[Previous] [Contents] [Next]

Leadership for learning: The challenges of leading in a time of change

Six  Leadership of change and improvement: achieving results

The reality of change means that leaders have to adapt to the changing roles demanded of themselves and their staff.

This section considers some of the key issues surrounding leadership of change and improvement. The reality of change means that leaders have to adapt to the changing roles demanded of themselves and their staff. Leaders have to base their decisions, which affect the potential and life chances of learners, on real evidence. There is seldom a quick fix. We need to have one eye on the futures agenda and the other on educational gain. Leadership of educational establishments is being influenced by the need for integrated working with children’s services which demands a more strategic overview of tasks and working practices.

"Headteachers should demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the principles and practice of leadership and the management of change."²⁹

Leaders are the backbone of any organisation and the guiding and managing of change places very real demands on them. When leaders, staff and learners see these changes impact positively, they become a powerful motivating force to engage in further changes. The demands on leaders are considerable but these are less onerous when they are shared. It is an exciting task to be a leader of an establishment or service and we see from our contacts that there are real satisfactions in taking this role forward well. Other staff too are responding positively to the challenges and satisfactions of being part of a wider team and playing a more strategic role. Heads of establishments are beginning to think about how they can best deploy their staff team in productive ways. Increasingly we are seeing staff playing a key role in chairing and contributing to working groups and making distributive leadership a reality.

Adaptive challenges and technical problems

As the agenda for leadership becomes more unpredictable and complex, new solutions are needed. In one influential model, leadership is characterised as requiring either adaptive or technical approaches. In the latter, both the problem and the solution are clear and lie within the parameters of what we already know. In adaptive work, the problems may be more complex, the solutions are not at all clear and the environment is more complex and unpredictable. These problem demand a different approach and mindset.

The notion of technical and adaptive leadership is useful because it highlights the need to recognise where a more active form of leadership is needed. In those establishments/services that are proactive in developing a leadership culture, we notice that:

• partnerships and team working are encouraged;
• time is protected for professional discussion and sharing best practice on learning and teaching;
• staff are supported to experiment and take measured risks;
• there are clear and effective channels of communication;
• attention is focused on outcomes and impact (what difference is X making?);
• information is disseminated widely; and
• attainment and achievement are prioritised and celebrated.

Where do you focus your energies?

Effective leaders at all levels ensure that there is a clear focus on the activities that impact directly on learners. These are often referred to as high-leverage activities. Richard Elmore reinforces this when he states that, "If you can’t see it in the classroom then it’s not happening."³⁰

What is being emphasised here is that leaders need to be out-and-about so that they know what is happening in learning and teaching. This is because the only way to improve performance is to be where the performance is happening. This sounds easy and simple, but as those in leadership positions know, it is all too easy to get drawn into other things that demand attention. The most effective leaders are able to prioritise tasks, reinforce the direction of travel and focus on what really matters. The following questions can be useful to keep in mind:

• "Where can I intervene to make the most impact on learning?"
• "What are the ‘high-leverage activities’ that will make the most difference?"

Effective leaders at all levels ensure that there is a clear focus on the activities that impact directly on learners.

One of the most significant things any leader can bring to a team or organisation is encouragement to be creative. A culture based on trust, listening and feedback inspires confidence. Recruiting the right kind of people and having these people in the right place also matters. The kind of questions that you might find helpful include:

• What have we done that is creative and innovative and what happened as a result?
• What aspects of the process are worth repeating?
• How do we reward/inhibit creative projects?
• Where do we want to bring creativity into our work?

Change is more liable to be successful and sustained where the following apply.

It is useful to think about the process of change and to begin to build up our understanding of the change process and the pieces of the jigsaw that need to be in place. In the most effective establishments:

• proposed changes are understood in the context of the big picture and are not just ad hoc or reactive;
• key changes are understood across teams and departments;
• communication and consultation are given priority so that leaders retain the confidence of staff;
• strategies are in place to monitor and evaluate the impact of the changes; and
• leaders anticipate the impact of change on individuals and reduce feelings of isolation by keeping in contact.

Inspection evidence indicates that a pattern of small, cumulative technical changes can build up to support and lead cultural change. Changes do not always need to be large. Indeed, sometimes small changes or ‘tweaks’ can and do affect people’s ways of thinking and working and, in turn, the culture of the establishment/service. Some strategies which have been successful in establishments visited have included, for example:

• starting off staff meetings with a brief challenge (e.g. what would you do if you walked down the corridor at lunchtime and saw…?) followed by time to discuss and exchange ideas;
• organising a weekly extended break for staff to meet and for senior staff to make key announcements;
• programming short, regular meetings so that key staff can meet together to review their practice;
• developing and agreeing shared criteria for observing learning and teaching;
• setting aside ten minutes during team meetings for staff to engage in focused conversation on a current issue/topic; and
• reviewing the way that meetings are conducted and sharing points arising from those meetings.

Leadership for learning implies the targeted use of data — without becoming a prisoner to it.

An increasing number of establishments have introduced electronic systems which quickly indicate if learners are on, off or ahead of target. These systems allow all staff to access aspects of the profile and other key staff, such as guidance staff to have password access to more sensitive areas. Profile data can be collated to provide a leadership team with a very clear picture of what is going on and to target resources to areas for improvement. Similarly, department or sector teams can review profile data to see if they are on track and if aspects of the curriculum or of learning and teaching need to be altered. It is important to note that data itself is not enough. Data needs to be used effectively as a basis for dialogue. The more opportunities that staff and learners have to meet and talk with one another about progress, the more chance there is that students at risk of underachieving are identified and supported.

All organisations will produce a wealth of data and information that will be potentially valuable. The best-led establishments will have effective management information systems (MIS) in place because it is recognised that data management is the key to effective performance. Data needs to be updated on a regular basis and used as the basis for discussion. Data collated from learner profiles is a key source of information for staff. This usually includes information relating to assessment, test results, homework/research or assignments. Data then becomes a strategic tool to enable purposeful conversations to take place.

Leading change programmes

Staff leading change programmes need to be aware of where they are in the improvement cycle and what expectations are reasonable at a particular time. Clearly, leaders have to introduce change which is well thought through and not reckless. As indicated previously, these changes do not need to be ground-breaking or dramatic. They do, however, need to be made with an eye on:

• educational gain for learners;
• effective consultation;
• risk assessment in the broadest terms;
• data collection and monitoring to track progress, make necessary adjustments and evaluate outcomes; and
• financial and resource considerations.

School leaders and Quality Improvement Officers play a key role in both supporting and challenging schools to continue to improve. They have a significant contribution to make to the quality assurance of school performance and share responsibilities for staff development, the building of teamwork, collegiate responsibilities and leadership capacity within the organisation at all levels.

In an effort to gain improvement, it is important to strike the right balance between challenge and support. This requires sensitive judgements based on the context an establishment is working in and where it is in the improvement cycle. Just as there is no simple link between changes in provision and achievement, there is not a simple, linear connection between high attainment and excellent learning, teaching and curriculum. A high-performing establishment/service will often have to work just as hard to make a 1% gain in attainment as a lower-attaining establishment which may be looking for a 10% gain. A high-performing establishment in an economically advantaged area, may be evaluated as having good attainment overall rather then very good, because it is not making sufficient value-added improvements given the starting levels of learners.

Establishments in economically deprived areas often need additional support in order to retain staff, create smaller groups or provide specialist provision to support learners and their families. It is often difficult to secure consistency of staff in these circumstances yet vulnerable learners, of whom there will be a higher proportion, are more susceptible to changes in staffing. Decisions need to be made at a strategic level in order to target funding to areas of deprivation. Support may come through various funding streams and result in additional staffing, input from specialist staff such as social workers, health professionals, counsellors or youth work staff. Sometimes whatever the arrangements, enhanced packages are agreed to attract staff to work in economically deprived areas. There needs to be a shared understanding of the issues the establishment is facing, a shared vision of where it wants to get to and a commitment to consistently implement agreed policies and practices.

How do we know that changes are working?

An important change which represents a culture shift is the move towards a focus on outcomes and impact. The outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence are clearly expressed in terms of confident individuals, successful learners, effective contributors and responsible citizens. Outcomes are not simply examination passes, important as these are. The outcomes above signal the key role that education must play in helping children and young people to be prepared for the future’s agenda and to be lifelong learners and resilient young people.

Tracking the impact of initiatives such as sporting programmes, arts and cultural events or outdoor education experiences on the achievements of learners is complex. However, there is a shift in awareness that we need to begin to find effective ways of doing so. Large numbers of learners are achieving well, sometimes extremely well, in these types of activities both within and outwith programmed time. Establishments are looking to broaden their programmes in order to cater more effectively for the all-round talents of learners. Some establishments are developing a database to track students’ involvement in clubs and to target those who have little or no involvement. In one recent example, this was being taken forward very effectively by a business manager liaising with staff leading clubs.

Developing self-evaluation and building capacity for improvement

Within CLD, self-evaluation is becoming increasingly embedded building on the publication of How Good is our Community Learning Development 2?³¹ Within schools, self-evaluation is well established using HGIOS (Second Edition). Future self-evaluation will focus on the new suite of indicators set out in HGIOS (Third Edition)³². The primary purpose of monitoring is to achieve improvement in terms of the learning experience for students and other stakeholders and this is set out in Evaluating Learning and Teaching, which is published as part of the HGIOS (Third Edition) guidance. The process should lead to individuals and groups reflecting on their own performance. It should leave people clear about what needs to be done to further enhance already good practice as well as rectify weaknesses. In Scotland’s colleges, the statutory responsibility of Boards of Management for overseeing strategic direction, taken together with the principal’s role as Accountable Officer, has led to generally well-established procedures for systematic monitoring. Senior management teams and faculty heads/boards monitor progress against departmental and college objectives. The use of quality indicators as a vehicle for taking forward self-evaluation is becoming increasingly established across sectors.

Self-evaluation as an aspect of organisational learning has a crucial role in leading continuous improvement. To have maximum impact, it needs to be embedded into the life of the establishment/service. Activities must be interconnected, rigorous and focused on learning and the progress of young people. Across sectors, possible strategies include:

• closely monitoring the progress of initiatives or changes and their impact on learners;
• sharing best practice within and outwith the organisation through ‘internal or external’ staff visits, team teaching opportunities or collaboration with a neighbouring establishment/service;
• using national indicators of quality to evaluate the impact of changes on learners; and
• adopting initiatives such as mini observations of teaching linked to face to face feedback.

Remember to involve learners in self-evaluation strategies

Effective leadership ensures learners are fully involved in self-evaluation and strategies for continuous improvement. These might include:

• regular reviews of learning targets and agreed next steps in learning;
• profiling and tracking systems which are used to gauge and improve the quality of individual learning;
• student-led learning and teaching forums or committees;
• units or courses on learning to learn;
• responding to learners’ views and promoting their involvement in planning appropriately stimulating activities;
• AifL strategies in schools focused on how to improve learning; and
• guidance systems to help learners plan their future paths.

The potential contributions of learners in providing feedback on the quality of teaching and of their learning in formal and/or informal settings should not be overlooked.

Leading successful change and improvement programmes lies at the heart of continuous improvement. This section has highlighted some examples that have helped to direct the work of establishments/services that are at different stages in their journey towards excellence.

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]