'Standards parasites' and 'leadership creatures'

I've stumbled across this excellent blog by David Weston, a former teacher turned expert in data use for school improvement who runs his own consultancy Informed Education.




In an article he posted yesterday he briefly explores, reflecting on his own experience in the classroom, the interesting issue of how consistent individual teachers in terms of a consistently maintaining and raising the standards of achievement and application:

"If you look at the last few weeks at your school, I’m sure you can think of times where students behaved well without you having to put in much effort. Thinking back over my years of teaching, I know there were days when I took classes like this as a great reason to relax a bit, and let a few lapses go by without comment. Similarly there were students who may have not done some work where I just let them be".

This vexes Weston as he feels he was in fact on those ocassions being 'a standards parasite' because without consciously realising it he "happily accepted the results of my colleagues’ hard work while eroding those same expectations".

This is an interesting reflection and chimes the age-old debate about the role of school leaders in reducing within-school variation by galvanising staff to hold their peers to account.

Some like Prof. Alma Harris ,of the IOE, have consistently argued that by distributing leadership more effectively and giving all teachers a sense of ownership or leadership in the classroom standards are more likely to rise as the quality of teaching across the board becomes a collective concern for all professionals in the learning community.

I recently attended the Independent Academies Association National Conference in February, and there was a fascinating workshop session with Professor Brent Davies, a national expert in the field of education leadership development at the University Hull and Associate Director at the SSAT.


In it he presented a leadership matrix which categorised what he considers to be the 4 key 'leadership creature' types found within schools. Briefly these are in turn :

• The Owls - who are very wise and very good at what they do; they believe in the mission of the school, care about the educational achievement and progression of all children, strive to be ambassadors for the school and to help other staff to develop professionally.
  
• The Sheep - who are naïve and impressionable but have the potential to be inspirational teachers and potential leaders, who will respond positively to what school leaders challenge them to do to raise standards;
  
• The Foxes - who are capable teachers and clever professionals with intricate understanding of the internal dynamics of the school, but are more often than not cyncial of initiatives to raise standards across the board and are not averse to working against the organisation’s goals.
  
• The Donkeys - who are neither very wise nor very effective in what they do. They are complacent about standards and will do what they need to be considered adequete teachers. They tend to be world-weary but are not as cynical as the foxes.

To very briefly paraphrase Professor Davies' work, which is best captured in his new book Leading the Strategically Focused School (2011), the role of an oustanding head teacher and senior school staff is to act as 'fox hunters' and shepherds who protect impressionable 'sheep' teaching professionals (especially NQTs) from being demoralised by said foxes, and seek to manage out cultures of low aspiration and professional standards.

Turning back to David Weston's original reflections on 'standards parasites' it is interesting that he asks this in light of the growing debate about the appropriateness of the Troops to Teachers programme Michael Gove plans to introduce.

While acknowledging that the initiative to create a dedicated training channel for attracting ex-military personnel into teaching roles and teaching assistant roles with a view to full qualified status is not going to be a sliver bullet, he nevertheless sees some merit in the concept:

"However, anyone who is a high-standards exporter, anyone who is an aspiration-raiser, and anyone who can combine the magical complexity of teaching with a relentless drive to raise standards for all must surely be welcome in the classroom".

It will be interesting to see whether or not the first tranche of teaching profession entrants from Troops to Teachers end up producing a new influx of Owls in the school environment.