Improving schools through relationships

Foxfield Primary School’s journey from special measures to outstanding was one that placed relational, ethical leadership at the centre of the school improvement agenda. The metrics for successful student learning, as well as the leadership of learning, had misguidedly focused simplistically on measurement and accountability, ignoring everything we know about the importance of collaboration, culture and trust. In A Manifesto for Excellence in Schools, I lay out the strategies that helped lead our team through difficulties to success.
The problem with accountability

Our obsession with education reform has concentrated on assessment, accountability and what politicians like to refer to as ‘rigour’. This has created a convenient script, locating the ‘problems’ of education with teacher expectations or students’ capacity to learn. The standards agenda creates an environment where target driven practices become normalised, students are viewed as objects and test scores become our proxy for success. In other words, students learn to read nonsense words in phonics, because that is what we test, but they do not necessarily fall in love with reading.

Characteristics of high-performing education systems	Features of struggling education systems
High levels of collaboration within and between schools	High levels of competition
Trust-based accountability	Test-based accountability
Values professionalism from leadership	Deprofessionalisation
Consistent, sustained improvement over time	Addiction to reform
High levels of equity	Obsession with standards

A Manifesto for Excellence in Schools proposes an alternative vision for our education system. It argues the case for re-calibrating the purpose of learning so schools are seen as more than exam factories. Education has a role to ensure students find their place in the world, contribute more effectively, and make explicit links between knowledge, skills and application in meaningful contexts. It is a kind of learning which values teamwork, creativity, diversity of opinion and an ethical framework. This is what I call ‘affective domain’. When we guide students to think more critically, more ethically, we provide agency between what is taught and why this matters.

The international picture

The most enduring education systems place students at the centre, cherishing relational learning and connecting education with the wider world. They have higher levels of equity, measured through both provision and results, less disparity of outcomes between student groups and view success in relation to trust-based rather than test-based accountability.

The book identifies key themes for maximising learning at both student and teacher level. These include:

• The importance of learning environment as the invisible teacher.
• A deliberate emphasis on ‘affective domain learning’ as well as ‘cognitive domain learning’.
• Strategies for empowering collaboration between teachers and students.
• Ideas to maximise ‘bottom-up’ school improvement.

It offers a world centred view of education which challenges the perception that students are merely a percentage figure. Instead, it argues that a more expansive approach to learning and education, one which celebrates the many gifts our students bring to the classroom and creates a climate where everyone achieves.

Individual relationships and behaviours

Another key area of focus for school improvement is teacher behaviours. The real worth of teaching can often be found in the way we model high quality relationships – a child may not always remember what they were taught but will never forget how a teacher made them feel. The best schools generate a climate where specific teacher behaviours lead to a mindset where all students thrive. For example:

• Making kids feel good about coming to school.
• Teaching inter-related concepts bind to ‘big picture’ learning together.
• Modelling learning dispositions as well as teaching through explicit instruction.
• Balancing teacher versus pupil talk in lessons.
• Fostering relationships between teachers as well as between students.

I argue if we can separate teaching from learning, we have the potential to create more dynamic classrooms where deeper levels of thinking take place and the role of teacher and learner enable a more expansive and exciting set of experiences. The relationship between teaching and learning does not have to be a transactional one. Because you ‘teach’ something, it doesn't mean that it becomes ‘learnt’. This is a problematic concept because everything we have been taught to do as leaders involves evaluating the work of teachers through a teaching and learning lens, comparing it with intended impact on learning including:

• How teachers plan, facilitate, deliver intended learning (without really understanding the complexity of concepts such as agency, motivation and internalisation of learning).
• Measuring outcomes of learning (test scores, progress review meetings, book looks).
• How teachers exercise control of a classroom by regulating the expectations for learning and the behaviours of pupils in lessons (for example, regulating talk time, facilitating discussion, behaviour management processes). 

The way in which we, as leaders, can challenge this accountability mindset is by building trusting relationships with staff and giving them the agency to lead in their own classrooms. A Manifesto for Excellence in Schools aims to provide encouragement to those who believe that teaching pupils how to live is as equally important as teaching them what to learn.

Rob Carpenter is the author of A Manifesto for Excellence in Schools, published by Bloomsbury Education.