Teaching school heads Chris Wheatley and Paul Stone reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly of collaboration in education
In recent years our political masters have been telling us that schools should work together to raise their game rather than improvement being directed from above by government.
That is how it should be. Heads know what works best for their schools and if we share that knowledge we can all improve together for the benefit of all pupils.
There is good evidence that all the rhetoric about 'self-improvement' is turning into action. Teaching schools – outstanding schools that lead on school-to-school support and the training of teachers and heads – are a good example. Both of our schools were among the first wave of teaching schools in 2011 and there are now over 360 teaching school alliances operating in England.
Most heads we know are motivated with a genuine desire to improve schools and the lot of all the children within them.
But it seems to us that school leaders are facing a stark choice: between genuine collaboration for self-improvement, in which schools strive to work with and for as many schools as possible, and a limited approach characterised by the self-interest of small groups of schools intent on protecting their privileged position at the expense of other less successful schools in the area.
This is worrying. With the decline of local authorities the need for schools to work together for the good of all pupils has never been greater.
Most schools want to talk collaboration because that's what the education establishment wants to hear. But in several cases we have seen collaboration that has not been about headteachers working together for the advancement of all schools. In these situations collaboration has been about the protection of interests and the advancement of certain views: empire building. For example, we've come across groups of schools that use collaboration as a vehicle for forced academisation, or as a response to the threat of the unknown.
This approach stifles the free flow of knowledge and stops risk taking. It replaces it with self interest and protectionism. Some schools will inevitably fall through the gaps created by what will be an atomised, competitive system.
If we had not formed Inspiring Leaders with four other like-minded East Midlands teaching school alliances we would have been unable to provide the CPD and teacher training opportunities we now offer to so many schools across the region.
Inspiring Leaders is a not for profit partnership with a network of more than 300 schools across Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northants and Lincolnshire. We use the expert leaders and teachers within our outstanding schools and alliance partners to deliver training and development programmes for middle leaders and aspiring senior leaders across our combined networks, as well as any schools in the region that want it. We can do this because of the scale of our collaboration – we already have 135 school leaders participating on our programmes.
We chose this route because we realised that becoming teaching schools in our own right wasn't enough to ensure that as many schools as possible got access to support and development. In order to increase our reach we had to find other like-minded schools that were driven by similar motivations to ours. Together we could act as a genuine force for the improvement of many schools – rather than a few.
We found each other because we all shared similar beliefs about collaboration. We attended local headteacher meetings and listened to what other heads were saying. Similar personalities, points of view and ethos were vital if our partnership was to work. We developed a radar for picking up on people who shared our philosophy. Heads who spoke about all children, working for communities and sharing were more likely to agree with our outlook on collaboration than the head who constantly referred to protecting their Ofsted grades and pupil funding.
Once we'd found each other we looked for areas that we could collaborate on. Our schools had compatible strengths and we realised that working with each other and the other teaching schools as a combined unit only strengthened what we had to offer.
We looked for what we could do together rather than compete on the same areas. We figured that by working together we could offer something that was of a higher quality for schools. If we had been competitive rather than collaborative we wouldn't have been able to offer schools the professional development courses and teacher training that we now offer.
At the moment we are at a tipping point: we have a choice between steely competitiveness, in which schools form their wagon circles of protection, or altruism, in which we open ourselves up for the improvement of all schools and every pupil.
Please, let's choose the latter.
Chris Wheatley is headteacher of Cotgrave Candleby Lane Primary near Nottingham and Paul Stone is headteacher of Kibworth Primary near Leicester. They are part of Inspiring Leaders, a partnership of five outstanding primary teaching schools and one outstanding special school which trains aspiring and established school leaders. More information is available here.
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