Seizing Success 2010 blog

Directory of coverage from each day

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:48:00 -0700

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

Day two - Thursday 17 June

Day three - Friday 18 June

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Catch up on anything you missed from the last three days of the conference

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:19:00 -0700

That's it for this part of the coverage of this year's conference. You can continue to read and participate here on the blog or visit the College website for:

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

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"I'm a black guy from the middle of Pittsburgh who's saving souls with clay"

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:11:00 -0700

Bill Strickland closed the conference with his legendary slideshow telling the story of his work to build up the Manchester Bidwell Corporation - an extraordinary training centre in an impoverished part of Pittsburgh. One of our delegates described Strickland's speech on Twitter as "a powerful emotional speech from a living angel, Bill Strickland".

Strickland's highly visual, funny and very moving presentation can be viewed online as a speech to the renowned TED conference. We'd urge you strongly to find 35 minutes in which to view Strickland's story.

It's a story of profound transformation in the lives of young people who would otherwise be lost in the system. He repeatedly makes the point that so many of the difficult challenges facing schools have been solved by the investment in world-class facilities. Strickland's message is both profound and simple: if we treat people as assets, they are an asset to the community. If we treat them as liabilities, they become a liability. Beautiful environments create beautiful people. Prisons create prisoners.

Stuart Sutherland

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Tim Gill on childhood in a risk-averse society

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:35:00 -0700

Tim Gill, author of No fear: growing up in a risk averse society spoke on the consequences of our society taking a zero-risk approach to childhood. One head at the close of the session described it as "the most refreshing session of the entire conference".

Gill opened the session by inviting delegates to think about their favourite places where they played as children. Delegates were invited to stand up if their favourite place was outdoors. Everyone stood. They are asked if their favourite place was not supervised by adults. The vast majority were still standing.

Gill's point is that we need to remind adults of the central ingredients of a good childhood - that there is something universally important in children's development in being unbounded out of doors. He contends that in the UK we're becoming prey to a zero-risk approach to childhood and we're being taken 180 degrees away from the kind of childhood that best nurtures children.

As examples of how misguided our attitudes towards children have become, Gill told of the children who were arrested for building a treehouse in a park; the referee that banned parents from taking photos of their children at a Sunday league football match because of his understanding of child protection; the school that banned kiss and chase on the grounds of child safety and the housing trust that sent a letter to the parents of a three year old about his anti-social behaviour because he played football outdoors.

Children's normal behaviour, argues Gill, is being labelled as anti-social and the adults who allow it as almost criminally negligent. The core of his argument in the session was that we need to rethink our attitude to children and to the kind of communities we live in and how welcoming they are to children.

Gill gave an example of how much more controlled and constrained by adults children's lives have become by showing a visualisation of the 'home territory' of four generations of a family. The great grandfather could roam six miles to go fishing. The great-grandson is allowed to walk to the end of the street. Gill told delegates that between 1980 and 1990 the percentage of children who walked to school declined from 80% to 9%.

Gill expanded his central argument with several case studies, one of which was the issue of playground safety. Over recent decades, playgrounds have become sterile, risk-averse environments and we've spent £300 million on high-tech safety surfacing. Is there a safety problem in playgrounds? For decades, 1 child has died every 3-4 years in a playground, compared with over 2500 children who have died in traffic accidents in that time. What is the opportunity cost of this? What else could we have done with that £300 million? We could have saved the lives of hundreds of children had that money been spent on traffic calming. Gill argues that we have our approach to the apparent risk of injury in playgrounds out of all proportion. And we've got to this point because we've adopted an attitude towards children as being thoroughly fragile and incompetent beings.

Gill drew the following conclusions from his series of case studies:

the zero risk childhood is impossible
the measures must be proportionate to probabilities and dangers
neighbourhoods must allow children free play and interaction with adults

So what do we do about all of this? How do we resist the false logic of risk aversion? Gill argued that there are two key changes we need to make:

we need to move from a philosophy of protection to a philosophy of resilience, to an attitude where we support children to bounce back
we need to create more child-friendly communities

Gill concluded by arguing that the climate around risk and childhood has begun to change for the better. He shared with delegates some more recent encouraging developments that seek to push against the tide of risk aversion. He discussed the impact of the publication ‘Managing risk in play provision', which has encouraged the relaxation of some regulations and supported the development of more exciting outdoor play spaces. He also argued that we are helpfully moving away from a culture of risk assessment to one of risk benefit analysis - whereby the benefit to children of certain activities is a core part of the equation.

He pointed delegates to his website on rethinking childhood and to a publication he wrote for the English Outdoors Council 'Nothing ventured - balancing risks and benefits in the outdoors’ (2.4 MB PDF file).

He shared several examples of what exciting outdoor play and play spaces might look like in schools. He showed a video of the Bristol-based Play Pod scheme, where a container full of 'junk' is opened for children to experiment and play with at play times. You can watch the video about the Play Pod scheme on YouTube.

Gill finished by arguing that the move to a philosophy of resilience is likely to be supported by at least a silent majority of parents. And he encouraged education leaders in the room to be assertive with the fearful: "you cannot set your bar at the level desired by the most anxious parents."

Stuart Sutherland

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David Bell on coalition policy and the role of the Department for Education

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:15:00 -0700

See the full gallery on Posterous

David Bell is Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education (DfE) and former Her Majesty's Chief Inspector. He joined us today in conversation with Tony MacKay and conference delegates.

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

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Vicki Phillips on the educational work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:53:00 -0700

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:

education is opportunity
get the right structure, plus teaching and learning, makes the most difference
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:

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

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John West-Burnham on leadership as a vocation

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:17:00 -0700

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

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Roundup of the second day at the conference

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:58:00 -0700

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.

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Kurt April on responsible leadership

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:25:00 -0700

See the full gallery on Posterous

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:

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)
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
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
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

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Sir Michael Barber, Paul Pastorek, Professor Ben Levin and Dina Martin on turning educational establishments around

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:35:00 -0700

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

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Ben Levin on managing distractions

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:12:00 -0700

Ben Levin's presentation

Professor Ben Levin (pictured on the right) spoke about managing distractions, noting that the biggest challenge identified by leaders is finding the time to do what is most important. Ben described two kinds of distraction:

operational distractions such as day-to-day management issues
political distractions such as competing agendas

He looked at how leaders could identify the tasks that are both vital to success and that only they could do. He also talked about the 80/20 rule, where an increase in effort brings lower and lower returns, and felt that identifying the ‘80/20’ point was vital. He also stated that routines and delegation were essential to managing distractions since "at any given moment there is a high probability of low probability events". In other words, surprise dominates. Too many surprises could mean a problem with routines though and he noted that delegating to others means accepting the way they do things.

Ben made some suggestions about dealing with operational distractions by:

keeping priorities in your face
being accessible but not open door
reducing meetings
making priorities

He advocated understanding the reality of competing interests when dealing with political pressures by building strong relationships, learning conflict management skills and creating vehicles for dialogue. Overall he suggested a balance of optimism and realism combined with clear vision.

Kathy Seddon

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Mick Waters on learning through the eye of the pupil

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:11:00 -0700

Mick Waters' presentation

Opening his presentation by "looking at learning through the eye of the pupil", Mick Waters showed an image of an eye with a continuously shifting and changing pupil – a very interesting metaphor! Mick spoke about Nelson Mandela, showing images of his cell and of the learning cave in the nearby prison quarry – “even there education was the great approach to freedom”. Mick asked delegates what their pupils thought about teacher learning on courses and showed pupil drawings responding to this question. They said things like "my teacher reads thicker books as she gets older and finds out how to build better lego".

On pupil learning Mick quoted Greene: “there is always a moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future”. He noted the recent curriculum shifts in England, the move away from content and towards having more flexibility, with national parameters but local interpretations. Mick suggested that, as we move forward, there may be more choice - though with a fixed core with more emphasis on facts and rote and less on skills.

Mick presented a word map of the Queen’s speech which showed: schools, teachers, give, reform, new, improve and state to be commonly-used words. Learning, however, was very small. In today’s speech Mick suggested that the Secretary of State had mentioned "authors of destiny" "more power and control to school leaders" "collaboration" "improved refined tests" and "key parts of plans moving forward".

Mick also made reference to the recent Gove/Gibb speeches at the Royal Society of the Arts and drew some provocative conclusions about the plans for the curriculum. He felt there would be a core of imparting of knowledge, delivered in subject disciplines. He next presented a tongue-in-cheek set of Kipling ‘ifs’, that might have large-scale system effects. These included publishing league tables by constituency, parent observers in lessons and a limit of eight GCSEs.

Looking at learning through the eye of the pupil was advocated, and a five point guide to thriving in schools was presented. Literacy and numeracy, pleasing teachers, contributing to the school, having general knowledge and having a wide friendship group were the key factors for pupil success. Mick looked at achievement on a graph with two axes: ‘everybody to unique’ and ‘effort to easy’. He looked at ways to move learners from what everyone can achieve easily, to things that took effort but made achievers unique. This would involve providing challenge with support. Getting to basics, he felt learning skills, stamina and sprit were needed and that learners needed to experience work with success, and how to deliver with panache. The entire planned learning experience would involve extended hours outside school as well as school routines.

Looking at a video clip about enjoyment in learning he felt it should be important to know the pupils and their language, and that policy must be enacted to inspire and reach out to the learners. He described how pupil assessment of school departments can be extremely valuable for change: "It’s not the number of breaths that we need to count, it’s the number of moments that take our breath away".

Kathy Seddon

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Henry Winkler (yes - the Fonz!) at the conference

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 06:56:00 -0700

See the full gallery on Posterous

Henry Winkler - author, actor, director - was at the conference to talk about his own personal struggle with dyslexia; the work of First News (award winning children’s newspaper); and his role as an ambassador for the My Way campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the many different ways children learn and to celebrate their success.

He was certainly a popular person to visit, with the queue for him to sign books stretching around the room!

Peter Clarke

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Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, addresses the conference

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 04:19:00 -0700

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education speech to the National College Annual Conference 2010 from The National College on Vimeo.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, was warmly welcomed to the stage by conference delegates. He thanked Steve Munby for eloquently and brilliantly articulating the case for servant leaders in the preceding presentation. He was pleased to see a Latin tag in Steve’s speech and suggested that if he were to make one it would be "Hail Caesar" – you’ve done a great job boss, thank you!

He also thanked the audience, stating that his deepest conviction is that there is no greater calling than to teach and that his role was to identify what government can do to serve teachers. He stated that he felt heads and teachers are the best people to lead schools and listed the many schools he had visited that confirmed this. He acknowledged Steve’s point in saying that some visits had involved some very courageous speeches! He stated that he wants to give heads more power and control and to celebrate gains made - “it is professionals that drive school improvement... collaboration, providing mentoring and excellent professional development”. He expressed gratitude to Steve, and to the work of Local and National Leaders of Education but confessed that he was impatient to do even better.

The Secretary of State felt that we need to develop a culture of professional development including professional qualifications, where the National College will be central. He described the driving, crusading vision at the heart of the new education policy - with the single most important ethic being to make opportunity for more equality since we know that we have very stratified system with a gap that rises throughout a less privileged child’s life. This moral failure was described as an affront to social justice. The government are committed to address disadvantage - this is at the root of their accelerate programme, since the days are long gone when we could educate a minority. He described a need to harness education capital, as without it other countries will overtake us. We can see that we are doing better than we did in the past – but need to think how we are doing compared with both the ‘rest’ and the ‘best’. We must learn from the most innovative nations. The pace of change across the globe is accelerating: 20 years ago we were 14th now we are 23rd. As the fourth largest economy, with high investment and talent, these figures are not good enough.

Michael Gove stated the intention to extend power to innovate “in your own school and across schools”. He noted that the USA has taken radical steps to improve education with more great charter schools to drive attainment and social mobility. Canada has similar autonomy, freedom, and choice for parents - Alberta is one of the best examples in world. Sweden, Finland and Singapore are also driving up standards. He described how the new academies will offer autonomy for all schools to fully control their own budget and staffing and to develop their own curriculum. To date, 1,772 have expressed interest in the offer, which includes 70% of outstanding secondary schools. He added that they will not undermine what is already happening well - in fact he wants academy partners to offer other schools help. Brokering support from great schools will be an important role for the College, LLEs and NLEs. He envisages a new approach to curriculum as one of the new ways to tackle a tragic culture of low expectations.

Gove quoted Mike Gibbons in the TES who expressed views that align with those of the new coalitions:

"A study of models of innovation in other domains show that the most dynamic consist of a group of large organisations surrounded by very small start-up groups around the margins. In this model, new structures act as tugboats adding extra 'pull' to the drive to increase universal standards, not the innovations dragging much-needed resources away from the fleet."

The sum of the system will continue to be greater than the parts. Structural reform is needed urgently to get more excellent teachers into the classroom. It is planned to write off the student loans of science and maths teachers and to shift resources so that training is possible in their own school. He felt that teaching is a craft best learned as an apprentice and so more classroom observation will be encouraged. He added that it is vital to tackle discipline and behaviour, with parents taking increased responsibility, in a culture where adult authority is respected. He encouraged greater control over career development with a vital role for the College. He described how we need richer, timelier, more in-depth data (for instance on pedagogies that succeed) as improvement must be more evidence based. He will re-focus the Ofsted inspection regime and their role will be inverse to schools success.

He envisages a new approach to curriculum as one of the new ways to tackle a tragic culture of low expectations. Curriculum should be properly international with evidence from around the world to inform our core offer and again to provide evidence of good practice. Exam standards must also be internationally comparable. Ofqual should gauge exam standards both over time and across the world.

He closed by saying: "It's our ambition to nurture, encourage and inspire to do more - for every child to achieve everything they are capable of, with my role being to serve you in your task".

The full text of Michael Gove's speech can be read at http://www.education.gov.uk/news/news/nationalcollege.

Kathy Seddon

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Chief Executive Steve Munby's speech to the conference

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:28:00 -0700

Steve Munby's speech to the National College Annual Conference 2010 from The National College on Vimeo.

Steve Munby, Chief Executive of the National College opened the second day of the conference with an inspirational speech on leadership as service.

He spoke about acting with moral purpose - asking "what is wanted of me?" rather than "what do I want?" - is key to being a servant leader. And the best way to make a positive difference to children's lives is to lead.

Servant leaders get satisfaction in empowering and developing others and watching their people grow. In great schools, everyone is supporting everyone else to get better.

Servant leaders are careful stewards of the resources available - especially now as budgets are reduced. We need to continue to support our most vulnerable children despite this.

Arm's length bodies like the College are facing a reduction to their budgets, with the College losing £16 million this financial year.

The use of federations and collaboration, clustering and pooling costs like sharing school business managers across primary schools can all help in reducing costs. Leaders will need to manage budgets and find new models of working, helping schools and communities to work together to make a difference. It's challenging, but can make us more creative, more effective. He reminded the audience (in Latin!) that 'times change and we change with them'.

However, innovation and creativity need to be tempered with leadership of the basics: keeping order, managing behaviour and holding people to account for their performance. The key is knowing what to change and what to leave.

Servant leaders understand their context - their communities - and do what is right for them. People will support change is they have faith in you and the process - people don't mind change, but they dont like being changed.

Steve reminded the audience that every leader needs to be a learner. Being reflective and trying out new approaches is key to developing as a leader - he referenced Malcolm Gladwell's observation that around 10,000 hours of practice is needed to master any skill. Great leaders are always searching for new challenges and are never satisfied - they keep driving forward with moral purpose.

Steve spoke on the problem of variation between schools. The impact of National Leaders of Education is clear - working together drives improvement and school-to-school support is vital in order to develop 'collective capacity'. Steve also said that he is delighted that academies will be expected to offer support to other establishments.

Those leaders who are driven by status and not moral purpose are a risk - empire building and isolationism is very damaging when collaboration and professional networks are clearly seen to have such a positive impact.

Leaders need to be resilient. Steve gave the example of Eddie Izzard running dozens of marathons back to back, depite never having done it before - we can make amazing things happen if we just believe we can. But we can't do it alone - Izzard relied on team of colleagues and support from the public and the same applies to servant leaders, who need to have the humility to ask for help when
they need it.

Director's of Children's Services (DCS) have a job that requires enormous resilience and Steve stressed his admiration for the role. He spoke about how the College is helping DCSs work together and develop their own and their group resilience

Finally, Steve talked about how servant leaders must be willing to hold courageous conversations, never avoiding difficult discussions as the outcomes for children matter so much and children rarely get a second chance.

He concluded by reminding the audience that their challenge is to lead in a time of reduced spending but to make more of a difference to the lives of children and young people - by collaborating, being a learning leader, being resilient and always being courageous in our conversations.

Finally, he spoke about what the future will bring for the National College. We have our part to play in these times of austerity and we're always aware that our responsibility is to make a difference to the lives of children and young people, not to protect ourselves. We're building on the best of our past work and doing everything we can to reduce our impact on the public purse.

We exist to serve the government of the day, children and young people, and leaders - helping them to be the best they can be, because in times of change what we most need is great leadership.

Peter Clarke

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Delegates arriving for day two of the conference

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:46:00 -0700

movie.mov Watch on Posterous

Day two has got off to a great start, with our Chief Executive Steve Munby making an inspirational speech to a crowded main hall.

We'll have more coverage of the speech shortly, and the video of it will be available on the website this afternoon.

Peter Clarke

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Andy Hargreaves on the fourth way

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:17:00 -0700

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

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Day one is over, but the stage is set for day two...

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:43:00 -0700

That's it for this evening, but visit again tomorrow for a very busy day with:

the keynote speech from National College Chief Executive, Steve Munby
the ministerial address from Secretary of State, Michael Gove
many more speakers including Andy Hargreaves, Sir Michael Barber and Mick Waters

Peter Clarke

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Olympic champion David Hemery on coaching

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:30:00 -0700

David Hemery's presentation

Former Olympic champion and world record holder, David Hemery CBE, began his session with a film of one of his sporting triumphs.

He told us how three thoughts occured to him when he stood on the podium to receive his award:

I'm relieved I didn't blow it
this is a dream come true
most importantly - "Why me?"

His running partner and he were equal slowest of the field, not the favourites to win - but they did.

After his running career was over, he decided to try and discover why when under pressure some people achieve close to their best, some do only okay and others tend to achieve significantly lower than their potential.

He was fortunate enough to be able to speak to 83 people who were viewed as the best in world in their chosen sport.

Key concepts emerged from this research:

they were very aware of their goals
they were very aware of their challenges

Hemery pointed out that the leaders in the hall would not be in their positions of responsibility if they were not keenly aware of these concepts. Their work was based around this awareness.

He posed the question: "how can we enhance this is others - do we put them under stress?".

Henery urged caution but pointed out that there is nothing wrong with the 'traditional' methods. Suggestions, sharing best practice, goal feedback are all useful. However, if it's only on our agenda, it's not going to work - we need people to think for themselves, to promote thought and independence. We can be at risk of generating dependence. To avoid this, we must ask questions which make people think.

Hemery identified three intrinsic motivations:

The joint agreement of agendas
Ownership and independence - the 'coaching dance'
Personal development and performance improvement

As coaches, we need to ensure that people are involved in decisions which personally affect them. We must listen,engage people in decisions.

Hemery went on to describe the history of management styles leading to a discussion of the work of Daniel Goleman over twenty years ago - emotional intelligence. Key to this is the fact that over 85% of management is now concerned with relationships, with the understanding of what is going on in the emotional minds of people we work with.

Developing the argument, he pointed out that values underpin all behavious - "If I don't give a hoot about people it will be evident in all I do" - and it's this self-awareness that is at the start of emotional intelligence. He encouraged delegates to be aware of the reactions of their people and look after them emotionally.

More recently, spiritual intelligence has also been studied - the desire of people for a meaning, a purpose in their lives. Hemery stressed that the mix of all these aspects are essential.

Hemery's own coaches were the basis of much of his own success, of course. A most striking statement was from an experienced coach who put his philosophy of coaching as simply; "becasue I loved them." This is unmeasurable. Hemery pointed out that people will value and respect you if you go theough the hard times with them but overall, the most important starting point is "can you encourage them to take the first step?".

Everything starts with the first step.

Finally, after an inspiring, authentic and emotional journey with a rapt audience, Hemery closed with a challenge to identify, value and nurture the innate talent in everyone we deal with:

"Can you become exceptional coaches and 'guardians of the flame?'".

Kevin Mulryne

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Ronald Heifetz on leadership, change and collaboration

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:04:00 -0700

Ronald Heifetz's presentation

Ronald Heifetz is the Founding Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government. He shared three core ideas about leadership with the conference.

1) Leadership is a practice

Heifetz said that too often we think of leadership as a set of personality traits. You're either born with it or you're not. He argued that this doesn't explain why so many successful leaders fail a lot of the time. It doesn't explain the variance in achievement by very successful people across their careers - whether excellent leaders or successful sports-people.

Heifetz argued that it's not useful to equate leadership with personality. We need to think of it as a practice, and one that requires different activities, different responses in different contexts at different times.

To view leadership in this way we will never draw a bottom line on ourselves or other people. This is an approach that allows us to say "how can I do better next time?" and gives us more freedom to think about how we can become leaders or become better leaders.

Heifetz also argued that we ought to teach children that leadership is an activity, something that everyone can practise and not something that comes with authority or social dominance - which is an assumption that children can learn very, very early.

2) Leadership is a practice that can be performed with or without authority

When we distinguish leadership from personality we can also distinguish leadership from authority. And we want people to be exercising leadership without authority, beyond their pay grade.

Heifetz argued that in western cultures we structure problem-solving by authority relationships, turning to authority when there is a problem. Children look for direction, protection and order from their parents and by the time we are twenty we have this behaviour hard wired into us: if there is a problem we turn to authority for a solution.

This culture only works well when you can look to the elders for direction. But in times of change, looking to authority for a solution doesn't work as they don't always have the solution and are not as adaptive as they could be. Our expectations of authority make it far too difficult for people in authority to say to those around them: "I'm in way over my head". Leaders, particularly in a time of crisis, need the people they lead to share some of the responsibility for making the change that is necessary.

3) We need to understand the difference between adaptive work and technical work

Heifetz argued that the most common source of failure in leadership is that people diagnose adaptive problems as if they are technical problems. In other words, leaders too often see the difficult problems facing them as problems that can be solved using the techniques we have used in the past. He argues that leaders need to identify those parts of a problem that can be solved with the 'technical' knowledge we have built up in the past and those that need them to be adaptive, to admit that they they do not have all the answers.

Heifetz believes that many of the issues and challenges we are faced with on a daily basis sit beyond our technical knowledge and training - they require us to work in partnership with other professionals. However, we're under pressure to restore equilibrium quickly, to treat the difficult problems as things that can be handled managerially. Heifetz contends that so much of leadership is really about holding people together in these situations where no individual knows the way forward.

Heifetz concluded by suggesting that "the best thing I can do for all of us is to bless our incompetence". There is no way, he argued, that any of us as individuals can do justice to every problem we face or every child we have to teach. We need to get over the shame of our incompetence and engage much more collaboratively with our colleagues. We need a culture of taking risks, learning in an ongoing way about how to do what we do better. We need to ease up a little bit with ourselves and acknowledge more quickly when we are having difficulty. That way we would take corrective action more quickly and invite others in to help more quickly.

Stuart Sutherland

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