Humble Ownership
What it means to be a leader in schools
Humble Ownership
If I ever write a book about school leadership, this is what it will be called. Humble Ownership.
A humble leader isn’t wishy washy. They have strong beliefs. But these beliefs have to be based on evidence which tells a credible story.
Lesson visits are not a credible story. Peer reviews, Ofsted, these are not credible stories. They are stories shaped around the preferred styles of the story teller.
Example: once learning had to be demonstrated at different points within a lesson. Now Ofsted looks at learning over time, because ‘if it is not in long term memory, nothing has been learned’. Entirely opposite conclusions.
What is a credible story? Data is always a credible story.
We make it more credible by asking what the story seems to say, and then we dig better. Not by asking what this means for pupil premium girls with single mothers and a couple of ACEs. That’s digging a very small hole. It’s like drilling a hole a few meters down to find out more about Roman life, straight through a Roman mosaic floor we never see.
Much better to uncover the whole mosaic - not drilling, just better digging.
Humble Ownership is Better Digging
The humble part of this is that you keep digging, even when you are convinced of your own success. You say:
‘Ok, this is what we thought we should do, but now that we have tried it, what’s the impact?’
Be prepared to be wrong. Because, everything you ever do will always go wrong. Find out how, and quickly. See if you and your teams can fix it.
Sometimes you will even find it is the right solution to the wrong problem: there’s an even bigger problem staring you in the face.
For example, we revise the curriculum so that it is perfectly sequenced, and filled with high value knowledge. Go us!
But our assessments show that students’ score an average of 53%, and that low prior attainers score 40%, and high prior attainers score 62%.
The deeper problem is that we are not teaching our students to remember what they have been taught. That’s the real problem.
Let’s change that by creating a retrieval curriculum which will make learning sticky and build long term memory. Go again, us.
Let’s Look at My Data
There are a few schools I have worked with in this list. But only three last year. There are also local schools to these, or within the same MAT, or they are schools I used to teach at. They are not a representative sample, though they do range from inadequate to outstanding.
They have high interest value to me in being able to measure my impact.
Does my English Advice Work?
I’ve worked with English teams in 4 of these schools last year. I’m normally called in because the school is struggling, or the English team is struggling.
P8 is a guide to my impact, but it is likely to be low because overall P8 in each of those schools was negative.
But what if I look at the difference between the school P8 (often boosted by the open bucket) and the English team? Now I can unpick the effect I have had in context.
(This is the best way to measure the impact of your own department).
This data is pretty strong. Top 5 includes a head of department in their first year. And they had 12 students who didn’t even take literature, which means the true impact on their team has been muted.
Another top 5 I spent a day in last year, and a day the year before - some impact, but I can’t hang my hat on it. A day is a very gentle guiding hand.
The third was the UTC in the list. Progress 8 for English is similar to English nationally, at 0.01. But for UTCs nationally, the average P8 for English is -0.85. So, this looks like astonishing progress. There are 32 UTCs, and this one came second. 4 half days of my support. Not bad.
Another school I worked in two years ago. 4 days on instructional coaching.
I said: ‘look, this is not what the teachers need. They need to teach a curriculum and establish a school culture that makes students think and work hard. As SLT, you need to focus on that.’
The trust and head did not agree. They got rid of me, so no chance of ownership there. But, P8 of -0.86. And for non EAL, - 1.19. Sure, it gives me pleasure to find out I was right. I have an ego.
But I was 100% prepared to find out I was wrong.
Humble ownership doesn’t mean you can’t recognise when something works.
So, I know what I do works. Or I think I do.
What about other schools that I worked with in the past?
I’ve included every mainstream secondary school I’ve ever worked with in this list. There is no inconvenient data I’ve left out.
I have an ego, but I have to park that at the door of data, sitting like Oliver, asking for more at the School Performance Tables.
What Do I Find?
I trained one head of English up to 2012. Ofsted visited just over a year ago and gave the school RI. The English team, highly unusually, were named and slated in the report. The head of English quit because the SLT offered no vote of confidence.
The head of department’s legacy, one year after leaving, is for English to be 5th on the list. Once again, English is the most successful department in the school, as it was most years.
Ofsted told the wrong story. So did the SLT.
There are a couple of other schools I worked with the year before. One powered through Ofsted, following my advice, after successive RIs.
They asked me back last year, but I said no - the English progress did not seem to be improving - either the team was poor, or my advice was poor.
They asked again - could I come in in April and deliver 9 masterclasses to key groups of year 11? A plaster on a serious wound. A failing team. No, I wouldn’t.
Their results are predictably poor. But they are no poorer than the rest of the school. I’d helped their worst department become average for the school, despite this. Not really a success, but at least not a reason to cast doubt on what I do. And I coached them to spin a plausible narrative to the 5 HMI, one of whom was an English specialist. So, ok impact.
The other school was bottom 5. The English team had changed most of it’s personnel. Yet they powered through Ofsted, despite consecutive RI judgements. But English P8 was lower than the school. A qualified success/failure.
Humble Ownership
Ok, I now know that my advice appears to deliver real success and improvement. But, the way that advice is implemented can derail that.
So, I could give the Head of Department and line manager a playbook - this is what you should do, and this is probably when.
Do not deviate from this unless data tells you it is wrong. Phone or email me when you do, so I can improve, or I can help you see you are deviating without data.
But in the real world, decisions are made every day, and Heads of Department don’t have time for that.
So I insist on return visits where we go looking for data which tells how the story is playing out.
Because, if my advice is right, but it isn’t followed, I have to own that failure. That was my fault.
If you want to have incredible impact with your English team, you don’t need me to visit your school. Most of what I know is right here:
Multi Academy Trusts: Humble Ownership
The lead school for English in one of the MATs I work with has fantastic progress. As a colleague in a £43,000 a year private school remarked to me, “most parents own a £2 million house in that catchment, they all have degrees, tutors are a dime a dozen, so what do you expect?”
I can’t comment, but their English progress 8, though fantastic, is only marginally better than the school. There are 2 other schools from the same MAT in the top 5 with better progress relative to the school, one of which is the new head of English in their first year, and 12 missing P8 buckets.
Humble ownership from the MAT would involve visits to both these schools, the ones who outdid their school context - trying to unpack how their English teams have bucked the trend.
It is unlikely to happen.
School Culture
How do I test school culture from the data? Let’s rank all the schools by EAL. These students achieve +0.5 nationally. So I look for which schools exceed that with their EAL.
These EAL students also attend school - they don’t take time off. Want to know the value of your curriculum? Compare your EAL P8 to everyone else’s in other schools on the list.
The school I have worked in most, on curriculum and teaching and learning, ranks 5th in the list. But their attendance ranks 26th.
This tells me the department heads and teachers are doing a fantastic job. But attendance is crippling their progress. Attendance was the main thing in 2022, and is just as bad in 2023.
Attendance
The leadership team have not practised humble ownership. Indeed, last time I was in, the curriculum was still being blamed for poor P8, rather than attendance.
I have failed to help them because attendance is not my job. It isn’t why they’ve hired me. But still, I had pointed out the problem repeatedly.
And I made no difference: P8 increased by 0.04, even though EAL students scored P8 of over 1 - 10 extra GCSE grades per student. It only works if students are in school!
So, how do I take ownership of this? Well, I either find a way to help them make attendance a bigger priority, or I don’t.
Obviously they have thrown resources, time and expertise at the problem. But have they owned the problem, their lack of impact?
Here’s a quick, off the top of my head, list of things they might do or have done:
Interview parents of students with 85-90% attendance. And so on with other bandings - the replies are likely to be different for different bandings.
Have they interviewed students in those bandings?
What actions have they taken in response?
Have they used ChatGPT to craft different texts and letters home, and then trialed these to see which ones work best?
Have they taken the two best versions after 12 weeks and tweaked them to see if they can have a better impact? Iterate every 12 weeks.
Have they looked at the Nudge Unit to see what they recommend?
Have they considered an incentive, or reward? E.g. £10 per week if you attend every lesson in the week and you are a PP child?
Set up two groups - one where the money goes to the student, one where it goes to the parents. Which has more impact?
Does inter-tutor group competition work, perhaps with the worst outlier removed?
Have those with low attendance in the tutor group got a mentor from these with the best attendance in the tutor group?
Do we constantly publish attainment data with attendance data - is there a massive correlation? Do students and parents see this and understand it?
Do we do the same with progress correlated to attendance?
What clubs and experiences do we offer students who are PP?
Have we read Doug Lemov’s book on belonging, and what have we implemented?
What have we consciously put in to school to increase the students’ sense of belonging?
What do we already have in the curriculum - leadership, mentoring, tutors, PSHE that ought to create a sense of belonging - how do we find out how well these are working (or not working?)
What is the MAT doing? Do they have any successful strategies they could measure? (If not, do they think they should? Manage upwards - insist that this is a MAT wide problem hidden by middle class catchments in other schools)
Has the school looked at their P8 for non-EAL students? It is around -0.25, a quarter of a grade. That has to hurt. It might spur some urgency that the average overall P8 does not.
Have they used attendance data and the EAL progress to celebrate the teachers and departments who get fantastic progress from those who attend even 90% of the time? This could create buy-in that the next area to succeed in is just as possible.
Have they compared that to schools in the list, local schools, with 90% attendance? They’ll see a massive impact in their own data - they will be able to unite the teachers around a message which says, ‘your curriculum is great. Your teaching is great. Can we now think about how to make our students come to school to benefit from it?’
Etc.
Can I make any of this happen? Who should I approach in school?
An ownership problem for me to ponder.
What problems do you need to own?