‘Letting go’: the role of headteachers

* This paper is Chapter 5, ‘Letting go’: the role of headteachers’, in Professor Ritchie and Dr Deakin-Crick’s book, Distributing leadership for personalising learning. London. Continuum, pp. 115-126. Published in this online conference with the kind permission of the authors.

5.1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the role of the headteacher as the ‘designated’ (Jackson 2002a) or ‘symbolic’ (Murphy 1993) leader who has a key role in facilitating distributed leadership. In chapter 3 we recognised the complexity of leadership. According to Jackson (2002a)

‘It is as much akin to potential energy as it is to kinetic. Leader-ship is about the latent as well as the currently lived and enacted expressions of leading. As metaphor, it has much in common with the notion of intellectual capital – the potentially banked and available capacity to be drawn, and the interest that can be added! As such it potentially exists very widely within an organization’. (2002:2).

In this chapter we explore how that potential can be released. As we argued earlier, moves to personalising learning require a paradigm shift. It is therefore unsurprising that we also question whether existing school organisation/ management structures are conducive to distributed leadership and personalising learning. We are of a view that they are not and need to be reconceptualised and adapted in many schools to make them fit for the purpose of expanding leadership capacity for personalised learning.

Distributed leadership is not something that operates in one direction – it can be top-down, bottom up or have a lateral manifestation. Enquiry teams, where leadership of the group is collective or rotated are examples of the latter. Distributed leadership can be inhibited by ‘top-down’ structures with regard to aspects of hierarchy and power that they can foster. Structures conducive to distributed leadership are likely to be fluid and flexible and adaptive to the changing context in which they are created and used.

Effective distributed leadership, as we noted in Chapter 3, is invitational rather than imposed. Those without designated titles and, indeed, those with them, need to want to lead and their ‘right to lead’ has also to be granted by followers if it is to be effective. We explore the ‘creative tensions’ that headteachers face and consider the relationship between ‘personal power’ and ‘institutional power’. We will argue that the former needs to exceed the latter for them to maximise the impact of their leadership.

5.2 Headteachers’ roles with regard to distributed leadership

A headteacher’s task according to Jackson is to ‘harness, focus, liberate, empower leadership towards common purposes’. They do this through ‘creating the spaces, the contexts and the opportunities for expansion, enhancement and growth amongst all’ (2002:2). Senge (1990) suggested that in ‘learning organisations’ leaders should leave their status at the door. Jackson reminds us that in hierarchical structures it is necessary for others to leave the designated leader’s status at the door too (Jackson 2002a:3).

Headteachers may seek to distribute leadership for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. These may be strategic, pragmatic, opportunistic, incremental or cultural (MacBeath et al 2004b). We consider the latter to be essential for sustained change to result from distributing leadership.

In Chapter 3, based on one of our research studies, we identified characteristics of heads in schools where distributed leadership was judged to be embedded. These have resonance with some of Murphy’s (1993) metaphors of leaders as social and organisational architects. Head teachers have to design (with others) and implement the organisational structures that will support the engagement of others in leadership as well as structures that are conducive to personalised learning – a complex task, which is likely to remain ‘work in progress’ given the constantly changing context in which schools operate.

We noted that leaders should ‘live out their values’ in their professional lives – as both leader and (where appropriate) as follower or team member – this is where the personal ‘power’ of the head needs to be to the fore. This role modelling as a means of building the capacity of others also requires them to live out their professional lives as ‘lead learners’. They need to make their commitment to and understanding of their own learning explicit. Below, we discuss further the notion of ‘headteacher as learner’ and consider the idea of seeing learning and leadership as inextricably related.

Release of leadership potential in others clearly has an interpersonal dimension – it needs facilitating, nurturing and support, again focusing on the personal as opposed to institutional dimensions of the role. We regard coaching as an effective process for doing this and return to it later in this chapter. It requires and in turn supports the creation of ‘trusting’ relationships and the co-construction of shared values and sense of purpose. Dialogue is essential for providing opportunities for exploring values and the moral imperative of the school’s endeavours. It also allows the leader to hold others accountable to the explicit and shared values of the school with regard, for example, to personalised learning.

Allowing others to take fuller responsibility for significant school developments can feel threatening to the designated leader, who is ultimately responsible for the school. Creating structures conducive to distributed leadership and giving up the ‘power’ that comes with traditional hierarchical models of leadership involves taking risks and requires a degree of moral courage. As already noted, though, the head’s success in ‘letting go’ (Senge et al 2004) is dependent on others allowing this to happen. This is not helped by traditional views of headteachers which involve what might be seen as the ‘singular identity’ model of school leader and the implications this has for others’ dependency on the one leader. For these, and other reasons, letting go is potentially the hardest part of distributing leadership for some heads.

5.2 Headteachers’ learning journeys

We have already made it clear that, for us, learning and leadership are related in complex but essential ways – they are interdependent. A good leader needs to be a good learner and a good learner is likely to have more potential to be an effective leader than someone less open to learning.

In Chapter 4, we introduced the metaphor of learning journeys. Headteachers learning journeys have often been long and involved working in various roles and in varying contexts.

The NCSL recognises various stages in headteachers’ learning journeys including:

• emergent leadership - when a teacher is beginning to take on management and leadership responsibilities and is building personal leadership capacity
• established leadership - comprising assistant and deputy heads who are experienced leaders. During this phase, institutional dimensions become more significant although building personal capacity remains vital.
• entry to headship - including a teacher's preparation for and induction into the senior post in a school. This is possibly the most challenging stage and when gaps in personal capacity can be exposed and the institutional context and constraints can dominate.
• advanced leadership - the stage at which school leaders look to widen their experience, to refresh themselves and to update their skills. It is heads in this stage, who because of changes in schooling in the last few years, are the ones having to re-evaluate their understanding of leadership and adopt new approaches.
• consultant leadership - when an able and experienced leader is ready to put something back into the profession by taking on training, mentoring or inspection. This stage receives least attention in the context of this book.

We suggest that a hallmark of strong and effective leaders is their readiness to recognise that the more they know the more they need to know. Different stages provide differing opportunities to learn and require different outcomes, because the purposes will be different. An advanced or consultant leader, as well as perhaps already knowing much more about the structures, processes, routines and procedures of management than an emergent leader, might also have acquired the mental space to develop a real fascination for the personal elements of learning and leadership that reside in the uniqueness of individuals and their responses to change, the unpredictability of moments and the insights they offer. Headteachers’ learning is often ad hoc and, for some, rarely made explicit. The learning may be through experience (reflection ‘in’ or ‘on’ action (Schon 1983)) and through dialogue. Learning through doing the job and through the ongoing conversations that are part of every head’s daily life, with fellow professionals, young people, their parents and carers and others provide professional lifelong active learning. In particular, it is through these learning conversations that some of the most important personal qualities of heads come to the fore – for example, active and open-ended listening. In other words, a leader can ‘distribute’ the power of personalised learning by involving and engaging others in the demonstration of a very personal kind of critical curiosity.

If headteachers are to provide role models for others as lead learners they need to acknowledge and maximise the range of learning opportunities that they have. Such opportunities can be informal or formal, explicit or implicit, individual or social, shallow or deep, facilitated or self-led, short-term or long-term. Formal settings, with scope for ‘reflection on action’, include:

• teaching and interactions with pupils;
• monitoring / observation of colleagues;
• coaching / mentoring of colleagues;
• in school collaboration with staff in planning /team contexts;
• staff development – school or centred based;
• formal professional development, eg NCSL programmes / HEI provision;
• networks and partnerships;
• international visits;
• school self-evaluation and dialogue with school improvement partners;
• school-based enquiries.

Informal opportunities, such as those presented by (apparently) unplanned conversations and ‘off-duty’ social discourse can be more powerful, by being sensed as ‘natural’ and received as authentic , without any ‘palpable design’ upon the ‘listener’..

It is through all these interactions, particularly those that involve dialogue with other professionals within and beyond the school that the headteachers’ sense of direction and understanding of the moral purpose of their professional lives emerge and are refined. Nothing is more likely to inspire and engage colleagues in their own leadership development than discovering they can play an active and significant part in the learning journey of their headteacher.

One of us has been working with networks of headteachers for some years with the explicit aim of fostering their deep learning to improve their leadership and, consequently, to impact on the quality of learning and teaching in their schools. Several of these groups have addressed improvements related to what is now embraced within personalising learning such as curriculum development, assessment for learning, innovative use of ICT. These have included long standing networks of heads (a small schools group that has been meeting for six years); funded projects with diverse networks of heads focusing on school-based enquiries (e.g. Ritchie and Ikin 1999) and smaller learning sets with specific foci (Ritchie 2006 - BriLL). The contribution of these developments to school self-evaluation and the perceived benefits to participants have been discussed elsewhere (Ritchie 2007b).

Some of the most difficult moments on a learning journey involve managing apparently irreconcilable tensions. An obvious example, faced by most headteachers at some time, is the tension between the interests of the school community and those of an individual member whose behaviour and attitudes seriously threaten to undermine it. Parker J Palmer describes a learning opportunity designed to help with such moments. It is based on the four hundred year-old Quaker practice called a ‘Clearness Committee’, in which colleagues ‘think together’, asking only ‘open, honest questions’, forming ‘personal connections’ and using ‘blame-free, truth-telling zones’ to help each other to become ‘more productive in general and more resilient in a crisis’ (Palmer 2004). There are some parallels here to learning sets.

5.3 Heateachers’ learning selves

Headteachers’ learning, like that of young people, is influenced by many factors, including how well they know themselves - and ‘the identity’ they construct for themselves as learners. All learners have ‘life narratives’ that impact on their learning and leadership capacity and biographical factors can have both constructive and inhibiting influences. An effective leader and learner is aware of these and seeks to minimise the inhibiting and maximise the positive drivers that are a consequence of previous experiences.

Some leaders are confident enough of their identity as learners to share it with others. Examples, some from the networks discussed above, include heads who share specific aspects of themselves as learners, such as the head who learnt to play the bagpipes and shared, regularly in assemblies, progress made and barriers to his learning. Whilst playing the bagpipes has no direct benefit to the head’s leadership, in a ‘learning-centred’ school it allowed him to role model himself as a learner and how seriously he was taking his learning. It also illustrated how difficult learning can sometimes be and modelled resilience, a critical aspect of effective learning. Another kept a public learning journal in the staff room and sought to record daily what he had learnt from his professional activity. Others shared progress on the masters or doctorate research. These are ways in which heads provide excellent role-models as ‘lead learners’. In one school, featured by one of us in another publication (Ritchie 2006), the head, Wendy Davey, goes as far as putting ‘Head Learner’ on her door and makes her role as lead learner in the school explicit symbolically and through her behaviours and engagement with other learners, young and old.

There are lessons here for those who work with heads to support their development - dialogues between heads and with others who facilitate their learning can, and perhaps should, focus on how the ’learning heads’ see themselves.

Headteachers’ learning usually involves a social context and their learning is enhanced or inhibited by relationships. Ideally, these will be genuine, ‘pedagogic relationships’ that foster deep learning – for example in a mentoring relationship, where a more experienced head mentors one new to the role, or an HE tutor supports a headteacher in the context of research for an MA. However, genuine pedagogic relationships and learning conversations do not just happen – they need to be encouraged and require commitment and effort. They require, in fact, the same qualities that we identified in Chapter 2 as characterising all effective learning relationships: trust, affirmation and challenge. Without trust, it is hard to take the risk of rising to challenge. Without affirmation, it is hard to sustain the effort of responding to challenge. Without challenge, there is little opportunity to gain affirmation or deepen trust. One of the benefits of facilitated networks, that their participants have regularly cited, is that the anticipation of regular testing of their learning against the critical friendship of detached fellow professionals keeps them focused and engaged. Collaborative learning within schools can be seen as a prerequisite of distributed leadership and expanding leadership capacity. The headteacher who is intent upon expanding leadership capacity will, at times, be facilitating that sort of collaborative learning and at other times modelling learning as ‘just another’ member of the team, or as a follower. In this way, the cultivation of professional learning relationships can develop into the culture of a learning community.

The concept of ‘critical friendship’ becomes important here in thinking about the way in which professionals facilitate each other’s learning. It signifies a relationship that is characterised by trust, affirmation and challenge in which a tacit dissatisfaction with the status quo takes nothing away from colleagues’ mutual regard and implies that a shared, restless sense of the purpose of improvement has become at least as important as recognising and celebrating achievement.

Headteachers, like many educational professionals, tend towards ‘action learning’ sometimes based on school-based enquiry methods. Most of the networking initiatives mentioned above engaged the heads in such enquiries, drawing on action research approaches (Ritchie 2006). Essentially the process is a cyclical one in which heads identify a concern (perhaps where their values are ‘denied in action’); plan systematically to improve the situation; implement the changes and collect evidence of its impact; evaluate that impact and consider next steps. It involves reflection on, not merely in action and is what Schon (1983) describes as ‘double loop learning’.

The approaches described provide a model of ‘demand-led’ learning since the foci for enquiries are under the control of the learner – the learning is facilitated but essentially gives the individual autonomy. This is certainly personalised learning for leaders.

These learning journeys can be related as ‘stories’ in order for the learning to be shared with others and, perhaps, enhanced through communication and co-creation of the narrative. Revisiting learning to share it through ‘storying’ with others can lead to deeper learning through reflection and reflexivity. One group of heads with which one of us worked disseminated their learning through a publication entitled ‘Telling Tales of School Improvement’ (Ritchie and Ikin 1999). The title reinforces they way in which their journeys were being shared through stories aimed at being significant for others. They became the way in which headteachers could share with others answers to the questions of how and why they lead in the way they do and how that changed over time. Through their stories and the enquiries and discussion within the network that led to them, they were talking through their values and aspirations – sharing and understanding their learning and leading selves.

5.4 Headteachers’ personal qualities, values, attitudes and dispositions

The nature of personal qualities needed for headship are the subject of considerable literature. It is worth mentioning again how attracted we are to the list (quoted in Chapter 3 on page xx) proposed by Woods (2002) in her research on what she described as ‘enchanted headteachers’.

A more analytical list of qualities comes from Hey McBer, and this has been influential in informing NCSL leadership programmes and implies a broader view but one, perhaps, less focused on the personal and human-centred qualities of school leaders.

Figure 5. 1: Leadership characteristics Hobby, R (2001) Teacher effectiveness and leadership a framework for lifelong learning Primary Leadership Paper 3. (June). (pp. 11-12). National Association of Head Teachers

The danger of such prescriptions is that aspiring leaders might reasonably feel that they could never match up to them. That is another reason for emphasising the dynamic nature of the learning story in leadership development. Just as Douglas Barnes (1975) says in relation to teaching, it is not much use asking people ‘to arrive without having travelled’.

In order to underline the relationship between leadership and learning that is so fundamental to our purpose in this book, we propose another framework for exploring headteachers’ (and other leaders’) dispositions to learning and leadership that we referred to in Chapter 2.(Deakin Crick 2006). Figure 5.2 describes the seven dimensions of Learning Power as they were adapted by a group of heads involved in the Bristol Leaders of Learning (BriLL) Project (Ritchie 2006). They were used to support and strengthen leaders in developing their own values, dispositions and attitudes for learning in the context of leading change:

Figure 5.2: Learning / Leadership dispositions

We believe that such frameworks as those above are helpful for heads in self-evaluating their own work as leaders. However, of more significance to the way in which they behave and lead are the values that underpin their practice – whether these are implicit (as is often the case) or explicit. It is through self-reflection and analysis of their core values that headteachers come to understand their own professional vision and their ‘personally-valued competencies’. These may, or may not, be congruent with the publicly assessed and valued knowledge and know-how included in the National Standards for Headteachers (DfES 2004).

5.5 Headteachers and relationships

It could be said that Headteachers are ultimately responsible for modelling and establishing the quality and nature of the learning relationships they wish to characterise their school community. The most important of these relationships is between students and the professionals who work most closely with them and this of course is of critical importance with vulnerable learners (arguably all or most, at some time in their stories). In a piece of empirical research undertaken by one of us with the RSA, a particular methodology for personalised learning was trialled with a group of ‘hard-to-reach’ learners, not in employment, education or training, some of whom were in a young offenders’ institution. This methodology, which started with personal choice and used the ‘ELLI Dimensions’ to ‘scaffold’ the development of learning power though a six-week personal enquiry project, produced some dramatic improvements in the learning power, confidence and attitudes to learning of the young participants. One of the key findings concerned the nature of their relationship with the researcher, who adopted the position of a ‘learning guide’ rather than teacher. What became clear was that learning and creativity flourish where there is a dynamic adaptability in the balance between freedom and structure (or constraint). The ‘scaffolding’ of learning, through structure, guidance and ‘rules’ needed to be ‘stretched’ or ‘tightened’ or even removed altogether sometimes, in response to the changing capacity of the learners to ‘grow’ in confidence, responsibility and autonomy. This required the ‘learning guide’ to know and observe these changing personal needs and dispositions acutely and, most importantly, to be primarily committed ‘to the life-narratives of the learners’, rather than to a set of learning objectives devised on their behalf (Milner 2006).

What this means, in turn, is that Headteachers need to recruit people to their staff who are capable of relating to young people in this way. Just as the hardest part of distributing leadership for some heads may be the ‘letting go’ of power or control, so the most difficult thing about personalising learning for many teachers will be the ‘opening up’ of learning boundaries and continual review of the balance between structure and freedom for each individual learner, in the context of an effective, trusting relationship. The equivalent task for the Head is to manage the dynamic tension between the desire to confer and support autonomy, on one hand, and the moral imperative to require professionals responsible for leading learning to grow (and even change) in their capacity to meet these demands of personalisation. This is what we mean by suggesting that there is a single ‘continuum’ linking personalised learning with distributed leadership: some of the same key themes are apparent, whether we are thinking about our responsibility for managing one’s own learning and growth, or the learning of a group of young people, or the vision, improvement and possible transformation of a school. Just as the ‘learning guide’ needs to be committed to the ‘life narratives’ of the learners, so a head will need to be committed to the ‘life narrative of the school and its wider community’.

Successful headteachers are good at their own relationships (within and outside the school) and good at creating the conditions for effective learning relationships to grow and flourish.

5.6 Headteachers’ contributions to school ethos and culture

Research suggests, unsurprisingly, that that school cultures most conducive to distributed leadership are those which are fully collaborative. Headteachers’, in many ways, hold the key unlocking such cultures. They are the ones who create the opportunities for colleagues to work together. It is through their example that strong personal and professional relationships can be developed. They can help foster commonly held social and moral intentions. In fully collaborative cultures, failures and uncertainty are not protected and defended but shared and discussed – again heads can model this and facilitate the discussion. Finally they can seek to ensure that individuals and groups are simultaneously and inherently valued. In the first case study below we see an example of a head committed to and creating such a culture.

Heads can, in some situations, and sometimes with the best intentions end up creating or supporting less effective cultures (which Day et al (2003) refer to as ‘cultures of connection’). These can be described as ‘balkanisation’ (where separate and competing groups work against each other’s interests), ‘comfortable collaboration’ (where every one gets on and is involved but there is a lack of reflection and critical self-evaluation) or ‘contrived collegiality’ (where all the systems and paperwork is in place but there is little ownership or empowerment). Successful heads are aware of the limitations of such cultures and aim for the ‘culture of integration’ discussed as ‘fully collaborative’ above.

Another dimension of ethos and culture that is important for both distributed leadership and personalising learning is ‘learning-centredness’, introduced in Chapter 2. Here the head recognises the importance of role-modelling, dialogue and monitoring.

School ethos and climate is also related to approaches to behaviour management as these impact directly on learning. Personalised learning is an unobtainable goal if the school cannot sort out pupil behaviour. Small offers a useful disciplinary taxonomy to help heads and teachers understand the journey towards effective behaviour management. He offers a ‘typology’ of discipline often found in schools, ranging from ‘despotic’ at the most extreme and externalised end of the spectrum, to ‘self-discipline’ at the other end, which comes ‘from within’ and is therefore more likely to be self-perpetuating and less likely to be dependent.

Figure 5.3: Typology of Discipline Types

It is our contention that the kinds of discipline towards the ‘bottom’ of the typology, functional discipline arising out of an activity to be ‘mastered’ – of which learning is a good example - and self-discipline, arising from the desire for ‘self-actualisation’ are more self-sustaining and less dependent on application by those in authority. When under threat, individuals and organisations understandably tend to resort to the types of discipline nearer the ‘top’ of the scale, which risks initiating a spiral of decline as discipline becomes more and more dependent upon power and intervention ‘from above’. The kind of behaviour management often referred to as ‘fire-fighting’ can sometimes be a symptom, or ‘warning bell’ of such decline.

What the leader of a ‘learning organisation’ seeks, for all, is the development of personal power, rather than institutional power. By this, we mean that the power to learn comes from within, from the drive to ‘become more fully who we really are’ and that it is also this kind of power that persuades others to accept our influence and our leadership. Institutional power, which invokes legal, constitutional or functional authority, such as the power to administer exclusion or require silence in an exam or fire practice, is sometimes essential, but carries with it the risk of increasing dependency, especially when over-used or abused.

In the contribution heads make to fostering appropriate culture, ethos and climate we see both personal and institutional power operating again. The head who seeks to influence through personal rather than institutional power is, in our view, more likely to create sustainable change.

5.9 Headteachers as gatekeepers to personalising learning.

If we re-visit the gateways to personalising learning that Hargreaves suggested and which we discussed in Chapter 2, we can see each of these is influenced by the role of the head and, in that sense, the head becomes the gate keeper, although we would argue, in promoting distributed leadership, the head is merely opening some of these gates and allowing others to lead the journey down particular pathways.

• Curriculum
• Assessment for learning
• Learning how to learn
• New technologies for learning
• Work force development
• Mentoring and coaching
• School design and organisation
• Student voice

Within each of these areas, and others, headteachers find themselves dealing with complexity and the tension between innovation and continuity. There are other ‘creative tensions’ to manage, too. We have noted the suggestion of Ronnie Woods that an ‘enchanted head’ might see herself as ‘nothing special’, but we also know that she will adopt a figurehead role when it is called for and accept being ‘looked up to’ by staff and students alike. It is most often around power issues that tensions are found. The extent to which these tensions end up being ‘creative’, leading to innovative ideas and developments which benefit young people, will often depend upon a head teacher’s ability to ‘hold things in tension’ which could, if allowed to, become polarising ideas and tendencies. For instance, nothing symbolises the head’s position as ‘gate-keeper’ more tangibly than the power to exclude a student. The weighing of the interests of an individual against those of the wider community – which have been threatened by the attitude or behaviour of the individual – is amongst the most challenging judgements required by a school leader. A head who can turn such moments into opportunities for articulating the moral dilemma, inviting others to join in ‘holding the tension’ before rushing to judgement, is modelling moral courage and developing leadership capacity in the wider team.

The case studies below explore how two headteachers, one primary and one secondary, have set about opening all of the gateways and managing the creative tensions involved in innovations designed to give young people a genuinely personalised experience of learning.

5.8 Case studies

Case Study 1: Waycroft Primary School

Waycroft provides a school where distributed leadership and personalising learning have been the goal for sometime and where the results of that synergy are exemplified. When Ofsted inspected Waycroft in 2007, the outcome was extraordinary – the school was described as ‘remarkable in every respect’. The word ‘outstanding’ was used 15 times in the five-page report and is the rating given for all 27 criteria used in the inspection. According to the report, the school ‘exemplifies all that is best in primary education’. With regard to leadership and the extent to which it is distributed, the inspector described it as outstanding from ‘top to bottom’ which implies a hierarchical structure that does not in reality exist. The headteacher ‘ensures that everyone has the opportunity, self-confidence and support to make a positive contribution to the management (sic) of the school, and is very good at getting the best out of all his colleagues’.

The achievements of the pupils, who come from ’mid-twentieth century housing estates’, are ‘exceptionally high’ and their ‘outstanding personal development and well-being are a tribute to the high priority the school gives to this area’. ‘Pupils develop a wonderful love of learning … and are developing an outstanding sense of being good citizens and contributing to community life.

Simon Rowe has been headteacher at Waycroft Primary School in Bristol for eight years. Waycroft was formed from the amalgamation of separate infant and junior schools when he took over. It currently has approximately 450 pupils in 14 classes and a nursery. The school is successful in terms of its results (within top 5%) but is in an area where some parents, according to Simon, tend not to value lifelong learning and have low aspirations for their offspring.

He is a committed and enthusiastic school leader who welcomes visitors and enjoys the opportunity to talk about his values, the schools achievements and the challenges he faces. He constantly refers to the extent to which everyone is valued in his school and reinforces any success being the success of all not of individuals.

Simon’s learning journey as a school leader involved previous headships in small rural schools and that has had significance influence on his approach to personalising learning – he has sought in his phrase ‘ to develop a ‘small school ethos’ in the larger school setting of Waycroft’. This included his aspiration for pupils to be known well by teachers and other staff so that their individual needs can be fully understood and addressed – so that their learning can be personalised.

The success of distributed leadership at Waycroft is underpinned by the professional relationship that Simon has established and that exist across all staff as a result of his influence. He values those relationships and invests time and energy in them as is evident to anyone who has the opportunity to be shown around the school.

Additionally, the school’s structure and organisation are set up to support distributed leadership. There are two tiers of formal structure – ‘tier one’ is the head, deputy and assistant head. ‘Tier two’ involves eight other team leaders (Foundation, Key Stage One, Lower Key Stage Two, Upper Key Stage Two, , Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) and core Subject Leaders) who have responsibilities that include performance management of staff. Tier 1 meets every Friday afternoon to review the week and plan for the next, including Monday’s staff meeting. Tier 2 meets formally approximately 6 times a year. Team leaders are explicitly encouraged to provide leadership opportunities for others to take a lead on particular areas or at particular times (for example an Newly Qualified Teacher took responsibility for an In-Service day that focused on ensuring Design and Technology addressed children’s experience and interests, which led to a revision of the Design and Technology Scheme of Work). So, although a hierarchical organisation is evident, the staff feel empowered and valued, which motivates them to take up opportunities available. Non teaching staff are equally valued at Waycroft and the impact of distributed leadership is evident in their activities – for example lunchtime supervisors are in teams with ‘play leaders’. Simon regards the organisation of the school office as another essential part of effective school operation – he sees the efficiency of that allowing him more time to concentrate on his leadership role.

Another of Simon’s key drivers has been the need for consistency across the school, which, for him, is fostered by shared leadership: policies are developed by teams and negotiated, so staff are clear about what should happen, and then everyone is encouraged to take shared responsibility for making it happen. This involves all adults taking responsibility for consistency with all learners – in the classroom and beyond. This was particularly important after the amalgamation and has become a strength of the school according to Ofsted.

Celebrating achievement is important at Waycroft and there is an explicit ‘responding to children’s work’ policy that covers the whole continuum from ‘smiles’ to formal prizes (including lots of trophies for various areas – academic and non-academic). The policy supports the school’s desire to develop further their approaches to ‘assessment for learning’. This has led to what Ofsted described as ‘exemplary marking, assessment and target-setting’. The use of assessment data is another dimension of this. The school aims for a minimum of two-thirds of a National Curriculum level improvement for each pupil every year. There is a sophisticated tracking system in place to identify pupils at risk of not reaching their targets. This system is the responsibility of the deputy head who has an assessment brief. She liaises with the SENCO to plan specific intervention strategies for specific pupils. This is another way, according to Simon, of applying the small school ethos in a systematic way. This involves good management (for example, the tracking system) as well as good leadership (vision and strategic thinking). Behaviour is also monitored systematically and this is something that involves all adults (including the large teams of lunchtime supervisors and teaching assistants) using a simple proforma. In a large primary school, a pupil could be interacting with five or six adults in the school day and the tracking system aims to ensure a good flow of communication. The approach to behaviour is based on ‘golden rules’ and these form the basis of the tracking. Simon analyses the outcomes of this process every Friday and follows up with parents and class teachers any concerns where children’s behaviours are acting as blocks to their learning. However, the overall success of this is not just a result of the systems being in place: the key to the success of the systems is, once again, the quality of relationships. Simon’s relationships with young people – as with staff - lead to them feeling personally valued and motivated to improve. Again, it is ‘personal power’ working in tandem with ‘institutional power’ that makes the difference here.

Another gateway to personalised learning, learning to learn, has been a focus of recent developments at the school. They have introduced ‘Building Learning Power’ (BLP) (Claxton 2002) through a staff development programme (led by Tier 1). This is an early formulation taken from the research that ultimately led to the ELLI learning power dimensions. According to Simon, it is now being consistently used across the school. In particular, the language of learning associated with BLP, permeates various aspects of the school’s work. It forms the basis, for example, of the reward system, planning and monitoring of lessons, on-line quizzes etc. Simon has been careful to use the language of learning accurately and consistently in assemblies and other contexts to provide a role model for staff and pupils. Teachers were supported through INSET activities in understanding their coaching role with pupils and used case studies from other schools to discuss and develop their understanding of issues related to changing practice to make them more ‘learning-centred’. Simon now finds parents, as well as staff and pupils, talking the same learning language. This has helped parents, according to Simon, understand and value learning more. At the foundation stage, pictures have been used to make the ‘language’ accessible. ‘Super heroes’ or characters to support children’s understanding such as ‘Resili Ant’ (Resilience) and ‘Mr Mirror’ (Reflectiveness) have been created and modelled to help children ‘image’ some of the ‘learning muscles’ that they are developing. Ofsted saw the results and described the pupils’ ‘wonderful love for learning’. By year 6 they ‘know in detail what they have to do to learn best in any situation’.

To further raise pupil and parent aspirations, the school promotes the previous achievement of ex-pupils through displays and local media coverage.

Simon considers professional relationships within the school to be good. The staffing situation is a very stable and there is little turn over. Many teachers have had differing responsibilities over the time they have been at Waycroft and succession planning and retention is seen as important and fostered through giving colleagues a varity of challenge and responsibility. Subject leaders have opportunities for classroom observations of colleagues which have coaching dimensions – observations have a focus (perhaps on an aspect of learning) and feedback is offered in ways that are intended to be formative and lead to further development. A standard feedback pro-forma is used to allow Simon to monitor all such observations. Performance management is not seen as ‘threatening’ at Waycroft as staff, according to Simon, welcome the opportunities involved in such monitoring. He considers the school to have a culture of openness in which professional dialogue is common and valued.

Subject leadership was identified by Ofsted in 2002 as in need of further development. Subject leaders now have clear guidance on the nature of their role and tasks they should be completing that lists things like: lesson observations; long term planning; pupil conferencing (subject leaders meet with a small group of pupils); presentations to governors; SAT analysis; policy update. Evidence files are compiled to support the school self-evaluation form (SEF) and Ofsted inspections – and proved their worth in the recent inspection.

Personalising learning through curriculum approaches at Waycroft pre-date the national driver for personalised learning. A broad and balanced curriculum that engages all pupils has been Simon’s goal since he arrived at Waycroft. He claims they have never placed undue focus on the core subjects at the expense of time given to foundation subjects. As an ex-PE teacher he believes that pupil engagement results from a varied and flexible curriculum. He has sought to appoint staff who are good classroom teachers and who have wide ranging interests. He encourages them to take risks in their planning and teaching and sees evidence of this enriching pupils’ learning experiences. There are several musicians, sports enthusiasts and creative artists on the staff. He has never encouraged ‘cramming for SATs’ and says that , even in the run up to SATs, Year six students are being offered a broad curriculum in which creativity and enjoyment is valued. He is keen to ensure children want to come to school and that school provides them with broad experiences to engage them – whether that is traditional lessons or extra-curricula activity. The school’s planning is available on the school intranet system to foster improved subject links – subject leaders can easily access planning in other subjects to ensure continuity and progression. The school has always organised cross-curriula and specialist weeks such as an ‘international week’ or ‘science week’ during which the whole school engages with the particular theme in place of the traditional curriculum. These events provide opportunities for pupils to pursue activities that particularly interest them and opportunities for more pupil-directed and independent learning. Ofsted reported that it is ‘an exceptionally high quality curriculum which grabs the imagination of all pupils’.

Simon and his colleagues work hard at addressing pupils special education needs, through schemes such as Reading Recovery (the SENCO is an expert in this), which has been well established at Waycroft for eight years. Ofsted said ‘outstanding progress was made by pupils with learning difficulties’. Reading Recovery work is now supported with funding from a KPMG grant. He sees approaches such as this benefiting all pupils in an inclusive way as they influence the quality of teaching in ways that go beyond the support offered for individual pupils by the SENCO. Simon’s own learning through international links was significant in this area since he saw good use being made of Reading Recovery on a British-Council funded visit to New Zealand some years ago.

Another of Hargreaves personalised learning gateways, ‘student voice’, is evident at Waycroft. There is a well-established school council which addresses learning issues as well as others – for example the development of Building Learning Power was discussed with them at the planning stage and they are used to monitor how new developments are going. Personalised learning is also enhanced by the house system – there are four houses with house captains and vice-captains which offers another ‘home’ for pupils and provides other ways to support the ‘small school ethos’ in which pupils feel ‘known’ and ‘valued’. There are house ‘assemblies’ (for KS1 & 2) which are relatively small meetings and organised as circle times. Simon will often encourage all pupils to talk to house captains about issues he is raising if they would like to feedback to him or other staff concerns that they have. Again, personal relationship and dialogue are crucial – the existence of the systems alone is not enough.

Learning is supported through extensive use of new technologies – there are two lap-top suites, a PC suite as well as PCs and internet connections in all classes. An Information and Communications Technology (ICT) specialist teaches all classes twice a week and makes sure every pupil works individually (as opposed to working in a pair or group) at least once every three weeks in these specialist lessons – this was introduced when it became clear some pupils were avoiding keyboard activity and not developing appropriate skills through group or paired work. There are other ICT opportunities offered – for example a specific Government-funded ‘girls-focused’ ICT group. The school employs as part-time technician to support ICT work.

Another approach to fostering more personalised learning at Waycroft has involved the extensive development of the library as a learning resource area – Simon’s thinking with regard to this was influenced by a trip he took to look at schools in Denver. Waycroft employs a part-time, enthusiastic, librarian who has helped turn the library area into a stimulating space that children are encouraged to use and which fosters their independence and engagement with texts. ICT is an important part of the centre. The use of resources is monitored electronically so that the school can analyse, for example, what Y6 boys are accessing (currently, interestingly, more books than Y6 girls).

Simon’s ‘worry list’ is currently dominated by issues related to ‘parenting’ and the school’s role in the community in the context of the Every Child Matters and Extended Schools. He worries that schools are being asked to do too much and that there are a small minority of parents in each class who are reluctant to engage constructively with the school. Schools cannot succeed in isolation and parental responsibility can not be absolved and given to schools. He is keen to engage with parents more regularly and new facilities are being developed to move this forward.

Case Study 2: St John’s School and Community College

Patrick Hazlewood has been Head of St John’s Marlborough since 1996. It is his second headship. Since 1999, he has worked with the RSA on the ‘opening Minds’ curriculum project – ‘Education for the 21st Century’ – which ‘places the learner at the centre of educational endeavour and redefines the role of the teacher’.

St Johns is - and has been for a long time – a large, happy, successful secondary school with a growing sixth form and a good reputation in its community: a rural market town and outlying villages set in countryside of outstanding natural beauty.

In 2000, the school was judged by OFSTED to be ‘very effective’. For Patrick, all the positive feedback from this was counterbalanced by the first stirrings of concern. He saw that the school was achieving success largely through the overwork of staff and the compliance of children. A plateau had been reached. Performance, on this basis, would be hard to sustain and could only really go down. It was time for radical reform.

The reforms at St John’s have attracted widespread attention since then, not because they offer a recipe for success but because they tell a story about what it means and costs to have a vision of education for the time we live in, to ask some of the hard questions raised by it and to set about making it a reality.

The vision, in a nutshell, sounds like this. It is Patrick’s view that, through no fault of their own, schools began to get things badly wrong during the 1990’s. There was a lack of deep and rigorous thought about what they were actually for. There was an expansion of the powers of such agencies as examination boards, the QCA, the Specialist Colleges Trust, all stimulating initiatives and developing a culture of accountability. However much we might agree with their ultimate goal, this ended up creating a ‘concentricity of busyness’, when what was needed was the space for creative people to ask ‘What really matters here?’ For Patrick, what really mattered was acknowledging and upholding each child’s responsibility for accessing the learning from which she could most benefit. No one else has the divine right to say what that child’s curriculum should consist of. “Every day that a child spends with us, matters. We cannot afford to debilitate her learning capacity, ever! There will always be different views of what is right for her, so the answer is to put her at the centre and ask her to take real, active responsibility for taking her learning forward.”

What flowed from this learner-centred philosophy amounts to a radical re-design of a ‘learning organisation’. The management structures had already been changed to underline the concept of collegiality, based on the understanding that the most important relationships in the school were those between teacher and child. The collegial theme was strengthened by all staff, including support staff, being involved in a series of twilight seminars through which the hard questions were addressed together, about the nature of a curriculum for the 21st century and how it could be implemented. The shift in ethos improved students’ attitudes, results and the receptiveness of everyone to change. Into this new climate, in 2001 the ‘Integrated Curriculum’ was introduced into Year 7 as a pilot project. In 2003 it ceased to be a ‘pilot’ and was called ‘The Alternative Curriculum’ and by 2005 it was subsumed into the school’s Key Stage 3 curriculum model.

There is not the space here to describe the new curriculum in detail, but it is worth describing some key features. Firstly, it was designed around six ‘competencies’ needed for survival and success:

• Numeracy and problem solving
• Literacy and communication
• Organising information
• Organising self and relating to people
• Citizenship
• Emotional intelligence and empathy.

These formed the framework for self-assessment, monitoring and review of progress.

It was clear that this thinking was cutting across subject boundaries, so two more radical changes followed to the way the curriculum was organised: firstly, it was delivered to each Year 7 teaching group by a team of six teachers, who needed to develop the confidence and expertise to work outside their own specialised areas; secondly, the content was accessed through six modules in a year, with broad thematic titles, like:

• Being Unique
• Higher, faster, stronger
• Making the news
• Going places
• Forests
• Counting the cost

These changes achieved two things very quickly: firstly, they improved relationships, since teachers and students saw more of each other each week; secondly, they freed the students, themselves working in small teams, to make decisions and choices about where their learning should lead. The changes also required two things quickly: first, teachers to welcome a steep learning curve in their own professional development and second, a ‘mapping exercise’, to monitor what was learned against the requirements of the National Curriculum, on which the students would of course be formally tested at the end of the Key Stage.

In time, the early dramatic improvements in students’ attitudes, motivation and behaviour were translated into a reduction of the Key Stage 3 curriculum to two years instead of three, since so much more ground was covered in the given time. Almost all the conventional measures of performance went up, significantly.

How does this relate to our key themes of ‘Personalised Learning’ and ‘Distributed Leadership’? The extent to which learning was more ‘personal’ to each learner seems fairly self-evident in both the philosophy and practice of the new curriculum at St John’s. Importantly, it is not seen as the school and its teachers ‘personalising learning’ on behalf of the students; it is about releasing the energy and developing the responsibility of the students to personalise it for themselves.

The ‘distribution’ of leadership is clearly a key factor in Patrick’s vision and the way in which the reforms have taken root at the School. It was clear to him from the start that teachers would need to be ‘taken into’ the business of change and that both those established in ‘old ways’ and those more recently trained, simply to organise and deliver the National Curriculum, might struggle. He wanted a staff of independent professionals who see no limits to what they could achieve with their students. That was another reason for creating teams of six – to support the professionalism and development of each. He was influenced by notions of ‘extended professionalism’ developed by Michael Fullan (1988) and Linda Darling-Hammond (1990; 1993) through which teachers are see as capable of taking decisions for themselves: ‘Had a good idea? Do it! Don’t wait until you have been able to ask permission!’ Old hierarchical models were replaced by teams of fellow professionals of equal worth, defining together how they would work and collaborate.

The ‘TLR’ re-structuring exercise in 2005-6 offered opportunities for consolidating the principle in a new structure focussing properly on supporting learning. Titles such as Head and Deputy Head of Department, serving redundant, ‘box ticking, accountability’ functions, disappeared. They were replaced by leadership dedicated to the professional development of the teams of teachers and to the progress of the students from age 5 to 19. ‘Whole School Strategy Managers’ were made responsible for such things as Assessment for Learning, work-related and vocational education and performance data analysis. ‘Directors of Impact and Innovation’ were appointed, to help teachers to adjust and improve the curriculum (defined as ‘everything’) by observing and understanding its impact on each child. ‘Phase Progression Leaders’ were appointed to look in a more longitudinal way at whether students are properly enabled to make seamless, unhindered progress, from age 5 to 13 and from 13 to 19. The overlap (at age 13) means that these leaders have a year of joint responsibility to hand-over their personal knowledge, taper the input of one and increase that of the other. The theme is clear again, that personalised learning and distributed leadership are, both, often more about removing barriers to learning than making new things happen.

Patrick would say it is also an essential part of the sustainability of the vision to have what he calls ‘an organic understanding of the organisation’, in which roles and structures are fluid and responsive to change, the rigid assumptions and power differentials of old hierarchical models are left behind. The extent of this commitment to fluidity and continual evolution is evident in the redesign of the whole school’s curriculum structure over the last eighteen months. Instead of the traditional subject departments and faculty structure, there are now four ‘schools’, all focussed on the education of human beings in the global dimension of the 21st century:

• School of Human Exploration
• School of Human Communication
• School of Human Enterprise
• School of Human Performance

Although this ‘raised eyebrows’ when it was first proposed, in a mere eighteen months it has ‘become part of the way people think about the organisation of learning in the school’.

The next step in this story of ‘evolutionary adaptation’ to the times we live in and to the learners ‘who are at the heart of everything we do’, is what Patrick calls ‘Radical Collegiality’: embracing students into the ‘collegial responsibility of the organisation’ as co-researchers, observers, and participants, ‘co-constructing the pedagogy’, having equal worth and therefore an equal voice. A small group, consisting of a dozen students in each of the three Year Groups, 8, 9 and 10, are already being trained as researchers, together with partners from a school in Essex. They will train and teach the others. “If you teach something, you know it better yourself”, says Patrick. “You enquire into the learning environment and understand the frustrations…” The idea is to give students some of the ‘expert status’ once reserved for teachers.

Of course, it has not all been ‘plain sailing’. Change does bring confusion, frustration, even panic at times. Patrick explains what happened when ‘panic set in’, in the autumn of 2006. An independent evaluation exercise revealed general enthusiasm for the philosophy of the curriculum reforms (which Patrick describes as ‘common sense and difficult to argue against’) but equally widespread concern about how to implement them. People were saying ‘I don’t know what to do!’ and instead of being given a script or an answer were asked to go away and ‘Think about it!’ What happened next was a good illustration of the ultimate benefits of distributed leadership, which had to include a determined ‘letting go’ of the power and control which the Head was being invited – almost implored – to take back. The ‘Phase Progression Co-ordinators’ began to meet of their own accord and start to come up with solutions. Instead of the ‘Leadership Team’ writing a ‘School Development Plan’, teams were beginning to draft their own strategic plans and circulate them for consultation. It was beginning to ‘take off!’

In summing up the vision, Patrick would come back to the kind of students he wants the school to produce: confident, capable, competent learners who know how to go about learning, also to interrogate and challenge their environment. He wants to ‘put challenge at every level in the organisation’, so anyone can challenge the status quo. He wants the organic growth of the school community to lead, naturally, from the integrated curriculum into the integration of leadership and learning’

As for the evolution of his own role, he believes there will always need to be a Head, not to tell people ‘how it is’ or what to do, but to understand, represent and speak on behalf of the community and all its members. He acknowledges that a certain kind of ruthlessness was and is necessary on his part, to be so uncompromising about the vision and need for reform. Now, he has come to a point in his own learning journey when his leadership is about trying to be ‘the reflective voice’, recognising the fallibility and vulnerability of human beings – especially teachers, who are so naturally self-critical - who need their ‘souls and spirits’ to become more robust. He believes their growth is better served by him acting as ‘an understanding listener’ than ‘a leader so full of himself that he knows exactly what they should do!’

5.9 Conclusion

This chapter has addressed the opportunities and challenges that distributing leadership offers headteachers. To let go and allow others to take on leadership responsibilities is not easy and required qualities more associated with relational learning as opposed to those associated with the ‘heroic’ head leading from the front. The headteacher who is successful in establishing a culture conducive to distributed leadership will be part of a learning community in which the relationship between student, staff and organisational learning work in an iterative way that is mutually supportive and beneficial. Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2000) captures the interdependency between self and community well in his description of the Zulu concept ‘Ubuntu’. He explains ‘ a person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole’, in essence ‘a person is a person through others’.

In the next chapter, we look at the ways in which subject and middle leaders in schools can enhance their impact on personalising learning if their leadership potential is released by their headteachers.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Professor Ron Ritchie, BSc (Hons) Aeronautics and Astronautics, PGCE, PhD, Fellow HEA, School of Education, University of the West of England, England, United Kingdom.
Dr Ruth Deakin Crick, Cert. Ed, M.Ed, M.A. Ph.D, FRSA, Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director, MPhil/Ph.D Programme, The Graduatr School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, England, United Kingdom.