Raising the Stakes

From Improvement to Transformation in the Reform of Schools

Brian J. Caldwell, Jim Spinks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134069750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Raising the Stakes provides an understanding of the breadth of resources that are needed in order to provide a quality education to all students so that every individual, organisation and institution can become a stakeholder in the enterprise.

This comprehensive book draws on best practice in several countries to show how resources can be allocated to help achieve high expectations for all schools. The book demonstrates how schools can move from satisfaction with improvement to accepting the challenge to transform, identifying and exploring the need to align four kinds of resources:

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• intellectual capital, that is, the knowledge and skill of talented professionals

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• social capital, being support in the form of cash, expertise and advocacy drawn from a range of individuals, organisations, agencies and institutions in the broader community

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• financial capital, which must be carefully targeted to ensure that these resources are aligned and focused on priorities for learning; and finally

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• spiritual capital, which can be viewed in a religious sense or in terms of the culture and values that bring coherence and unity to these endeavours.

The authors also outline a Student-Focused Planning Model with particular attention to the deployment of resources to support each student and embracing the notion of personalising learning.

Practitioners and researchers reading this book will be inspired to work more closely in networking knowledge about how 'high quality' and 'high equity' can be achieved. Raising the Stakes is essential reading for those with the responsibility of ensuring that resources are acquired and allocated to achieve the best possible outcomes for students.

Chapter 1

A new view of self-management

Introduction

No reform in education can succeed without appropriate resources to support the endeavour. This means that initiatives such as Every Child Matters in England, No Child Left Behind in the United States, and the Blueprint for Government Schools in Victoria (Australia) are certain to fail if the level and mix of resources are not appropriate.

Traditionally such a statement would be assumed to mean more money is needed from government to reduce class sizes, or fund a programme of in-service training for teachers about a preferred approach to curriculum or pedagogy, or provide a new pot of money as an incentive for schools to take on a new project related to one or more aspects of the reform. All of these may be desired by policymakers, who include these time-honoured approaches in their election campaign announcements. They would be welcomed by practitioners, because well-designed initiatives in school improvement must be funded one way or another, and the size of the school budget is sometimes (mistakenly) seen as an indicator of success.

The focus on money alone as the chief resource for schools has not resulted in expectations being achieved to any great extent. While his message is often greeted by puzzlement or even anger, the Hoover Institution’s Eric Hanushek found that increases in funding for schools have had, with few exceptions for some programmes, little impact on educational outcomes over many decades. His conclusion could not be clearer: ‘The aggregate picture is consistent with a variety of other studies indicating that resources alone have not yielded any systematic returns in terms of student performance. The character of reform efforts can largely be described as “same operations with greater intensity” ’(Hanushek, 2004, p. 12).

Governments have despaired when their apparently well-conceived programmes have not succeeded, sometimes blaming teachers who are perceived as unresponsive or incompetent or both. Schools are frustrated because they feel their best efforts have not been supported. Schools and school systems continue to search for the magic formula for the allocation of funds among schools and within schools so that expectations can be achieved.

These disappointments are largely the result of a narrow view of resources and adherence to a status quo view of the way schools and school systems should be led and managed. They reflect what may be described as ‘old enterprise logic of schools’. This is similar to Hanushek’s explanation of lack of impact cited above: ‘same operations with greater intensity’. The ‘new enterprise logic’ (Caldwell, 2006) and the adoption or adaptation of the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) ‘re-schooling’ scenarios (OECD, 2001a) will yield a different and much richer view of what we mean by resources. Money is important, but the key issues are concerned with the range of resources and how each is deployed. What are the most important resources if expectations are to be achieved? Limited success in the past, and a chief source of despair, derives from a view that the key unit of organisation is the school system or the school or the classroom, especially the last of these. It means that an important indicator for governments at election time, or for teacher unions at all times, or for teachers who find that their best efforts are not appreciated, is the student–teacher ratio. Success is indicated by the number of new teachers who have been hired, or the extent to which student–teacher ratios have been lowered, and some broad brush indicators of learning outcome, such as average performance on international tests such as those conducted in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), or a national or local benchmark like the number of students receiving five good passes in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) (England) or the percentage of students who reach a particular level in the curriculum and standards framework, as measured by the Achievement Improvement Monitor (AIM) (Victoria).

What is needed is a new mechanism to allocate funds when the key unit of organisation is the student, not the classroom or school or school system. What is needed is a view of resources that pays more than lip-service to intellectual capital, one that accounts more accurately and comprehensively for the knowledge and skills of every person who supports the learning enterprise, and ensures that all who work in or for the school are at the forefront in terms of their professional capacity. What is needed is the application of all of the resources of a community, not just government and not just money, and this is where the notion of social capital comes in. It has been under-valued and under-utilised in the past. There is still no systematic way to measure the level of social capital that supports the school. What is also needed is a sense of urgency, accompanied by an unprecedented campaign of action, to replace the appalling facilities in which much of the learning and teaching occurs in many countries. Resources in the form of infrastructure still reflect a nineteenthcentury factory or industrial model, or ‘the old enterprise logic’.

The good news is that this broader view of resources is now being adopted in some countries as governments and the wider community reach the end of their tether. England is good example of where there is now a deeper understanding of what is required. Following the White Paper (Secretary for Education and Skills, 2005), new legislation provides every school with an opportunity to acquire a trust, employ its staff and manage its assets. Trusts may support a number of schools which will acquire the flexibility of specialist schools and academies. The tipping point has been passed as far as specialist secondary schools are concerned, with a consistent gain over nonspecialist schools in achievement in the GCSE, with benefits being greatest in schools in challenging circumstances. Local authorities will have an important strategic role in establishing and expanding schools, responding to the needs and aspirations of students and parents, and helping to drive up standards.

In the remaining pages of Chapter 1, some underlying assumptions are addressed, summarised at the end as ‘first principles’. These assumptions concern the agenda for transformation, the personalising of learning, the self-management of schools, the new enterprise logic of schools and the emergence of philanthropy and social entrepreneurship as a key driving force for achieving success in trusts and the building of social capital.

Transformation

It is important that the scale of the challenge is appreciated. This is not allocation of resources for improvement. It is the allocation of resources for transformation. Transformation is significant, systematic and sustained change that secures success for all students in all settings, thus contributing to the well-being of the student and society. What this achievement is about, and how it is measured, varies from setting to setting and is invariably contentious.

Transformation is an appropriate word because such an outcome (‘all students in all settings’) has never been accomplished in any society in the history of education. It has, however, been accomplished in some settings. Success in these instances involved particular approaches to the allocation of resources. A major purpose of this book is to identify the principles that underpin these approaches to help build a capacity to do the same in all schools and school systems.

Personalising learning

At the heart of the theme of ‘all students in all settings’ is the importance of personalising the learning experience. Shoshanna Zuboff and Jim Maxmin coined the concept of ‘new enterprise logic’ in describing what is required in every organisation, public and private. As far as schools are concerned, they declared that ‘parents want their children to be recognised and treated as individuals’ (Zuboff and Maxmin, 2004, p. 152). Tom Peters included education in his general call to ‘re-imagine’: ‘Teachers need enough time and flexibility to get to know kids as individuals. Teaching is about one and only one thing: Getting to know the child’ (Peters, 2003, p. 284).

The case for transformation through personalising learning was made in England in the Five-Year Strategy for Children and Learners (DfES, 2004a).

‘Over the last 60 years, a fundamental recasting of industry, employment, technology and society has transformed the requirement for education and training – not only driving the education system, but introducing new ideas about lifelong learning, personalised education, and self-directed learning. And the story has been of taking a system designed to deliver a basic minimum entitlement and elaborating it to respond to these increasingly sophisticated (and rapidly changing) demands.

‘The central characteristic of such a new system will be personalisation – so that the system fits the individual rather than the individual having to fit the system. This is not a vague liberal notion of letting people have what they want. It is about having a system which will genuinely give high standards for all – the best possible quality of children’s services, which recognises individual needs and circumstances; the most effective teaching at school which builds a detailed picture of what each child already knows and how they learn, to help them go further; and, as young people begin to train for work, a system that recognises individual aptitudes and provides as many tailored paths to employment as there are people and jobs. And the corollary of this is that the system must be freer and more diverse – with more flexibility to help meet individual needs; and more choices between courses and types of providers, so that there really are different and personalised opportunities available’ (DfES, 2004a, p. 4).

The Five-Year Strategy contained a range of approaches to personalising learning, including the use of information and communications technology, individualised assessment for diagnosis, the planning of learning experiences for each student, and the provision of children’s services to support the work of teachers as they endeavour to meet the needs of each learner.

As further illustration in another setting, the former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in Australia, Michael Keating, made the following observation: ‘The reforms of public administration affecting service delivery stemmed fundamentally from public dissatisfaction with many of the services provided. The major problems were their lack of responsiveness to the particular needs of the individual client or customer . . . society has become more educated and wealthy and its individual members have developed greater independence and become more individualistic . . . This individualistic society is both more demanding and more critical of service provision’ (Keating, 2004, p. 77).

Self-managing schools

It is inconceivable that an agenda for transformation through personalising learning could be achieved without a high level of decentralisation in decision-making. Schools should be self-managing.

A self-managing school is a school in a system of education to which there has been decentralised a significant amount of authority and responsibility to make decisions related to the allocation of resources within a centrally determined framework of goals, policies, standards and accountabilities.

(Caldwell and Spinks, 1998, pp. 4–5)

Critics or sceptics have suggested that self-management has not had an impact on learning. This may have been true in the early stages when capacities at the school level were limited, especially in the absence of a strategy to make the link to learning and the data base was weak. Evidence is now strong. Ludger Woessmann, formerly at the University of Kiel and now Head of the Department of Human Capital and Structural Change at the Ifo Institute for Economics in Munich, undertook a comprehensive study of why students in some countries did better in TIMSS, and found a powerful connection between decentralisation of decision-making to the school level and student achievement (Woessmann, 2001). It is a connection that has been affirmed in subsequent results in PISA (Programme in International Student Assessment). Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division at OECD, identified decentralisation as one of several policy levers for student achievement (Schleicher, 2004). He found that, in the best performing countries:

• Decentralised decision-making is combined with devices to ensure a fair distribution of substantive educational opportunities.
• The provision of standards and curricula at national/sub-national levels is combined with advanced evaluation systems.
• Process-oriented assessments and/or centralised final examinations are complemented with individual reports and feedback mechanisms on student learning progress.
• Schools and teachers have explicit strategies and approaches for teaching heterogeneous groups of learners.
• Students are offered a variety of extra-curricular activities.
• Schools offer differentiated support structures for students.
• Institutional differentiation is introduced, if at all, at later stages.
• Effective support systems are located at individual school level or in specialised support institutions.
• Teacher training schemes are selective.
• The training of pre-school personnel is closely integrated with the professional development of teachers.
• Continuing professional development is a constitutive part of the system.
• Special attention is paid to the professional development of school management personnel.

More evidence about the link to learning is reported elsewhere (Caldwell and Spinks, 1998; Caldwell, 2002; Caldwell, 2003; Caldwell, 2005; Caldwell, 2006).

The new enterprise logic of schools

A review of developments in the self-management of schools by Caldwell (2006) found that best practice had outstripped initial expectations. It had become a key mechanism in efforts to achieve the transformation of schools. Nine workshops over nine weeks in four countries in the first half of 2005 revealed how success had been achieved. The concept of ‘new enterprise logic’ was adapted from Zuboff and Maxmin (2004) and its key elements are listed below. Together they constitute a new image of the self-managing school.

1. The student is the most important unit of organisation – not the classroom, not the school and not the school system – and there are consequent changes in approaches to learning and teaching and the support of learning and teaching.
2. Schools cannot achieve expectations for transformation by acting alone or operating in a line of support from the centre of a school system to the level of the school, classroom or student. Horizontal approaches are more important than vertical approaches, although the latter will continue to have an important role to play. The success of a school depends on its capacity to join networks or federations to share knowledge, address problems and pool resources.
3. Leadership is distributed across schools in networks and federations as well as within schools, across programmes of learning and teaching and the support of learning and teaching.
4. Networks and federations involve a range of individuals, agencies, institutions and organisations across public and private sectors in educational and non-educational settings. Leaders and managers in these sectors and settings share a responsibility to identify and then effectively and efficiently deploy the kinds of support that are needed in schools. Synergies do not just happen of their own accord. Personnel and other resources are allocated to energise and sustain them.
5. New approaches to resource allocation are required under these conditions. A simple formula allocation to schools based on the size and nature of the school, with sub-allocations based on equity considerations, is not sufficient. New allocations take account of developments in the personalising of learning and the networking of expertise and support.
6. Knowledge management takes its place beside traditional management functions related to curriculum, facilities, pedagogy, personnel and technology.
7. Intellectual capital and social capital are as important as other forms of capital related to facilities and finance.
8. New standards of governance are expected of schools and the various networks and federations in which they participate. These standards are important in the likely shift from dependence and self-management to autonomy and self-government.
9. Each of these capacities requires further adaptation as more learning occurs outside the school, which is one of several major places for learning in a network of educational provision. The image of the self-managing school continues to change in different settings.
10. The sagacity of leaders and managers in successful self-managing schools is likely to be the chief resource in preparing others, if transformation in a short time and on a large scale is the goal (Caldwell, 2006, pp. 71–2).

This book takes up the theme of item 5 in this list. Particular attention is given to items 6 and 7, which refer to resources that have been under-utilised in efforts to achieve change on the scale of transformation, namely, intellectual capital and social capital; and to item 8 on new standards in governance.

Intellectual capital or intellectual assets refer to the ‘talent, skills, know-how, know-what, and relationships – and machines and networks that embody them – that can be used to create wealth’ (Stewart, 2002, p. 11) or, in the case of schools, ‘to enhance learning’. Knowledge management in item 6 refers to the creation, dissemination and utilisation of knowledge for the purpose of improving learning and teaching and to guide decision-making in every domain of professional practice. Building intellectual capital and sustaining it through a comprehensive approach to knowledge management are the hallmarks of successful organisations in a knowledge society. Few schools have developed a systematic approach beyond the selection of qualified teachers and relying on occasional in-service days. It is a theme of this book that the creation of intellectual capital and state-of-the art approaches to knowledge management are essential for transformation and are key requirements in the acquisition and allocation of resources at the school level.

Fukuyama (1995) defined social capital as ‘the ability of people to work together for common purposes’. A school has social capital to the extent that it is part of a mutually supporting network of individuals, organisations, agencies and institutions in the public and private sectors, in education and in other fields. As in other organisations in western society, social capital for schools became weak in the second half of the twentieth century (Putnam, 2000). The challenge is to support schools as they seek to build their social capital. An impressive achievement in England is the way more than 2,600 of about 3,100 secondary schools have secured cash or in-kind support from thousands of individuals, organisations, agencies and institutions when they became specialist schools. New legislation extended the opportunity for schools or networks of schools to secure the support of trusts.

These are dramatic developments, considering that schools in England had little support of this kind barely a decade ago. In many respects they are benefiting from the rise of philanthropy which has its counterparts in other countries. The Economist (2006a) documented the trends: ‘Giving away money has never been so fashionable among the rich and famous’. Bill Gates led the way in providing US$31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support health and education, including a large grant to Cambridge University. Many school projects are supported, including an initiative to create smaller schools in the United States. Among developed countries, the United States leads the way in philanthropy, followed by Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Japan, Germany and Italy. ‘Britain’s government has recently been trying to foster the philanthropic spirit, and other European countries are starting to follow suit. Even in China, the government seems keen to build up a non-profit sector that caters to soc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Series foreword Leading School Transformation
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1 A new view of self-management
• Chapter 2 Core principles for next practice
• Chapter 3 Alignment
• Chapter 4 Intellectual capital
• Chapter 5 Governance and social capital
• Chapter 6 The funding of high quality and high equity
• Chapter 7 Next practice in the funding of schools
• Chapter 8 A student-focused planning model
• Chapter 9 Student-focused planning in action
• Chapter 10 Studies of success
• Chapter 11 New challenges for policy and practice
• Appendix 1 Principles of resource allocation for student-focused self-managing schools
• Appendix 2 Self-assessment of knowledge management
• Appendix 3 Self-assessment of governance
• Appendix 4 Self-assessment of resource allocation
• Appendix 5 The Student Resource Package in Victoria
• References