Learning to Lead: a national pilot

Learning to Lead helps young people to create communities by training them to run teams and lead projects themselves to improve any aspect of life in school they have identified as needing improvement, or would be of value to others. In the process, the students learn by doing and they learn skills for life, while they are still in school.

We are pioneering a new teaching role called the 'community link teacher' to train and support the increasing numbers of students involved. This demands a different way of teaching and relationship with students, which teachers are relishing. Frequently, they say they are reconnected to the initial inspirational reasons they went into teaching and welcome the sense of exploration and journey into a different way of working in their school, which is also grounded in tried and tested practice from real school experience. My husband Neil and I - both teachers - have been developing this approach for the last seven years with the help of around 2000 students over that time.

At present, we are involved in a national pilot of Learning to Lead in 11 secondary schools throughout England. Thanks to the Healthy Schools programme,  we are also  piloting in primary schools where teachers are developing  'community classrooms' and can easily incorporate the approach into the daily curriculum to help children to take responsibility for their classroom and learning. Most recently, we have begun to develop  'curriculum communities' where students and staff use our tools and structures to work together to increase interest and learning and enrich good practice.

Cambridge University and the New Economics Foundation are to undertake the evaluation of  both the learning and well-being aspects of Learning to Lead.  Jonne Ceserani, of Power and Grace, and partner of Synectics, specialising in innovation and the management of change in major organisations, is to provide an appraisal of our approach in relation to developing management and organisational skills, alongside creative thinking in young people.

The Learning to Lead Community Interest Company is a not-for-profit organisation with six students on its board of directors.

Why is it called ‘Learning to Lead’?

The word ‘learning’ purposefully sits uncomfortably next to the word ‘lead’.

It is meant to shake us into reevaluating our common understanding of leadership.

We are used to leadership being a place of arrival and recognition.

But leadership looked at this way creates a hierarchy of greatness.

It can recognise, reward and applaud a few and in the same vein overshadow the strengths of others and promote an attitude to life that lacks aspiration and vitality for personal growth.

This view of ‘leadership’ can create communities which are at best compliant and disinterested and at worst frustrated, valueless and violent.

But place the word ‘learning’ before ‘leading’ and you create an approach which is open to us all.
Defined in this way, ‘Learning to Lead’ is viewing life as a journey to find out what is in us and others and how to lead this outward to be of value to the world.

Only in this way can the sheer magnitude and diverse numberless qualities and talents of us all ‘shine’ and give other people the permission to shine too.

This is an invitation to ‘Learning to Lead.’ We provide an innovative way to develop the necessary change in relationship we need with our young people in schools, so that education is no longer something which we do to them, but rather something which we help them to do for themselves.

How we develop as individuals and how we become citizens are central to this approach.

Learning to Lead supports schools in a journey to join in this exploration, and offers a Forum on the Learning to Lead website for teachers and students to use to share their own ideas, experiences and concerns. For more information, please visit: www.learningtolead.org.uk

This way of working does not ignore government requirements or the need to improve standards, but recognises that in order to achieve them, a radically different approach to teaching is needed in which teachers have the opportunity to use their own inspiration, to be guided by the pleasure of working with young people and the desire to share with one another.

With a greater emphasis on personalised self-directed learning, the emotional and personal development of each child needs to be supported so young people are ready to lead themselves.

• Learning to Lead is about developing self-leadership and working with others.

• Self-leadership comes with confidence about who we are.

• Confidence develops through building and affirming positive relationships.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ms Susan-Piers Mantell is a former English teacher and parent of four teenage boys. She played a big part in a campaign to influence the Government's early learning policy in 1999. The nationwide campaign called 'Let the children play' led to the Government including more play-led activities in their early learning goals. In the early 1990s Susan began The Meadow School, in Bruton, Somerset, and with others, developed a school where both children and parents could be actively involved in taking responsibility for all aspects of their school community. She has worked for the organisation Right From the Start, contributing to the handbook for teachers: ‘Promoting Children’s Well Being in the Primary Years.’

More recently, working closely with her husband Neil Mantell and inspired by the outcome of their work with students in The Blue School, Wells, Susan has set up Learning to Lead as a Community Interest Company, with eight directors, five of whom are students, working to share the approach further.
Having introduced Learning to Lead school community councils in 10 secondary schools in the South West, 11 more secondary schools are piloting Learning to Lead nationally during 2008-2009, thanks to funding from the Edge Foundation. As part of the Healthy Schools Plus programme, Learning to Lead has also been piloted as a whole school approach in five primary schools in Somerset 2007-08.

Wells Blue School and the Learning to Lead approach is used as a case study in the recent report on school councils for the Department of Children Schools and Families conducted by Professor Whitty and has been identified by the Education Select Committee to demonstrate active citizenship in practice. Barry Sheerman MP chair of the DCSF Select Committee has helped to attract the funding to support a national pilot.

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