There needs to be another way

During the past few months I’ve been writing a book. It has been the most cathartic, scary and all-consuming experience of my life. I’ve cherished and savoured every minute of it. When I finally submitted the manuscript, I did so with great reluctance, as if I was cutting loose one of my own children. I felt compelled to add a note to the editor: ‘Take good care of her…’

What follows is an extract from the introduction:

I love what I do. I’ve had the privilege of working with so many talented people, whose dedication and zest for teaching always continue to amaze me. I feel incredibly proud to be a headteacher. Even now, when people ask me what I do, I love seeing their reaction when I tell them. It always strikes a chord with people. I sometimes half expect them to give me a hug, as if to thank me for singlehandedly trying to save the world. Do you ever feel like this, or is it just me?

When I was in sixth form, I remember going to a careers event and being told that the key to a successful life was to find something you enjoy doing and then getting someone to pay you to do it. Even better, if it’s something you are good at and it’s something the world needs. This then becomes your purpose in life. I’ve since learnt that it’s what’s known as having a firm persuasion in your work, and is – according to the poet and author David Whyte – one of our greatest and missed opportunities: “To feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at the exact same time.” It is, he says, “one of the great triumphs of human existence.” It’s what allows us to move mountains.

I sometimes feel that I can move mountains. I’ve also had to climb my fair share as well, as I faced challenge after challenge after challenge. But overall, I have a very firm persuasion. We all know what’s great about being a teacher, and many other books have done a far better job at describing this than I ever could. I always remember asking an experienced teacher at interview, “What is the best thing about being a teacher?” Her reply was immediate: “August”. She got the job.

Here’s what I like best about being a headteacher:

1. Transforming the life chances of those pupils and their families who put their trust in you;

2. Helping people to become the best they can be;

3. Telling everyone and anyone how proud you are of your school, whether they want to listen to you or not;

4. Quoting Walt Disney to your Year 6 leavers on the final day of term, telling them that, ‘if you can dream it, you can do it. Now go out and change the world.’;

5. Sleeping soundly at night because you know that they will. The world is in safe hands and in some small way you played a part in it.

But as much as I love my job, there are bits I really don’t enjoy anymore. More than anything, I’ve had enough of being judged on how well I jump to other people’s tunes. The relentless pressure, for example, to become ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, to come top of the league tables, to be in the top 10% of this or the top 1% of that. And all based on somebodies tune. It’s about time I started to jump to my own again.

I’ve now come to the point where I’ve realised I can’t see out the rest of my career continually trying to incrementally improve test scores; to eke out a percentage point here and a percentage there. Marginal gains are all well and good, but not in the context of test scores. I find the thought of this entirely unedifying and certainly not the reason why I became a headteacher. As goals go, it’s not exactly going to rip up trees. Besides, how could I possibly motivate my staff on the basis that this be the sole purpose of our being? Would you want to come and be a part of this magical journey? Of course not.

So there needs to be another way.

If you read this book from cover to cover you will find out how I had the privilege of being a part of some great teams that transformed several schools to outstanding. The highs and the lows. The trials and tribulations. The sleepless nights and nagging self-doubts, especially when inspectors tell you that what you’re trying to do is not good enough. Even though deep-down I always knew my school was great, there was always that fear that others won’t. And unfortunately, it’s their view that counts. Not mine. So if I were to tweet what the #ArtofStandingOut is all about, this is what I’d write: ‘How to transform your school in a way that is meaningful, courteous and worthwhile, without giving two hoots about Ofsted.’

Perhaps then, this is the ‘other way’. To no longer get hung up by others, Ofsted included. It goes much deeper than this though. What if we could still continue to improve our schools, with or without an inspectorate, but do so in a manner that focuses on a holistic education that is both wholesome and worthwhile? Let us not get hung up on the notion of ‘outstanding’, whatever that may be, but instead, look at it in a different way. We need to redefine outstanding to suit our own agenda. We need to be brave enough to drape banners across our gates on our say-so and not on that of others who only step foot in our schools once every leap year.

For too long we’ve been stymied by Ofsted rhetoric and their ever-changing proxies for what they believe the best schools must look like. The Art of Standing Out is about setting us free from the shackles of an inspectorate so that we can examine our schools through a fresh new lens, one that allows us to filter out and see only the things that matter.

The Art of Standing Out will be published by John Catt in July 2016. You can pre-order a copy on Amazon here.

Feel free to let me know what you think on Twitter @AndrewDMorrish. Be gentle.

 

 

 

 

The Power of Love

Have you ever experienced what it feels like when you get several hundred like-minded people together and lock them in a room for the day to see where the magic can take you? And that during that day you get to dream about ‘what if…?’ and get to ask really powerful questions like ‘why can’t our schools be like Disneyland?’

We did. On the last Friday of the half term, we closed all the schools within the trust and got them together at a lovely venue and held our inaugural ‘Standing Out’ conference. Everybody was there, including support staff, governors, trustees, directors and teachers. We didn’t literally lock them all in, but we certainly closed the doors, battened down the hatches and spent the day re-calibrating our moral compasses.

As it was the start of the Valentine’s weekend we wanted to launch the conference by inviting each and every one of us to fall in love. Or more to the point, to fall back in love with what called us to the profession in the first place.

Having enjoyed an uplifting opening choral performance from one of our schools, I had the pleasure of kicking off the event by exploring the concept of ‘The Art of Standing Out’. We reaffirmed our core purpose, which is ‘to make people become the best they can be’. We then explored three key themes of what makes for a standout school: Great culture, great teaching and great experiences.

Great culture: We explored our beliefs, in particular dispelling any fears we may have around our limiting beliefs. With our empowering beliefs established, we then looked at our values and launched ‘Trust Us: Making Our Values Happen’. This document was written by our cross-party changemaker team that unpacked each of our five values, providing examples of what these might look like in practice. We then celebrated and affirmed FIDES (Latin for ‘to trust’) so that we can Focus on family, Insist on excellence, Do good as we go, Embrace innovation, and Seize success. As our core values, these ensure that our organisational culture is always conducive to wholesome growth.

 

Great teaching: We asked ourselves the Disneyland question and how we can ensure that we let RIP in our lessons so that learning is Real, Immersive and Purposeful. We explored what 21^st century learning looks like and how we can ensure that children are taught to be confident independent learners, with a strong focus on meta-learning. Moreover, we want our children to always have JOBS and to experience the Joy Of Being Stuck in their lessons. Most importantly, we acknowledged that as teachers, quite often what we want to say is different to what the children are interested in, and so we must find a way to merge the two so that learning is relevant.

Great experiences: We want our children to experience a challenge-based curriculum that is inspiring and engaging, so that pupils run to school each day buzzing with excitement at the thought of another day of mouthwatering thrills-based learning. We re-affirmed our commitment to the pursuit of the creation of a curriculum that guarantees a continual stream of learning opportunities that will tantalise and inspire in pupils a desire to dream, imagine and thrive.

To bring all this to life, we ran a series of workshops throughout the day to awaken the creativity within, be it through the arts, social enterprise, technology or good old-fashioned maths mastery. We then wrapped the whole thing up with a thought-provoking keynote from Andy Buck, from Leadership Matters. We are eternally grateful to @RobArtsConnect (Arts Connect and MAT trustee), @JonathanClith79 (Real Ideas Organisation) and the team from Apple (@krcs_education) for giving up their time to host the workshops, in addition to our very own @matt_wynne1.

We even managed to get all of the heads up on stage to do a bit of pecha kutcha. Meaning chit-chat in Japanese, each head had four minutes to present four slides on ‘what makes my school standout’. Slides weren’t allowed to contain text and were timed so that after one minute they automatically moved on. Ranging from car engines, to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, space ships to Anton du Becke, the heads took the challenge by the scruff of the neck, showing why they themselves in particular stand out. We all know how much heads love talking about their schools, so this was no mean feat to restrict them to only two hundred and forty seconds.

At the end of the day, we asked each delegate to make a pledge. They wrote these down and we intend to send them to them at the end of the summer term. I am confident that they will make the change they want to see. Examples of pledges include:

• I will always consider the real meaning behind the lesson – the ‘so what?’
• Always try and praise the children’s efforts and not intelligence (a growth mindset).
• To be the teacher that the children want to be with.
• Stop limiting my beliefs and empower them!

We didn’t quite manage to get #StandingOut16 trending, but we certainly made a lot of noise on Twitter. At one point, @Andy__Buck tweeted, ‘One could be forgiven for thinking that every member of staff at @VicParkAcademy is on Twitter #eagertolearn’.

You don’t need to be in a trust to experience the power of synergy. Any group of like-minded schools can get together and make it happen, be it a local cluster, federation, collaboration, teaching school alliance or whatever. What’s essential though is that you invite absolutely everyone, provide a lovely venue (such as the Birmingham Botanical Gardens) and feed them well. The rest looks after itself.

The evaluations are now in and we are delighted with how positive they are. The words ‘inspiring’ and ‘inspirational’ crop up a number of times, as does ‘you ran out of chips’. As a multi-academy trust we can offer many things, such as sticky toffee pudding to die for, but when it comes to fried potatoes of the chipped variety, I’m afraid even we’ll have to pass.

 

Andrew’s book, ‘The Art of Standing Out’ will be available soon. Published by John Catt as #thestandoutbook.

How I apparently undermined Ofsted

I’ve become a tad obsessed with values lately. This is a good thing, I think, although it does preoccupy my thoughts to the point of probably being unhealthy. I even found myself driving round the block on the way to work last week so that I could listen to the end of Radio Four’s ‘Thought for the Day’. Not good and I had to have a quiet word with myself.

There are two reasons why I’m fixated with values. Firstly, I’m leading on a piece of work across the trust on the very same. Secondly, Ofsted. More about them later.

A few months ago, I read Alistair Campbell’s book ‘Winners’. It’s an enjoyable read and one I recommend. It’s one of those books that you can dip in and out of without missing the gist. At the heart of the book is his ‘holy trinity’ of Objectives, Strategy and Tactics (OST). He relates this concept not only to politics, education and business but also to great sporting leaders. At times, I got confused with the difference between the O and the S – a mistake that Campbell points out a number of major international organisations make. However, it seems to me that it boils down essentially to one thing: values. Objectives, strategy and tactics amount to nothing without a common set of key principles, values or beliefs that underpin all that you do. In short, these become your road map, a moral compass.

It is this road map that is fixating me at the moment. Getting it right is crucial, especially in the start-up phase of a multi-academy trust. It was hard enough aligning vision and values as a headteacher of a single school, let alone trying to do so across five academies, each one unique, autonomous and distinct. This is where a common set of agreed values are so important to drive strategy towards an objective. (As objectives go, ours is pretty straightforward: To make people become the best they can be. More about this is future posts.)

So, now to Ofsted. Until recently, I hadn’t realised quite how much I value the importance of free speech. It has never really been something I’ve thought about, as I’ve always taken it for granted. In a previous post I explained why I resigned from Ofsted as an inspector on account of them wanting to censor a post that I had written. They were evidently so worried about it that by the very act of reading it, your confidence in Ofsted would be undermined. I now take this as a great complement as I hadn’t realised that the piece had such profound power.

Support on Twitter was overwhelmingly positive. I saw a 3,000% spike on the number of visits to my blog. Local and national press picked up the story. Here, for example, is what @warwickmansell of the Guardian had to say:

 

Ofsted reveals thin skin after head’s blogpost

Finally, a headteacher who served as an Ofsted inspector for eight years has written about how he resigned from the inspectorate after being asked to remove sections of a blogpost that had been taken as criticising it.

Andrew Morrish, executive head of two West Midlands primary schools, writes of receiving a call from a “senior national director at Ofsted” saying that a blogpost in which he said “the process of inspection is flawed” was “not befitting of an inspector”.

Morris (sic) was told that the post “had to be cropped”. He refused. “I was being censored, gagged, call it what you like. However much I value the experience of inspecting schools … I would much rather retain my right to write freely. So I resigned,” he says. Morrish also says anyone reading his blog in full would see that it was pro-Ofsted. He may well have a point.

An Ofsted spokesperson said: “We do not believe in censorship”, but that inspectors must not “undermine confidence in the inspection system”. Morrish’s resignation, while disappointing, was “entirely his own decision”.

The chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has in the past encouraged successful heads such as Morrish to be inspectors, so we wonder if Ofsted can afford to lose such people in circumstances that some may take as having an authoritarian whiff about them.

 

So, on that note, and with a distinct whiff in the air, I shall draw a line under the whole matter. I shall not let the fact that Ofsted have refused to reply to my letter of complaint irk me.  Instead – in the knowledge that I am seemingly being snubbed by the national inspectorate – I shall revert to one of my favourite writers, Oscar Wilde: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”. Ouch.

Doing good as we go

As I sit on the train on my way to a meeting in London I spot an article in the Metro that claims that ‘Women are the real task masters’. Apparently, according to a well-known skincare company, us men can only manage 19 tasks a day compared with 26 for a woman. Not only do they manage to pack in 7 more tasks, the report confirms that women also get the shopping done and do the cooking. Every day. Meanwhile, the men are down the pub and watching sport, both of which are listed by the way as 2 of the 19 tasks. The report is inconclusive as to what the other 17 involve.

Despite appearing disadvantaged by virtue of being male, it does reassure me somewhat, in that it explains why at times I feel as if I’ve got nothing done. I’m not entirely sure how a ‘task’ is defined, but already today I’ve completed at least 9 and it’s not even lunchtime. Ten if you include the writing of this blog, so I’m on track to exceed the daily 19. I’m very pleased with this, until I remember that the woman sitting opposite me (doing nothing I might add) has done a lot more than me already. This is probably why she is looking rather smug, as she too has read the article and knows she is ahead.

Reflecting on this, I think this might be why, when inspecting a school, it always seems as if my fellow team members are getting a lot more done than me (male or female). By lunchtime on day one, they will invariably have amassed an impressive wodge of completed EFs whilst I clearly haven’t. I calm myself down by reminding myself that it’s quality that counts, despite experiencing levels of stress that at times are unparalleled. You see, as hard as it might seem to believe, being an Ofsted inspector is very, very stressful. Not because it’s unnecessarily difficult, but simply because you want to get it right.

I will never forget my ‘sign-off’ inspection in 2007. As a rookie inspector you enter the arena with confidence and poise. But deep down, I had never felt more nervous – more so than any interview I’d ever had. You’ve been trained, you’ve completed your ‘shadow’ inspection, and so – quite rightly – the HMI leading the team (and who is scrutinising your every move) expects you to get on with it. You collect your blank EFs from the team room, are given the areas you are leading on, a timetable, map of the school and off you go.

I still feel the same way now. The stakes are so considerably high that nothing less than exceptional performance on my part is acceptable. I have to get it right. The team has to get it right. When I did my training with Tribal, the trainer instilled in us a mantra that we must always abide by: Do good as you go. Having recently at the time been on the receiving end of several quite bruising inspections, I found this laughable. Since when have Ofsted done good as they went? It never felt like that for me when on the receiving end.

The reason I am on my way to London is to attend a meeting with the Whole Education Network to refine their existing Peer Review process. I’ve written about the virtues of peer review before (here) and very much see it as the way ahead for inspection, especially for those outstanding schools that are now exempt. As I see it, one of the many advantages of a Whole Education Peer Review is that you feel as a headteacher that good has been very much done unto you. It is system-led and impact driven, focussing entirely on the core purposes of education. If we can avoid the pitfalls of the cosy-fireside-chat syndrome, then in terms of doing good, peer review is here to stay.

‘Do good as you go’ stuck with me and I try to carry it with me at all times, none more so than when inspecting a school. It is now one of the five core values of the trust that I lead and is a key driver in creating the ethos and culture. At a recent Ofsted training event, Sean Harford (Ofsted’s National Director of Schools) alluded to much the same thing. He said that inspectors require not only a ‘fierce intellect but also an impeccable bedside manner’. He is right.

So, as the 2015 inspection window opens a week from today, I hope that amidst all the pressures of a new framework, the 1500-strong inspection team remember this. I’m sure they will because it’s been drilled into us by HMI at recent CIF training events and regional national conferences. The new inspection framework feels very different in approach than previous ones. We all know that the process of inspection is flawed in so many ways. But as we move forward into another new framework with the assumption that good schools are just that, I am confident that if we get it right, a lot more good will be done as we go.

As a serving practitioner I feel very reassured by this and I hope you do too.

A formula for success?

Last week I had the pleasure of working with a group of leaders from Schools of Tomorrow. It was the first morning of their inaugural year-long Leadership for Tomorrow development programme. If you’ve never come across the Schools of Tomorrow network then you really should. Established several years ago – originally as the Beauchamp Group – SoTo has since evolved into an influential network of like-minded schools who all share a common mission: to transform schools so that they are beyond outstanding. I have written articles about this previously about the creation of ‘stand-out’ schools, but SoTo goes beyond this by acknowledging that we cannot simply continue to improve schools by incrementally doing so. You can read more about this in the book that was published at SoTo’s launch event last Autumn at the RSA by Professor John-West Burnham. It’s free and can be downloaded here from i-books.

The theme for Day 1 of the LfT programme was simply called ‘Imagine’. Part of my remit was to explore the notion of change and the forces that influence it. The management of change has always fascinated me, so much so that it was the focus of my M.Ed back in the mid-1990s. My research was around how the organisational culture of a school can influence change, concluding that it is one of the key drivers of effective school improvement. Organisational culture is a tricky concept to define but can perhaps best be described as ‘that which keeps the herd heading west’ or even more simply as ‘the way we do things around here’. At its most basic, it’s the sum total of how people behave in any organisation.

For this reason, the dominant values and beliefs of an organisation are what determine the culture, ethos or climate of a school and ultimately its success: ‘When a school seeks to become powerfully effective it does so by creating a climate or culture in which the range of shared values is high and commitment to those values translates into motivation.’ (Murgatroyd, 1993).

The difficulty of course (and I wrote about this in a previous blog) is that it is almost impossible to change the culture of a school, particularly when the stakes are high and Ofsted are breathing down your neck. The ability to compromise is therefore essential and for this reason I’m with Peter Drucker on this: “Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try instead to work with what you’ve got.”

So this is where we find ourselves with our sponsored school in special measures, although fortunately we have a team of staff who are committed, have the desire and share the vision and values. Rather than trying to impose a culture onto the school, one of our priorities this term has been to try and fuse together what is there already along with our own beliefs. It’s what Tim Brighouse refers to as ‘winning hearts and minds’. I think we’ve made a reasonable start and can see that at least the ‘herd is now heading east’.

Spending time getting to know the culture of a school is therefore an essential pre-requisite before embarking on significant change (or any change for that matter). This was at the crux of my session with the SoTo leaders as I attempted to unpack the main features of the change process. There are a number of excellent books available on the management of change. A particular favourite of mine is Michael Fullen’s ‘Leading in a Culture of Change’ in which he sets out the context for the change management process by identifying the different styles of leadership that are necessary to develop an effective organisational culture. The most effective organisational cultures are those where leaders can ‘style-flex’ between, for example, coercive and authoritative or democratic and affiliative styles of leadership.

I take a far more simplistic approach though by using the following formula:

C = v²+s+d+r+2p

where c = Change, v = Vision, s = Skills, d = Desire, r = Resources and p = Plan

For effective change to occur, all five factors need to be evident for shift to happen. Vision is so important here as it’s inextricably linked to values and organisational culture. It needs therefore to be squared up. Likewise with strategic planning: However well you think you’ve planned, double it and plan again. (I am always reminded of the SAS maxim that proper planning and preparation prevent p—- poor performance.)

As with any formula, it simply won’t add up if a factor is missing from the equation. For example, take away the Resources and you end up not with change but with Frustration (a situation we find ourselves in at the SM school with a large budget deficit). Put the Resources back in but take out the Skills (i.e. the ability to teach) and you have Anxiety. Leading a school without Vision will surely only lead to Confusion. Likewise, if the staff have no Desire, motivation or commitment then you are likely to find Resistance. Finally, it matters not one jot how effective the v²+s+d+r is if the 2p is missing and there is no strategic Plan. In this scenario, everyone will feel as if they are on a never-ending treadmill because leaders have failed to define the milestones or success criteria. As a result, staff will never know how well they are doing or whether they have achieved the goal.

I’m sure there are a number of other factors that could be included in the formula for change. For example, Time (t) surely plays a key role when leading effective change. However, it could be argued that this element is wrapped up in the Planning (p), especially if SMART targets are deployed. The rate of Learning (l) is also crucial, as this must always exceed the rate of change, so perhaps this needs to be factored in somewhere.

Let’s face it, nobody likes change. We don’t want to  admit it out loud, so our default position tends to be “Yes, of course I like change, but you go first…’ Over the years though, these 5 elements have served me well, especially when a leap of faith is required. I’m always conscious that I try to have them all in place when embarking on change. I’m generally a fan of the ‘lining-up-all-your-ducks’ school of leadership. Whether these ducks are enough to create the schools of tomorrow remain to be seen. Why not join SoTo and try for yourself?

Have belief in your vision

One thing I’ve learnt during my time as a headteacher is that compromise is king. Back in the day as a new headteacher I naively always saw compromise as a weakness – that staff would see me as being a lame and indecisive leader if I didn’t insist on doing things my way. I felt it was incumbent on me for example, to show my authority by laying down a vision – a road map – that would lead staff unto the Promised Land. It was always the one thing that every headship interview panel looked for and that as a prospective new head, you sensed that you would either live or die by your vision. It became the Holy Grail.

In fact, it wasn’t even worth applying for headteacher posts unless you had a ready-made vision to trot out. Unfortunately, when I took up my first headship we didn’t have Google so I really had to make one up. I remember coming across a story from an American Principal bemoaning the agonies of trying to come up with a vision: ‘Years ago, if I declared I had a vision I would have been locked up. Nowadays I can’t get a job without one’.

All of us have a vision of what we believe education stands for. We may not know it, but we do, and we do for one very simple reason: That we all possess a set of values and beliefs that make us who we are. These values and beliefs provide us with our goals and moral purpose that drives us day in, day out. We were born with these and it’s often very difficult to change them as they were shaped by our formative years. So strong are these values that without knowing it we try to create emotional conditions that enable us to be in the right mood or state of mind that allow such beliefs to flourish. Our beliefs are usually located at a deep sub-conscious level serving primarily to determine how we behave. It’s this behaviour of course that then determines our results and if we want to change the results, then we need to change the way we behave.

All of this leads us back to our beliefs and that if we want to change the way we behave then we need to change our beliefs. This is not easy, although it can be done especially when we consider that most of our beliefs are ones we hold about ourselves. As individuals we hold the key. Gandhi once said that ‘If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have had it at the beginning…’  The challenge for leaders therefore appears to be to try and convince staff to change their beliefs – their own self-perception of what they are good at – so that vision and goals become a reality. It all sounds rather Machiavellian but at its core it’s about developing in staff a growth mindset.

This is where compromise comes in, as the above task can be rather like an immovable force colliding with an unmovable object – something’s got to give. It is the real art of leadership to be able to manage this process in order to assimilate the values and beliefs of an entire staff into a vision that meets the needs of a diverse and dynamic organisation. This has always been a bit of a conundrum for heads taking up new posts. What happens if your shiny brand new vision doesn’t fit in with the values and beliefs of the staff? Do you change your vision or do you change their beliefs? I’m certainly not going to change my vision, so this is where I’ve learnt to compromise.

Teachers and educators are very passionate and principled people. We all have deep-seated beliefs about what education stands for and quite rightly so. You only have to take a look at Twitter to see for yourself. Entire timelines and blogs are devoted to extolling the virtues of humanism, cognitivism, constructivism and any other –ism you can think of. By and large each and every one of these has a place in school as they are well-established, tried-and-tested versions of learning theory. It’s quite likely that in any one school, most of these bases are covered by members of staff whose beliefs and values are firmly planted in a particular camp, myself included.

So how is it possible to assert a vision that accommodates such a wide spectrum of beliefs? How in a school would we ever agree on what good learning and teaching looks like? How for example would we gain consensus on how best to teach creativity, meta-cognition, emotional awareness and critical thinking if the head’s vision was built around the acquisition of core knowledge? As a young teacher I believed strongly that my job was to teach knowledge – to instruct pupils on the content of a prescribed programme of study. I started teaching at the same time the new national curriculum was introduced so you can imagine how pleased I was. As far as I was concerned, any attempt at teaching the soft skills that allowed children to become critical thinkers denigrated the true purpose of education. I wanted to teach, to impart knowledge, to be the sage on the stage.

As an NQT I was influenced – among others – by the work of Jerome Bruner whom I liked very much and who wrote a book in 1960 called ‘The Process of Education’ (long before I trained as a teacher, I might add). Bruner said that ‘you can teach anything to anyone in an intellectually honest manner by translating it courteously for them.’  In other words, no matter how complex or difficult the content being taught, providing it was skilfully differentiated, the children would be able learn it regardless of age or ability. I was very clear on how instruction worked in my lessons and how each lesson built on the knowledge acquired previously.

I no longer have this belief. It has evolved over the years and even more so since Gove began imposing his own beliefs on the national curriculum. In many ways this reminded me even more of the need to compromise, which brings me back to the purpose of this post. Namely, that the real art of leadership is to know which bits are worth keeping and to then blend them into some kind of approach that works in your school.  It really is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts – a bit like trying to get a tune out of a room full of random instruments that when performed together sound like a musical masterpiece.

So why am I writing about this? Because I’m sitting in my office thinking about how I will get my own beliefs, values and vision to resonate with the staff of the school that we are about to sponsor in a few weeks time. The school is in special measures and we have a training day organised for the first day back and I am trying to capture my vision and values all in one or two slides. I’m even going as far as trying to see if I can capture my vision in 140 characters or less. (#Tweetyourvision. No mean feat let me tell you.) We are also going to come up with a teaching and learning policy, complete with 10 non-negotiables. I have no idea what these might look like as I want them to come from the staff. But with the right vision in place, and with a set of beliefs that are aligned, or at least in the process of being aligned, the art of compromise should be so much easier.

Whether we ever agree in September on how best to teach anything to anyone remains to be seen. With there likely to be as many different values and beliefs among the staff as there are musicians in a full symphony orchestra, the odds of getting a tune out of us all at first may appear remote. However, the likelihood of success is increased significantly if we can ensure that we all have the same piece of music in front of us. Having this played out as the soundtrack to your vision is music to anyone’s ears and perhaps something we shouldn’t compromise on after all.