If you'd like to find coverage of individual speakers, follow the links below for each blog post or scroll down to see everything.

Day one - Wednesday 16 June

• Vanni Treves opening remarks to the conference
• Susan Greenfield on screen culture
• Andy Hargreaves, Alma Harris and Andy Boyle on leading performance beyond expectations
• Ronald Heifetz on leadership, change and collaboration
• Olympic champion David Hemery on coaching

Day two - Thursday 17 June

• Andy Hargreaves on the fourth way
• Chief Executive Steve Munby's speech to the conference
• Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, addresses the conference
• Henry Winkler (yes - the Fonz!) at the conference
• Mick Waters on learning through the eye of the pupil
• Ben Levin on managing distractions
• Sir Michael Barber, Paul Pastorek, Professor Ben Levin and Dina Martin on turning educational establishments around
• Kurt April on responsible leadership

Day three - Friday 18 June

• John West-Burnham on leadership as a vocation
• Vicki Phillips on the educational work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• David Bell on coalition policy and the role of the Department for Education
• Tim Gill on childhood in a risk-averse society
• Bill Strickland - "I'm a black guy from the middle of Pittsburgh who's saving souls with clay"

• online discussions on the themes of the conference
• videos, presentations and other resources

We hope to see you again for next year's conference and throughout the year on our online network.

Our next conference

As a Seizing Success delegate, you are eligible for a loyalty discount for Achieving world class schools, the School Business Management International Conference 2010, which takes place 12-13 July in Manchester.

It's a unique opportunity to network, learn new and innovative approaches and share good practice and is open to all school leaders, school business managers, local authority representatives and governors.

To get your loyalty discount, quote ALC10 when booking.

• Find out more about the School Business Management International Conference 2010.

Peter Clarke

Tony MacKay started the session by asking what it's been like for the DfE in the run up to the election and now that the coalition has formed. Bell answered that it's been the most interesting part of his career to date. The DfE drew on Scottish and Welsh experience of coalition to tap into sources of experience and advice. They also looked internationally, particularly at New Zealand.

During the pre-election period (known as purdah), they spent a lot of time analysing manifestos, looking for overlappig policies. After the coalition was formed, the coalition document helped as it is a programme for government in black and white. Of course, it doesn't cover every policy and Bell highlighted the need to be sensitive to possible disagreements within the coalition. He made clear that the role of the civil service is to provide advice when disagreements occur, and that policy decisions are made solely by the centre of government. So far, he said, everything has been stable with a good policy programme. He also felt that we should be proud of the way we've handled the transition as a nation and credited the civil service for their help in making things go smoothly.

He outlined the new structure of the ministerial team at the DfE and talked about how the Secretary of State wanted to set a new direction for the department, but that Michael Gove believes passionately in both education and improving the lives of children and families.

How should leaders engage professionally with the politics of education? Bell felt that the most important role of leaders was to have an awareness of the political environment and to interpret the external to the internal as it was impossible to seperate politics from education when £50 billion a year is spent on it.

An executive head of two schools felt that the transition had not been great and that there was too much of a drip feed of information on academies. Bell responded that the government had only been in office for five weeks and that the Secretary of State had put a premium on moving quickly and showing that the coaltion can take decisive steps to further their policies. The consquence of this is that not all information can be immediately available.

A primary head asked what lessons Bell had learned from the civil services of other countries like Sweden and Canada. Unfortunately, Bell replied, it's almost impossible to find parallels - all you can do is look past cultural differences and see how others have responded to the same problems we face. Tony MacKay added that it is often difficult to see the complexities of the differences between countries when making comparisons. Bell added that, despite the difficulties, he would prefer to see inter-country comparisons made than the continuing comparisons of modern education and that of 1953.

Iain Gilmour (@iaingilmour) asked how Bell maintained his integrity when he disagreed personally with government policy and when hard work is discarded due to policy changes. Bell reminded the audience that his role, and that of all civil servants, is to implement the policies of the elected government. Although it was always disappointing for civil servants to see their work abondoned, they need to keep to the civil service values of political impartiality. If he felt that a policy conflicted too much with his personal values, then he couldn't continue to do his job.

Tony MacKay asked about the role of advisers in the DfE. The special advisers in the department are both from the same party as the Secretary of State (this is true of every department) and they help to avoid the politicisation of the civil service by acting as a bridgehead and allowing civil servants to avoid becoming embroiled in political debate.

When asked to name the top three policy priorities that school leaders should be concerned about, Bell said:

• greater autonomy in a more diverse system of providers, with a premium on collaboration. Ofsted arrangements will be "sharpened up" and more information provided to the public
• fair and transparent funding system - the pupil premium
• changes to the National Curriculum. He asked the question of whether the current generation of teachers know how to go about creating the curriculum - he saw a big leadership task in making sure they can.

When asked about the ethics of moving to the academies/free schools system, he said that he personally did not feel "ethically compromised" by the direction of travel and that Michael Gove is keen that the greater autonomy is driven by fairness.

On the future of Every Child Matters and children's centres, he was pleased to see that the front line had been protected from cuts and felt that the coalition was interested in the role of children's centres, although they may want to re-orientate some aspects of them.

He said that a substantial range of announcements on behaviour were to be expected, but that he couldn't say any more at this point.

On the final question about what the pupil premium might mean for Pupil Referral Units (PRU), Bell suggested that targeting funding at individual children would have a positive impact as schools should be able to use it better and ensure that the money goes to the PRU when a child is excluded.

In conclusion, he outlined how he thought a system of autonomous schools might work through leaders collaborating out of enlightened self-interest, with important threads connecting schools - a system of choice.

Peter Clarke

• Vicki Phillips' presentation

Vicki Phillips is Director of Education, College Ready, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She set the stage for her talk by mentioning 'uncommon leadership'. The Foundation concentrates on ways to train, inspire, and empower good leaders for the benefit of students.
 
The Foundation believes that all people have the chance to lead happy and productive lives so they are looking for places around the world where educational development will reap the biggest rewards. They are prepared to take risks, even to fail, to tackle tough challenges and have the advantage of credibility - they are not tied to any ideology, simply doing what works, based on evidence and research. As such, they've learned three things:

1. education is opportunity
2. get the right structure, plus teaching and learning, makes the most difference
3. make good practice viral so that it's possible to scale investments

The Foundation's focus on innovation is intended to change the system dramatically. Phillips refered to a school in the US where pupils do most of their work online, which produced different pupil expectations. Pupils don't have to 'power down' when they come in to school - the level of technology available is comparable to what they have at home. Crucially, this is also combined with access to the adults they need.
 
Phillips continued with the theme of 'powering up' in connection with teachers. Powering up the teaching profession is important as US teachers feel 'powered down' with a lack of respect. The Foundation aspires to let teachers be as flexible and creative they can be. They are in the process of creating a whole range of free support for teachers, hoping to set common standards to be used as a springboad for innovation. Key to this is the creation of systems to help teachers help each other through online sharing of materials created by teachers and companies.

Putting an effective teacher in every classroom would lead to the US closing the achievement gap in only three years and becoming the most successful educational system in the world. However, research suggests that the kind of teaching certification teachers hold makes no difference and  neither does seniority after three years in the profession. What really makes a difference is the past performance of the teacher - it's the best indicator of effective teaching and strong student outcomes. However, in the US past-performance is not rewarded.
 
The Foundation is engaged in a huge research project to identify the features of effective teachers,  asking pupils questions like,"do your teachers do things to move you?" They are using the wisdom of practictioners to work out how to use the results and are interested in creating career ladders so great teachers can stay in the classroom but also lead. They are also working on how to assign the best teachers to students with the greatest needs.
 
Phillips mentioned the following schools as examples of what the Foundation is trying to achieve:

• Rocketship
• The School of One

Part of the drive to enhance teacher practice involves innovations in the use of technology.The T3 system allows teachers to be in multiple places at once in the classroom. Teachers can assign different tasks to different groups using virtual cartoon avatars of the teacher, complete with audio recordings of instructions and assignments. This is leading to what Phillips described as a personalised 'playlist' of activities.

The Foundation is using investment to catalyse re-engagement with the teaching profession so that they know how inportant they are. Phillips pointed out that this cannot happen without teachers - the best model is to have pupils with adults every day and the idea of children learning on their own, connected to computers, will not work. They are working to support the 'traditional' system and also to think about new models.

To conclude, Phillips focused on several important factors:

• relentlessness - focus on teaching and learning because this is what makes the most difference
• scarcity - rebuild what we value the most, despite budget cuts
• productive struggle - the US is not very good at this. The search for consensus often waters down the best ideas
• Live in the 'and' - for example, we need to support good teachers and remove poor ones - it's not either/or, it's both.

The key task of leadership identified by Phillips is managing these tensions and the Foundation is based on the principle - "you do it, we will help."

Kevin Mulryne

John West-Burnham opened the final day of the conference with a breakfast seminar to a rapt audience about leadership as a vocation.

His central argument was that the ways that we think and talk about leadership, and the ways that we practise the development of educational leadership, should be enhanced by a greater focus on leadership as a vocation.

West-Burnham distinguished between leadership as a job (something that you do to earn money), leadership as a career (something that you do to gain advancement and recognition) and leadership as a vocational calling. When we think of leadership in education as a vocation, we bring in a very moral dimension to our work and we begin to think of it as a higher order calling.

He argued that, in order to secure enough leaders in the future, we need to nurture future leadership as a vocation, as work that is value driven.

In his research for the College into the personal life histories of outstanding leaders, West-Burnham found that the primary motivation of these very successful leaders was a sense of moral purpose, and also that these leaders enjoy tremendous self-development outside of their working lives. "Looking at the history of art may be more developmental than looking at the budget," he suggested.

He argued continually that we might develop more successful, resilient and morally confident leaders if we encourage their self-development outside of work and if they are exposed to great literature and music and to an understanding of science as much as to one day courses in technical management.

He challenged his audience to think about their own self-development and about whether they are, in their work, growing in to the people they want to be. In this regard, West Burnham quoted Sir Ken Robinson: "When people are in their element they connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose and well being. Being these provides a sense of self-revelation, of defining who they really are and what they are meant to be doing with their lives"

He also quoted Warren Bennis: "the process of becoming a leader is much the same as the process of becoming an integrated human being".

Nurturing thew idea of teaching and leadership as a vocation generates focus, commitment and dedication. It also provides the leader with a source of enthusiasm and joy and moves the educator to creative exploration of how the practise their calling.

So how do we nurture this idea of educational leadership as a vocation?

• We need to develop our competence in continual reflection. He cited the example of a primary head who has kept a personal learning log all of her career and who now, monthly, publishes the edited highlights on her school website, sharing with her community "this is what I have learned this month".
• We need to place ourselves in real and challenging situations outside of our comfort zones and to contribute to solving them, whether though secondments, placements or volunteering.
• We need to continually open ourselves up to new experiences and to sharing our knowledge with colleagues near and far. West-Burnham argued that we squander a lot of intellectual capital in education because we do not share our thinking and practice enough. Outstanding heads do, he argues and it also brings them personal confidence and resilience.

West-Burnham concluded that if we can nurture the understanding of educational leadership as a value-driven, higher-order calling we can enhance the status of leadership both inside the profession and outside it in the communities we serve. And we can achieve more.

Stuart Sutherland

It's been another busy day, both here at the conference and on Twitter. Take a look at the Twitter coverage to get a feel for events.

Coverage of Steve Munby's and Michael Gove's speeches (along with most other speakers) is here in the blog and you can watch videos of each on the College website along with highlights of Vanni Treves' speech from yesterday.

Join us again tomorrow for Professor John West-Burnham, Permanent Secretary David Bell and more.

• Kurt April's presentation

Professor Kurt April began by stating: "Yesterday unconsciously holds tomorrow hostage, to the extent that many of us are unable to act upon good intentions".

He told us that he had a wonderful childhood, not held back by financial constraints. Later he achieved a position on the board of an International company but longed for holidays and lacked joy and fulfilment in work. He came to believe that work is a form of suffering - he had a job but no purpose. He asked the following questions of himself:

• is there something/someone larger than me?
• what lifestyle do I want?
• what are my values?
• how can I lead (me, others) more fully, and with purpose?
• how can I translate my intent into real action?

He knew that he would have to “make a courageous choice away from my imagined safety from pain toward a revealing openness”.

He shared a graph (included in the slideshow above), describing the pressure of work success where raw potential is realised and success follows until a third life crisis. At that point anger and power could dominate or there could be a breakout to an enriched multi story. His mother advised him that he should live with passion, so he resigned his job to focus on what it means to be efficient and effective, but in balance that with equal concern about what it means to be responsible.

He wrote: “Leadership begins with the knowledge that we become whole when we exercise our efforts, emotions and spirituality to make others powerful. Leadership is thus the ability to live on purpose, by being authentic and consciously aware of oneself and others, thereby creating value for yourself and others”.

Kurt described some of the inhibitors that might be faced:

• overcoming the romantic notions of the ordinary and not allowing individuals without substance to set the social norms
• engaging with the pain and loneliness of standing alone in criticism of the things you hold dear
• overcoming your mental models, stereotypes and deeply-held subconscious sets of beliefs and assumptions

Bruised by apartheid, and shaped by a lack of confidence and self-esteem he wondered what else could be done to compensate, and get rid of anger. He had an identity confusion – black but not quite, white but not quite African, but not South African. Kurt stated that you control your personal dream by making choices. The enduring impact of these, among the patterns that we allow to enter our awareness, is not what we get in life but who we become.

Kurt described two types of power:

• ‘hard power’ - the ability to get others to do what we want
• ‘soft power’ - the ability to get others to want what we want

Looking at the role of leaders he identified four components:

1. they are the custodians of values, character and resources – hearing the minority voice and widening the conversation, helping others cope with uncertainty and ambiguities and teaching compassion (actionable empathy)
2. they invest in personal renewal - taking time out for serenity, growing in gratitude for those who have influenced our lives, investing in those who make us resilient, living your purpose – saying no to that which is not in your purpose
3. becoming agents of healing - helping people to work through resentment and become connected, reconcile conflicting images of the past with a vision for the future
4. provide hope and healing - embody hope being active against despair, become a voice for the marginal

Kurt summed up by saying: “responsible leadership starts with an intention of wanting to be the best for the world, not necessarily only the best in the world. It is the basic call for all of humankind to become more than we currently are. But you can only be more if you - through purposeful action - help others and allow them, to be more than you. You can’t be more, if you don’t know how to be less.”

Kathy Seddon

Sir Michael Barber opened the session by asking whether or not we can learn from worldwide experiences of turning establishments and systems around. Are there common lessons and are there major differences?

Paul Pastorek

Paul Pastorek worked for NASA before getting involved with the school system in Louisiana, USA. When asked why he left NASA to take on a failing school system, he replied that he didn't know the magnitude of the problem he was getting into.

He was originally brought into NASA to use his private sector contracting knowledge on the space agency's problems after the Columbia space shuttle disaster. NASA had to cope with a much higher assumption of risk than any other organisation - there was a 1 in 80 chance of a shuttle disaster, the kind of risk that needs to be managed in extraordinary ways. Unfortunately, Nasa was only going through the motions.

The first (and most difficult) step in Pastorek's quest to turn NASA around was getting the organisation to accept the truth that it was complacent and to learn to accept the frailty of its own capabilitites.

After hurricane Katrina, Pastorek was engaged to turn around the school system in Louisiana, to which he applied the lessons he had learned at NASA. The community in Louisiana was in denial about the school system and as a volunteer pre-Katrina, Pastorek found it difficult to get people energised. It was not until after the storm that it bacame clear to everyone what was happening - the experience of the better enviroment in schools outside New Orleans led them to demand something different for themselves. The crisis helped people to focus on the problems.

When asked what he did next, Pastorek mentioned the importance of driving forward with sheer determination on one hand and on the other, the need to nuture people who are struggling to understand. Vision and purpose is important but it is key to gather enough people together who will suspend disbelief for a period of time to give you space to operate.

Dina Martin

Dina Martin is head of Firs Hill Community Primary School, which has a high percentage of Pakistani families. She visited the Kashmiri part of Pakistan to see what she could learn and found children sitting in terrible conditions for five and a half hours just to get an education. Seeing this, she realised the view of education in the UK was totally wrong.

Consequently, she worked much more closely with families. The visit encouraged better relationships in the school community. All the Pakistani parents understood was formal learning, which was their first-hand experience in Pakistan. They couldn't understand the homework which was being set and the majority of work children were doing in school. However, now Martin had been to Pakistan, they felt they could better relate to her.

Ben Levin

Professor Ben Levin finds himself going back to big challenges in the Canadian government. Successive governments have wanted to do really important things, so it has been impossible for him to say no to requests for help. There was an environment of poor morale, strikes and working to rule amongst teachers, so Levin set up 'partnership table' meetings which brought all stakeholders together to discuss all major decisions.

It took two years to turn the situation around - he set demanding targets and realised that you don't get change by attacking teachers. He built on good practice and used a more collaborative approach but people still felt pressure.

After hearing these fascinating stories, the audience were also asked to contribute. There were accounts of employing people from the community to work with parents and Dexter Hutt Ninestyles in Birmingham added that leadership has to add value - if changes don't take place at a faster rate, what are you needed for? He added that most people are far more capable than they think they are.

If you show faith in people, they will rise to challenges - they will flap their wings and fly.

Kevin Mulryne