Quality Education for All, Shared by All

International Seminar in Madrid

29 November – 1 December 2004

• Professor David Hopkins

• Chief Advisor on School Standards, DfES
The Problem:
• Link between social class and outcomes

• Within and between school variation

• Too many children insufficiently engaged by learning,

leading to

• very poor participation rate at 17

The challenge is to put all this right….

 Brief history of standards in primary
schools
11 plus dominated Professional control Standards and
"Formal" "Informal" accountability
NLNS

2003

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Policies to Drive School Improvement

Intervention
in inverse Ambitious
proportion Standards
to success

High
Devolved
Accountability Challenge
responsibility
High
Support
Access to best
Good data and
practice and quality
clear targets
professional
development
 Five Drivers for Reform
• Personalised learning, enriched curriculum, whole child

• System wide focus on workforce reform and teacher

professional development

• Strong institutions committed to excellence and equity

• A synchronised system generating its own momentum for

reform

• The whole enterprise capturing the heads and minds of the

nation
Enhancing Professional Development
through Workforce Reform
Workforce Reform is essentially about creating the conditions to deliver
personalised learning:
• Teachers freed to focus on teaching and learning (released from
tasks that don’t require their expertise)
• More professional support staff both in and outside the classroom
(HLTAs, pastoral and business managers, cover supervisors) and
the flexibility to deploy them
• Teacher promotion based on classroom practice through ‘teaching
and learning reviews’
• Cutting edge ICT to revolutionise curriculum delivery and
streamline “back office” systems
• Getting the culture right, willingness to re-examine existing models
and working practices
 The School as a Professional Learning
Community
• Build in time for collective inquiry
• Collective inquiry creates the structural conditions for school
improvement
• Studying data on classroom practice increases the focus on
student learning
• Use the research on teaching and learning to improve school
improvement efforts
• By working in small groups the whole school staff can become a
nurturing unit
• Staff Development as inquiry provides synergy and enhanced
student effects
New Relationship with Schools

David Miliband, Minister for Schools, in his North of

England Speech, on 9th January 2004 said:

“If we want to make personalised learning the defining feature of

our education system then we need to develop a new, more
focussed and purposeful relationship between the Department,
LEAs and schools.

• Strip out clutter and duplication

• Align national and local priorities
• Release greater local initiative and energy”
 The Main Changes
SELF-EVALUATION
• “continuous, searching, objective … how students progress and how core systems
are working”
INSPECTION
• “short and focussed review of the fundamentals of a school’s performance and
systems …. every 3 years … very short notice”
SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PARTNER
• “credible practitioner … in many cases with current or recent secondary headship
experience … a critical friend”
SINGLE CONVERSATION
• “about school’s priorities, targets, support needs…. reduce multiple
accountabilities … reengineer DfES and LEA programmes”
PROFILE
• “reflecting the breadth and depth of what schools do”
DATA
• “collected once, used many times”
COMMUNICATIONS
• “information that schools need, when they need … Amazon-style online ordering”
 ng nd

Im
Sc ove
ni a

pr
ar ng

ho m
Le hi

ol en
ac

Personalised
Te

Learning

t
System Wide
Reform
 Networks and Innovation
Networks support educational innovation by:
• Providing a focal point for the dissemination of good practice
and the agents of knowledge creation, transfer and utilisation.
• Keeping the focus on the core purposes of schooling in
particular creating and sustaining a discourse on teaching and
learning.
• Enhancing the skill of teachers.
• Building capacity for continuous improvement at the local
level.
• Ensuring that systems of pressure and support are integrated,
not segmented.
• Acting as a link between the centralised and decentralised
policy initiatives.
Key Principles for Reform

• Greater personalisation & choice

• Opening up services and new ways of delivery
• Freedom & independence
• A major commitment to staff development
• Partnerships
The 5 Priorities from the 5 Year Strategy

• Supporting the education & welfare of the whole

child
• Continuing the drive in primary education
• Widening choice & increasing achievement in
secondary & Further Education
• Reducing the historic deficit in adult skills
• Sustaining an excellent university sector
 POWERFUL
LEARNING
EXPERIENCES