The power of collaboration and networking

 

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  Hello, my name is Simon East. I’m the Co-Headteacher of Horning Primary School in Norfolk and I’m also the National College’s Leadership Network Leader for the Eastern region. What I am going to describe represents practice and experience not theory. The experiences follow on from each other and in some senses inter-relate; even if that was not by design in the first instance.

  The nature of school leadership is changing; it’s changing to meet the demands of this century rather than being primarily based on an outdated post-Victorian model. I believe that becoming a headteacher is not necessarily the final goal in a school leader’s career. This is a time of opportunity and headship can be an important step along a career path and not an endgame in itself.

  Schools are working more collaboratively – buying into their collective strengths, sharing responsibilities and accountability. In my opinion this approach is vital and it has to spread, if we are to ensure that a healthy flow of aspirant school leaders see the job as doable and take the step up to headship.

  Some people look back in time and describe a ‘Golden Age’ in education. I honestly don’t think that there ever was such an era. I hope that my experiences in a small way can break some barriers and make a positive contribution to the education system.

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  I became a headteacher for the first time in 1998. I moved from being a deputy head in Hertfordshire to the headship of a small school in rural Norfolk. The school was far from ‘fit for purpose’: it had outside toilets, no staffroom, no head’s office and two out of four classrooms were mobiles. The staff were paralysed with fear knowing that an inspection was long overdue. I was teaching four days every week in the only modern part of the building – well, a mobile!

  Not that surprisingly, Ofsted placed the school in Special Measures. The school was isolated, introvert and depressed. I discovered that I was the seventh headteacher in the previous ten years. Welcome to headship! Things had to change. I realised that the school would not improve and I could not survive unless we did things differently. We took three approaches: one, stop feeling sorry for ourselves and start playing to our strengths. Two, collaborate with each other. Three, network, network furiously. We didn’t have the answers, but I made the assumption that the answers were out there, we just had to find them!

  Through sheer determination, fear of continued failure and a lot of help from my friends and supportive allies, the school was removed from Special Measures within the year. Standards did rise, but more importantly so did our self-esteem. There was a new collective belief within the school and crucially from our community.

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  In 2001, I was invited to take the acting headship of a second small school and the Hevingham and Marsham Partnership was formed. The ethos behind the partnership was that by pooling our human and physical resources, we would be stronger. That social, academic and sporting opportunities for our children would be improved and that has proved to be the case. Our partnership work built capacity within the schools and we developed a sustainable and a ‘can-do’ mentality.

  What we hadn’t taken into account were the unexpected positive spin-offs. For example, by the very nature of being a headteacher in two schools, I was always absent from one of the schools. This created a great many career development opportunities for other people to step up into new roles. For the first time ever, we could actually muster a fully functioning senior leadership team.

  As the partnership became established, its reputation spread. The schools became known for collaborative work and staff development. Suddenly recruitment was not the intractable problem it had once been. An example of how careers developed was a previously failing class teacher moving from one school to the other, developing her strengths and interests, across both schools as Leader of ICT. More recently, since September 2006 and my secondment to NCSL, our deputy headteacher has stepped up to become acting headteacher of two schools in her first headship appointment. This is an important step in what should be a long and successful career in school leadership. Through the partnership, she has been able to progress from part-time teacher to subject leader to assistant head to deputy, and now to acting head. I ask, where next?

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  My role with the National College is as the Leadership Network leader for the Eastern region and it has focused me back on my basic instinct for networking and its power to problem-solve. The Leadership Network is all about sharing – it’s all about sharing solutions to local as well as national issues. Looming large on the horizon is the challenge of identifying aspirant school leaders with the ‘right stuff’ to fulfil the impending shortfall in headteacher numbers. We know that there is no one solution and that there must be locally developed strategies involving schools and local authorities, with NCSL’s support.

  Through the Leadership Network, I have developed an internship project, aimed at supporting a group of 50 aspirant school leaders from across the Eastern region to gain leadership learning experience.

  Reciprocal internships were organised in schools of all types. The interns – briefed in protocols and expectations – were provided with a learning and evaluation record based on the National Standards for Headship.

  Interns experienced what it is like to be a school leader in another school context. To observe another headteacher working, to meet children, governors and parents, to fulfil leadership responsibilities and to feed back their observations and thoughts through discussions with the host head and leadership teams.

  The project recently concluded with a very successful conference where interns shared their experiences. Overwhelmingly, they spoke of the positive benefits of the project; the opportunities to observe leadership away from their own school and their familiar ground, to take stock of their career and to focus on their career development needs. Crucially, the project has allowed the interns a view of school leadership without the commitment of making an application, without upping sticks and moving area. Many have mentioned that the project has been the catalyst that has re-energised their thinking towards taking the step up to headship.

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  From September 2007, I will be working on a part-time basis for two organisations. Firstly, I will be continuing my Leadership Network role with the National College and also taking the exciting challenge of primary school co-headship.

  I feel that I am now in control of my career and that it is developing in areas of my strength and my interest. Through the co-headship I am buying also into the strength of my co-head. The co-headship will develop my leadership skills, but it will also demand intuitive thinking. I’ll be contributing to the system by supporting an excellent headteacher to stay in the profession when she would have otherwise taken early retirement.

  I see co-headship as a logical phenomenon that has emerged from schools themselves. I see it as a way of retaining good heads at a time when we need them most. It is an effective strategy for aspirant leaders to take a bite at headship whilst being mentored and supported in a reciprocal relationship with an experienced head. I believe that more middle leaders would take that step forward toward headship if they were not put off by the singular accountability of headship. Co-headship addresses that tension.

  I have become increasingly aware that if our system identifies potential school leaders at an early stage in their career and catapults them to headship, then there will be associated problems. Headteachers will have more than half of their career ahead still left by the time they lead their first school. So what will happen to them in the next 30 years? Will it be headship after headship? I think that the answer lies with system leadership and greater opportunities to contribute and lead beyond a single school.

  There are flexibilities emerging all of the time. Schools, system stakeholders, governors and parents are increasingly open-minded to the possibilities presented by new forms of school leadership such as federations, villages of education, partnerships and co-headships. Headteachers can also contribute to the system as mentors, consultants and School Improvement Partners.

  Shared accountability at all levels and inter-school collaboration builds capacity within schools; it increases effectiveness and underpins our core moral purpose as school leaders, which is about improving the lives of all children. Perhaps the ‘Golden Age’ of education is still to come. Thank you.