HC 269 Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by ATL
Executive Summary
1. ATL welcomes this inquiry. We believe that:
Schools and colleges should be supported to work collaboratively to offer excellent teaching and learning, and to support pupils’ well-being, across a local area;
Partnerships come in many forms. This inquiry appears to be focussing on school-to-school cooperation, and ATL recommends that the Committee also considers partnerships between schools and other professions? (eg health and social care) as well as partnerships between education staff who learn and work together;
All partnership working takes time and administration, particularly to develop the clarity of roles and responsibilities required;
Partnerships and cooperation require trust, and a vision for quality that is pupil-centred;
The impact of partnerships and cooperation on pupils’ learning and well-being, on teachers’ professional development, and on school improvement is difficult to track, particularly in a system where schools are judged individually;
The biggest problem for school partnership & cooperation is the drive for schools to compete;
A solution would be to hold schools accountable for the education of young people across a local area, not just those in their own schools. This requires new thinking about accountability, and the role of the local authority or local governing boards in managing high quality education for all pupils;
League tables, where schools can improve their positions only if other schools move down, do not support a vision of all schools being excellent. They should cease;
A finer-grained school improvement system is needed, which supports schools to better identify strengths and weaknesses, and which enables schools to find partners who can reflect cooperatively on complex issues;
As Alan Steer states in 2010, “if the needs of children are the moral force driving education, institutional isolationism has no place.”
About ATL
2. ATL, the education union, is an independent, registered trade union and professional association, representing approximately 160,000 teachers, head teachers, lecturers and support staff in maintained and independent nurseries, schools, sixth form, tertiary and further education colleges in the United Kingdom. AMiE is the trade union and professional association for leaders and managers in colleges and schools, and is a distinct section of ATL. We recognise the link between education policy and members’ conditions of service.
ATL exists to help members, as their careers develop, through first rate research, advice, information and legal advice. Our evidence-based policy making enables us to campaign and negotiate locally and nationally. ATL is affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and Education International (EI). ATL is not affiliated to any political party and seeks to work constructively with all the main political parties.
ATL Policy
3. ATL’s education policy is underpinned by the professionalism of teachers. Teachers should be recognised for their knowledge, expertise and judgement, at the level of the individual pupil and in articulating the role of education in promoting social justice. Development of the education system should take place at a local level: the curriculum should be developed in partnership with local stakeholders and assessment should be carried out through local professional networks. Schools should work collaboratively to provide excellent teaching and learning with a broad and balanced curriculum, and to support pupils’ well-being, across a local area. This means that mechanisms must be developed that ensure a proper balance of accountability to national government and the local community, and which supports collaboration rather than competition.
Differing Forms of School Partnership
4. ATL members identify a range of different partnerships in operation. These include:
school-to-school within a geographical area or across different areas;
school to school across different phases (eg between secondary schools and their local “feeder” primaries, secondaries and colleges, UTCs, and studio schools, or between primaries and nursery settings);
academy chain schools as well as partnerships between academies and other schools;
schools worldwide through collaborative partnerships;
local behaviour partnerships;
school sports;
teaching schools; and
between independent schools and maintained schools through requirements around charitable status.
5. These may be informal partnerships, or more formal through federations. Members who work in small schools point to the importance of partnerships for sharing resources and providing broad opportunities for pupils, particularly where there are difficulties in recruiting staff.
6. There are also partnerships between differing levels of staff. These may be through formal routes such as the National and Local Leaders of Education, or particular staff roles including former Advanced Skills Teacher roles, SEN Co-ordinators and subject co-ordinators. Locally supported moderation meetings or curriculum forums (including SACREs) offer partnership opportunities, and staff also work cooperatively with others through activity within trade unions and subject associations.
7. Members point to partnerships between schools and other organisations and professionals, which are supportive of professional practice and children’s learning. These may be with health and social care professionals, police and community organisations. Or they may be based on CPD needs, through links with Universities and teacher CPD providers (including the trade unions and subject associations which provide local and national professional development).
8. This inquiry would seem to be focussing on school-to-school/college cooperation. ATL recommends that the Select Committee considers the benefits and risks surrounding other forms of partnership, in order to identify effective ways of “driving school improvement” to the benefit of all pupils.
9. The advantages of partnership working depend on the types of partnerships involved. Members identify potential for cooperation to include:
sharing resources, including staff expertise;
developing consistent approaches in areas of concern (SEN, behaviour, admissions…);
peer-to-peer support, challenge and professional development;
supporting transition between schools for the benefit of pupils;
enabling local quality assurance of provision, and aiming to come to agreement about what makes effective practice and what good learning/progress looks like.
10. In 2006, Mel Ainscow (et al) suggested that “under the right circumstances, school-to-school collaboration is a powerful means of strengthening the capacity of schools to address complex and challenging circumstances.” They pointed to strong evidence that collaboration can widen opportunities and help address vulnerable groups of learners.
11. Members agree that partnerships can support flexible approaches with pupils, enabling broader curriculum provision, increased options for behaviour support, opportunities for teachers to work in different classrooms and with different practitioners, as well as opportunities for pupils to experience different ways of learning.
12. As Alan Steer stated in 2010, “If the needs of children are the moral force driving education, institutional isolationism has no place.”
13. All partnership working takes time and administration, particularly to develop the clarity of roles and responsibilities required. This may need local support, eg through the local authority, to broker those partnerships. Partnerships and cooperation also require the building of trust—between education staff, and between other professionals. Cooperation is not a quick-fix and partnerships need to develop over a number of years, particularly in situations where the culture of the school community needs to change. Otherwise, there is a danger of a “them and us” culture between different partner schools.
14. The current climate does not support long-term culture change, as all schools are judged on a single year’s worth of test results, and schools which fall below floor targets or are deemed to “require improvement” are given very short timescales to turn around. Teachers and leaders who feel that their jobs and their professionalism/vocation are under threat will find it extremely hard to form meaningful partnerships.
15. Some members are concerned about the inflexibility of some partnerships, particularly hard federations. These can take an inordinate amount of time and bureaucracy to support and can be difficult to undo should schools’ needs change.
“Highly Performing Schools”
16. ATL members have fundamental concerns about the concept of “highly performing schools” cooperating with others, for a number of reasons:
The assumption that excellent academic results are entirely the result of the school’s interventions, when they are also affected by pupils’ prior attainment and the levels of FSM, SEN etc within a school;
The assumption that schools may be uniformly “highly performing” (or conversely “low performing”), when most schools will have some departments/key stages which achieve excellent results and others which achieve less good results;
The assumption of uniformly high performance, when some schools will do very well with some groups of pupils, and may boost levels of progress with particular groups, but are not identified as “high performing” on other indicators;
The assumption that a school with excellent academic results will be able to articulate easily what it does in ways that another school can adapt and use.
17. A meaningful system of accountability, which supports schools to identify particular strengths and weaknesses in their practice, could enable schools to develop more effective cooperation. Systems would need to be put in place for schools to find others who have dealt successfully with similar issues. This would make for a much finer grained school improvement system which was not predicated on a model of some schools being “better” than others overall. This would benefit schools across the range of pupil “performance”.
18. Particular issues were raised by members about teaching schools, with concerns expressed that they are becoming exclusive and gaining a “monopoly on talent”. Others were unaware of teaching schools in their areas, suggesting in some cases that partnerships are not obvious. ATL recommends particular evaluation of the role of teaching schools in supporting cooperation and joint learning.
19. Members suggest useful roles to be played by staff working together across the primary and secondary transition. This can be a secondary school supporting work to raise levels of attainment and learning in primary schools, which enables pupils to feel more confident as they begin Year 7. It can also mean primary staff supporting secondary colleagues to develop effective practices in year 7 that are closely linked to the pedagogy of primary schools.
20. A meaningful system of accountability, which supports schools to identify particular strengths and weaknesses in their practice, could enable schools to develop more effective cooperation. Systems would need to be put in place for schools to find others who have dealt successfully with similar issues. This would make for a much finer grained school improvement system which was not predicated on a model of some schools being “better” than others overall. This would benefit schools across the range of pupil “performance”.
Tensions between Partnership and Competition
21. Schools which are in competition with each other will find it hard to develop meaningful partnerships. Highly performing schools within the partnership will need to continue to “look good” in order to attract parents.
22. Members suggested a range of ways of minimising the impact of competition on school partnerships, including:
encouraging more “vertical” partnerships (for example primary and secondary schools working together). This benefits young people by encouraging smoother transitions, enables teachers across phases to share information about the children and their learning, as well as enabling sharing of resources (subject teachers or laboratory facilities from secondary to primary, or key stage 3 teachers learning about holistic teaching from primary colleagues). There are difficulties with this approach when pupils move on to a number of different (and competing) institutions;
encouraging partnerships beyond a geographical area, which can be managed through good use of technology. This would work well with a system where schools identify in more detail their particular strengths and weaknesses, and have time to consider practices in different contexts;
supporting partnerships between the independent sector and the maintained sector, which are mutually beneficial. Often independent schools have better facilities, which can be shared. But meaningful partnerships should go beyond sharing sports fields, and there are examples of partnerships where pupils from both schools attend lessons in the partner school. Sharing of support between teachers must be two-way: the assumption is often that the independent sector (as highly performing schools) will be the lead partner, but again a fine-grained system of school improvement will enable maintained schools to share effective practices from their own circumstances.
23. ATL members believe that removing the system of league tables would go a long way towards reducing competition, and developing meaningful partnerships between schools. League tables will always have some schools at the top and some at the bottom and in order for any school to improve another must go down. We need a system which encourages the idea that all schools can be excellent.
24. The current accountability system provides little incentive for meaningful partnerships. Those schools deemed “outstanding” by Ofsted and those which have high percentages of pupils achieving expected levels and grades are concerned that developing partnerships will take the leadership team focus away from their own school and may lead to lower results next time round. Schools which are told that they need partnerships in order to improve their results are already demoralised, and may be suspicious of potential partners in case they are looking for sponsorship opportunities rather than meaningful partnerships. As cooperation takes time, and needs to develop trusting relationships between staff, this is not a good place to start.
Incentives to Develop Meaningful Partnerships
25. The best incentive to develop meaningful partnerships is the positive impact on pupils’ learning and on teachers’ professional development. Different forms of partnership will have different outcomes, and ATL recommends that evidence of impact is made available to teachers and leaders, so that effective practices can be developed. This evidence should also be used to give credit to schools which work well together.
26. Members agree that continuity of funding is vital. Too many schemes for joint working are stopped before impact can be measured, because priorities have changed and the funding moves to new ideas.
27. Members also point to the vital importance of support for teachers to learn together, through shared CPD and opportunities to observe teaching and gain feedback from peers on their own teaching. This must be well-managed as a learning opportunity, separate from performance management.
28. It is vital that cooperation and partnership between schools is well-defined, both in terms of what it should look like, and its intended outcomes. This must be shared throughout the community, including with governors, parents and pupils in each school. Effective leadership must maintain this shared vision. We would welcome the development of clear statements of the benefits of partnership working in local areas where there are now many different types of schools operating,
The Role of Academies
29. It is important to remember that Academies are not the panacea to school improvement, and that not all Academies are highly performing. Even convertor academies may not remain “outstanding”, and information from the HoC Library shows that of the 233 Academies inspected between 2008–09 and 2011–12, under half (113) were good or outstanding. So while it is important that Academies are expected to work in partnership with other schools, it should not be assumed that this is the same as expecting “high performing” schools to work with others.
30. Members are not convinced that the requirement for Academies to support other schools can be effectively “policed”, as funding agreements are “shrouded in confidentiality”. They point to a need for greater transparency.
31. “Forced” partnerships, where a school is required to become an Academy and has little if any say in the choice of sponsor, will have great difficulty in developing the trust required for improvement to take place.
32. The Select committee recently heard evidence from the RSA Academies Commission about academies which had committed to support other schools, but had not followed through with this. This points to the need for a debate on how to ensure that collaboration and partnerships are enabling, and seen as a professional duty, but with a means to measure and ensure that it does actually happen. This is important in terms of ensuring that partnership working is more than a “buzz word”.
Partnerships and School Improvement
33. More research is needed to demonstrate the impact of school partnerships on pupil outcomes. However, we do know that they are vitally important for widening opportunities for pupils and for education professionals.
34. School partnerships should be developed as ways of improving the education system as a whole, rather than focussing on improving individual schools.
October 2013