Election Politics & Personalisation May 1, 2010

The recent ballot to boycott this summer term’s SATs assessments has sparked all kinds of controversy and conversation across the country. As we approach the general election there has been a range of views shared publicly by Headteachers, Parents, Children and Politicians. The general consensus seems to be that there is a friction between the need for accountability of schools so that we can ensure all children are receiving the very best start in life, and the political point-scoring nature which has led to so many changes of these accountability goal-posts.

Ask a Headteacher or Teacher what their view is on this political dynamic to school-life and you will most likely hear them say that the government (whichever political party that may be formed from), is dictating and creating levels of beurocracy which are getting in the way of progress of learning; our raison d’être. Ask the same Headteacher or Teacher where the solution lies and usually the answer includes some reference to the need for government to stop dictating, and for schools to be empowered to manage themselves.

Rightly so. Having had the priviledge of working with thousands of schools across the country I believe that our school workforce is packed full of inspirational people, experts, enthusiasts, creative minds and quite frankly, some phenomenal teachers.

We have the most fabulous range of skills in our teaching workforce today.

So I’m puzzled.

Why is it that we are all (me included) very quick to ask for government to decentralise their control, and to empower schools (us), but we are somewhat more hesitant to replicate this decentralisation/empowerment in our own classrooms?

The whole point of de-centralising surely is that it achieves empowerment of the individual?

De-centralising, means the whole way doesn’t it? Otherwise, are we not just creating a different kind of dictated leadership?

Consider this.

If we all woke up tomorrow and were told that in terms of Teaching & Learning, all schools were responsible for themselves and all teachers entirely responsible (in all senses) for their own classes and were not required to conform to any kind of dictat, then what would we change, and how would we change it? Do we actually know what we want to do? Do we have the confidence to do it?

Consider the most common arguments for devolving power away from central and local government down to schools:

• Government is out-of-touch with what children need
• Schools have expertise that should be forming the decisions
• Accountability expectations from government are getting in the way of Learning
• Inspections are carried out by people who are out-of-touch
• There is an endless stream of instructions and beurocracy (from government)

Consider replacing the above list with arguments for devolving power away from the school management and down to learners themselves:

• Managers are out-of-touch with what children need (eg; mobile phones in classroom learning)
• Learners have expertise that should be forming the decisions about learning (eg; I know … but I don’t yet know…)
• Accountability expectations from teachers (eg; the weekly spelling test) is getting in the way of Learning
• School observations are carried out by people who are out-of-touch (eg; if you understand how children learn, you don’t need to carry a clipboard when coming to watch…)
• There is an endless stream of instructions and beurocracy (eg; how many folders do we have in our classroom cupboards?!)

Now, I’m well aware that as soon as someone reads this list who is in support of the SATs boycott, the response will be “When government stop making us focus on tests, then we will have the freedom to be able to do all of these things”.

Well, (and this is controversial) I don’t believe anyone who says that!

The best Headteachers and teachers I’ve had the priviledge of working with have been those who empower their learners to organise, manage, review and respond to their own learning. Students who are given the learning objective and the context for their learning and are taught the skills, knowledge and understanding around how to approach the experience, and the rationale of why the particular learning objective is necessary; both immediately and in the longer term through their life. Among this group, the best Headteachers I’ve had the honour of working with do exactly the same for their teachers – empowering them not managing them.

This, is nothing to do with curriculum, and has everything to do with attitude. Attitude of the teacher. Attitude of the school leadership team. Where a Headteacher, or school leaders give their staff confidence and time to be able to think and discuss what needs to be in place to facilitate this kind of freedom-to-learn approach, it happens. Good leaders ensure that every teacher is empowered to be experimental in the classroom, to try out new strategies; accepting that some things will work and some will not.

The living proof that all of the above is possible and achievable is in schools all over the country, and is in schools from all kinds of catchments, backgrounds, strengths and challenges. Given that I work with so many schools in so many local authorities I’m wary of naming individuals here for fear of inadvertently offending anyone who I don’t mention! However, a look through my Twitter stream (www.twitter.com/FionaAS) will provide links to some of the schools I’m talking about.

Anyway, a week before the General Election made me wonder about a little parallel here.

I wonder, to what extent a school’s “style” reflects a subconscious political “style”.

For example, one school I have in mind – let’s call it Yellow School (deBono Six Hat reference!). Yellow School has a Headteacher who empowers everyone that she meets – children, teachers, parents, colleagues – I’ve watched this effervescence on many occasions and it’s quite ‘awesome’ (I mean that in the wow sense of the word!). The belief of this Headteacher is very much a ‘can do’ attitude – that everyone ‘can’ if they are encouraged , empowered and inspired. As you’d expect this has translated through into the most tangible learning environment at the school, high progression & attainment standards, engaged parents, and a happy community. All within a relatively challenging catchment area.  They key to this success has been the way that the Headteacher has empowered, and allowed every individual to do what they know and do best, and her role has been to encourage, support and facilitate that to happen. She’s effectively “de-centralised” the school. Everyone is still accountable, still has to ‘produce the goods’ (as is apparent by the progression & attainment outcomes), but is doing so by taking responsibility, and thus ownership of both the “problems, and the solutions”. Every individual at the school has personalised their role in “the school”; whether that be their role of teacher, child, parent, governor, community member. Everyone has ownership and feels responsibility for the part that their life plays in the big picture (the school).

Now I don’t know what the political viewpoints are of this Headteacher, but doesn’t the above rather mirror the phrases that we’re hearing from the Conservative Party of today? In the 3 recent prime ministerial debates David Cameron has used phrases such as

Have a look at the many comparisons of party views on education, and look for which ones are eproviding mechanisms to empower, and which are decentralising, and which are providing a “chalk & talk” approach to politics (do I as I say…). LINK – click to view

So what am I getting at?

This article began by looking at one of the symptoms of the centralised way in which our schools are currently organised – SATs. The majority of teachers & leaders feel that SATs are not serving the purpose they are there for. In fact I really like the Cambridge Report summary – “Stop making Year 6 tests bear the triple burden of assessing pupils, evaluating schools and monitoring national performance. Stop treating testing and assessment as synonymous. Abandon the naive belief that testing of itself drives up standards. It doesn’t: good teaching does.”

(Well personally I’d go a bit further and say that good Learning drives up standards, but that gets into a whole new discussion about why Teaching & Learning are so fundamentally different as approaches to Educating…)

Anyway, most of us are keen for whichever government we end up with next week to decentralise the way in which they lead our education system.

Many schools, like “Yellow School” above, are already doing their bit to decentralise within their own school – empowering teachers, encouraging families, embracing learner voice.

But, I’m not sure that everyone who says they want decentralisation from the government, really means that they want decentralisation. I think there are many instances where it’s just a way of asking government to devolve power to an individual or group of individuals (themselves). This, I feel is a flawed ideology. It means that instead of decentralising freeing up people to achieve their best, it actually just creates a new ‘centre’ for the centralisation – at school/Headteacher level.

No wonder some political parties such as Labour are therefore reluctant to make this happen – because the outcome would be that some schools empower every individual with outcomes such as Yellow School above, whereas some schools would tighten their own reins and create little ‘satellite versions’ within classrooms or schools, of what has been happening nationally – decentralised dictatorship.

Consider this right down to classroom level. Imagine government decentralise and give schools more control over their own organisation. Some Headteachers would then want to maintain the ‘control’ themselves alluded to above, but let’s imagine for a minute that the Headteacher is like the one at Yellow School and empowers individuals.

The buck now stops with us, the classroom teacher.

Are we ready / Do we know how, to empower individuals within our classrooms? (Empowering individuals is a bit of a soap-box of mine, as you’ll see from my Doctorate subject matter, because ultimately it’s all about empowering the individual to personalise their own experience – it’s decentralising from the teacher, to the learner).

Will the classroom teacher continue to decentralise, or will the classroom teacher want to retain ‘control’?

So there is a problem here. Even if government decentralised to schools, and Headteachers decentralised to teachers, I’m not sure that the majority of teachers feel comfortable or confident with being able to decentralise to learners – or in other words, facilitate personalisation.

I recently Twittered (Tweeted?) a question “What do you think Personalisation means?”, and although my response group was rather skewed by the nature of educators-who-happen-to-use-Twitter (and all the connotations of self-motivated professionals that this implies), there were 2 key groups of responses:

1)       Educators who think personalisation equated to differentiation

2)       Educators who understand personalisation, and are working towards its ideal, one step at a time

To me, the principles of the 2 responses above could equally describe our 2 main political parties at present:

1)       Political party who think empowerment equates to different sets of instructions for different people

2)       Political party who understand empowerment, and are working towards its ideal one step at a time
A closing thought then.

How much do your political views & aspirations equate to your existing professional practice?

If you talk about political empowerment, do you empower those that you work with?

If you talk about political differentiation, do you differentiate for those that you work with?

But above all, do your political views/ideals, match your personal & professional practice?

It’s certainly made me re-think mine…

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