High Performers E-Book

Alistair Smith

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Alistair Smith - trainer, author and consultant, and described as the UK's leading trainer in modern learning methods - has identified and visited the top performing schools to find out what makes them successful. This timely book is aimed at decision makers in schools and gives sound, evidence-based guidance on how to embark on the learning journey and where to head once the journey has begun. For classroom practitioners there is also a great deal of practical guidance. It focuses on: Core Purpose; Outcomes; Independent Learning; Classroom Learning; Curriculum; Professional Development; The school as a Community; and Parents and Carers. This is not intended to be a book of tips. Rather, it is a sound 'how to' guide based on the findings of a detailed study of the best of the best schools and how they have achieved their success.

Leseprobe

Praise for High Performers

Building success is a personal as well as professional challenge. Alistair Smith manages to get up close and personal in delving into the professional journeys of some successful schools.

He goes past the formulaic approaches, the templates for action and sets out a series of challenges for school leaders and their teams to ask themselves. The touchstone is a set of schools which are recognised as successful; most importantly by the pupils within them.

Because the book is not formulaic, it is one to dip into as a means of exploring your own school. Every section of the book bristles with the sort of reflection that touches nerves while at the same time offering balm.

The balm is the management suggestions that prompt a ‘we could do that’ outlook. The suggestions promote incisive, swift, modern and demanding but enjoyable approaches to leadership.

Alistair Smith leaves the reader professionally aware and personally motivated. Leadership can make a massive difference and young peoples’ lives benefit when it does.

Mick Waters, Professor of Education at Wolverhampton University, President of the Curriculum Foundation

I have never read a school improvement book like this. Almost every page has some small vivid, persuasive and compelling example of good practice drawn from the classroom or the department or the senior leadership team itself. Every one is authentic, as it would be with Alistair Smith as author. Generations of teachers and school leaders have known him as an inspirational speaker and workshop leader. Here he shows an enviable skill as a writer. It is written at a time when money is going to be tight but ideally every teacher should have their own copy. Even in such straightened times a copy for each newly qualified teacher and freshly appointed heads of department or subject leader would be money well spent by all schools. The beauty of this book is that it brings within your certain grasp what appeared just out of your professional reach.

Sir Tim Brighouse, Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education

Alistair Smith visited 20 of the top performing state schools to investigate ‘what makes them successful?’ He asked the same questions in each school and in High Performers he shares the findings. His style is lucid and pleasing; his findings reasoned and cogent.

I commend the book to school leaders and classroom practitioners. It gives persuasive evidence-based guidance on why some of the best have succeeded. It focuses on core purpose, student outcomes, learner engagement, classroom teaching, roles and responsibilities, professional development, managing data and the school as a community.

High Performers is an easily read and impressively practical ‘how to’ guide full of ‘tips’ that draw on original research.

Vanni Treves, Chairman of the Governing Council, National College for School Leadership

I was once told that the more power you gave away the more power you had. If I had read this book earlier I would have understood the concept more fully. This easy-to-read book gets to the heart of distributed leadership. It creates a model which will help everyone within a school to understand its own unique core purpose and ensure that they feel empowered and accountable for delivering it. Whilst it will provide a brilliant ‘big picture’ guide for a new head it can be used as a service manual for experienced heads who are seeking to fine tune their leadership.

Will Ryan, Assistant Head of School Effectiveness for Rotherham Borough Council, Education Consultant and Author

This excellent book, organised and written in a lively and engaging style, explains how schools can become high performing in all aspects of their work, based upon case studies, practice and extensive research. It is structured around the concepts of leaders improving, teachers performing and managers supporting with appropriate recommendations for action. The book is packed with practical ideas and suggestions and will appeal greatly to school leaders, classroom practitioners, members of the school community and all those who work and advise on school improvement.

Professor David Woods CBE, Chief Adviser for London Schools and Principal National Challenge Adviser

Alistair Smith has set out to distil the practice of 20 high performing schools – and comes up trumps. The result is a highly readable book full of valuable practical advice. His lists of ‘recommendations’ for heads, teachers and middle leaders has the potential to inform, enliven and enrich many a discussion or training workshop. Reading this book is the first step for all those committed to school improvement – but I strongly suspect that it is the discussion that it provokes that will impact at both the individual and school level.

Sir Dexter Hutt, Chief Executive of Ninestiles Plus and Executive Leader, Hastings Federation

With characteristic wisdom and clarity, Alistair Smith peels back the layers of some of the country’s top performing schools. What he reveals isn’t some slick replicable formula, but there are some overpowering messages of what works – relentless sureness of purpose, the ability to say no, intolerance of mediocrity and endless optimism. Smith illuminates the schools he peers into with wit and humanity. This is no exercise in cheap praise or hagiography: he describes what he sees, what he’s disappointed in or surprised by as well as what he admires. That’s what makes the book such an illuminating, personable read. We look through the eyes of one of education’s undoubted masters and find ourselves nourished and enriched by the account of what he sees. As a result, the seemingly impossible becomes tangibly more possible: without league table tricks or curricular sleights of hand, we could all make our schools like these. High Performers is a compelling read. It’s strongly recommended for current and would-be school leaders, and also for our political masters who would benefit from this sharp-eyed, astringent and endlessly uplifting insight into what great schools do, day in, day out.

Geoff Barton, Headteacher, King Edward VI School

Every school leader will find a host of ideas in this gem of a book, which is packed with practical suggestions that are being used in outstandingly led schools.

The 93 recommendations – in separate sections for school leaders, middle managers and teachers – are a great resource for staff at all levels. Thoroughly researched and clearly presented, the book is an invaluable volume of excellent practice, which can be used in many different ways for professional development.

Every leadership team, middle management meeting and staff training day should focus on learning and this book will be a stimulus to improvement, whatever the starting point.

Every teacher and school leader will find in this book enough nuggets of wisdom to create a gold mine of good practice. The focus of the book is on great learning and it contains numerous examples of how it can be stimulated through great leadership and great teaching.

John Dunford, Chair of Whole Education and Chair of WorldWide Volunteering

The high performing school is an elusive phenomenon. We all know that it exists but actually identifying its component parts in a way that enables understanding and action is rare. This is what Alistair Smith has achieved in High Performers. This resource provides detailed and systematic guidance in how high performance actually works. Firmly based in current practice this book is both a reference work and a source of inspiration. It is challenging and practical and will be of real value to leadership teams planning their way forward.

John West-Burnham, Professor of Educational Leadership, St Mary’s University College

Preface

The Flying Wallendas

The Flying Wallendas are a troupe of high wire performers. They first gained notoriety at a performance in Ohio in 1928 when the group fell from the wire. There was no safety net, it had been left behind in Germany, but they were unhurt. The next day, the newspaper report said: ‘The Wallendas fell so gracefully that it seemed as if they were flying.’ Karl Wallenda made his own name and that of the dynasty that day.

Over 80 years later his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, family, partners and friends still perform as the Flying Wallendas. The legendary Karl Wallenda died in March 1978 aged 73. Small and frail, halfway across a high wire suspended between two multistorey buildings and buffeted by winds, he sank on to, then fell off, the wire to his death on the streets of San Juan 300 feet below. A year later his grandson, Ric, completed the very same walk.

The Wallendas epitomise high performance at its best. They are wire walkers, human pyramid and trapeze artists performing without safety nets often in public spaces, across gorges and between skyscrapers.

Seen from afar the performers have a rhythm and style that looks effortless. Close up you would see the physical strain and sense the adrenalin. The Wallendas have legendary resilience, some would say an unhealthy indifference to risk. In 1962, whilst performing the ‘seven-person chair pyramid’ in front of a huge audience at the Detroit State Fair, the front man lost balance and three of the group fell – two were killed and one paralysed from the waist down. The following year the Wallendas took to the wire again. In one form or another they have been doing so ever since.

We are naturally curious about people who go out there and give their all; individuals and teams who bring something extra. This could be in the spectacle of the circus arena or stage or equally it could be in the pressured environment of a state secondary school like those described here. We are intrigued not only by the performance and the results but also the people behind the performance, the regimes they put themselves through, the routines they adopt and the beliefs that drive them.

Karl Wallenda was the inspiration of his troupe. His energy and vision drove the others on. His family and fellow performers adopted roles and were trained in different disciplines. Sometimes they performed solo or in a pair as trapeze artists, catchers or flyers. Sometimes as a team, perhaps the seven-person pyramid where everyone knew their job and did their job to work as a unit. Our high performers do more than entertain and enthral: they offer us a legacy, one that we can take to schools.

It’s one of optimism about what’s possible when we are prepared to take a few risks …

Acknowledgements

Individuals, schools and organisations helped me in researching the content of this book and I am grateful for their assistance.

John Turner at Alite. John did a lot of the work behind the Outstanding and Beyond sections. Heather Hamer at Alite proofread sections of the book. David Douglass, Chris Montacute, Phil Bourne and Kirstie Andrew-Power at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust helped set up the initial research.

The following head teachers also welcomed me to their schools and allowed me considerable freedom to ask questions of their staff.

Alan Gray: Sandringham School

Rajinder Sandhu: Guru Nanak Sikh Voluntary Aided Secondary School

Jonathan Miller: Jewish Free School

Tracy Smith: Seven Kings High School

Doreen Cronin: St Richard’s Catholic College

Rob Sykes: Thornden School

Iain Melvin: The Thomas Hardye School

Mark Johnson: St Angela’s Ursuline School

Stephen Munday: Comberton Village College

Mike Griffiths: Northampton School for Boys

Caroline Hoddinott: Haybridge High School and Sixth Form

Jennifer Bexon-Smith: Tudor Grange School

Rachel Macfarlane: Walthamstow School for Girls

Nick Weller: Dixons City Academy

Jonathan Winch: Emmanuel College

John Winter: Weydon School

Chris Tomlinson: Chafford Hundred Campus

Ani Magill: St John the Baptist School

Ian Hulland: Alder Grange Community and Technology College

Oli Tomlinson: Paddington Academy

Mark Lovatt, Kenny Brechin, Darren Meade and Chris Harte from Cramlington Learning Village helped me with the new technologies referenced in the book.

Thanks to colleagues at Abraham Guest School, Wigan for their work on leader behaviours. Finally, to Ani for lots of support and encouragement and no small amount of inspiration.

Contents

Title Page

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The concept of high performers

Summary of findings

One: The high wire: leaders inspiring

1. Core purpose

2. The first 10 steps

3. Academic and autonomous?

4. Staying the course

5. Saying no to peripherals

6. Exacting self-scrutiny

Two: The trapeze: teachers performing

7. Build from the BASICS

8. Relentless optimism

9. Fundamentals first

10. Repertoire of strategies

11. Stretched through challenge

12. Beyond outstanding

Three: The human pyramid: managers supporting

13. The middle leader role

14. Delivering: own what you do

15. Teaching: build from learning

16. Buffering: soften the hierarchy

17. Supporting: track performance

18. Challenging: ask the right questions

19. Scanning: stay ahead of the game

Appendices:

The 10 x 10 project

The journey to outstanding and beyond

Leader recommendations

Teacher recommendations

Middle leader recommendations

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Copyright

Introduction: The concept of high performers

This book explains how you can become a high performer and so help your school become even more successful – a high performing school, perhaps.

The book is the product of hundreds of hours spent in schools and it emerged from a research project completed with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), which examined the leadership cultures in some of the most successful non-selective state schools in England. I visited 20 schools, 15 of which the SSAT had chosen as ‘high performers’ and 5 of which I added as my outliers.

The criteria for selection of the 15 core schools included:

Outstanding in Ofsted (all categories)

At least three years of progress

Specialist Status from 2008 and prior to then

Leading Edge Status

CVA (Contextual Value Added) 2009 above expected

Low internal variability

JVA (Jessen Value Added) 5A–C 2009 equal to or above +10

JVA 5A–C EM (English, Maths) 2009 equal to or above +10

2 A–C Sc (Sciences) 2009 above 54

2 A–C MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) 2009 above 32

Non-selective.

The criteria for selection of the 5 ‘outlier’ schools included:

High or exceptionally high contextual value added

At least three years of progress

Recognised nationally for an aspect of their work in leadership or in learning

Schools ‘complementing’ the core list by offering a novel dimension: for example, ‘speedy’ turnaround from category; innovation in parental engagement; outstanding succession planning; ‘dramatic’ intervention to improve results and imaginative work in learning

Known to me.

Other schools cited in the book offered case studies of practice that I uncovered through reading, recommendations or conversations or from previous visits. The high performer model emerges from this work but also draws on the fact that over 20 years I have visited hundreds of schools, spoken to thousands of educators and delivered over 1,100 in-service events. Hang around long enough and something must rub off!

The schools that have been included do not claim to be the ‘best’ in the country, nor am I, on their behalf, making such claims. Some of the best leadership in the country takes place in schools where it goes unrecognised. Schools where, for instance, many students have everyday lives that are characterised by high uncertainty, dysfunctional relationships and poverty. For these students, their school is a reservoir of hope. There are schools that do terrific things in learning and teaching but are hampered by the absurdities of coping with endless bureaucracy, absurd regulations and an inspection regime which, all too often, misses the point and hands out ‘limiting judgements’ focused on peripherals. In years to come we will look back and ask ourselves how, as a profession, we allowed ourselves to label schools as failing with all the stigma, stress and consequence it carries because at the time of the visit the KS4 data hadn’t been analysed by ethnicity.

Adjust the criteria for selection and you adjust the list of schools. It would have been possible to give a bigger emphasis to contextual value added, levels of progress from KS2 or the demographics of the catchment. The fact that every school acknowledged it struggled to create autonomous learners whilst at the same time improving their academic performance, suggests that for the schools here the definition of success needs to go beyond their exam pass rates.

In comparative terms the high performers sample is very small. There were 3,457 maintained secondary schools in England in 2003. There were 220 Leading Edge Schools from which the SSAT pick was made. The graphs below provide a sample of how our SSAT pick and outliers performed against Leading Edge Schools and all maintained schools.

KS2 to 4 progress in English and Maths 2009

5 A–C inc. English and Maths improvements 2006 to 2009

Jessen value added (KS2 to 4) 5 A–C inc. English and Maths 2009

The ‘research’ has limitations. What was provided was a snapshot with visits confined to a limited time frame and schools choosing the staff interviewed. I was the only interviewer. There were limited opportunities for observation of classroom practice. The questions I asked were open to a variety of interpretations and inevitably respondents would wish to position themselves and their schools in a favourable light in answering them. There are hundreds of schools which do interesting and innovative work and do so in equally or even more challenging circumstances than those included here. However, to begin to account for every possible permutation in selecting high performers is a life’s work. This is a snapshot of what some of the best have done to secure their success, no more than that.

In each of the 20 schools I visited I asked the same ten questions – in the same way – of three categories of educator: leadership teams, middle managers and classroom teachers. I was attempting to gauge what was the essence – or distinctive character – of successful schools, and what factors had shaped this essence. It was a study in school culture. I wanted to find out more about the everyday preoccupations and behaviours of influencers in successful schools.

Clear patterns emerged. Schools in the project were all well led. They had clarity around core purpose and said no to pressures or initiatives that threatened to divert them from core purpose. They were all stable with many, but not all, outward looking and eager to improve. All schools benefited from supportive parents though each had arrived at this positive situation by a different route. All schools were struggling to sustain high academic outcomes whilst at the same time creating more independent learners. Surprisingly for me, learning and teaching was not consistently good across these top-performing schools and, in fact, in some it appeared pedestrian. All schools managed student performance data effectively and most put it into the hands of teachers when they needed it most. Clear lines of accountability at all levels were apparent in nearly all of the schools, with the middle manager role seen as key. Staff development varied significantly – from practice that was in my view genuinely ‘leading edge’ to practice that had been the norm 30 years previously.

The high performer model assumes that leaders, managers and teachers all share responsibility for providing life changing experiences for the students in their care. In this regard they are like the performers in the main arena.

The leaders are high wire walkers who are visible to everyone, often – though not always – on their own, taking risks and showing a lead. This lead is based on years of experience, careful decision making and sensitivity to the changing environment in which they perform. The head teacher or principal is a high wire walker who stays focused on what matters, is relentlessly determined and looks ahead – not down or back. A word of caution for those who would walk the wire: becoming a head teacher is not the end of your journey. It’s a higher and more conspicuous platform on which you must perform. Only go there if you are prepared for its particular demands and if you want to make a difference rather than have the role.

The teachers are the trapeze artists who know, understand and engage their audience with relentless optimism. Through great training and quality support systems, they are allowed to be and have become highly creative. They respect their performance medium and its inherent risks. They express themselves in ways that are often breathtaking in their individuality. They work tirelessly for perfection, they inspire – and never more so than in a choreographed small team performance.

The middle leaders are the human pyramid builders who work together building a solid platform that reaches up and up. They challenge expectation, provide support for others and show high levels of interdependence. Their success is based on strong bonds of mutual regard, trust and a capacity to micro-adjust, shifting weight and balance to keep the team aloft.

High performers work together and in doing so gain our admiration and respect. They do things we can mimic but never reproduce so the best we can hope for is to learn from them and create our own act.

One of the impulses to write this book was to let teachers, middle leaders and leadership teams see what the others needed to perform at their best. Most teachers don’t buy books about leadership. Leadership teams have bought most of their teaching books, many of which now languish on the office shelves. Middle leaders don’t seem to get many books written for them! So if I can do my bit to help each group widen its understanding of the everyday demands on the others then it can help elevate performance as a whole.

When I started the work on this book we were in the last days of a Labour administration. Now, as I finish, we are in the early months of a very different administration, a Conservative-Liberal one based upon a pact and one with a different set of emphases on education, assessment, inspection, learning and teaching. An hour ago the first White Paper was published. So for the performers, the wire has moved.

When the wire starts to move it’s dangerous for the wire walker to try to stay still. The wire walker must adjust position and move with the wire. When the conditions change, adjust your stance but as you do so you must always look forward …

What’s your school culture?

Culture in a school has been variously described as ‘the way we do things around here’ or ‘the web of significance in which we are all enmeshed’ or ‘the shared beliefs and values which knit a community together’. In one study it’s described as ‘a reservoir of energy and wisdom to sustain motivation and co-operation, shape relationships and aspirations, and guide effective choices at every level of the school’.1 One of the simplest ways to begin to understand the school culture is to undertake a learning walk.

A learning walk occurs when you, as a visitor, are accompanied around the school by a senior leader who tells you the story of the school as they see it. As part of my research I went on lots of learning walks. The 45-minute walk was deliberately chosen as my first exposure to the school. During the learning walk you can discover a huge amount about the school and how it seeks to position itself. Some of what you discover is anticipated, choreographed and deliberate. Most is unanticipated, unscheduled and arbitrary.

Schools are like individuals in that they seek to make sense of their everyday and present experiences by positioning themselves within a narrative. The school tells a story about itself and it is this story that unfolds as you are taken around the buildings and along the corridors. Your guide chooses to take you to places that are key to the story, often buildings of which they are proud or in some cases embarrassed; departments that achieve beyond expectation or facilities that are well used.

As you are taken around the school there is an accompanying story, which is often well rehearsed though never written down. The story can be positive and uplifting or it can be the opposite: either way it becomes the articulation of the culture of the school. I’d strongly recommend you avoid locking in your school to a negative or defeatist story.

Here are some negative or defeatist stories I’ve encountered in 20 years of visiting schools:

we can’t get good results because we are too near the airport and aspirations are low because of guaranteed jobs

we are a seaside community with lots of seasonal workers

we are a rural community and our boys just want to drive tractors and work on the farms

we take our kids from that tower block

we are too close to the industrial estate

our corridors are so cramped the children misbehave

our parents don’t care

we’re on a split site

the school opposite creams off the best youngsters

we’re only 20 minutes on the train to London

the timetable won’t allow it

because of our geography we can’t recruit good staff

we’ve become the sink school for the town.

Allowing a negative story or ‘script’ to go unchallenged is to encourage it and give it a life of its own. Very soon it becomes the filter through which you make sense of things, to the extent that everyday behaviours, which in a wider context might seem eccentric, now are consistent with what the school has come to believe in and value, and so seem normal.

Recommendation for leaders:talk up the positive aspects of your school experience; do so relentlessly and unapologetically, and encourage others to do the same.

Before local events and circumstances begin to be ‘your story’ – intervene. Reframe what seems to be a difficulty into something more positive. The split site is an opportunity to have small schools within a larger school; the fact that you have one of the largest army camps in the country on your doorstep is also an opportunity to become the experts at dealing with behavioural issues to do with disrupted lives; if staff accommodation is prohibitively expensive form links with local housing associations; if you can’t recruit because you are in an unattractive area have the best Continuous professional development (CPD) programme there is and promise young talent you will get them ready for their next move; if you tip into a category strip out every demand on teachers except that they prepare for and teach to the very best of their abilities.

Sometimes it is about small, gestural interventions. At Tudor Grange I was told that the term non-teaching staff was never used because the school did not have ‘non’ anything or anyone! When I interviewed Alan Gray, head teacher at Sandringham School, he never once used ‘I’, ‘my’ or ‘mine’. I wrote it in my notes: ‘he only ever talks about “we”, “our” or “ours”. At St John the Baptist School one of the first phrases to become popularised amongst staff was ‘no winding down’. The head teacher had said it with such regularity she began to be caricatured for doing so. At Chafford Hundred Campus the certificates belonging to all the catering staff are on display for all to see behind the serving area. Change their language, change your language, change what’s seen and therefore change people’s thinking.

Recommendation for leaders:use positive and inclusive words and images that have impact to communicate the best of your school.

A learning organisation is one that mines past and present experiences for important lessons and principles, for stories and legends that can energise current labours.

Deal and Peterson (2009)

There are only a few basic stories that humans tell. Some say only seven variations exist. Schools rework these basic stories much like authors and scriptwriters. Here they are with a school ‘spin.’

Overcoming an adversary – we defeated the parsimonious local authority or the local predatory schoolsThe quest – we arrived together as a team and transformed the schoolJourney and return – we had a transformational experience, which then influenced our thinking thereafterMisunderstanding before resolution – the school had lost its way with too many directions and too many initiatives at onceTragedy/hubris – the school was coasting and was hit by an inspection failure which it had not anticipatedRebirth – we were a community school with a strong pastoral ethos; now we are an academy focused on attainmentRags to riches – we were a failing school; now we are transformed.

Some of the stories are told in combination using a mix of three types of engagement: personalities, controversies or philosophies. I don’t think this would matter at all if the stories told in those learning walks were one-offs. However they recirculate and obtain a life of their own. They are picked up by the community and by parents, they are invested in by staff, they may even go some way to framing the initial impressions of inspectors and perhaps play a part in judgements.

What really happens on a learning walk is that you are being positioned. This happens whether you like it or not. It may not be deliberate in any conscious or intended way but it leaves a trace. On the very first project visit I made in researching for this book, the deputy head took me on a walk around the school. It was a school of which he was genuinely proud. The walk was literally round the school and as we went around and outside we peered into classrooms, talked about the adjacent industrial estate and the football ground and the buildings. The deputy was hugely experienced, talking all the while with passion about the buildings and the people, the environment, stability, security and continuity. It turned out to be a very useful experience for me. The school’s success was significantly influenced by the community it served and by stability, security and continuity. There were few risks taken in that school.

The research in study after study shows that when cultural norms were antagonistic to change, improvements did not take place. A group sense of efficacy generates energy towards improvement.2 For head teachers and school leadership teams, when they talk about ‘their’ school they are talking about the things which are felt or agreed to be right and the things they feel or agree to be true. In other words, what you value and what you believe. The walk takes you straight to the heart of the school culture: what is valued and what is believed. For that reason I think it is a really useful exercise for a school to examine just what its culture may be and moreover what the signifiers of this culture are that are likely to be picked up and recirculated by stakeholders and others.3

Recommendation for leaders:examine your school culture. Ask which cues a visitor might notice and, as a consequence, what conclusions they would reach.

Summary of findings

Core purpose High performers are very clear on core purpose and seeking consistency and coherence in its pursuit

Student outcomes High performers strive to balance academic achievement with 21st century learning skills

Student learning High performers actively engage students in being relentlessly optimistic about possibilities and their capacity to learn

Classroom learning High performers progress from a performing orientation to a learning orientation

Curriculum offer High performers relentlessly focus on what’s best for their students

Professional development High performers utilise both tacit and formal learning opportunities in perpetual support of functional and personal development

Staff roles, responsibilities and profile High performers provide support, challenge and opportunity based on shared understanding of evidence

The school as a community High performers celebrate successes and build a strong coherent team ethos with internal ‘collaborative competition’

Engagement with parents and carers High performers align with but are not dictated to by parental aspiration

Engagement with the wider community High performers use partnerships to significantly extend their capacity to deliver an imaginative and enriching offer

Note: The 10 areas above formed the focus of the 10 x 10 Project upon which much of this book is based. Details of the 10 x 10 Project are also included in the appendices.

One:

The high wire – leaders inspiring

1. Core purpose

2. The first 10 steps

3. Academic and autonomous?

4. Staying the course

5. Saying no to peripherals

6. Exacting self-scrutiny