VIEWS & OPINION
Cost-effective school improvement is achievable Comment by MATT TIPLIN, VP of ONVU Learning, former senior leader in a MAT School and an Ofsted inspector
Funding for schools is not going up as fast as the costs pressures they face. And now that schools are expected to receive less money than originally thought, difficult decisions loom around the scale and pace of school improvement. But putting the brakes on school improvement plans could have a
significant negative impact on pupil progress. As schools juggle balancing the books with delivering good quality education, what steps can they take to support teachers and ensure school improvement remains an achievable target?
A shared approach
One way is to foster a culture of collaboration. This can have a huge impact on school performance, without eating into the budget.
But as schools are busy places, teachers can often miss out on conversations with colleagues that can help them talk through any problems they might be experiencing in the classroom.
As it’s not easy for teachers to find the time to have informal chats, setting aside dedicated times for staff to share their professional experiences and personal reflections can help them to feel more supported and less isolated. Research shows that encouraging greater collaboration improves the quality of teaching practice. When time is short they want to know what approach has worked for their colleagues and how the suggested improvements could be effectively and practically implemented.
For example, grouping teachers with similar training needs together in a session can encourage them to share issues and talk through practical solutions. It removes the ‘judgement’ and instead promotes and environment where everyone learns from one another, helping teachers to feel more valued and trusted.
But precisely because time is short, it can tempt schools to limit CPD to whole school INSET days, which typically focus too much on whole school priorities and not enough on the needs of individual teachers. This can leave teachers feeling less engaged in the training offered and frustrated that their time is being taken up when they it would be better spent preparing lesson plans.
Rather than hiring a trainer to provide training from a podium or sending teachers for expensive off-site CPD, consider making it easier to for staff to collaborate and learn from one another instead. It’s a strategy that can help schools cut costs while continuing to improve outcomes for children.
January 2024 Teacher retention is key
Recruiting new teachers and training them up is expensive for schools and difficult to achieve given the current recruitment challenges, but there are also chronic teacher retention issues. For pupils to flourish their teachers need to flourish, but
if we are to go by the results of education charity Education Support’s seventh Teacher Wellbeing Index then the sector could be in trouble.
Loneliness, isolation, stress, and burnout are all cited as contributing to a significant decline in the overall wellbeing of classroom teachers and senior leaders.
Ian Hartwright, head of policy at school leaders’ union NAHT has expressed concern about the current crisis in retention of teachers and school leaders. Providing teaching cover for staff off sick is both costly and a potential disrupter to pupils learning and can have a negative impact on both the performance and bottom line of the school. Although not a magic bullet, ongoing, good quality and relevant CPD taking place regularly within a collaborative environment can drive cost effective school improvement and better support teachers to stay in their role.
Put teachers at the centre of the own professional development
According to a report by the Schools Improvement Commission, ‘school improvement should not be a top- down, one-size-fits-all process; schools need to own their improvement and not have it dictated to them.’ Putting teachers at the front and centre of the own professional development gives them the autonomy to decide the areas for development themselves. These can be identified through reflective practice, for example by videoing and reviewing their own lessons using camera technology, that way they can see for themselves what worked and what perhaps didn’t, giving them more ownership over areas they want to improve.
It’s also worthwhile encouraging teachers to share any lessons learnt with colleagues or suggesting a colleague review the footage as a peer-on-peer review can provide valuable insight into how the lesson went. Especially so if the observer has first-hand experience of teaching this set of pupils and can offer practical suggestions to improve teaching practice. Sharing the lesson footage can help the observer too, as they could also pick up new ideas and approaches to develop their own teaching practice. Doubling the value. It is far more cost effective and efficient to retain teachers in the longer term by shaping school improvement plans around what’s happening in their classroom. This approach places explicit trust in teachers’ individual skills which could drive school improvement and support growth.
In the words of Sir Tim Brighouse, “School improvement is how schools create an ever-better climate for the individual and groups of teachers to do their job in the most favourable circumstances.”
It doesn’t have to be costly.
www.education-today.co.uk 29
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