“Every teacher can improve,” said educationalist Dylan Wiliam, “not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better”.
It’s a powerful message and one we can apply to organisations as well as individuals.
Take school trusts, for example. There is growing evidence that school trusts have been effective in improving education in England.
System-level evidence of this is sometimes obscured by the fact that trusts have taken on many of the more challenging schools in the country, making broad brush comparisons with other school types difficult.
But if we look closer we can see many trusts have become expert at improving education at scale.
Academy trusts and school improvement
I visited Northern Education Trust several months ago and saw how the trust had transformed North Shore Academy - located in one of the most disadvantaged parts of the country.
And the same phenomenon has taken place in schools across the trust.
It really is remarkable and if you haven’t seen what the trust has achieved it really is worth looking at.
Then just last week I had the privilege of visiting Windsor Academy Trust (WAT) and saw again the impact an effective trust can have on children and communities; a very different trust but with a similarly strong focus on improving outcomes and empowering staff and students.
It’s important to recognise these are not stories of individual school improvement; they are stories of ongoing systemic trust-wide improvement: the interdependent building of expertise and capacity across all aspects of a family of schools.
Ignored by academia
So, what do we know about effective ways to help school trusts do that? Unfortunately, the answer is not as clear as many of us would like it to be.
Partly because academic research has spent the past decade erroneously viewing trusts through an ideological lens, there has been relatively little research into how trusts improve.
There are numerous papers asserting claims about whether “academisation” is a good thing or not, but few have ventured to the likes of Northern Education Trust or WAT to set about understanding how trusts are achieving what they are.
This failure of curiosity and lack of pragmatism limits our capacity to build knowledge that could further improve schools and trusts, and thus benefit children.
Sharing best practice
So, the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), and the sector it represents, is stepping into this space.
Today we are launching an inquiry into sector-led trust improvement. This will bring together trusts, national organisations and experts to make a significant contribution to addressing the question: “How do trusts improve?”
The inquiry is the latest example of the trend towards greater collaboration and cooperation between trusts and I am proud to be chairing it.
We believe developing the professional capacity to improve trusts and schools is the responsibility of the sector itself. It should be led by the sector and supported by the government, not the other way around.
We don’t believe there is a single model of how to run or improve trusts, but we do think there is more we can collectively know about trust improvement.
Expert voices
CST is bringing together a range of experts from school trusts, including the CEOs of Northern Education Trust and WAT, which I mentioned above.
We also have on board several people and organisations steeped in educational evidence, including Professor Becky Francis, CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation, and Professor Rob Coe, of Evidence Based Education.
We are also delighted to be benefitting from the input of Dr Kate Chhatwal, CEO of Challenge Partners, as we will be able to draw on her expertise in the evaluation of school and trust quality. These are just a selection of the school trust and education sector experts on the inquiry panel, and we’re looking forward to starting this work with them all.
The past few years have been hugely challenging for everyone in education, but I believe the quality of education in our schools is better now than ever before because of the extraordinary work being done by leaders and teachers.
And it’s important to be clear that the pursuit of improvement is not a mission to simply squeeze more out of a school system that is undoubtedly feeling the strain of recent years.
When you visit trusts, you increasingly find that supporting the wellbeing of staff, managing workload and investing in professional development are at the forefront of their strategic plans.
More trusts are subscribing to the view that being effective is often not about doing more, but rather about finding the things that make the biggest difference and doing less of the stuff that doesn’t have as big an impact.
As Dylan Wiliam reminds us, wherever we are on our journey, we can unlock improvement.
We hope this inquiry into trust improvement will play its part in enhancing the good work already being done in school trusts, helping them to deliver even more effectively for their children, staff and communities.
Steve Rollett is the deputy CEO of the Confederation of Schools Trusts
