1. The roles 2020: A cohesive and collective school-led system
The Surrey Governors Association
25 November 2017
Maria Dawes, Deputy Director
South East South London RSC Office

2. South East and South London (SESL) region key facts
c schools
32% academies
79% of acads in MATs
216 MATs
128 Teaching Schools
90% Good/Outstanding
Low failure rates
Pockets of real challenge
Disadvantage

3. Vision: our ambition is to create more good and outstanding academy places so children, particularly in our most challenging areas, can benefit from an excellent education.
Ministerial priorities have meant an intentional shift from a focus on academy numbers to even more strongly embedding the importance of effective school improvement.
‘We want to encourage, support and challenge the best leaders to take responsibility for more schools and to bring their expertise in school improvement to benefit more children.’
Sir David Carter
School Improvement
Building Capacity

4. What does a school-led system that delivers improvement look like?
High Quality Leadership in all schools
Strategic School and Cluster Improvement Strategies
Collaboration and Partnership
Use of evidence to drive improvements
Local Area and Place Based Solutions
Strategic Support through ‘Capacity Givers’

5. Who are the ‘Capacity Givers’ in the System?
Organisations
Successful and Sustainable high performing maintained schools, academies and MATS
Teaching School Alliances
Maths Hubs
NPQ Licensed Providers
Newly designated Research Schools
Effective school improvement providers working across Local Authorities
Credible and Effective Improvement organisations (Teach First, ASL, EEF, Sutton Trust, NSN)
Universities and HE Schools of Education
Independent Schools
Designated System Leaders
National leaders of education
National leaders of governors
Specialist leaders of education
CEO of MATS
Headteacher Board Members
DfE Education Advisors
Academy Ambassadors
Leaders of School Improvement in TSA, MATS etc
Outstanding Heads of good schools
Great school leaders past and present, who are none of the above

6. What contribution should we expect our ‘Capacity Givers’ to make?
Connecting the school to wider system thinking
Diagnosis of Improvement Need
Bring evidence based thinking to strategic development
Challenge the emerging strategic plan
Offer Advice and Guidance to Leaders and Governors on managing change
Mentor and Coach School Leadership teams
Challenge thinking and practice and review implementation
Open up access to new networks
Bringing the wider system into the school
Take over the leadership of a school in severe crisis
Add capacity at team level and review team performance
Source classroom and middle leader support
Build sustainability for long term success
Identify talent and potential for succession planning
Deliver bespoke training
Identify better schools for leaders to visit and learn from

7. New ways of thinking about System Capacity
Why SSIF is integral to this
Carries the expectation that MATS, schools, TSA, Diocese and LA will work together to design new solutions
Focus is more strategic
Scalable solutions across more schools
Sustainability of the improvement solution is integral
Local Area and Place Based solutions to deliver effective improvement to more schools and more children
How is this being developed?
12 Opportunity Areas
RSC Priority Areas
Sub Regional Improvement Boards
Criteria for the Strategic School Improvement Fund applications (SSIF)

8. MATs play an integral part in the improving school system
What’s happening?
Quality not quantity key
79% academies now in MATs, and rising
75% MATs between 1-3 schools
Mainly local, organic
More sharing of learning across MATs
Join up across the system eg. LAs, Teaching School Council, SSIF
MATs tell us opportunities are…
Share professional practice
Leadership succession development
Recruitment and retention
Mutual accountability
Refresh governance
Economies of scale
The point: better outcomes for children

9. Three core elements that the strongest trusts exhibit
A board that contains a wide range of professional experiences that can deliver the dual responsibility of building strategy to deliver great outcomes for children alongside the culture of accountability that is necessary across the organisation.
The appointment of an executive leader, typically an executive head or chief executive officer, who is held to account for standards across the schools.
The creation and execution of a school improvement strategy that develops and improves the workforce, builds succession and enables the strongest teachers and leaders to influence outcomes for more children.
We know that the composition of MATs varies in different locations, and there is no one right model. There are great examples of primary only or secondary only trusts, but also examples of trusts with different types and phases of schools
Whilst there is no single way to create and lead a MAT there are at least three things that the strongest MATs all demonstrate: …
It is the last one that I want to talk about today.

10. The Autonomy Debate and Who Does What
Academy Autonomy
Academy Alignment
Academy Standardisation
What does being Autonomous mean?
Academies choose what they do on the basis of local need
What does being Aligned mean?
‘Strategic partnerships require alignment with organisational mission and vision’
The way we do things has some common elements but some scope for flexibility
What does Standardisation mean?
‘The process of making something conform to a standard’
The way we do things is the same across the whole MAT

11. What are the benefits of greater standardisation across the MAT?
Greater equality of experience for Children
Effective practice across the MAT is evidence led
Leads to economies of scale in terms of time, resource and speed of school improvement
Enables staff to work within clearly defined parameters that are common to teams across the trust
Enables leaders, teachers, governors, parents and children to be clear about the expectations of the individual in the trust structure
It can be challenging because….
Schools may have been promised their autonomy
Schools often think that their challenges are unique
Schools are reluctant to let their strongest staff play a wider role across the MAT
Schools can be afraid of their weaknesses and strengths being shared more visibility

12. What we are seeing……
As the MAT model matures, more trusts are recognising the need to align strategy and delivery across the schools in a more significant way and move from being loose to tighter
Many of our early and smaller MATS are highly focused on giving their academies their autonomy so have high population of strategy here
In order to increase alignment MATS start to co-construct strategy to build collaborative engagement across the schools rather than impose centrally driven decision making on the schools
Some standardization exists around HR policies, financial system and governance but modest use of standardization in place for educational delivery

13. How an Academy ALIGNS and Co-Constructs its strategies and approaches
Which features of the MAT strategy are STANDARDISED across all Academies?
How an Academy ALIGNS and Co-Constructs its strategies and approaches
Where does an Academy still have the AUTONOMY/OWNERSHIP to take decisions?
Strategic Focus Areas
Governance and Setting Vision
Being a single employer
Financial Management
Raising Standards and Improvement Planning

14. The strongest MATs have a clearly defined trust wide improvement strategy
The ultimate challenge is finding the right approach that raises standards and sustains them
Trust
Cluster
School
What happens where?

15. Trust/Cluster/Academy Improvement Strategy
Shared vision based on the highest expectations
Define the strategy at different levels of the trust structure
Trusts need one data system
Monitoring must inform delivery
Diagnosis and Analysis
Commissioning
Delivery
Accountability and QA
Some form of external QA process

16. What do we know about effective improvement strategies for groups of schools?
They know their academies well quantifiably
They ensure their academies work together
They adapt strategies to an academies context
They deploy expertise strategically
They coach improvement in teaching and learning
They use inquiry based learning to accelerate improvement
They empower middle leaders
They evolve and employ some non-negotiables
They work and learn from other schools
They know their impact

17. MAT Improvement Capacity
Vision, Culture and Ethos
Clarity of purpose
Understanding of needs
Leading a culture of improvement
People and Partners
Building capacity for improvement
Recruiting, developing and retaining talent
Teaching and Learning
Approach to pedagogy
Leadership of teaching
Evidence based professional learning
Curriculum and Assessment
Aligned curricula
Intentional use of assessment
Quality Assurance and Accountability
Knowing schools quantitatively
Knowing schools qualitatively

18. We see four main phases in the ‘turnaround’ of schools…
Sustain
Sustained good outcomes over 3+ years
Confident, innovative & risk-taking delivery
Phase 3
Improve
Leadership is proactive
Strategies start to embed
Outcomes never as bad again
Phase 2
Repair
Control from chaos
Reactive decision making
Things improving
Phase 1
Stabilise
The school is broken
No underpinning of the future
Real truth comes after project starts

19. Strategic Questions For Governors in each phase
Stabalise
Repair
Improve
Sustain
How close are we to understanding the precise nature of what needs to be done?
Are we effective at prioritising the strategies we need to implement?
Who should we commission to provide the external support and challenge we need?
Do we have the right skills and experience on our board to critique the effectiveness of the strategies?
What data is going to help us to provide the challenge that our leaders need?
How do we understand the short term progress the school is making without having to wait for the next meeting?
How are we monitoring the cost of improving the school?
What should we ask the leaders to do less of to create capacity in other areas?
Where are the pockets of stronger practice that we can develop and share?
The questions posed in the Stabilise Phase still apply but in addition these link to the Repair Phase:
Is the external support that we have commissioned delivering what we need it to?
Have we got the balance right between supporting and challenging our leaders and staff?
Are the leaders in the school coping?
How reliable is the data that the school is sharing with us to demonstrate progress? How do we moderate it?
Now that the school is improving, how are we working with parents and students to learn from their experience?
Should we commission some external reviews to reassure us that progress is as secure as we are being told it is?
The questions posed in the Stabilise and Repair Phases will apply up to a point but some will no longer be needed. These are the focus questions for the Improve Phase:
Have we articulated the lessons learned so far and are we sharing them more widely?
Are we getting the balance right between quality assurance and operational improvement?
How do we make sure we are not institutionally blind to the challenges we still face?
What are the areas that still need repair?
As a board of governors do we need to refresh our professional expertise and capacity?
What is our strategic plan to train and develop our team of governors as we move towards becoming a very good school?
The questions that governors should be asking in the Sustain Phase are about sustainability / wider system participation:
What are the risks to us reaching a performance plateau and how do we avoid that?
What capacity do we have to support another school?
Can we be confident that the areas of expertise we believe we have really are that good?
Are the strategies we have implemented scalable and replicable?
Have we allocated key areas for sustainable performance to members of the board (disadvantaged students, able students)? 19

21. Thank you: Any questions or comments?
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