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School Effectiveness and School Improvement
the UK experiencePresentation to the World
BankSouth East Asia Conference on Education
Quality New Delhi, India, Thursday 25th October
2007
Professor David HopkinsHSBC iNet Chair of
International Leadership
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Overview

• Preamble effectiveness, improvement and moral
  purpose
• The legacy of informed prescription
• Towards informed professionalism
• Coherent system design

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KNOWLEDGE POOR
1970s Uninformed professional judgement
1980s Uninformed prescription
NATIONAL PRESCRIPTION
PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT
2000s Informed professional judgement
1990s Informed prescription
KNOWLEDGE RICH
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School Effectiveness andSchool Improvement
The UK Experience

• The Legacy of Informed Prescription

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The 1988 Education Reform Act

• State control
• National curriculum
• Assessment at 7,11,14 and 16
• Teacher appraisal teacher training
• Formulae for school funding
• School inspections every 4 years
• Transfer to most LA powers to central government
  or governing bodies

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Brief History of Standards in Primary Schools
11 plus dominated
Standards and
Professional control
"Formal"
accountability
"Informal"
NLNS
2004
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
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Distribution of Reading Achievement in 9-10 year
olds in 2001
575
550
525
500
475
450
425
400
375
350
325
300
Italy
Israel
Latvia
Belize
Turkey
France
Greece
Iceland
Cyprus
Kuwait
Norway
Sweden
England
Hungary
Bulgaria
Germany
Scotland
Romania
Slovenia
Morocco
Lithuania
Colombia
Argentina
Singapore
Netherlands
New Zealand
United States
Czech Republic
Hong Kong SAR
Slovak Republic
Moldova, Rep of
International Avg.
Macedonia, Rep of
Russian Federation
Iran, Islamic Rep of
Canada (Ontario,Quebec)
Source PIRLS 2001 International Report IEAs
Study of Reading Literacy Achievement in Primary
Schools
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New Labour Policy Framework
Intervention in inverse proportion to success
Ambitious Standards
High Challenge High Support
Devolved responsibility
Accountability
Access to best practice and quality professional
development
Good data and clear targets
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Percentage of pupils achieving level 4 or above
in Key Stage 2 tests 1998-2003
English
Maths
80
75
70
Percentage
65
60
55
50
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003

• Test changes in 2003
• Major changes to writing test/markscheme
• Significant changes to maths papers

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The Key Question - how do we get there?

• Most agree that
• When standards are too low and too varied
• some form of direct state intervention is
  necessary
• the impact of this top-down approach is usually
  to raise standards.
• But when
• progress plateaus - while a bit more might be
  squeezed out in some schools , and perhaps a lot
  in underperforming schools, one must question
  whether this is still the recipe for sustained
  reform
• there is a growing recognition that to ensure
  that every student reaches their potential,
  schools need to lead the next phase of reform.
• The 64k dollar question is how do we get there?

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School Effectiveness andSchool Improvement
The UK Experience

• Towards Informed Professionalism

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Towards system wide sustainable reform
Building Capacity
Professionalism
Prescription

National Prescription
Every School a Great School
Schools Leading Reform
System Leadership
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System Leadership A Proposition

• System leaders care about and work for the
  success of other schools as well as their own.
  They measure their success in terms of improving
  student learning and increasing achievement, and
  strive to both raise the bar and narrow the
  gap(s). Crucially they are willing to shoulder
  system leadership roles in the belief that in
  order to change the larger system you have to
  engage with it in a meaningful way.

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Act as a Community Leader
Work as a Change Agent
Managing Teaching and Learning
Developing Organisations
Personal Development
Partner another School Facing Difficulties and
Improve it
Moral Purpose
Lead a Successful Educational Improvement
Partnership
Strategic Acumen
Developing People
Lead and Improve a School in Challenging
Circumstances
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Leadership for Learning

• Setting direction 
• Total commitment to enable every learner to reach
  their potential 
• Ability to translate vision into whole school
  programmes
•  
• Managing Teaching and Learning
• Ensure every child is inspired and challenged
  through personalized learning
• Develop a high degree of clarity about and
  consistency of teaching quality
•  
• Developing people 
• Enable students to become more active learners
• Develop schools as professional learning
  communities
•  
• Developing the organization 
• Create an evidence-based school
• Extend an organizations vision of learning to
  involve networks

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System Leadership Roles

• A range of emerging roles, including heads who
• develop and lead a successful educational
  improvement partnership across local communities
  to support welfare and potential
• choose to lead and improve a school in extremely
  challenging circumstances
• partner another school facing difficulties and
  improve it. This category includes Executive
  Heads and leaders of more informal improvement
  arrangements
• act as curriculum and pedagogic innovators who
  develop and then transfer best practice across
  the system
• Work as change agents or experts leaders as
  National Leader of Education, School Improvement
  Partner, Consultant Leader.

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School Effectiveness andSchool Improvement
The UK Experience

• Coherent System Design

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Coherent System Design
U N I V E R S A L H I G H
High quality personalised learning for every
student
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Complementary Policy Framework for System Reform
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Every School a Great School Framework
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(i) Personalising Learning Joined up learning
and teaching

• Metacognition
• Curriculum choice entitlement
• Assessment for learning
• Co-production

My Tutor Interactive web-based learning
resource enabling students to tailor support and
challenge to their needs and interests.
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(ii) Professionalising Teaching Teachers as
researchers, schools as learning communities
The Edu-Lancet A peer-reviewed journal
published for practitioners by practitioners
regularly read by the profession to keep abreast
of RD.

• Enhanced repertoire of learning teaching
  strategies
• Evidence based practice with time for collective
  inquiry
• Collegial coaching relationships
• Tackle within school variation

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(iii) Building Intelligent Accountability Balanc
ing internal and external accountability and
assessment
Chartered examiners Experienced teachers gain
certification to oversee rigorous internal
assessment as a basis for externally awarded
qualifications.

• Moderated teacher assessment and AfL at all
  levels
• Bottom-up targets for every child and use of
  pupil performance data
• Value added data to help identify strengths /
  weaknesses
• Rigorous self-evaluation linked to improvement
  strategies and school profile to demonstrate
  success

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(iv) Networking and Collaboration Disciplined
innovation, collaboration and building social
capital
Leading Edge Practice Partnerships Schools
develop exemplary curriculum and pedagogic
practices and share with others

• Best practice captured and highly specified
• Capacity built to transfer and sustain innovation
  across system
• Keeping the focus on the core purposes of
  schooling by sustaining a discourse on teaching
  and learning
• Inclusion and Extended Schooling

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(v) Governance and Segmentation System
transformation is both complicated and
facilitated by the high degree of segmentation
within the secondary school system.
Autonomous Federations Groups of schools opt
out of LA control but accept responsibility for
all students in their area

• Greater responsibility taken for neighbouring
  schools
• All failing schools in Federations
• Significantly enhanced funding for students most
  at risk
• Rationalisation of national and local agency
  functions

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(vi) System Leadership System leaders care
about and work for the success of other schools
as well as their own
System leaders understand that in order to
change the larger system you have to engage with
it in a meaningful way

• Measure their success in terms of improving
  student learning
• Are fundamentally committed to the improvement of
  teaching and learning
• Develop professional learning communities
• Strive for equity and inclusion

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Segmentation of the Secondary School System
100
90
N 3313
80
70
Low Achieving
Below 30 5A-C
N 483
60
5A-C gt30, lower quartile value added
Underperforming
Actual 5A-C 2003
50
N 539
5A-C gt30, 25-75th percentile value added
40
Progressing
N 1495
30
5A-C gt30, upper quartile value added
High Performing
20
N 696
10
Leading the System
0
N 100
0
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
100
Estimated 5A-C from pupil KS3 data
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Networking and SegmentationHighly
Differentiated Improvement Strategies
Key strategies responsive to context and need
- Become curriculum and pedagogic innovators Support lower-performing schools
- Regular local networking - Subject specialist support to particular departments
Linked school support - Consistency interventions
- Formal support in a Federation structure - New provider
System Leadership Role
Leading Edge - Consultant Leader
- Education Improvement Partnerships - 14-19 partnerships
- Raising Achievement Transforming Learning - School Improvement Partners
- National Leader of Education and National Support Schools - School Sponsored Academy
Type of School
Leading schools
Succeeding schools with internal variation
Underperforming schools
Failing schools
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Paulo Freire once said

• No one educates anyone else
• Nor do we educate ourselves
• We educate one another in communion
• In the context of living in this world

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Professor David Hopkins HSBC Chair in
International Leadership
David Hopkins is the inaugural HSBC Chair in International Leadership, where he supports the work of iNet, the International arm of the Specialist Schools Trust and the Leadership Centre at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is also a Professorial Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Between 2002 and 2005 he served three Secretary of States as the Chief Adviser on School Standards at the Department for Education and Skills. Previously, he was Chair of the Leicester City Partnership Board and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Nottingham. Before that again he was a Tutor at the University of Cambridge Institute of Education, a Secondary School teacher and Outward Bound Instructor. David is also an International Mountain Guide who still climbs regularly in the Alps and Himalayas. Before becoming a civil servant he outlined his views on teaching quality, school improvement and large scale reform in Hopkins D. (2001) School Improvement for Real, London Routledge / Falmer. His new book Every School a Great School has just been published by The Open University Press. Email d.hopkins_at_ioe.ac.uk Website www.davidhopkins.co.uk