Taking the programme on board will inevitably raise some vital leadership questions:
From
- how will the school benefit from this programme?
To
- what changes to the school’s operations will need to be accommodated?
To help structure these management issues we’ve used the successful McKinsey 7-S Change Management Model to help schools structure their thinking to plan and implement organisational change.
In the section below we simply alert you to the leadership considerations that, when answered, will lay the foundations of success.
It’s worth taking a few minutes to reflect on these 7 leadership aspects and how they might apply to your school. Sorting out the answers will lay the foundations of success.
Further help is at hand. Over the years we have learned that it’s the leadership and management of development programmes that has the greatest influence on their success. Hence, as part of the programme, we now include detailed consideration of the 7 leadership aspects for both Phase 1 and 2 in separate leadership modules. These are outline, and suggest some answers to all of the leadership considerations necessary for the successful implementation of ‘Building Better Learners’
You are now in section 3. Leadership Concerns.
Use the navigation bar to move between sections.
Just raising, not answering, the vital leadership questions.
1. How does this programme fit with our school values?
Having met an outline of the programme earlier the first questions you will want to muse on are:
- How does ‘Building Better Learners’ fit with our school’s ethos?
- Will this programme strengthen our values and organisation?
- How will we ensure stakeholders buy in to it?
Shared values govern any school’s health and when implementing change the expectation is often that teachers will change/adapt their teaching behaviours. As research has made clear this is only possible where there’s a change culture together with real, lived school values. Taking on the values of ‘Building Better Learners‘ is about preparing students for a lifetime of learning; to enable students to get better at learning; to empower them to lead a productive lifetime of learning. When considering all the questions below, they should all be seen to fit with your school’s values. Shared values is not so much a place to start but the one that will have a guiding influence over all your other questions.
2. What sort of skills/competencies does the programme enhance?
Having thought about how the programme fits with school values your next questions may well revolve around staff and learner competencies, wondering how you can gauge what your classroom cultures and students’ learning behaviours are really like now?
You may want to muse on:
- What are our students’ learning behaviours like now?
- What are our classroom cultures like now?
Of course the programme helps you both ask and answer such questions but here are a couple of short questionnaires to point you in a realistic direction to kick start your thinking.
What are our students’ learning behaviours like now? What are our classroom cultures like now?
3. How could we accommodate the staff development approaches suggested?
If you’ve mused on the skills and competencies that the programme will enhance you might then wonder how you go about enhancing staff skills. There are staff development approaches embedded in the programme so you may want to consider:
- Could we manage the suggested staff development?
- What’s the best way to organise the development of staff across the school?
- How will we achieve high levels of engagement with the programme?
The way that the school decides to organise staff to engage with the programme and learn together impacts heavily on its success. Hence how the programme will be led, who will lead it, and how it will be resourced in terms of directed time become essential questions. As such, these decisions that will inform many aspects of the strategy.
4. How do we prevent it becoming a workload issue?
Of course the school has all sorts of instructions for how staff need to go about completing certain tasks and processes to ensure all runs smoothly. However, when thinking about changing your school’s systems, it’s sometimes necessary to assess the different types of project management and workflows that are currently in place. You might want to ask yourself:
- How will we prevent the programme becoming a workload issue for teachers, support staff, the programme lead, and senior leaders?
- What will need to be changed to create the necessary directed time for ongoing engagement with the online learning aspects of the programme?
- What will need to be changed to create the necessary directed time for the programme related meetings?
The programme requires participants to engage with the online materials, plan and implement small scale learning enquiries, and reflect on the impact of developments with colleagues. So teacher workload and a consideration of directed time will be pertinent. You cannot will the ends without willing the means.
5. Who will lead it and what accountability may be needed?
Clear chains of command avoid chaos & confusion and the school will have a simple structure because it creates a sense of accountability within the school. But in taking on the programme you may like to consider:
- Who will lead this change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
- How will the programme leader keep senior leaders informed of developments?
- How will senior leaders support the programme leader?
Might the programme be managed by a seasoned T&L specialist, someone outside the current leadership team, could we need several learning champions, will we need a written job description….and so on. Remember – it is a false economy to invest in the programme itself but neglect making adequate provision for its leadership.
6. How are we going to support the programme?
Leadership and Management behaviour patterns
The school will have its own leadership / management styles and indeed it is this style that often decides the level of staff productivity and satisfaction in an organisation. Hence you will have been wondering:
- How will we, as leaders, create the conditions where teachers are encouraged to take risks, to try things out, to fail in safety?
- How will leaders demonstrate an ongoing interest in the enquiries that teachers are undertaking?
Flawless execution of tried and tested teaching routines is at odds with a programme that intentionally seeks to help teachers to adjust their classroom practice to focus more explicitly on growing students’ learning behaviours. Supporting innovation will involve dialogue and enabling of exploration. ‘Permission to act’ needs to be devolved to teachers and leaders will need to show interest in teachers’ ‘learning enquiries’.
7. How do we expect it all to work? How will we create a plan to pull all this together?
The purpose and organisation of the change
The ‘Building Better Learners’ programme is a strategy and will have a place in the school’s plan to implement change and so gain improved outcomes for students. A well-crafted strategy will draw together the answers from the other six questions dealt with above. You may find yourself musing on:
- What is our strategy for implementing ‘Building Better Learners’?
- Is the plan sufficiently detailed to show time frames, responsibilities of key players, monitoring checkpoints, contingencies, funding/time implications?
It would be wise to consider how your plan will inform your Self Evaluation form – describe what you are Intending to achieve and how you plan to Implement it. The Impact of these plans will be evidenced by ongoing monitoring as the programme develops over the next year or so.
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