially open source peer-to-peer systems/the ability to convene through the Internet

• an increasing emphasis on values (Who are you? What do you stand for?)

• a huge rise in local affiliation/focus on the local community's needs

• increasing need for security

• changing market opportunities and demands

• exponential growth in user demands for personalised services

• dissolving school boundaries

• new talents and skills.


6) Michel Laurent Regisse - System Leadership: What if?

Education

Transcript of 6) Michel Laurent Regisse - System Leadership: What if?