10. Memorandum submitted by the Diversity
Pathfinders Evaluation Research Team (DP 55)
1. PROJECT EVALUATORS
1.1 The research team comprises:
1.1.1 Professor Rosalind Levacic, Jennifer
Evans, Professor David Gillborn and Frances Castle
— all based at the Institute of Education,
London University.
1.1.2 Dr. Philip Woods, Professor Ron Glatter
and Deborah Cooper
— all based at the Centre for Educational
Policy and Management, Faculty of Education and Language Studies,
The Open University.
2. RESEARCH BRIEF
2.1 Background
2.1.1 Current Government policy is aiming
to develop innovative forms of educational diversity and collaboration
which make positive and significant contributions to the standards
agenda. To do this, practical ways of overcoming or moving beyond
a number of tensions or challenges need to be tried and systematically
evaluated. Diversity Pathfinders (DP) is a DfES initiative in
which six LEAs have set up their own projects with DfES/LEA funding
to encourage groups of secondary schools to combine diversification
(as specialist schools) and collaboration.
2.1.2 The six LEAs are Cornwall, Portsmouth,
Newham, Hertfordshire, Birmingham, and Middlesbrough.
2.1.3 The evaluation commenced on 1 April
2002 and will be completed by 30 September 2005.
2.2 Aims of the Evaluation
2.2.1 (i) To evaluate the effectiveness
of the DP projects in terms of their
(a) impacts on diversity and collaboration
(c) differential effects (impacting on
inclusion)
(d) effects on schools' use of resources
(e) overall cost effectiveness
(f) own specific aims and objectives
(ii) To suggest conclusions and
lessons for future policy and practice with respect to collaboration
and diversity.
2.3 Methodology
2.3.1 The research design combines qualitative
and quantitative research methods to assess the impact on student
outcomes and educational opportunities and effects, the responses
of students and schools to the experience of collaboration, and
the processes and costs involved in forging and continuing collaboration
and in enhancing diversity. One or more collaborating groups of
schools in each of the six LEAs are being studied.
2.3.2 Each LEA or DP area is being treated
as a case-study. Quantitative and qualitative data are being collected
from DfES, LEA and school sources on:
— students' intermediate and final
outcomes (exam results, curriculum diversity, satisfaction with
school and participation in post-16 education);
— financial and time costs of collaboration;
— the extent of DP schools' diversification
and their collaboration in enhancing student opportunities, professional
development activities, sharing resources (staff, expertise, courses,
teaching methods, specialist equipment), working to common strategic
aims, use of ICT, and so on;
— factors promoting or hindering school
collaboration.
Data sources include questionnaires (used in
student surveys for example); interviews and observation; nationally
available school-level and pupil-level data; financial information
on the costs of DP activities; schools' annual Year 9 options
booklets.
3. ISSUES
3.1 Nature of these Remarks
3.1.1 Data collection is only in its very
early stages. Work to date has been concerned with detailed planning
and research design, negotiations for research access and the
gathering of some preliminary baseline data. It is not possible,
therefore, to report findings at this stage. Here attention is
drawn to some of the factors and issues germane to understanding
the different DP projects and the extent and direction of their
pathfinding.
3.2 Diverse Starting Points
3.2.1 The context for each DP project's
starting point differs significantly in a variety of ways. Differences
include:
— social and geographical factors,
varying from an inner city concentration of an ethnically mixed
population in Newham to rural Cornwall with its geographically
dispersed incidence of deprivation;
— local history and context of inter-school
competition and competitive pressures;
— type and degree of challenges
facing local schools, such as teacher recruitment, school
buildings, and so on;
— existing diversity of schools:
for example, Middlesbrough has a variety of types of secondary
school including a city academy (with one more opening in 2003)
and a city technology college, as well as schools with specialist
and beacon status, whilst in Newham the vast majority of secondaries
are community schools with a third of them specialist status and
a third beacon.
3.3 Diversity of Vision and Aims
3.3.1 Although the DP projects have a commitment
in common to develop innovative forms of educational diversity
and collaboration which make positive and significant contributions
to the standards agenda, there are significant local differences
in emphasis. Cornwall and the Stevenage collaborative group in
Hertfordshire stress, for example, that their DP project specifically
aims to contribute to supporting and enhancing the local economy.
Newham has a particular concern to promote cultural harmony.
3.3.2 Local visions and aims may turn out
to be developmental (in that reflecting on and refining them in
the light of DP experience is a continuing process), depending
on local circumstances. They may also vary over time in the degree
to which they are locally responsive and are known, understood
and owned locally.
3.4 Role of LEA
3.4.1 There are marked differences in the
degree and nature of LEA activity. In some cases external advisers
and links with higher education institutions are part of the development
of the DP project—for example in Portsmouth and Middlesbrough.
One of the most striking contrasts is in the distribution of DP
funds. For example, Birmingham is concentrating the DfES DP funding
on one collegiate academy of six schools, whilst Hertfordshire
is spreading it across more than 70 secondary schools. The impact
of such contrasting modes of funding will be a particularly interesting
aspect of the research evaluation.
3.4.2 Implicated in the DP initiative is
the changing role of the LEA as part of the Government's standards
policy agenda. The strategic role of the LEA remains influential
locally. How each LEA is re-focusing its role and developing its
relationships with schools is bound up with the way it helps to
shape and encourage the local DP project.
3.5 Leadership and Management of Diversification
3.5.1 The increase in diversity, which is
an integral aim of the DP initiative, is not an end in itself
but is intended to advance the standards agenda and enhance the
opportunities open to individual students. Key questions in relation
to each DP project concern the impact, from their differing starting
points, of diversification on:
— the breadth and pattern of educational
opportunities and attainment;
— the drivers of and barriers to collaboration,
discussed below.
Of interest in addressing these is how diversification
is led and managed, and how it is steered (if this proves the
case) towards achievement of its promised positive potential and
away from its dangers, such as increasing the local hierarchy
of schools.
3.6 Collaboration in Diversity: Drivers and
Barriers
3.6.1 The issues underlying the question
of drivers of and barriers to collaboration in a diversifying
school context go to the heart of the DP initiative's feasibility.
Amongst these are the following:
— Incentives to collaborate.
Looked at from the viewpoint of the dominant school performance
measures, there may be benefits for some schools through working
together, but equally other schools may see disadvantages in sharing
and collaboration. The focus of performance indicators on the
individual school, as is presently required through performance
league tables, reinforces a concentration on the school as a separate
(or "independent") institution. Other aspects of the
national accountability framework, such as Ofsted inspections,
act as incentives or otherwise depending on the degree to which
collaboration is perceived as a criterion for evaluation. The
issue of incentives can also be approached at the personal level.
To what extent are collaborative activities of benefit to professional
and career development? Ensuring the relevance of DP activities
to the latter is, for example, part of the operational strategy
of the Collegiate Academy of schools in Birmingham.
— Costs Expenditure of money
and time is incurred in the development and maintenance of collaborative
working. In addition, with the generation of numbers of networks
and partnerships (such as Excellence in Cities and Education Action
Zones), there are dangers of not only increased costs but also
duplication of effort. The greater the costs, the greater the
chance that they act as disincentives to collaboration.
— Identities and loyalties. There
is a history in England of identification (on the part of staff
and students) with the individual school institution which still
has a powerful resonance in contemporary schooling. An expansion
of loyalties to embrace a grouping of schools, as a complement
to the individual school, is conceivable, and achievement of this
is an integral part of the DP initiative. The aim is an ambitious
one. The extent to which progress is made towards it will have
implications for the impact and perceptions of incentives and
costs. An additional factor is that of professional identity and
how far inter-school collaboration is viewed by teaching staff
as integral to this.
— Capacity. Leadership and management
of complex networks entail particular capabilities and qualities.
The DP projects involve the development and running of networks
and shared or distributed leadership across institutions and often
across differing networks and partnerships. This requires new
capacities and places new challenges on leaders, indicating an
important area for consideration in the research evaluation.
3.7 Focus
3.7.1 The focus of the DP projects' programmes
of change can be considered from a number of perspectives. Three
are highlighted here:
— Parts and the whole. The foci
of efforts in the DP projects to bring about change can be separated
under different headings—for example: activities (such
as staff development programmes); people (their awareness,
beliefs, commitment, loyalties); organisational structures
(institutional arrangements for collaboration). Whilst these
are distinguishable, they can also be approached as components
of a dynamic whole, which encourages issues to be raised concerning
their interaction, mutual impact and alignment. Different ways
of conceptualising and understanding this approach, such as through
the notion of communities of practice which informs Portsmouth's
DP project, are possible.
— Individual student/school institution.
Another dimension is the degree to which DP projects are centred
on the individual student or on the school institution. Shifting
the focus of the local education system towards the former is
one of the most radical aims of the DP initiative. The challenge
of translating this into practice requires major shifts in policy
and practice.
— Formal/informal. Benefits
of sharing practices and ideas and engaging in mutually supportive
critical reflection may result from new, formal arrangements for
collaboration, such as joint professional development and training
activities. Equally, the informal interactions and relationships
that are engendered by or alongside formal innovations may have
distinct and valuable benefits. Suggestions of the importance
of the informal interactions are emerging from the early programmes
of the Collegiate Academy in Birmingham.
3.8 Governance
3.8.1 One of the ways in which the DP initiative
may contribute to pathfinding is in developing and trying out
new models of governance that reflect redefined relationships
between schools, their communities of learners and LEAs. As there
is no model to copy, these can only be built up through a developmental
approach which builds and refines ways of organising the complex
local partnerships between DP schools and others. The Collegiate
Academy of schools in Birmingham is unusual in implementing a
pre-planned model (the collegiate academy). However, this is developmental
also in that experience of its operation is likely to feed back
in the form of modifications and refinements of the initial arrangements.
3.8.2 There are implications for accountability
as DP collaboration is translated into practice. For example,
to what extent is the individual school accountable not only for
its own performance but also that of the collaborative grouping,
and how might this accountability be made manifest? The institutional
focus of performance measures (raised above) is one of the questions
relevant to accountability. Another is the extent to which feedback
mechanisms are developed by and within collaborative groupings,
facilitating self-evaluation and responsiveness to the experience
of DP and to changing circumstances in schools and their communities
(enabling a process of self-renewal).
3.8.3 School governance, and by extension
DP governance, has educational implications too—for example
through arrangements for consultation and participation of students.
This suggests that there is a potential for linking the way collaborative
groupings are run—who and how different stakeholders are
involved—with citizenship education.
3.9 Tackling Disadvantage
3.9.1 A central aim of the DP initiative
is to raise the educational achievements and opportunities of
all students, with a particular emphasis on ensuring that students
in more difficult circumstances benefit educationally from diversification
and collaboration. Ways in which the latter aim is specifically
tackled in relation to disadvantaged students, and the extent
of progress made towards this, is therefore of particular interest
to the research evaluation.
3.10 Diversity of Innovation
3.10.1 It is early days to assess the variety
and scope of innovation throughout the DP projects, especially
since, as suggested above, local aims and operational strategies
are likely to be developmental. However, there is evidence of
initiatives that are aiming to create "new paths" to
collaboration within diversity, such as the data base under the
control of Newham headteachers and the planned collegiate academy
intranet in Birmingham. The interest in these is not only in how
the innovation works in itself, but also the extent to which it
contributes to and benefits from a collaborative dynamic that
leads and manages diversity so that it meets the differentiated
educational needs and aspirations of all students.
December 2002
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