Embracing Your Magpie: School Improvement Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

Case study: Building A School Improvement Framework

Just over two years ago, the kind people from Chiltern Learning Trust invited our Strategic Leader for School Improvement to a session for people with similar roles.  Our lead, Mark McLaughlin, met the incomparable Lorraine Hughes and learned about the approach of the Chiltern Learning Trust to school improvement, including the role of their School Improvement Framework.

We shamelessly took that framework and learned all we could from the work of some really talented people.  Through careful co-construction our Trust team re-shaped the framework in a way that reflected the distinctive character of our Catholic schools, but took care to avoid the toxic mutations that see great ideas in one organisation fail when applied to another organisation.  That process was not straightforward and it would be daft not to recognise seeking to build on the ideas from one organisation and applying it to your own is not without challenge and the occasional firm 'push-back', but that process actually enhances the final product.

So, what is the difference?  Well, we always had a strong understanding of our schools both qualitatively and quantitatively, but the framework has done something very different.  It has helped us to support schools in identifying the precise priorities that represent the best next step in their journey and identify those schools where that next step would benefit from support and capacity.  I have lost count of the number of times a school has identified a specific issue in an area of the curriculum that needed to be addressed and has made the necessary changes thanks to the application of the School Improvement Framework.  We have unlocked a collaborative way of working that sees leaders across schools supporting one another through Collaborative Review that they recognise as a brilliant way for leaders to learn from one another, but doing so through a clear shared language and shared expectations.

Like many of you, I looked at the press release around Ofsted's Big Listen with keen interest.  Sir Martin identified a need to move towards a better conversation around each school's improvement journey between inspectors and school leaders and I am sure he made reference to rubrics that may help.  Our friends at Chiltern Learning Trust saw a need for that some time ago - we stood on their shoulders and have reaped the benefits of doing so.  That was only possible because our friends at Chiltern Learning Trust - Adrian Rogers, Sufian Sadiq and Lorraine Hughes - are outward looking and work with a spirit of generosity.  

So, embrace your inner magpie.  Go out, find great practice, make sure it works and that there is great evidence to back it up...and then shamelessly claim it was your brain child if you really must!

Joe Richardson
CEO of St Thomas Catholic Academies Trust

September 2024

When the GB Ladies hockey team gathered to prepare the path to the London 2012 Olympics, they had to decide what it was they were seeking to achieve.  The most obvious objective was to win medals, but this was not their ultimate goal.  No, their goal was to leave a legacy of inspirational memories that would inspire a generation of little girls to pick up a hockey stick and become the star of the future.  They wanted people to love what they loved.

On Thursday 10^th October, the Year 7 students at Cardinal Newman School in Luton gathered for their Welcome Mass shortly after the Feast Day of their patron, St John Henry Newman.  At the very start of that Mass there is a ceremony that sees their primary school headteacher pass on each student in their school to the staff at Cardinal Newman.  

They say, "I entrust the children of...to the community of Cardinal Newman School".  Those children entrusted to the school are then promised that they will be loved and that people in the school will do all they can to help them succeed.  In that moment there is a chain of memory between our schools, a chain of faith, a chain of love, a chain of hope for each young person.

And that is important.  St Paul talks about us being 'ambitious for the higher gifts' and in that expression he is talking about love and hope.  If we set our sights on goals that are defined by winning medals, the chances are we will end up winning nothing at all.  If, like the GB Ladies hockey team, we focus on something higher, we will 'achieve infinitely more than we can dream or imagine' - to take another lovely line from St Paul!

Trust and school improvement is, first and foremost, all about culture and establishing, virtues, character and charism within a community.  It is all about those higher gifts.  Anything we try to do without this work will fall on stoney ground and fail to take root.  

And, as a footnote, that brilliant hockey team went onto win a Bronze at 2012 and Gold in Rio in 2016 - results matter too, but they were made possible because of a higher ambition!