Fix the process, transform the outcome: Rethinking school leadership

In any kind of manufacturing or engineering business you would expect the management to be heavily focused on process.

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Take Toyota, for example, you will find that leaders spend a lot of their time at the “Gemba” (as the Japanese call it). This is the place where something has happened (or not happened) that requires attention, in order for the entire production process to work more effectively. Elon Musk would say that much of his time is spent going to the place at which a problem has been identified and helping the team involved to come up with an effective solution. Get the process working well and you don’t need to worry about outcomes.?

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It seems to me that in schools and trusts, governance is considerably less focused on process (i.e. the teaching and learning) and much more on outcomes. I would take a bet that leadership team meetings are not at all dominated by teaching and learning.

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I recently spent time looking through the full board meeting minutes of some of the country’s leading academy trusts and was amazed to see how little attention was given to the process of bringing about increased learning in school populations. Much was discussed about exam results and progress, but very little about the work teachers are doing to explore different ways of getting children to learn. And yet the leaders of the most effective learning institutions in the country, whom I have been interviewing recently, tell me that exploration is a significant part of the makeup of the most effective teachers. Do governors and trustees know this?

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We are clearly not getting it right, because at least a third of our young people are failing to meet the benchmarks set by government. We can be proud of the fact that we are improving in a number of areas, such as maths, in international comparative tables, but we are still failing thousands upon thousands of children. How bold a suggestion is it that leadership and governance should be obsessed with improving the quality of both the curriculum, and the pedagogies that are used to deliver it??

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This is the subject of the research I am currently undertaking at Bayes Business School, as part of my doctorate. I am particularly keen on visiting schools where they are highly focused on these issues. ?Do point me towards them, if you think a conversation might be fruitful.