At the moment we are in a period of flux in education.
We have had a new government for the past year, which has made relatively quick work of starting to review the curriculum and assessment processes in England’s schools.
We also have a revised Ofsted inspection framework emerging alongside this - although those plans have recently hit some speed bumps.
Real change in schools is still some way off. The Department for Education will have to make decisions around what to do with the findings of the curriculum review and then, alongside the Standards and Testing Agency and Ofqual, pull this into a shape that can be used to help determine what is to be taught and assessed in schools - while bearing in mind whatever the new Ofsted framework looks like.
Curriculum review and Ofsted changes
But when change does come, it will come for all. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently at the committee stage in the House of Lords, seeks to remove some of the freedoms previously awarded to academies, including requiring them to follow the national curriculum. This means that they, too, will be required to deliver the outcomes of the curriculum review.
Curriculum review leader Professor Becky Francis has been very clear that the review is about “evolution not revolution” while the “new” Ofsted framework has been presented largely as a new lens through which we can look at the old framework.
However, there are still a significant number of unknowns.
It is understandable that school leaders will be keen to get ahead of the changes, putting things in place to support any new direction of travel and making sure they are not on the back foot once inspections are underway and new assessment approaches are in place.
Staff will already be looking to middle and senior leaders to determine the direction of travel, and rightly so. But while it’s tempting to try to put things in place ahead of the new academic year, nobody wants to waste time and effort on planning that won’t align with the new approaches.
When it comes to forward planning, then, schools are very much operating in limbo. So, in the current circumstances, how can leaders do their best to change-proof their schools?
My main advice to the heads I work with has been to look inwards, rather than outwards. By this I don’t mean they should completely ignore what may be coming and put their heads in the sand. Rather, they need to return to their core purpose: the essential values and aims of the school or trust.
Leaders should be asking themselves how those values are being lived out through what their staff do. How can they further strengthen understanding of the values, and drive them home, regardless of external changes?
Sticking to your core values
From my perspective, this always comes back to trying to provide the best for pupils, especially those who are experiencing difficulties related to socio-economic disadvantage or special educational needs and disabilities. How have we decided what all pupils need to know and do in relation to the curriculum as it stands? What have we emphasised and how have we ensured that we are providing the best opportunities possible for that learning to happen?
There has always been a lot of noise in education around the different ways in which we could meet the aims of teaching and learning. School leaders navigate through that noise daily, and this should be approached in the same way.
If we have clarity and confidence in what we are already doing, we are in a good position to make the adaptations needed once we know more about the changes to come. This will ultimately help to ensure that any new shifts in policy do not take us too far from our core purpose.
If we get caught up in the zeitgeist of change, we risk losing sight of what is important to us for our pupils, our staff and our wider communities. But if we can trust in our core mission, we will be able to weather the storms of change, knowing that what we are doing is the right thing, regardless of what might be incoming.
Zoe Enser is the school improvement lead for a trust in the North West of England
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