So you want to recruit for diversity

Picture: Mona Chalabi

Background

It is clear that there is an acute and snowballing issue around recruitment and retention of staff in our schools’ workforce. Schools are considering many proposed solutions, including promises to reduce workload, challenging the traditional reticence around flexible working practices and job shares, and the DfE has even launched a jobs board platform aimed at reducing the costs for recruitment that are often crippling for schools. Successive education secretaries have declared that far more teachers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are needed in schools to be role models for their pupils. Since the recent brutal killing of George Floyd, and the subsequent soul searching that seems to have happened for many white people around their relationship with the structures and systems which impact on Black people’s life chances, the BAMEed Network has seen a flood of requests from schools and multi-academy trusts asking for support to diversify their workforce.

Teachers from BAME backgrounds have been marginalised in a system that seems to have changed little since the 1980s, back when the Swann report identified that ethnic minorities were underrepresented in teaching. Research since has confirmed that BAME educators are consistently the victims of systemic racism, which sees them overlooked for promotion and undermined. This is enacted not only through policy and practice around curriculum design, recruitment and performance management, but also through daily examples of microaggressions and behaviours from their colleagues – all of which serve to discredit them as teachers and leaders. We are all becoming familiar with the term “unconscious bias” to try to explain why this might happen, but we have seemed less committed to finding ways to seek out and cull the practices which perpetuate this bias. Structures of disadvantage in education are untouched and continue to perpetuate stereotypes of ethnic groups. Saying it is “unconscious” has proved to even give us an excuse that it may not be within our power to change. This is, of course, a damaging fallacy. Acknowledging the forces of socialisation can be a start to bringing the seemingly unconscious into the conscious domain and ensuring that the outcomes of our behaviour and actions, policies and practices are not damaging.

Why recruit for diversity?
It may seem obvious especially now, but it is surprising how many schools and other organisations are still not clear on the reasons for their own commitment to diversity. Many colleagues believe in the mantra “we just recruit the best person for the job” and won’t question why those so-called best people all seem to look and sound the same. While we must always recruit the best person for the job, in doing so we are often blind to our own inherently biased perception of what that person looks and sounds like, what background and experience they should have had, and rule out the best person not for lack of skills and experience, but for other, more insidious reasons that are masked by seemingly innocent statements like “team fit” or “team culture”. The bottom line is, that if your team is not diverse in its make up, you most likely have not recruited the best person for the job. Excellent recruitment practice will naturally lead to a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, styles, perspectives, opinions and so on, and that can’t possibly mean a cookie cutter version of the same person. A word of warning here, no-one wants to be recruited for the colour of their skin, their gender or sexuality to fulfil a Top Trumps spectrum of perceived diversities that look good. However, just as addressing the bias that holds women back in the workplace shouldn’t be left exclusively to women to champion and work towards, so too must colleagues, school leaders and system leaders from all backgrounds educate themselves around the unnecessary barriers that face their marginalised counterparts. It is the recruitment practice, coupled with a commitment by the organisation to learn, iterate and change that practice that will lead to recruiting and retaining a successful, diverse team. 

Another practical reason to recruit for diversity is that it is proven to be good for business. We know from research such as the McKinsey Report, that having a diverse workforce leads to better teamwork, and more successful decision-making. If we are to see a change in attitudes and the subtle and not-so-subtle trappings of systemic racism, we need role models from Black, Asian and other minoritised groups for our fellow colleagues of all backgrounds, for governors and trustees, and for students from non-BAME backgrounds too. If we are to accept people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as credible teachers and leaders, we need to see these colleagues at every level in our schools’ workforce.

Finally, many schools believe that they should recruit staff that reflect the population they serve, if that population is itself seen as ‘diverse’. While it is true that children should be able to see themselves in the people who are their role models, there are two important points to highlight here. The first is that the colour of someone’s skin doesn’t make them able to understand all humans that have a similar skin colour. Diversity is intersectional – it includes class, gender, heritage, and more. Be careful with assumptions here. Secondly, it could be argued that schools that serve a predominantly white population will also absolutely benefit from seeing strong and capable role models from stereotypically undervalued and marginalised communities – this will be of benefit to staff, students and the whole school community alike. 

If we want to address the recruitment issues we face, and if we want to retain and develop our best leaders from diverse backgrounds, there has never been a better time to commit to this.

Preparing your organisation to be friendly to all humans

 

Looking inwards before looking outwards
For a campaign to ‘recruit for diversity’ to be successful, it’s worth taking an honest look at your organisational bias, and seeing why it may not yet be friendly to all humans. This is important because the last thing you want to do is recruit new people from more diverse backgrounds than you are accustomed to, only for it to be experienced as a hostile environment lacking the self-awareness to understand why only certain people will be able to thrive there.

To do this, you will need to commit some time and budget. You may benefit from some outside help to set the strategy with you, but you must carry out any work on this, as part of a committed whole-school learning process, even when you have external support. You will need to commit time to undertake reading, re-educating yourselves and un-learning some practices you have considered normal. It is also important to have an educated grasp on what systemic racism is, and not frame racism as many schools do, as just dwelling in notable incidents and overt acts of racist abuse.

The first place organisations usually go is to what is commonly known as “unconscious bias” training. Be careful with this, as one of the criticisms of quick-fix unconscious bias training is that it can have an opposite effect. Research shows that in terms of changing attitudes, it can often lead to people becoming more entrenched in their bias, and even concluding that because the bias is unconscious, it’s not possible to do much about it. That said, good training will help you understand what bias is, when it is useful, how it can be harmful, how you can own your bias and see it clearly, and interrupt it at the point before you may have enacted it previously. Good organisational culture around bias will mean that there is a safe space for colleagues to talk openly about situations where they can see their own bias surfacing, and can work together to acknowledge and mitigate the impact of that bias. Staff should be trained in things like microaggressions so they can avoid them, and learn how to be a reliable ally, learning to see, articulate and call out discrimination should it occur. Many schools are often not encouraging of critical thinking, challenge and straight-talking, so this may be quite a culture shift. It will be up to all levels of the organisation to hone their skills at spotting, naming and reducing bias and discrimination. Be warned though, the mark of an organisation committed to change and anti-racism may be one that once you have learned to see it, you see it everywhere! This can often be the marker of the shift from being ‘not racist’ to being ‘anti-racist’. Change takes commitment and time.

HR and policies
Once you have learned to spot bias and systemic or structural racism, you can carry out an internal audit designed specifically to hunt out and change places where bias and structural racism tend to lurk. HR practices and school policies are often sites where discrimination takes place. Again, you may be tempted to use a template or a service to help you with this, but make sure that you are skilling yourselves up to do this effectively in an ongoing way, so it doesn’t become an external bureaucratic exercise but instead becomes part of the culture of the organisation at all levels. 

The UK has 9 protected characteristics, set out in the Equality Act 2010. These are:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

There are 4 main types of discrimination under the Equality Act:

• Direct discrimination
• Indirect discrimination
• Harassment
• Victimisation

Any audit you carry out should be a critical look at your HR practices to ensure that there aren’t elements which are discriminatory. You’ll note that class and nationality are missing from this list. Again, none of this should be purely procedural or bureaucratic so it’s important to have training and regular robust and open discussion about these issues, as they are both complex and emotive. For white people such discussion may cause discomfort. This is a small price to pay in exchange for reducing the deep trauma racial discrimination inflicts on people of colour.

When looking at policies, it is vital that this extends to policies which affect the students and their families. These include home-school agreements, homework, hair and uniform policies, behaviour and exclusion policies and more. There is much research and writing about how these policies can be the sites of racial and other discriminatory action that can be subtle or blatant. A school that is friendly to all humans, needs to ensure this is true not just for staff working there, but also the whole school community. Staff cannot be expected to enforce policy which isn’t inclusive and which is discriminatory.

The most vital and perhaps challenging part of this work will be allowing a culture of identifying and challenging racism, both from staff as well as students and their families. Baked into all line management culture, 1:1s with staff, meetings with students and their families, should be the ability to have meaningful dialogue that is sensitive and courageous, so that racism can be named and framed without those raising the issue fearing being silenced or disciplined for their words. 

Curriculum matters
Here again, if your curriculum doesn’t reflect the reality of both modern Britain, the global world and an accurate picture of history and the diverse voices which have always been part of our country, you cannot be a school which will be fertile ground for diverse voices to be heard and valued. Take a look at your curriculum offer, and draw on the huge number of resources available to support decolonising the curriculum and how it is taught across all departments. We speak volumes to our staff, students and the school community through our curriculum choices.

Optics are important but not as a stand-alone
You need to see it to be it. If you’re hoping to attract staff members who are from a wide variety of backgrounds, you need to make sure that they can see themselves as valued in your school website, on the walls around the school, in the prospectus, the curriculum and more. When looking for diverse imagery, be mindful that you aren’t unwittingly perpetuating damaging stereotypes though. It’s all too easy to fall into this without some work on your bias. As Adrian Rogers, CEO of Chiltern Learning Trust, says, “ensure anyone considering applying looks in on your organisation (websites, social media) and sees that it welcomes diversity in its leadership and management. It isn’t tokenism, but it’s about making sure that the outward signal is ‘its good to work in this place, they value me as a person and a professional, regardless of colour or protected characteristics’”.

Remember, if you are early on, in your journey towards diversity in the school staff and leadership team, be upfront and honest about this. You know that candidates will check your website and may be confused by your statements of intent around diversity not matching reality when they see your all-white, mainly male governing board, or senior leadership team. Be prepared to have that conversation from the get-go in an appropriate way.

Get out
Not only do you have to ‘be it to see it’, but you have to ‘see it to be it’. Leaders of any organisation, multi academy trust or school should make a huge effort to attend community events. This is also an opportunity to learn more about the communities you serve. Again, in his experience from Chiltern Learning Trust, Adrian Rogers says, “BAME is a very broad term, and not all communities are the same – there will be huge religious, cultural and ethnic differences. However, if you are a white leader, in a school with a high percentage of Black or Asian pupils, it is even more important to show you care about that community and want to work with them and want the best for the young people in that community. In turn, this means you will gain the trust and friendship of that community and break down barriers – with the spin-off that people from your local community will want to work for you. This also extends to delivering CPD and supporting BAME leadership courses and development even if you yourself are white – it means you network with ambitious staff.”

He goes on, “as leaders, make opportunities to speak about BAME staff in your school in terms of the knowledge, skill and expertise that they bring to your school. It is easy to fall in the trap of seeing BAME staff as simply representatives of the ‘community’, rather than talented individuals in their own right. Leaders, governors and trustees should be restless and relentless in asking ‘is there more we should be doing?’ or ‘can I ask someone why we don’t get BAME applicants’. Leaders should be curious and reflective. A great way of demonstrating the accessibility of leaders is providing an open day for local people that may be seeking employment, and senior leaders meet prospective candidates without the formality of an application or interview.” It’s also a great way to test out the scoping of the roles you may wish to recruit for.

Advertising the role

 

Scoping
Now you are ready to advertise the role, start with scoping. Often a role can be carried out by a broad spectrum of levels of experience and expertise, qualification and commitment to learn. Make sure the recruitment panel has clearly mapped out a continuum of possible imagined candidates from the finished product to the ‘grower’. Be clear which bits are non-negotiable must-haves and which bits, if missing, can be solved through coaching, training or further on-the-job qualification. This will help you with the wording of your advertisement and will also make you hold yourselves to account to recruit for what you say you need, and not go on “feel” at the end of the day.

An important part of scoping is to map out which parts of the process will really test fairly what you are looking for. Assuming there are several stages to the process, from written application, a task-based assignment, a face to face interview and perhaps a chance to see that person in action, have you covered off every element you say you are looking for in your recruitment pack? Can each element be seen in more than one way?

Placing your advertisement
If you do things the same way, you will get the same result. So think about where you would like to place your advert and what other methods you can use to recruit good candidates from a wide field. Advertising is key, if your community and school has a diverse population, advertise locally and you will probably get a diverse workforce. This support in your community shows you embrace both the community and its diversity. If your community is not diverse, think about publications, platforms and other ways to reach further.

From his experience, Adrian Rogers suggests asking BAME leaders either in your organisation or that you know, to actively support your recruitment – they are role models and could be most effective in promoting your organisation to people of colour. This may help people of colour feel comfortable about applying to your organisation, and see they are valued.

Use different and wide ranging social media or media to advertise on. Local radio, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can be good places to advertise. Test what works for different groups and tweak accordingly. Adrian Rogers’ MAT is in Luton, and they found, for example, that local radio and LinkedIn helped them get a significant number of Black or Asian applicants. On the other hand, they noted that applicants through Facebook were predominantly white, and Twitter wasn’t significantly different for any group. Aureus School in Didcot was a brand new start-up secondary school. The headteacher at the time, Hannah Wilson, managed to recruit her entire leadership team without placing one ad, and instead used Linked In and Twitter to attract not only a wide-ranging diverse and highly skilled team, but many of whom re-located in order to work at the school and with the team she brought together.

Your diversity statement matters
It has become standard practice to place a generic diversity statement on job ads. Think about what yours says that accurately reflects the place you are in now. Be bold about addressing the elephant in the room if this will be in fact your first person of colour to join an all-white team. Writing this diversity statement should be exciting and easy, provided you are well on your way with the work described above to make your organisation friendly to all humans.

The recruitment process

Seen, felt, heard
The most important thing during the recruitment process aside from ensuring that you have tested for all of the elements you hope to get in a new recruit, is how you make people feel. Too many organisations make the recruitment process overly bureaucratic and impersonal, and also don’t offer flexibility over how they engage with candidates. This in itself can throw up unnecessary barriers for some candidates. Many organisations are not cordial and respectful about people’s time, often making them come for several stages of an interview at what seem like random times, when these could be rolled into one day. Consider also that women may often be juggling child care, or if they live in intergenerational households, may have responsibility for elder care and therefore may not have flexibility on what time of the day they can attend. This may sound sexist and of course men may face this issue too but statistically this remains stubbornly the domain of women in most cases. This might act to exclude them from the process unless you are openly discussing the best times of day for them to attend a face to face interview.

‘Blind’ recruitment
Many organisations employ ‘blind’ recruitment of varying degrees to the process. This means removing elements which may identify the person’s gender, age, heritage, where they were educated or previous employers. You can either ask candidates to do this themselves, or get your HR department to do this before sharing applications to be sifted. There are pros and cons to doing this:

Pros

• Blind hiring can promote greater diversity in the workplace because you can’t screen for candidates who look like you
• It is considered more “scientific” because it provides the same assessments for every candidate. The more the interviewee is in situations where they reveal personal information, the panel makes subconscious decisions based on biases. If those selected for the final interview process are selected fully on the objective assessments, the top 3-4 candidates will actually be those on top of the job requirements
• Blind hiring eliminates the “who do you know” practice that is often used, and, instead, opens up the field to other candidates who may actually possess higher skill levels

Cons

• Blind hiring can be seen as just a fad and that, in the long term, will not have staying power
• It can actually hinder diversity in hiring. Many organisations seek out BAME candidates in the hiring process as part of their commitment to diversity. When recruiters do not have the option of knowing personal information, they cannot actively pursue diversity
• Blind hiring does not take into account the type of work environment in which a candidate has been successful or unsuccessful previously
• Blind hiring could wipe out the often-used practice of referrals. Many organisations announce within their networking associations that they are looking for someone to fill a position. They put great value on the referrals they get from colleagues and usually interview such individuals. Of course, that referral alone provides a bias so should be treated with due caution

Written applications
One trap that many organisations fall into is judging candidates on their ability to write, when the job itself may not require you to be an excellent orator or writer. Aside from writing ability, the panel should be clear with themselves and each other on what is a non-negotiable and what can be solved by training, coaching or on-the-job qualification.

The interview itself

Watch for performance over ability
Similarly, many organisations come unstuck when they employ someone who performed impressively at interview, but then proved lacking in motivation, skills, confidence or ability in the day to day once they take the job. 

Think also about how to put people at ease during the interview process. If there is an element of observation, many schools will now find going to the candidate’s school to see them in front of a class that they know and have built rapport with, tells them much more about the person, than bringing them to perform in front of a class of strangers. When a candidate comes to interview face to face, think about how you make them feel the warmth and reality of day to day life – some organisations will organise a cup of tea and an informal chat with a member of staff, where they can ask any questions they like. That member of staff will not have seen the candidate’s application or know any information, but can spend 20 minutes in friendly conversation and give the inside track of what it’s really like to work at the school.

How you invite the candidate into the interview room, the make-up of the panel and the positioning of the panel and the candidate can have a huge impact on how people feel and perform in the interview. The candidate should be comfortably seated, offered refreshments, the room should be adequately heated and ventilated. If you are conducting a remote interview using video conferencing, make sure that time is given for technical support, and to get used to the situation.

Think about how you probe on the candidate’s actual qualifications and what they entailed. We can exercise huge bias by assuming that someone who went to a Russell Group university would be better equipped, without asking what they actually learned that could be useful now in their job. Similarly, we are often quick to dismiss qualifications that are from abroad without knowing anything about the quality or content of their studies.

The interview panel
Make sure that your panel is diverse. If you can’t for some reason, you had better be extremely alert to your own bias, and be able to have a robust, challenging discussion about this when deliberating about the candidates! Be honest with the candidates, whatever their background, that you are lacking in diversity in terms of race and gender and this is something that you know is unsatisfactory and which is being addressed.

While interviewing, the panel should take notes and be ready to discuss, explore and explain their reasoning around why they found a candidate suitable or unsuitable. Agree in advance that in your deliberations, you will not accept statements without evidence. So, no mention of “getting a good feeling” or the candidate being “likeable” without acknowledging and recognising where bias may be creeping in. This will aid not falling prey to “mirror-tocracy” or hiring in our own image.

After the interview

Unsuccessful candidates
Remember that you want candidates to feel excited, included and positive about your organisation. They should come away from an interview feeling that they had ample opportunity to show themselves at their best. They may apply for another role at the school if they were not successful on this occasion, and they may tell others about the school if they liked what they saw, thereby becoming a valuable ambassador.

Consider how you let people know that they were not successful in their application. Try to personalise this as much as possible rather than firing out a generic email. If your interview notes were robust, you should be able to have a few useful pointers to talk through on the phone and capture that in a paragraph of feedback for any candidates that would like it. Make sure you offer the chance for verbal feedback.

Successful candidates
Let the candidates know as soon as you can, and gauge their level of excitement carefully. If you have the right candidate, they should sound pleased! Be clear about next steps and make sure you have a clear and supportive system in place to ensure their success. This will include a staff handbook, an induction process, a buddy who can support them to get orientated and perhaps some kind of first day introduction and mini-celebration.

Make sure the team is informed clearly about who this person is, what role they will have and what their strengths are that they will bring to the team. Create as much opportunity for this person to feel wanted, welcomed and part of the team. This will be the test of all of the groundwork you have done in the organisation to make people aware of bias, committed to being reliable allies and anti-racist in every way.

Learning and growing 

For your own learning as an organisation, capture throughout the process, what went well and what could be “even better if…” Capture useful statistical evidence to see how well the different places you advertised perform, to explore at what stages candidates drop out and are rejected and to ensure that you are gathering learning and checking your own biases throughout the process. Consider getting feedback from the candidates that didn’t make it as well as those that did so you can learn and improve the processes going forward.

Good luck!

 

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Why be a governor?

This Saturday, the inimitable Raj Unsworth and I ran a session on thinking like a governor at the BAMEed Network conference in London. The session was aimed at anyone thinking about school governance, but in addition, was aimed at anyone thinking about BAME representation on school governing boards.

It is true of many governing bodies that they are made up of the usual ‘pale, male and stale’ volunteers. We shouldn’t overlook the great contribution governing bodies can make, whatever their make-up. However, to better reflect diversity in general or the school community and/or that of our country as a whole, if you are from a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background, this is your chance to help change this just by taking your rightful place around the table. Of course, you should not be expected to represent and speak for all BAME people, so watch out for this. If you aren’t BAME and have an awareness of and a commitment to addressing any of the issues that affect BAME students, staff and community members, I can’t urge you enough to be vocal, challenging and insistent about this as a governor. This is an excellent way to recognise and unabashedly use your white privilege for the common good. If you feel you don’t know much about the issues, but would like to know more, just do some Googling and start getting yourself educated! Following the @BAMEedNetwork might be a good place to start.

Raj, with her rich experience of over 20 years can give the low-down on the intricacies of being a governor at an academy or a multi-academy trust and this is probably worth setting out in a separate piece rather than trying to cram it all in here. This piece will cover school governance in general and what you might like to consider if you are exploring whether you should become a governor.

If you already work in education, you might think that volunteering as a school governor might be counter-intuitive and that if you are going to volunteer it should be time spent elsewhere. However, there are many benefits to you becoming a governor.

Firstly, for your own professional development, school governance, in any phase or type of school or academy is a fascinating opportunity to come out of your comfort zone, up your game as a professional and to see things from a different angle.  You will see that there is more than one way to skin a cat, whether you choose to volunteer in a school like your own, or one that is wildly different.

You can see what your own school looks like from a strategic perspective, or see another school that is similar, or indeed completely different from your own place of work. Whether you are a governor in your place of work or in a different school, you can gain the opportunity to set the strategic direction of the school, shape the school development plan and see how these play out in practice.

You can get a chance to take on leadership roles in manageable chunks, for example by chairing one of the committees and practising ensuring that the aims, progress and outcomes of the committee are addressed well.

Let’s look more closely about the pros and cons of being a governor at your own school or in another school.

Being a staff governor at your own school: pros and cons

Being a staff governor at your own school is one of two particularly challenging roles on the governing body. The other is that of parent governor and I will cover that later on. It is a challenge because you have to keep front of mind at all times that you are a representative from the staff but you are not a representative of the staff. You are not a union rep, you are not there to champion the grumbles and needs of the staff body, and nor are you there to report back to the rest of the staff about what came to pass in the meetings. All minutes are freely available, so any staff member that is interested, can read these after each meeting.

Many staff members may feel quite intimidated by being a staff governor at their own school for the simple reason that you are exposed to situations where you may disagree with your boss, the headteacher, and you will need to speak out if you do. A huge part of effective governance is knowing how to challenge and question things with the aim of ensuring real rigour in decision-making, and to support the school to do the right things for the right reasons.

Finally, being a staff governor means you have a strange insider-outsider status which means that at some points during meetings, committees and decision-making, you might actually be asked to leave the room as there will be a conflict of interest or a certain level of confidentiality that needs protecting. If your school’s governing body is not very effective, you may also find it demoralising to see in more detail some of the school’s weaknesses and struggles to address these well at a strategic level beyond the day to day operational activities you know more closely.

One of the pros is simply the flipside of the issue raised above: a different relationship with the headteacher. If you are looking for an opportunity to show your leadership skills and demonstrate your disciplined integrity in this tricky role, this is your chance. If you have respect for your headteacher and they are able to model how the relationship with the governing body works, this can be really good training for a time when you might be a headteacher yourself.  And if you wanted to see how a school development plan is put together and monitored throughout the year, you will have a unique perspective of both the strategic and the operational machinations that go into setting and executing the school development plan’s aims.

Being a parent governor at your child’s school: pros and cons

If you don’t have children, skip on to the next section! As mentioned above, this is a difficult one to pull off without either using your child’s experience as your only frame of reference, or being so hell bent on not doing that, that you end up not being able to find a way to address issues your child is facing at school for fear of being seen as pulling rank as a governor. Being a parent governor means trying to hold in mind all children at the school, and trying to banish from your mind your own child, their friends and specific little faces that are familiar to you. Being a representative from the parent body, but not a representative of the parents is one that the whole school community invariably struggles with. Your child’s friends’ parents will say things to you as a governor, expecting you to “sort it out”. Teachers who don’t understand the nuanced position of a parent governor can be just downright weird with you. There can even be repercussions on your children if you are seen to be too challenging or your children can be favoured if you do a good job for the school in your parent governor role. I found being a parent governor excruciatingly difficult myself and am in a much happier place being a governor at a school with which I have no personal history or affiliation.

The big advantage of being a parent governor is that you are already embedded in the school culture and it is easy to see how the values, the aims of the school development plan, policies and decisions play out in practice. You are immersed in information that helps you, such as letters home, parents evenings, how the school feels and responds to key events, behaviour issues, even snow days. You know the teachers, the parents on the school gates, and the way the school works. This is all something that is really hard to get a feel for if you don’t make time to explore all of this.

One double-edge sword of being a governor at your child’s school is related to The Guilt. You know The Guilt. It’s that feeling we all have as working parents, especially as teachers who are parents, that we are not there enough for our children, and often spend more time celebrating other people’s children’s magical moments and milestones more than we do with our own. Well, being a parent governor can either exacerbate this feeling or can in fact alleviate it. Ideally, your workplace will give you time and flexibility to be a governor because it is such great CPD. Where better to spend that time than at the school where your child learns? You can get even more of a feel for it, you can feel you are helping to make it even better for your own and all the children there, and you can get another perspective on what is behind some of the rhythms, routines and culture of the school.

Being a local authority or community governor: pros and cons

Whether a school is a local authority school or an academy, it needs to be the focal point of the community. Being a governor from the local community is a way to support this, and also a way to declare your commitment to your own community.

A lot of multi academy trusts will have some success at attracting ‘career governors’, local business people keen to bolster their CVs, and cash in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) hours by supporting a school. Their skills and experience are useful indeed to schools, but someone with up-to-date education experience can be much appreciated as well.  Being a trustee of an academy can give you valuable exposure to the charity sector and it operates differently to a maintained school governing body. It’s worth reading up on the roles and responsibilities of being a trustee or governor at an academy or a multi academy trust as these are different from those of maintained schools, which people often don’t realise until things get difficult.

As mentioned above, having no link to your own workplace or children’s school can be a very positive thing. And if you are thinking about being altruistic and not being suspected of having any ulterior motives or interests, this is one way to make that really clear!

As a teacher, you can think about what you want to gain from your governor experience and direct your choice of school accordingly. You might want to choose a school that is similar to the one you work in, so you can get a different view on some of the challenges and how they are addressed. You might want to broaden your frame of reference and deliberately choose a school which is a different phase, intake, demographic, size. If you work in a secondary school, being a governor at a primary feeder school can be really informative and worthwhile. If you care about SEND children, you might want to choose to work in a special school to understand some of the issues and successes there. Or perhaps a Pupil Referral Unit or Alternative Provision setting could be stimulating and useful. You might want to choose a school that is in difficulty rather than an outstanding school, so you can really commit yourself to making an impact. You will certainly get feedback on this if the school undergoes any kind of Ofsted monitoring or inspection. Similarly, if your school is struggling, it could be useful to see what it looks like from a different viewpoint (although there’s no guarantee that the governance is outstanding, especially if the school hasn’t been inspected for a while)

Wherever you land, as a governor at a school where you have no prior connection, you can happily get stuck into seeing the world from the other side of the table. You will be exposed to HR, finance, strategic planning and examples of practice – good and bad – that are great for you to learn from and for your professional development. You might even find yourself chairing a committee that hones your skills in a particular area of the school’s development. You could even find yourself part of the recruitment panel for a new headteacher or, less uplifting but equally eye opening, a serious HR issue. You could be there when an Ofsted inspection happens. If you ever want to step up to headship, what a great experience to see these processes from the other side of the table first. You will also be exposed to governor colleagues from the world of business, local councillors, and more, who could be handy to know and could differ from your usual social and professional group. All good social capital to help you on your way professionally.

How do you build your confidence when you are starting out?

Don’t assume that because you work in education and perhaps ‘know how to do meetings’, you know it all. I would recommend that you go to your local authority governor induction, specific training sessions and any termly governors briefings meetings. They are usually very good – and even if they are awful, they are so eye opening and anthropologically enlightening! I have been to some briefings that felt like I was in a Mike Leigh film just by virtue of the range of people there and their behaviour. Others have left me so impressed with how the local authority is addressing issues that affect the local community and doing heroic efforts to do what is best for those in their care.

Make sure the school gives you a thorough induction too. Again, even if you are a staff governor or a parent governor, a good school induction will give you the information you need and will set the scene for the modus operandi you need to adhere to. A good Chair of Governors will do this themselves and might also match you with a more experienced governor as a buddy for a time.

Join Twitter or Facebook school governor groups.  Read online, especially when you get the papers for the upcoming meeting. Go through the agenda and papers carefully and note any questions or thoughts you have. Have a look online at the National Governance Association resources or on The Key for School Governors or The School Bus website. Ask your school if they have a subscription to any of these, and if they don’t, do a free trial in the first instance.  Don’t be afraid to ask the school to invest in subscription if you think it is worthwhile. I am of course biased, but I can’t really imagine not having access to The Key.

How do you become a governor?

There are several ways to become a governor. If you want to be parent governor, this needs to be by election. Ask the headteacher or Chair of Governors when the next vacancy is coming up and express your interest in standing for election. If you are not choosing the parent or staff governor route, I would recommend doing some research into your local schools and doing your own process of exploring the pros and cons to help you decide whether you become a staff, parent or community governor. My favoured method, once you have decided, is to send an email to the school you would like to volunteer at, with your CV and a cover letter of why you are interested in becoming a governor at the school. Follow up with a call if they don’t come back to you.  A good governing body will interview you and will want to find out more, although many have a ‘bums on seats’ approach and will be so flattered and amazed that they will snap you up, no questions asked! Once you are a governor and have found your confidence, if that was the case when you started, you can always take it on to sort out how governors are recruited, the type of skills auditing that happens and ensure that the selection and training of governors is tip top.

There are also organisations that have a specific mission to recruit and sometimes train governors. The School Governors One-Stop Shop (SGOSS) and Inspiring Governance both have match-making services. You can also contact your local authority Governor Services department and offer yourself up there.

I’d be delighted to hear any further comments you might have that might be useful to others, or if you spot things that I might have missed or misrepresented here. Just add them into the comments section, or drop me a line and I will incorporate them if I can. If you do decide to become a governor, let me know. And if you need any support and I can help at all, similarly, get in touch!

Good luck!

When is a teacher a salesperson?

From the Ten Commandments for the ethical salesperson

 

Teaching is selling

I was chatting to a headteacher at an event I had organised recently and I can’t even remember what we were talking about exactly, but he said to me: “So basically you are a saleswoman”. I backtracked and said, “Well, in a way I am, but not that kind of saleswoman, not the slimy car salesman type. I see myself as just spreading the gospel of a good thing”.

Salesperson isn’t usually used as a compliment. I felt slightly shamed by what he had insinuated but our conversation took an unexpected turn for the better. He nudged me jovially, leaned in, and confessed, “before I got myself into all this” he said, gesticulating to the room heaving with long-serving, high achieving headteachers from across the country, “I was what you might call a travelling salesman – and I loved it”.

To pare down the conversation and cut to the point, we found ourselves discussing with great interest and agreement that teaching is basically selling. Here are some thoughts on the basics of really sound sales skills based on my decade as an English teacher and a decade in consultative sales in the education sector, in my roles as Director of Business Development at The Key for School Leaders, as a consultant helping two small education businesses grow and develop, and as Head of Membership at Challenge Partners.

Believe in your product

One of the key ingredients for failure in any profession is being half-hearted or lacking in belief in yourself and in what you are doing. The best teachers are really convinced that what they have to offer is really worth knowing. Those that have great passion and enthusiasm for what they teach, and genuinely want others to share in their joy, are the ones that usually at least get the attention, respect, and often loyal commitment of their students.

Likewise, I only became interested in business development out of necessity. I started at The Key as Research Team Leader, working with a team of researchers tasked with swiftly, accurately and succinctly answering questions from school leaders on anything that concerned their school. The service was a hit, schools were feeding back that this was a game changer, freeing up their time, reducing their anxiety and ensuring that they were doing what they needed to be doing. And then the financial crash happened and the DfE decided they couldn’t roll out nationally as planned. We had two choices: fold or find a way.

My absolute conviction that what we were doing could change the way school leaders worked led me to take on the role of business development and start to spread the gospel. My enthusiasm was boundless. We went from a few hundred schools that received the service for free to 60,000 school leaders with paid membership across the country over the course of the next 5 years.

Know your market and be an expert

Belief isn’t enough of course. You have to know who you are dealing with. You have to be an expert in your subject. You have to keep refreshing your knowledge. And you have to find a way to make sure that you can communicate to your market, based on your intimate knowledge of what their needs are, where their heads are at, and how you can reach them.

I care passionately about education. I steep myself in reading, thinking, listening, connecting, and getting involved in the sector as a school governor, through events and TeachMeets and the like. I can be passionate and well-informed about a number of key issues. I am seen as someone who understands and empathises with the frontline sector folk.

A teacher who is clued up about how their subject connects with their students’ worlds and can articulate that, is onto a winner. And I’m not talking about convincing students that they really will need to use Pythagoras’ Theorum in their daily lives one day, especially if they ever have to move a sofa up a narrow staircase.  Being able to play back your peripheral knowledge to your students and being able to pitch at the right level, is essential for teachers.

In my roles to date, being clear about what schools will prioritise based on ever-changing Ofsted criteria, funding streams, times of year, demographics, local politics, or any number of factors is paramount. Working that into my discussions with my clients can help them trust me and know that I understand where they are coming from.

 Know your client group and listen carefully

Basic knowledge about your students’ lives, the things that might be pulling them this way or that, being savvy about forces such as poverty, pressures on gender expectations and your own unconscious bias can be a massive advantage when thinking about your target audience.

As teachers and as salespeople, we have a natural tendency to want to launch in with our message of enthusiastic good news. Worse still, salespeople and teachers alike often find themselves in the oppressive world of targets, box ticking and trying to get to the end point from the minute they start their day. Lest these things start to dictate unsavoury behaviours, asking questions and listening carefully is time worth taking. Greeting each child as they enter the classroom is a great way to show you are human, but actually listening to them when you ask how they are, is even better. Making connections, following up, replaying and reaching out is hard to find time for, but can actually get you further along towards your end goal than you would imagine.

Know your competitors and treat them with respect

Something I really believe in is knowing your competitors inside out. I also believe that you shouldn’t politely avoid them but should rather make efforts to connect, be in the same space and interact comfortably. Moreover, I believe that you can never get anywhere or earn the respect of others through dissing your opposition or competition.

If you know your competitors, what they do well, where you are similar and where you differ, it is possible to articulate this in a respectful and engaging way.

Kids always try it on and will compare you with other teachers. How many times have you heard them say words to the effect of “Miss never gives us homework like you do! They are much nicer than you”? Or perhaps they complain about another teacher saying you are much nicer because of x, y or z reason. What do you say in response? Can you say something that shows that you actually know what your colleague is trying achieve and what is important to them rather than skirting around the issues or god forbid agreeing that they are a moron compared with you?

Or what about those students that are more interested in other things rather than in what you think is important? How can you be inquisitive, give respect to things that matter to your students rather than defaulting to the generation-gap trap of poo-pooing their passions?

When I worked at The Key, we didn’t really have any genuine competitors until one set themselves up to aggressively mimic what we did and deliberately target our members by offering to undercut us by 50%. Legend goes that their CEO was so determined to bring us down that he used to spit on the floor every time he had to mention our name. I made it my business to always go over and say a friendly hello to their sales team at their conference stands and congratulate them on their latest small landgrab. If asked about them, it was easy for me to set out the differences around quality, methodology, capacity and so on without ever saying a disrespectful word about them.

Recently as part of my work with Challenge Partners, I was invited to a seminar of organisations that offer peer review. Instead of the usual circus of pitches behind closed doors, each organisation was asked to speak about their model in a roomful of heads and in front of their perceived ‘competitors’ for business. What was delightful was the chance to hear more about these different models and to see the virtues and differences between them. Everyone was so passionate about their belief in peer review as a way to create meaningful and impactful collaboration, it was fascinating!

Solve problems, remove barriers

Consultative sales is really all about this. Putting together the points I made earlier, the ‘sales pitch’ really isn’t one at all. It is a discussion, which starts with you listening, and genuinely trying to see if what you have to offer will work for the other person. You can only know this by listening, knowing the market, understanding needs and so on. What are the simple things you can do to remove barriers? Can you move on the price, or perhaps add value without shifting on price? Are there economies of scale or a trial before there’s a commitment in full?

Students also need this level of barrier removal. You can’t know what these barriers are without listening, understanding, thinking creatively.

Have clear expectations for timelines and next steps

Some of the best teachers fall down on not being clear on what they want, when they want it by, in what format, how often, and for what purpose. It doesn’t take much to set these out and clarity can make for much better engagement and achievement in the long run. It’s not enough to just say it once either. It needs to be communicated in several ways at different intervals.

Same goes for sales. It’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of a prospective new member of your organisation without having properly set out the timelines and next steps of your discussion or negotiation.  If you get this wrong, excitement can lead swiftly to disappointment on all sides.

Be trustworthy

This is a big one for me. Having been brought up by basically unreliable and unpredictable adults, I have a special wariness of people who are flaky, who over-promise and under-deliver. I especially can’t abide by professionals or personal acquaintances who say they were swamped and that’s why they didn’t do what they said they were going to do. It seems to be a big feature of the education sector that people will just not be there when they have asked to schedule a call with you, or are half an hour late when they have asked you to come and meet them. As well as setting out next steps clearly, I always make sure I am true to my word. If I say I can move on price, I will. If I say I will call you at 2pm on Tuesday, I will.
Children need to be able to trust adults. They need to know that you will do what you said you would do. They need to know that if you set them homework, you can be trusted to take it in and mark it. They need to know that you will behave in a way that earns their trust and they also need to know you will be trusting of them.

Be warm and friendly but keep clear boundaries and don’t be a walkover

When I started teaching, I was told that I should start like a closed fist and only unfurl gradually and on my own terms. “Don’t smile ‘til Christmas” is what is said in this country, I believe. We often mistake being warm and friendly with a lack of boundaries. It is possible, desirable, essential even, to be warm and friendly to the people that we want to trust us, respect us and learn from us.

The same goes with sales. Warmth that is genuine and being friendly even if your service is ultimately rejected as not appropriate, is really important. If you have followed the steps of true consultative sales as set out here, there will be no change in your warmth and ability to be friendly, whether what you are offering is taken up or not. On the other hand, people can take the mickey and ask for a level of flexibility that just isn’t realistic. Don’t be afraid to say no because you worry you might lose the sale. Just explain why in a friendly way. You might be surprised that you don’t lose the sale after all.

While being friendly, one has to keep those clear boundaries.

Love what you do and do what you love

I have always had one rule about work. I love what I do and do what I love. If I find things to be otherwise, it’s time to move on.  I am genuinely passionate about the organisations I have worked with and feel completely at home sharing my passion, engaging others in dialogue and seeing if they might benefit from them too. There will always be targets, ideals, peaks in workload and even days that are simply crappy. But it’s important to me to work with my colleagues to build the right culture so that these things don’t become central drivers.

As a teacher, you can find that your initial passion can become swallowed up by the demands of the job. Where you can, join together with colleagues in your school to make sure the culture is one you believe in and that makes you feel happy and alive at least most of the time. Make sure that you aspire to being surrounded by staff and students that love what they do and do what they love.

Colour-blindness, cats and cucumbers, and cycling

From Margie Warell

Why is my curriculum white vs. why, is my curriculum white?

I was telling a friend of mine about the BAMEed Network and was surprised by her reaction when we started talking about a podcast I had listened to called ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ She suddenly sounded really annoyed as she said, “you know, we don’t need this pitying, dumbing down of the world on our behalf, thank you. Of course the curriculum is white, this is England. I don’t mind adding a black or Asian philosopher into the mix but it’s not representative and it is artificial if there’s more than one or two isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure how to react. She said, “All you are doing with this BAME thing is segregating and categorising people – I don’t want to be seen as a brown woman when I walk into a room or representing brown people or women when I am on the school governing body. I just want to be me”. I love my friend, we often holiday together as families, we feel so at home together but we are completely opposed in terms of politics and many aspects of our world views. But we can talk about things and trust each other completely. We also don’t try and change each other’s minds about things. We find the middle ground. Still, I said to her, “colour-blindness, that’s not actually real you know?” She was resolute. It would be for her.

Test yourself if you dare

It gave me pause for thought though. I am not trying to segregate the world, I am trying hard to be aware of my unconscious bias. I start from the standpoint that we are so culturally socialised by certain viewpoints that it is unrealistic to pretend to be colour-blind or neutral. I have been challenging myself recently by trying out some of the Harvard University unconscious bias tests available online. If you are brave you will give them a go too. It makes me squirm but it reminds me that this difficulty exists and the key is to be aware and to not deny or enact the consequence of your initial unconscious bias.

My husband and I keep comparing our results with great curiosity and some mirth. We are such opposites in some ways too. His experience starts as an Israeli-Iraqi Jew brought up in Jerusalem, where he is seen as mixed race and a second class citizen alongside the Ashkenazic, European Jews. He is an immigrant to this country since the early 2000s and that makes him feel an affinity with certain populations more than others. He sees how ethnic minority students, and staff members, are treated differently in his workplace, a university setting, and it makes him incredibly frustrated. Having spent over a decade living in Israel myself, being constantly reminded that I am a foreigner, I know how he feels to some extent. Back in England now, in my relative position of white privilege, but still sometimes finding it hard to assimilate back in, my experience sometimes feels so extreme that it feels disingenuous to do anything but recognise that the way we see the world and are seen by it differs depending on many factors.

Three popular internet things that make you wonder

Every day, things I see online make me think more about this. Three very different ones have made me think. The first is the story of a five year old white American boy who wanted to get his hair shaved short like his black American best friend so that their teacher “wouldn’t be able to tell them apart”. This is a stark reminder of the fact that we don’t seem to be born looking for differences and aware of skin colour that much. It is culturally constructed over time and is a part of our education. You can’t culturally un-construct it just by declaring yourself colour blind. All culturally constructed notions are deeply engrained.

Secondly, the news interview where a white man is speaking to the camera and in marches his small daughter, shortly followed by his other child in a baby walker. They are pursued by a woman who rushes in on all fours grabs them both and hustles them out of the room, returning briefly, still on her knees to shut the door. The assumption online was that this was his wife. Others speculated that it could be the childminder. There was backlash against presumed racially charged assumptions that the woman was a childminder and not the children’s mother and the white man’s wife – she was Korean. She was his wife.

Thirdly, isn’t it human, – and animal – ancient, learned behaviour to break the world up into categories of like me, not like me, threat and non-threat. You only have to see what happens to a cat when someone puts a cucumber behind it. Why would a domestic cat that has never seen a snake, have it so engrained in their ancient cat-bias, so as to be afraid of a vegetable that has only a vaguely snake-like appearance, is completely inanimate but seems to have sneaked up on them? Could this be true also for us human folk? Does it go that far back?

Cycling and gender-biased aggression

On a personal note, as a cyclist in London, I am now clocking up 45 minutes each way on my commute to and from work. I have always been bothered by the amount of abuse I get, although my cycling style is pretty mellow and non-confrontational. I have cycled for years and a while back now, I complained to my husband that as a woman, I get called all sorts of vile names and people can be unduly aggressive towards me. He said he never got any abuse and put it down to the fact that I can be bloody-minded and belligerent with my opinions so I am probably the same on the roads. One evening, we went out together locally and I suggested we cycle there together. On the way, I asked him if he would be willing to do an experiment with me, and to cycle some distance behind me and watch what happened. Sure enough, he was shocked by the different treatment I got compared to what he has been accustomed to. I had the usual array of cars beeping, or deliberately overtaking dangerously close and shouting as they passed, making me jump. There was also unwanted interaction with swearing pedestrians, heads down in their phones while they were weaving between the cars pausing for a moment in traffic, and from other (male) cyclists even.

Due to the air quality of central London, I have taken to wearing a pollution filter mask while cycling in recent months. It has been quite cold so with the mask, gloves, helmet and all my waterproof gear on, you can’t tell if I am a woman or a man or even what colour I am. It’s amazing. It’s as if I have been granted a completely new status. No-one bothers me at all. Bingo.  I can see why it would be amazing to reach a place where we don’t automatically treat people in certain ways based on deep seated and learned bias.

Dare you consider, how might unconscious bias affect your relationships at school?

Let’s assume then that unconscious bias does exist. How might this affect your relationship with your students and other staff members? Here are some all-you-can-eat, food for thought observations I have heard played back to me by school staff I have spoken to:

Have you noticed that BAME staff members tend to be in charge of certain subjects and the further up the hierarchy you go, the whiter it gets? Any BAME senior leaders that do make it in schools tend to be in charge of discipline or PE. What’s that about?

Why is it, in some schools, that the majority of kids that are in detention at the end of the day are black? Why do teachers of all races treat black children’s misdemeanours differently?

Why is it that schools which serve predominantly BAME areas, in parts of London for example, often deploy a military style discipline regime and refer to this as being appropriate for “these kinds” of students? The claim is that they are entrenching bias towards certain groups being subordinate to the ruling middle classes rather than promoting a socially mobile, lifelong learner expectation for children of ethnic minority backgrounds.

What about the teachers who are surprised when their Chinese heritage students educated in this country are not maths whizzes, when the black kid can’t run and their white working class boys love to read?

What of the Asian British pupil who wrote that he lived in a terrorist (terraced) house, and then ended up facing an investigation by police?

Why is it that more ethnic minority people get university degrees than white people in Britain and yet in the workplace they will be still more likely to be unemployed and paid less?

What about assessment, what elements of that is geared towards certain socio-economic and ethnic biases? What about the recent Year 6 SATs test and the dodo question for example?

Can you join me in learning more?

Please ask yourself these questions, try the Harvard online tests and let’s start to discuss what this makes us feel, what we could do differently and where the issues might lie. We will be holding a BAMEed Network conference on all aspects of unconscious bias on June 3^rd. If you have ideas for what other issues should be covered, let us know and make sure you are there on the day!

Don’t treat marketing and PR as an occasional necessary evil, be wicked at it from the get-go

 

Source: Simon Hepburn 

It was the level of marketing and PR that surrounds secondary school choices that got me interested in this area in general with regards schools. It might sound entirely bonkers to admit that a school with a seemingly poor reputation caught my attention and ended up being the one my children attend today. Doing what every parent does when they don’t know better, I asked other parents about schools in the area. One school nobody seemed to mention, but that was a stone’s throw from my home, always got the same response when I asked about it. People seemed to think it was a bit rubbish – but when pressed, no-one could say why and not one of the people who had an opinion on the school had visited it, knew anyone who went there or had even read anything about it. Me being me, I had to investigate. Since then, the school has invested time and energetic enthusiasm into their PR and marketing, and its reputation is starting to match that of the actual magic that happens every day at the school. I tell people, get your oldest in now, because all too soon, it’s going to be oversubscribed. Turns out the other local school that parents told me they just “knew” was amazing and a first choice, and whose headteacher blogs about incessantly, is about to take a reputational nose-dive since the latest Ofsted visit, as the hype might not live up to the reality.

When we talk about PR and marketing with regards schools, there seems to be a level of distrust and even disgust from many, as if this is solely the realm of the private sector, the commercial and the corporate. However, savvy schools are realising that this area is absolutely vital not only if you want to keep pupil intake high, but also if you want to have some control over the story that is being told about your school. Providing you can back up your claims with substance and it’s not all puff, when times are good, your reputation will be good – people will want to come to the school, existing students and their parents, and staff members will be well-informed about all the great things that are happening, and they will feel proud and justified by their choice to be part of the school community. When things go wrong, the proverbial dog mess hits the whirring blades of the media circus fan, this good stuff you’ve been consistently broadcasting could just be what people remember despite anyone’s best efforts to pervert the course of justice.

Good marketing covers several bases that shouldn’t be ignored, especially in the complex and challenging education landscape today. Here are some of them:

1. Your school can be seen as the first choice school if you articulate and market what your unique selling points are and keep making sure these are firmly grounded in the experience of the school community
2. In a landscape of increased competition, and where the new shiny ideas such as academies, free schools and now grammar schools catch parents’ eyes, building networks and partnerships with others across the sector and with local business that benefit students and staff alike, can make your school stand out too
3. Promoting good news stories regularly and consistently can stand you in good stead when things do go wrong or the going gets tough. Ongoing reputation management leads to robust damage limitation
4. Good reputation with the local community and across the sector can lead to excellent partnerships, some of which can support alternative revenue streams, which in turn can help the school when flat cash is at a premium. Future partnerships can also create future opportunities for your students in universities, local business and beyond
5. A school that is clearly a great place to work and to study will draw not only parents to send their children there, but will also be attractive to teachers. If you can articulate and broadcast widely the culture, ethos, CPD opportunities, and the high-quality education to be gained there, you can recruit and retain staff as well as families wanting to send their children to the school

The importance of marketing and PR really shouldn’t be overlooked. Traditional marketing for schools has been all about profile-raising for the purpose of successful recruitment and retention of both students and staff. Marketing is about improving and maximising brand opportunities. Taking this a step further and savvy marketing can mean future-proofing your school as mentioned above, and ensuring that your school is a first choice school for the surrounding area. The ninja marketers will also be mitigating some of the pressures in these financially straitened times, and will be using marketing for resources and income-generation through building meaningful networks and partnerships that benefit the school for years to come.

Links and resources for further reading:

If you are interested in learning more, Simon Hepburn from Marketing for Schools has many resources and opinion pieces from his many years’ experience on his website here

There is a good overview written by Simon called, How does your school stand out from the crowd, in SMT Magazine here. This sets out the cycle of marketing and PR  shown above that schools should embark on and helps you think about who in your school should be building the skills and expertise and making time for such a role.

Janet Murray gives useful advice on ‘How to link up with journalists on social media without feeling like a crazy stalker’ here. Her website contains all sorts of other useful links, articles and blog posts.

The Key for school leaders and NASBM (National Association of School Business Managers) have produced these useful slides called Why marketing matters to schools and their School Business Manager Toolkit also has some information on marketing your school successfully.

 

Joining the grammar school debate

Grammar school class photo in 1981

 

Weighing in on the grammar school debate

It seems that everyone has a story about their experience of grammar schools, be it going to one, or not going to one. It is a charged subject and we oldies love to draw on our own childhoods on this, as we often do so many topics around education and childhood. But this is one area that has changed so much since we were young, that we need to be really careful not to make up our minds, or heaven help us, make policy, based on our own frame of reference from the past.

That said, I will talk about my own grammar school experience later as a way to illustrate just how life has changed. First though, let’s look at some of what is being debated.

There have always been grammar schools, so what’s changed?

Prime Minister Theresa May has apparently decided to challenge the notion that she is a safe pair of hands bringing us stability and status quo in uncertain times. She has, almost out of the blue, decided to lift the ban on new grammar schools being opened. May has said that it is a good idea, for the sake of choice and to ensure that the brightest children are not held back, that we expand grammar schools so that in every area in the country families have better access to a wide range of schools, including grammar schools.

May points out that at present, there is a certain level of social selection around secondary schools as those that can afford to live in the posh postcode areas will have access to the better schools. This might be true, but will grammar schools change anything around that? And doesn’t going back to an 11 plus means that schools will be either selective grammar schools or secondary moderns? Or if the idea is that every school can be selective, how will that work exactly?

What does this choice mean in practice?

In some areas of the country, especially those that are more rural or sparsely populated, there is little or no choice of secondary schools because there are just very few schools in the area at all. However, in areas like London, the choice debate is highly relevant. And we need to make sure we aren’t making national policy based on a narrow, London-and-the-south-east-centric frame of reference.

In my catchment area for example, there are schools in three boroughs we can access within walking distance or that are a short bus ride away. We have a pick of academies, and maintained schools, faith schools for all the major religions, schools with different specialisms in arts, media, languages, tech and more, single-sex and mixed schools, grammar schools, schools with and without sixth forms. There are also plenty of different special schools catering for a wide spectrum of needs, and even three pupil referral units. There are schools with over 2,000 students and others with only 600. So chucking in a new grammar school wouldn’t make much difference would it? Most schools do really well by their students, are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted and cater for all kinds of vocational and academic interests and abilities. But there isn’t this choice everywhere in the country.

But when does choice become social segregation? I want my children to rub shoulders with the real population of the area in which they live. But I also know that with streaming, they are already experiencing a form of segregation for much of the school day in many subjects. I wouldn’t want to segregate them completely, no matter how bright I thought they were, from other children from all walks of life. Many parents however, really don’t want that. They want their children to be sheltered from the potentially distracting influences that might be experienced by fraternising with families that are not “like us”. Is that what some of us really mean when we talk about choice?

Do structures make a difference?

We already know that there is no evidence at all that structures make any difference to how well children achieve or to closing the gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those that are not. We have seen the government insist that the academisation programme is what will ultimately improve education for all, despite all the evidence showing clearly that the structure and governance of a school makes little or no difference to the outcomes for children that go there. What does make a difference is the teaching and the leadership in those schools –and resources. We know this and yet, it is a massive elephant that we don’t seem to be able to acknowledge in terms of the way policy setting goes. We are told we are pressing ahead, regardless.

Does selection make a difference?

The OECD has stated categorically that in countries in Europe, such as Germany and Switzerland, where selection has been widely used, these schools were not more likely to produce high-achieving students. The OECD education expert, Andreas Schleicher, said that access to selective schools was often unfairly biased towards wealthier families – and that contradicts the aim of stretching the most talented that Theresa May highlights as central to her call for new grammar schools.

What is needed, Schleicher says, is greater meritocracy in the school system. In fact, he goes on to say that what we call academic selection in this country, is actually selection by social background.

Back in the day, the 11 plus may well have identified the more academically inclined or brighter students because it tested a particular way of thinking and learning that could be built upon and stretched. Nowadays, with a huge army of private tutors and an entire shadow education sector that is thriving, the 11 plus does become something that more parents with money can push their children through regardless of their actual academic ability – or ‘talent’ as May likes to refer to it as.

Is education necessarily better in grammar schools?

This to me is just like the conjecture that private schools provide a better standard of education. We need to be really careful with this assumption as it is known that many private schools survive well on reputation, a host of private tutors after school, and in-built high expectations rather than having better teaching or a superior curriculum (as do some state schools, indeed).

Grammars, like private schools, will find it easier to attract and retain teachers and are likely to therefore have more experienced teachers. It’s hard enough to attract and retain teachers in the state sector but imagine what it would be like if there were more secondary moderns struggling to recruit well-qualified staff who will be motivated to stay in the profession.

Do disadvantaged students benefit from grammar schools?

This is where the romanticism of days gone by comes into play for many. The original tenet for grammar schools was indeed to provide equal opportunity for highly academic education for children from deprived backgrounds. And they did for a while but only for those that were accepted to grammar schools.

The DfE asserts that grammar schools provide a good education for their disadvantaged pupils, and that they want more pupils from lower-income backgrounds to benefit from this.

But what about the students from deprived backgrounds who don’t go to grammar school? In the old system, the sorting sheep from goats at age 11 is understood by many to have achieved its aim by releasing potential and it created in some cases a mobile population of young people from deprived backgrounds. But it also had dire consequences for many children, not least those who did not pass the 11 plus exam and were relegated to the secondary modern and to social segregation from their peers they had known from primary school. The psychological and motivational fall out of such an experience has been talked about at length recently.

There seems to be consensus that the picture would be different nowadays. But there really isn’t a level playing field on entry for grammars and successive studies have shown that poorer pupils are generally much less likely to get places in grammar schools.

According to the Sutton Trust for example, only 3% of entrants to grammar schools are entitled to free school meals, when in selective areas the average proportion of free school meal pupils is 18%.

However, Theresa May is emphatic that anyone criticising the lack of social mobility of grammar schools also has to face up to the inequalities in other ways of admitting pupils. And this is where she brings in the notion of a sort of postcode social apartheid caused by the system of catchment areas deciding school places. You only have to look at some of the successful comprehensive schools’ catchment areas and house prices to see how this social segregation plays out already in some parts of the country. But on the flip side, there are schools with extremely high intake of FSM children in deprived areas that do incredibly well by all their students.

And now for the personal story

I went to a top girls’ grammar school. How I got there is a bizarre thing indeed. We had a pretty gruelling home life and as a result we each reacted differently at school. My older brother was an angry and disruptive student at one local comprehensive, and my bright, quiet and well-behaved older sister opted for the other local comprehensive when her turn came.  When I reached the final year of primary school I was adamant that I didn’t want to be under the shadow of either of my siblings. A friend from my class was taking the 11 plus so I went along too. We got the afternoon off school and watched Bollywood movies at her house and drank Ribena in milk to celebrate. I didn’t really think much about it after that as the whole exam was completely baffling to me.

It was a real surprise to learn a few weeks later that I had gained a place although little did I know that I had in fact failed the 11 plus because my ability in maths was so poor. My mum only told me this humiliating fact a couple of years later, in a rage, when it was clear that things weren’t great for me at the school. The headteacher had decided to take me and another girl who had just moved from Yorkshire as her experimental students. I was the only one on free school meals, having to trot up to the till at lunchtime and present my while the others stared in curiosity. I hated every single moment at the school, feeling like an imposter with the well-off girls who were there. I had no resources or support at home for the academic level expected of me and the already significant gap between myself and my peers widened over time. There was no pupil premium to encourage extra support and the school did not feel any particular responsibility for whether I succeeded or not. They repeatedly told me that they had taught the material and it was up to me to try harder to make up the widening gap.

I left just before my 16^th birthday with 5 O Levels and a CSE. After burning my books in the back garden, I enrolled to an FE college where I took my A Levels. I also re-took my maths O level each year until I passed it with the help of a maths tutor funded entirely by my own Saturday job money. I left home at 17, took a year out so I could work and fund the rent of my sub-let room in a shared council flat where I lived with two blokes in their 20s. I finally went off to university to read Social Anthropology against all the odds at the end of that “gap” year. I am where I am today because of a combination of stubbornness and luck, and not because of the wonderful opportunity that grammar school provided me with.

My brother had already followed a similar path to me but skipped university in favour of an apprenticeship at a recording studio and today is a successful professional composer for films. My sister did really well at her comprehensive, got 10 great O Levels and 4 A Levels and gained a place at Cambridge, where a combination of imposter syndrome and a series of awful life experiences meant that she never could complete her course. She is happy and successful now but like for all of us, it has taken time and effort to get where we are.

The grammar school issue now is often described as divisive. There seems to me to be a real divide between people when it comes to their child’s education. We all want the best for our children but for some more than others, there seems to be a real passion for equality of opportunity that stops us from wanting to buy our children a place at the front of the line at the expense of those that cannot afford it. I still come back to the same place whenever these issues are up for debate. What we really need to do is invest our time, money and passion into ensuring that every local school is a brilliant place to work and to learn in. That within each school there is the expertise and resources to cater for all kinds of children from every walk of life. What an exciting place it could be to have at the heart of every local community, a well-resourced, vibrant place of education with many pathways to happy, successful and fruitful adult lives.

 

Killing off parent governors isn’t necessarily going to make school governance more professional

Nicky Morgan recently declared that being a parent is not enough to be a governor. This was following the announcement that parent governors are to be dropped from all school governing bodies in favour of professionals with the “right skills”.

Having been a parent governor for 6 years I must say that I agree that it is not enough to be a parent if you want to benefit a school governing body. You need relevant skills and you need time. You also need a commitment to spend time constantly updating and honing your skills so they are relevant and useful to the school you wish to support. In fact, I would say this is the most critical aspect of being any kind of governor. And it is the probably the area where many governing bodies are completely lacking. But as a parent governor, you need a level of mental agility and brutal self-reflection that, in my experience, most people just don’t possess and don’t know is necessary.

It would be fair to say that many parents want to become school governors for two reasons: they want to give something back to the school which their child attends; and they want to have some kind of influence over the direction of the school so that their child (and of course other children) will get the best education they can. This has been loosely referred to as supporting and challenging the school. But it is very telling that although they are meant to be looking out for the interests of all children at the school, a parent’s interest is naturally very personal to their own child’s daily life at the school and will usually end as their child leaves the school. To prove my point I can say that I sat through countless governing body meetings where parent governors pushed their own agendas, referred to their own children by name in the meetings time and again with comments such as “but my A__ loves the school meals/is always saying they are not allowed to drink in class” or “I know that L__ always complains that other children are holding him back when he is so bright/wouldn’t want there to be more play equipment in the playground as he likes the space for football”.

Parent governors are meant to be representatives from the parent body and not representatives of the parent body and this also seems to encourage the myopic view of the world through one’s own experience. I personally found it really difficult to get a view on what every segment of the school population was experiencing, needed, or would benefit from, especially since we, the governing body, were a pretty uniform bunch of predominantly white, middle-class professionals and most of us were parents. (The school had a habit of simply bumping people over from parent governor to community governor when their term ran out, so long as their child was still at the school. This meant that around 2/3 of the governing body were parents at one point).

This is where the mental agility and brutal self-reflection comes in to play. If you are not able to constantly question yourself, your motives and interests as a governor, and most especially as a parent governor (and as a staff governor, another role on the governing body that requires a zen-like level of self-awareness and mental gymnastics), you are almost certainly doing the school a disservice. If you are not committed to ensuring that the school gets the best of what you have to offer as a governor by attending training, reading a lot, staying up to speed with changes in legislation and demands, being part of an online community via Twitter such as #UKGovChat you should not be a governor at all. This is confusing, and it will probably annoy some people that I say this, because the defence against pushing governors that I always heard is that they are volunteers and are giving their professional skills, for which they would usually be paid pretty handsomely, for free. Bums on seats, be grateful and all that. It must be noted too that while London schools are inundated, there are schools where it is nearly impossible to get a full set of governors either from the parent body or from members of the local community. There just aren’t many people that fit the bill or who can afford the time. Only last year the DfE gave £1m to help schools recruit high-calibre governors and SGOSS will tell you that if you are from London, you will wait for months to find a governing body to join, where in other areas of the country it’s impossible to fill places.

I think that some of the rationale for abandoning the system of elected parent governors in favour of searching for people with the relevant professional skills (whatever those may be exactly) is to avoid a situation where being a parent is the only contribution you have to the school. We shouldn’t forget that the PTA is a good place for people with and without so-called professional skills, who can use their motivation, time and passion to have a massive positive and very visible impact on the school.

One of the things I tried to insist we adopted at the school where I was a governor was a skills-based approach. I wanted to force us to consider what these “professional skills” were that the school needed. If we don’t want to be looking for people who are just replicas of ourselves and therefore assume they are the right people, we need to clearly define what the skills are we need. I requested that we carry out a skills and knowledge audit and that we then matched the existing people we had already on the governing body with relevant courses, reading materials and resources to ensure that they had the basic skills we had decided were essential. We should also make sure the right people are on the right committees within the governing body too. Where we still had gaps, we could search for the right people to fill those knowledge and skills gaps. Based on the skills and knowledge audit, how important would it be to know if governors had not seen the school development plan, or were not clear how the governing body’s activities fit into this? How telling would it be if we discovered that our Chair of governors had not attended any training on being a Chair or didn’t the fill out the skills audit at all? How useful would it be to know that most people had not attended the LA induction and that there was no school-based induction? I have written about the importance of induction and orientation in a previous post. Furthermore, isn’t it right that any self-evaluation, challenge and support should start with the governing body’s own fitness for purpose?

My point is that I agree that being a parent isn’t enough but killing off parent governors isn’t necessarily going to make school governance more professional. Having a governing body made up of only professional people isn’t enough either. To be a governor these days, you really have to know your stuff and that includes being aware of just how much you don’t know. You have to start with the basics of being clear on why you want to do it, and you have to commit yourself to constantly honing your knowledge and making it clear where you can add value to the governing body as a whole for the benefit of the school, and according to the priorities set out in the school development plan. Times are rapidly changing. This is no mean feat.

 

 

I’m feeling a little shattered – may I have some glue?

The importance of induction and orientation

In 2007, aged 37, I returned to England, having been living, studying and working abroad since I was 24. I had spent the entirety of my working life abroad pretty much, and knew I would need to rapidly learn what it means to be English again. The country – and my home city – had changed beyond recognition in the time I had been away. I went through a period of re-orientation alongside my husband and children who had never lived in the country before and didn’t speak English fluently. I wish there had been some kind of induction or orientation for us all.

Induction for school governors

When I became a governor for the first time at a primary school in London, it took me a while to work out what I was meant to be doing, what the school was like, what the aims and vision of the governing body and SLT were. It didn’t have to be like that but it was, because there was no induction of any kind offered by the school or the governing body. I realised that there was no induction for probably these three reasons. The first is simply because the governing body was finding its own way under a headteacher who seem to regard them as a group of potentially interfering parents who needed to be kept at arm’s length. The second, more disturbing, was because there seemed to be a massive assumption that everyone knew what needed to be done, what the expectations were and how to behave in meetings. They were all white, middle class, professional people who had clocked up many hours on committees and in meetings of all sorts. This made me question how anyone who wasn’t au fait with all of the associated jargon and mannerisms of this very British system, was supposed to find a way in to this closed club. And the third reason was that no-one wanted to admit to anyone else that they had no real clue how it all worked in the very specific and very complex world of school governance, what we were all apparently buying into and what we were meant to do.

Such was my dismay that I took myself off to a local authority-run induction session. It was very telling. We were asked to bring along the School Development Plan (ours was a bound tome written in comic sans and that had no input at all whatsoever from the governing body) and a group of about 20 of us spent a day being inducted very thoroughly into the role, responsibilities, aims and ethos of good school governance. It may just have been me who saw this, but the socio-economic and ethnic mix of this group of people seemed very different to that of our governing body. Perhaps we all ended up there for the same reasons.

Suffice to say, I never really recovered from this bumpy start to my 4 years as a governor. This coloured my whole view of the gaping chasm between what good governance might look like and what I had experienced and it made me vow to ensure that new governors to our governing body would not feel the same. It took me years to push it through but eventually, as a parting gift at the end of my term, I did leave a thorough induction plan, clear materials, a buddying system and a vision for induction into the school’s governing body. It’s probably an unused file in someone’s inbox.

Good examples of induction policies for school governors

East Barnet School in London has an induction policy that states clearly that the induction process is seen as an investment, leading to more effective governance and retention of governors. It has a requirement for the following:

• The Chair of Governors will welcome new governors to the governing body
• New governors will have the opportunity to tour the school and meet staff and students
• A mentor will accompany new governors to their first full governing body meeting, as required

The policy also lists the documents that new governors will receive within two weeks of appointment and suggests documents for them to read, such as the school’s latest Ofsted report and the school prospectus.

There is a checklist for new governors to complete. There is space to record the date when each stage of the induction process was carried out, and to confirm receipt of various documents.

St Giles Community School in Warwickshire has an induction policy and induction pack for new governors. It looks at the roles of the headteacher, the governor mentor, and the training link governor.

The document explains that the induction process will be co-ordinated by the Chair of Governors, and that everyone involved must follow the agreed programme. It says:

The governor mentor is available to help and support the new governor, before, during and after his/her first meeting as appropriate.

He/she should have experience as a governor, a good understanding of educational terminology and acronyms and good interpersonal skills.

There is a table listing different stages of the induction process, along with who is responsible for carrying them out and when they will take place

School induction for Year 7s

My oldest daughter started Year 8 this year. When she left her primary school and began secondary school, she was lucky enough to go to a week-long summer-school that the school organised for all Year 7s. It was a great week – not least for us parents as it was free childcare for an entire week. But on many levels it helped this potentially stressful time of new beginnings pass joyfully and without drama. Having Year 7s in school for a week without any other students there gave them space and time to practise the journey in to school, to find their way around the building without fear of being teased for getting lost, and gave them time to bond with each other without having to worry about being quiet and disciplined in lessons yet. They got to know the school rules, the atmosphere, and the expectations which were clearly set out to them and they also got to ask questions and feel confident that they knew more or less what lay before them.

Ernest Bevin College and Sixth Form Centre in Wandsworth has a number of transition strategies to help new Year 7 pupils settle in, including holding a summer school like the one my daughter attended.

The summer school lasts for two weeks and all Year 6 pupils who have accepted a place at the school are invited to attend. In 2014 the activities included:

• A welcome day for pupils to get to know the school and each other
• A team building day at an outdoor adventure centre
• A ‘CSI science day’ for pupils to work in teams to solve a crime
• A celebration event where pupils show parents and guests what they have been involved in during the camp

You can see a timetable of the summer school activities here. Other transition arrangements include only having Year 7 pupils in school on the first day of term, and holding Year 7 and  Year 8 ‘buddy afternoons’ in the third week of term to help students get to know pupils in other tutor groups and the year above them.

In June 2013, the department published findings from a National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) survey of 21,000 disadvantaged 11-year-olds’ views on starting secondary school, and whether summer school had changed these. It concluded there was a “small positive effect on transition to secondary schools”, especially for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. NFER research from 2006 looks at transition from primary to secondary school in Wales. It includes four case studies of good practice. Strategies identified in the first case study from a primary school include:

• Designing a bridging project in science for pupils to begin in Year 6 and complete in Year 7
• Meetings between the secondary school’s special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) and the primary school to discuss pupils with SEN, and meet their parents
• Year 5 pupils visiting the secondary school
• Year 6 pupils attending the secondary school for a number of PE lessons, and two induction days (in the autumn and summer terms)

The third case study, from a large secondary school, describes the following actions that the school and local schools took to support transition:

• Headteachers of all schools in the catchment area met on a termly basis
• Members of the school’s English department met with primary school colleagues to plan a bridging project
• Primary school teachers observed secondary school lessons in core subjects
• The head of Year 7 met with Year 6 pupils twice, to deliver information and invite questions from pupils
• Sixth forms pupils were asked to help Year 7 pupils settle in, and the school held a day where only Year 7 and Year 12 students were present

The school in the fourth case study developed a proforma to gather information from primary schools about pupil’s test results, SEN, strengths and weaknesses, conduct/attitude, and attendance record.

It’s so sad therefore that the government decided to scrap the funding for these summer schools especially since we know that they do seem to impact on students’ integration and attainment having attended them. Many schools will now need to charge for these summer schools which will defeat the very important purpose of targeting underprivileged students.

Induction for new staff members

Most of the jobs I have taken on have found me working things out for myself and without a clear induction – mainly because I seem to have taken on new roles within an organisation, in start-up situations, or there has been an element of make-do-and-mend in the workplace I entered. However, I know that as a line manager, I have always ensured that my new staff members are inducted clearly and in a gradual and logical way. It can be overwhelming the amount of information one needs to take on in a new job. And it can be reassuring to know that your line manager and colleagues actually understand the workings of their organisation, the role you are taking on and what is expected of you.

The now dismantled NCTL summed it up well when they say that induction should “be designed to help the new member of staff to contribute quickly and fully to the life and work of the school. This requires processes that will enable them to be integrated socially as well as formally into the school community”. Similarly to students starting a new school, The National College says that induction can help ensure new employees are highly motivated, and that employees who settle quickly will become productive and efficient from early on. Induction should cover:

• A brief overview of the school and its management structure
• Conditions of employment, for example hours of work and holidays
• Procedures relating to sickness notification
• Health and safety arrangements

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) has produced a booklet with advice on the recruitment and induction process in all types of organisations. The benefits of an effective induction programme reflect those outlined by the NCTL and are:

• A more settled employee
• A more effective response to training
• Lower turnover
• Improved industrial relations

The booklet also says:

• A good reception on the first day, where the line manager spends time with the new employee, is important
• A written checklist of what should be covered in the programme is useful, so the new starter and the manager know what has and has not been covered, and to give some structure to the programme
• Care should be taken not to overload the new employee with information
• Written materials, such as a handbook, can cover key information and help employees to remember it
• A guide, mentor or buddy can usefully help with everyday questions, introduce other co-workers, and explain the layout of the building

Induction is important

I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that induction is absolutely crucial in any organisation to get newcomers off to the right start. I hope that the examples given here have been useful and that they can give some food for thought on how you work with new people, set the standards and get colleagues and peers feeling clear, focussed, involved and enthused from their first interaction with you.

If you need any help, some constructive criticism or support, you know where to find me!

‘When Governments ask for the World’

This week I was lucky enough to attend the Annual Trustees’ Lecture at the Arts and Media School, Islington. It’s always a treat. Last year was delivered by the stimulating and entertaining Grayson Perry and this year it was by the highly sensible and eternally affable Tim Brighouse.

Tim Brighouse delivered his lecture ‘When Governments ask for the World’, which you can also read here in full.

One of the most striking things he pointed out was just how education has changed through the ages – and how the power has shifted from the classroom practitioners to the Secretary of State for Education who has more and more powers over increasing levels of detail in the classroom. I have attempted to summarise it below

Five Ages of Education

Age	Years	Assumptions	Powers of the secretary of state
Trust and Optimism	1944 -1968	1)     Central government’s role was to set the general policy guidelines only; the detail and most power should be left to local government which was closer to the people and therefore better able to understand their needs. 2)     Political freedom, moral freedom, social justice resonated with politicians from all parties. Education was a ‘good thing’ and we needed more of it. Schools were built; Colleges of Further Education, Teacher Training Colleges, Colleges of Advanced Technology – later turned into Polytechnics (and ultimately Universities) – were created and run by LEAs. Local Authorities also created a Youth Service, Adult Education Centres, Teachers Centres and Outdoor Pursuit Centres for residential trips as they also founded a network of public libraries and youth employment services (later called the Careers Service). 3)     It was not for governments to interfere in matters best left to professionals. In education ‘matters best left to the professionals’ meant what should be taught and how it should be taught	Three: 1)     Removing air-raid shelters 2)     Securing a sufficient supply of suitably qualified teachers 3)     Rationing scarce capital resources for new buildings
Doubt and Disillusion	1968-1980	1)     Pupils weren’t being taught properly or the right things 2)      ‘Education isn’t working’ theme 3)     Central Government – at least in England if not in the other parts of the UK – was determined to act	Five
Markets and Managerialism	1980-2015	1)     ‘Choice’ (for parents), ‘diversity’ (of provision and types of school) ‘autonomy’ (for schools) and ‘accountability’ (by schools and local authorities). 2)     A belief in market forces and competition as a means of finding a solution to most problems. 3)     Seeing now the words ‘Equity’ and ‘Equality’ and they demanded regulation by the state since market forces, though never publicly acknowledged, couldn’t be relied upon to deliver those ideals. 4)     Markets and competition tend to produce winners and losers – sometimes more of the latter than the former. So we have managerialism by the state.	Forty
Confusion	2015-2020	1)     No national agreement on what the purpose of education is. 2)     Disproportionate focus on Literacy and Mathematics with little mention Music, Art, Drama, Dance or outdoor education or residential. 3)     Fragmentation of the system.	Over 2,000 and very little accountability. It extends to the Secretary of State defining in detail what shall be taught, how it should be taught and when it should be taught in England. This approach is not replicated in Wales Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Ambition and Partnerships	2020 –	1)     An accountability system where achievement as well as attainment is assessed, where there is an overt attempt to assess the progress of children in terms of their health and well-being, how they are able to be team players especially in solving inter-disciplinary problems which are the hallmark of the modern world, and how they are intelligent rather than how in intelligent they are. 2)     Access to schools would need to be fair rather than the competitive scramble it is now. 3)     A shared language of school improvement.

If you found this interesting, you might want to explore this timeline dating back as far as http://www.educationengland.org.uk/history/timeline.html  600 A.D