From compliance to confidence

If you haven't read Brian Lighman's article in Leader Magazine (http://www.leadermagazine.co.uk/articles/trading_places/), then I recommend you do.  It is one of the crisper analyses of what is happening in schools at the moment where he argues that most schools fall into one of two groups: confident or constrained. As someone who is chair of governors in one of the latter and on the board of one of the former I recognise that the difference is stark.

It's interesting that he links constrained, struggling, schools to those that have an overweening instinct to be compliant in everything.  These schools are only going to find the going tougher and tougher as the current political climate develops.  Compliance to government dictat is not going to solve the challenge of how to improve outcomes for children.  We are told that there isn't going to be any dictat - and Michael Gove's clear desire is to encourage schools to be as autonomous as they want, provided they clear certain baseline thresholds re attainment etc.  Nor is the government going to tell schools what or how to teach (though they do have a view on how students - and staff - should dress).  Struggling schools will need character, grit and self-belief in order to survive in the short term - and thrive as confident schools in the longer term. 

This change in the zeitgeist will have a considerable impact on the tenor of our interaction with schools at The Key.  The school moves to centre stage as the diva while the government and its apparatchiks become the chorus in the wings.  Headteachers decide rather than comply.  Schools start looking and feeling very different from each other.  Costumes and characters become more noticeable with the demise of the last vestiges of uniformity.  Teachers moving from one school to another find that a lot more effort and learning is required to adapt to the new environment.

The underlying professional standards of teachers across the country will be greatly challenged as it becomes more and more difficult to achieve agreement on what is most important but, I hope, diversification and cross-fertilisation between schools doing more and more exciting work will lead to an overall enhancement of the profession.  In many ways the landscape becomes more threatening, with natural selection rearing its head as failing schools close, merge or get taken over entirely by academy groups.  But the new world should bring innovation and passion to the fore - and I, for one, welcome that.