Andy Hargreaves began the second day of the conference with a breakfast session on the fourth way. Andy quoted Attwood, saying "there is no debt without memory" and looked back at the memories held by the profession.

In the sixties - the first way (Venus) was a time of innovation and professional autonomy. Parental trust was high but so was inconsistency.

By 1988 the second way (Mars) was in full flow with standards and curriculum set and competition high. We need to make sure that this doesn’t return full scale – there were positives but collaboration was low and leaders were over exposed and under supported.

The third way (Mercury) in the 90s involved developing 21^st century schools according to Gibbon's principles, the suggestion being that public and private systems should work in partnership. There was more pressure in terms of performance targets but more support training resources and ideas. There was no clarity on what was meant by world-class schools and the mantra was an all pervading vision to ‘raise the bar - narrow the gap’. Capacity building was a problem. Originally it meant helping people to help themselves – what it came to mean was training to comply with an imposed vision.  

Andy suggested that there are currently three paths of distraction:

• autocracy and the meaning needed to be in the relationship not the rules
• technocracy - we live in a surveillance society where data is everything but the push to improve needs trust and relationships
• effervescence -the depth of reflection may be lacking

For the future we need the fourth way (Earth). Andy recommended collaborative enquiry - by leaders - in a stable system. We need to think about the population we are serving, first settling behaviour. Then we need to observe what we are doing and begin to fit the learning to the child. Tracking and monitoring should support a school’s goals and provide a vision that’s inspiring and inclusive. Develop active trust with people and work together to build relationship before making demands on them. New accountability is about testing samples, not the whole – that’s surveillance. we need to be evidence-informed, not driven. In this country it is good that we are developing leaders that work together across schools and sectors – this is real capacity building.

Kathy Seddon