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System Leadership in
Practice
System Leadership in
Practice

Rob Higham, David Hopkins

and Peter Matthews

Open University Press

Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL

email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA

First published 2009

Copyright # Higham, Hopkins and Matthews 2009

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained
from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street,
London, EC1N 8TS.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978 033 5236114 (pb) 978 033 5236121 (hb)

ISBN-10: 033 5236111 (pb) 033 523612X (hb)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data applied for

Typeset by YHT Ltd, London

Printed in the UK by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters and/or data that may
be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to represent any
real individual, company, product or event.
To our parents

The three of us are very mindful that whatever we have achieved in our lives
we owe to our parents. We are also keenly aware that they are all passing
through important transitions in their own lives. We therefore dedicate this
book to them:

From Rob to Jo and John

From David to Cliff and Thelma

From Peter to B. and John

With thanks for their love and support.

 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
Acronyms and abbreviations xii

1 Power to the professionals: the emergence of system leadership 1

2 Mapping the system leadership landscape 18

3 Leadership of sustained improvement in challenging contexts 31

4 Leading innovation and improvement partnerships:

the case of Leading Edge 51

5 Leadership in the context of Every Child Matters:

extended, full service and community schools 72

6 Executive leadership and federations 91

7 Change agents of school transformation: consultant leaders,

National Leaders of Education and their schools 107

8 The prospects for system leadership 128

Notes 147
References 151
Index 159
 Preface

We have become increasingly intrigued over the past decade with the concept
of system leadership. From our various positions in government, universities
and Ofsted, and also in having a penchant for practice, we began to see a shift
in culture and attitude among the school leaders we were engaging with.
There was, increasingly, a dramatic shift in attitude and practice from the
voracious competition of the mid-1990s to a more benign attitude to colla-
boration. Partially stimulated by policy initiatives such as Education Action
Zones and Excellence in Cities, system leadership was also apparent in the
local collaborations to improve student learning in which many headteachers
and other leaders were involved. We began to realize that this was not just a
passing fad or some comfortable but essentially simplistic approach to net-
working. It was instead a potentially radical shift in the landscape of educa-
tion. The ubiquity of top-down change and prescription was being replaced
by more authentic forms of collaborative and lateral activity and focused
increasingly on enhancing student learning. In some cases, this was leading
to alternative forms of governance and structural arrangements, stimulated in
part by the National College for School Leadership and, as it then was, the
Specialist Schools Trust. We began to realize that we may be witnessing the
emergence of a movement that had the potential to transform the English
educational system.
In our various ways, particularly when, in the mid-2000s, we were all in
some way in government, we did what we could to support this movement
through trying to help make a shift from an educational system that was,
essentially, characterized by national prescription to one that was increas-
ingly led by schools. Having left government, we all found ourselves, a few
years ago, associated with the London Centre for Leadership in Learning at
the Institute of Education, University of London. Increasingly, we began to
focus our research and development energy on the phenomenon of ‘system
leadership’ in its various guises. This led, inevitably, to increasing collabora-
tive work and the commitment to write this book.
In preparing the book, we were determined to make this a collaborative
effort. So, although we have taken individual responsibility for different
chapters – hence some differences in style – our combined work on each of
them has improved the original markedly. We were also conscious that we
were writing at a time that was volatile in terms of policy and practice: so
x PREFACE

much so that events have inevitably moved on in some respects during the
course of publication. For example, the National Challenge, with all its
implications for system leadership, was announced as we were in the final
stages of preparing the manuscript. We have included reference to the
National Challenge in the text, but waiting longer to write and publish we felt
would be futile. We say this because we are confident that we have identified
trends and practices that have a medium- and even long-term relevance for
practice, policy and research.

Rob Higham, David Hopkins and Peter Matthews

London Centre for Leadership in Learning, September 2008
 Acknowledgements

We have incurred many debts along the way. The first debt of gratitude is to
the new breed of system leaders who have inspired us. They include, among
many others: Alan Roach, Sir Alan Steer, Barry Day, Bushra Nasir, David
Dunckley, David Hawker, Sir Dexter Hutt, George Berwick, Graeme Hollins-
head, Jack Harrison, Sir Kevin Satchwell, Michael Wilkins, Mick Meadows,
Paul Grant, Sue Glanville, Susan John and Terry Fish.
The second is to the policy makers and policy influencers from whom we
have learned so much. In government we would like to identify, in particular,
the contribution and support from Estelle Morris and David Miliband; from
national agencies, Elizabeth Reid, David Crossley and Sue Williamson (Spe-
cialist Schools and Academies Trust), Steve Munby, Colin Connor, Toby Salt
and Di Barnes (the National College for School Leadership); and others whose
support and advice have been critical: Dame Mary Richardson, Tom Bentley,
Tony Mackay, Tim Brighouse, Michael Fullan, Pam Sammons and Robert Hill.
Third, we thank those great colleagues and friends who have worked
alongside us over the past three years and have contributed to what appears
on the following pages; thanks to Elpida Ahtaridou, Karen Edge, Jan Robert-
son and Jenny Andreae. We are very grateful to Janet Brennan who did a
brilliant job of proof-reading the manuscript and saved us from much
embarrassment!
Fourth, we acknowledge the support we have had from a number of
organizations that have funded our research. Thanks to the Research Councils
UK, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, the National College for
School Leadership, HSBC Education Trust, the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development and Commonwealth Research.
Finally, in dedicating this book to our parents we also thank our families
for their support. Particular thanks to Alpa for all her love and
encouragement.
We hope that all those we have acknowledged will see the part they
played in what follows and realize what a contribution they are making to
ensuring that we really do achieve an educational system where every person
is able to fulfil their potential.
 Acronyms and abbreviations

APA Annual Performance Assessment

CPD continuing professional development
CVA contextually value-added (score)
CYPT Children and Young People’s Trust
DCSF Department for Children, School and Families
DfES Department for Education and Skills
ECM Every Child Matters
FSES full-service extended school
FSM free school meals
lCT information and communication technology
LEPP Leading Edge Partnership Programme
LLS London Leadership Strategy
LMS local management of schools
NCSL National College for School Leadership
NLE National Leader of Education
NPQH National Professional Qualification for Headship
NSS National Support School
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Ofsted Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills
SIP school improvement partner
SMT senior management team
SSAT Specialist Schools and Academies Trust
VLE virtual learning environment
1 Power to the professionals: the
emergence of system
leadership

Ask schools about the purpose of education and almost all will talk about
fulfilling each student’s potential. Ask how and most will set out a vision of a
healthy mix of knowledge, skills and qualifications, the well-being of every
child and their preparation for adult life. National education systems, how-
ever, have often failed to harness the combined capacity of their many
thousands of schools to advance this vision in practice. In England, there are
about 23,000 state schools, 450,000 teachers and senior leaders and 300,000
support staff. What they do on a daily basis has an impact directly on the life
chances of about 7.5 million young people. Yet, in discharging this enormous
responsibility, schools have traditionally remained relatively independent or
even purposefully disconnected from one another. While there are excep-
tions, pedagogy that might have been effective in individual schools has not
been easily shared or validated at a wider level. Too few schools have reached
beyond their own capacity to collaboratively develop exciting provision or
support one another in difficult times. As a result, the wheels of education
appear to have been reinvented many times over. In this book, we argue that
a solution to this state of affairs appears to be emerging. This, we suggest,
results from a new set of national policies, professional practices and, in
particular, the work of school leaders who act as system leaders.
There are many reasons for the historical isolation of schools. While
teaching inherently demands social interaction, its practice usually remained
behind the classroom door or the school gate. The consequences of state
policy have often been to keep it so. A potted English history provides some
evidence. In the post-war 1940s, the priority was to develop a coherent state
education system out of disparate local provision. The blueprint was for a
‘national system, locally administered’ with schools connected more by
policy circulars than by any planned interaction.1 By the 1970s, more wide-
spread professional innovation had emerged. Yet, despite notable exceptions
and the work of some local authorities, schools often remained unconnected
and it remained hard to share with the many the really innovative advances
of the few. In the 1980s, Thatcherism brought market forces into the public
sector to act as a spur to improvement. Schools were given delegated budgets.
They were empowered to make decisions about resources but became
2 SYSTEM LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

increasingly embroiled in competitive relations, particularly with open

enrolment, regular inspection reports and the publication of national test and
examination results. Some cooperation survived, and even prospered, but this
was marginalized for many years at a national level. Subsequent efforts to
spread good practice from the centre were too often undermined by a pre-
scriptive approach and limits to local ownership by schools.
Two-thirds of a century on from the initial post-war blueprint, there is
evidence of a widespread and unprecedented drawing together of schools.
The impetus, we argue, lies in a new alignment of specific government poli-
cies, the work of some local authorities and, ultimately, the leadership of
schools themselves. From about the turn of the millennium, moves were
made in government towards a sponsoring of school collaboration, in part as
a response to the excesses of market reforms. A number of national agencies
and local authorities followed suit by facilitating networks among schools
and engaging them in network design. Many school leaders have taken up
these opportunities and/or aligned them to existing local partnerships. What
is proving decisive is the emergence of a new type of school leader that we are
calling a system leader. Put simply, a system leader is a headteacher or senior
teacher who works directly for the success and well-being of students in other
schools as well as his or her own.
Such system leadership is relatively new. It goes substantial beyond the
collaborative activities in which schools in England are increasingly engaged.
There are, however, many leadership teams contemplating the challenge of
taking on strategic roles beyond their own school. This book argues that a
small but growing number of system leaders are a powerful force for change
and improvement. These are leaders who innovate, take risks and deploy
resources creatively. They have a deep understanding of pedagogy and how it
can be improved. They see collaboration with other schools as vital to deliver
on aims that individual schools simply cannot achieve alone. Above all, they
are leaders of schools that are willing and able to work for improvement in the
wider system.
In this book we focus purposefully on school-led system leadership in
practice. We do so in the light of new research evidence which begins to
illuminate the methods and impact of system leaders. We encounter such
leaders in local authorities and national agencies but our focus is on the
school and inter-school levels. We explore how and why such system lea-
dership is developing, its practices and outcomes as well as potential future
trends and policy implications. We identify and interrogate in detail five key
system leadership roles. These are:

* leadership that sustains improvements in very challenging contexts

and then shares its experience, knowledge and practice with other
schools;
 POWER TO THE PROFESSIONALS: THE EMERGENCE OF SYSTEM LEADERSHIP 3

* leadership of collaborative innovations in curriculum and pedagogy;

* leadership that brokers and shapes radically new networks of
extended services and student welfare across local communities;
* leadership of improvement across a formal partnership of schools;
* leadership that acts as an external agent of change in other schools
that face significant difficulties.

We believe that undertaking these roles, and mobilizing school and system
resources to do so, represents perhaps the most demanding yet profound
educational leadership challenge of our times. In short, we see system leaders
to offer a vision of how professionals working together can lead educational
renewal and the impact it can have on society.
Talk of a new era of professionalism may sound highly idealistic, espe-
cially at a time when, for many people, government tests and accountability
constrain the purpose of education. It will also be contested, as some see
system leaders only as functionaries of the state who coordinate local toil
towards nationally defined targets. Yet, despite these criticisms, the pro-
gressive potential of system leadership has excited real interest among many
stakeholders in education. It is seen to offer alternative solutions to educa-
tional challenges that have traditionally remained the preserve of the central
state. It is also seen to have implications for wider debates about centralism,
localism and the optimal distribution of decision-making power in public
services.
In this initial chapter, we begin to explore these perspectives by provid-
ing a short recent history of school-to-school collaboration. We then locate
our argument in the wider concerns for top-down versus bottom-up reform
before developing the notion of a new professionalism. This leads to our focus
on the emergence of system leadership before we finally summarize the
purpose and structure of the book.

A recent history of school collaboration

It is estimated that nearly all schools in England are now involved in some
form of networking (Hill 2006). This state of affairs would have been hard to
anticipate during the late 1990s. A New Labour government came to power in
England in 1997 having coined the now famous slogan ‘Education, Educa-
tion, Education’. The promise was for educational renewal and a healthy dose
of ‘progressive universalism’ aimed at improving school standards and social
equity simultaneously. In reality, at the systemic level, New Labour’s main
approach was to evolve the more radical reforms introduced in the 1980s
under Margaret Thatcher, albeit in a context of significantly higher public
spending. Thatcher’s Conservatives had introduced an educational market to
4 SYSTEM LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

unleash competition-driven improvements. New Labour sought to advance

market effectiveness through greater parental choice coupled with the
diversification of schools away from a common comprehensive model and
towards institutional differentiation by curriculum specialisms. Similarly,
where the Conservatives had introduced the National Curriculum and
national tests, New Labour developed accompanying National Strategies that
summarized a range of effective pedagogic approaches and promoted a
minimum set that schools and teachers were strongly encouraged to
implement.
It was at the more specific level of schools facing challenging circum-
stances that New Labour initially unleashed a range of funded initiatives
aimed at school collaboration for excellence and equity. The Excellence in
Cities programme, for instance, sought to share capacity for teaching,
learning and community engagement across urban schools. The Leadership
Incentive Grant aimed to strengthen leadership in schools through colla-
borative professional development and mentoring. A growing number of
specialist schools were expected to work with other schools to spread good
practice and raise standards. The list of initiatives went on. It might have
appeared contradictory to the broader approach of market-led competition.
But this was New Labour and its ‘Third Way’ philosophy that prioritized
eclectic pragmatism over ideological chastity. Thus, on the one hand, the
forces of market competition, external (consumer) standards and government
regulation were combined with, on the other hand, collaboration, the sharing
of best practice and the increasing professional status of school leaders.
By 2003, the government felt sufficiently confident to argue that there
were now ‘system-wide benefits’ to schools working in partnership (DfES
2003: 12). A range of reasons exist for this. Several hold clues to our later
discussion of system leadership. First, faced with the limits of ‘command and
control’ policies, as well as the system inequalities that can result from
competition, networks held the appeal of greater professional engagement,
lateral working and system coherence (Glatter 2003). Second, there was an
existing need for joint working in practice to resolve interconnected chal-
lenges in, for example, student welfare (Osbourne 2000). Sharing of power
between institutions was thus partly driven by legislation but also by ‘orga-
nisations coming together voluntarily, either to exploit opportunities for
additional resources or to resolve perceived problems’ (Connolly and James
2006: 69). Third, this was to some extent a rediscovery of the professional
collaborations that had been facilitated by local education authorities in
around the 1970s and 1980s (Glatter 1995; Stevenson 2007). But now central
initiatives were combining with the agency of educators, for whom the
impulse to collaborate had ‘never died; instead, it had persisted, but had
become more difficult to express’ (Hannon 2007: 135).
A decade or so on from 1997, we now have a growing sense of the
 POWER TO THE PROFESSIONALS: THE EMERGENCE OF SYSTEM LEADERSHIP 5

potential benefits of collaboration between schools as well as with other

agencies and private and voluntary organizations. Of course, different out-
comes often relate to local aims, activities and ways of working. However, a
range of studies and evaluations have found a relatively high degree of
similarity in the benefits that can be achieved where partnerships are effec-
tive. These are summarized in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Commonly quoted benefits of collaboration2

Good practice: share effective practice or expertise,

identify shared problems and work collaboratively on
solutions.

Professional provide mutual and informed support;

development: enhance quality of staff development and critical reflection;
joint staffing, wider career structures, solve staffing shortages;
improve leadership quality and support and/or whole school
systems.

Direct student benefits: wider curriculum choice and learning pathways;

improved transition of pupils into secondary school;
raised student expectations and (in some cases) attainment.

Local strategic increase equity and reduce polarization of schools;

leadership: promote coherent provision for local communities;
increased community involvement;
ensure the survival of rural schools.

Resources: drawing in additional funding and resources;

developing efficiency and economies of scale;
reduce risk and uncertainties of innovation and new projects.

Another common message is that achieving these benefits is far from easy,
particularly when evidence of an impact on student outcomes is sought. As
Vangen and Huxham (2003: 62) found more generally, reports of unmitigated
success are not common. Instead, partnerships can develop collaborative
inertia in which only hard fought or negligible progress is made. In educa-
tion, there are a number of obstacles to schools escaping such inertia. At a
national level, policy that sponsors collaboration is currently combined with
parental choice, competition between schools and the deeply ingrained
workings of accountability for individual schools. While similar policy con-
tradictions have a longer history (Levac̆ić and Woods 1994; Aitchison 1995)
the current scale of aspiration for collaboration brings these tensions into
sharper relief.
At the local level, a variety of circumstances can be found in which
contemporary collaboration and competition often coexist in complex
6 SYSTEM LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

muddy waters. At the extreme, there remains ‘a spirit of intense competition

and mutual suspicion’ (Arnold 2006: 6). Some relationships are still framed by
‘the pecking order in which they are placed by performance league tables’
(Stevenson 2007: 32). There are also the residual scars of policies which
allowed some schools to opt out of local authority control. This inevitably has
an impact on the ability and desire of schools to overcome other common
obstacles to collaboration. These include, as set out in Table 1.2, time,
resource constraints and distance. It also becomes more difficult to develop
the already demanding practices commonly associated with effective part-
nerships. These include building trust and the willingness to compromise,
surrender some institutional autonomy and bear the costs of partnership
work that usually occur before the benefits.

Table 1.2 Commonly quoted factors supporting and obstacles to effective collaboration

Factors supporting effective collaboration

Ethos Trust, honesty, respect, openness; a sense of joint ownership,

with different views taken into account; staff values
supporting cooperation; ability to compromise while seeing
collaboration in one’s interests.

Leadership Senior leadership commitment; a clearly identified and realist

focus that is predominantly shared; monitoring and
evaluation of progress.

Activities A degree of consensus on the methods that will lead to

success; purpose directly connected with needs of specific
learners; a focus on goals that individual partners could not
achieve alone.

Obstacles to effective collaboration

Resources time/distance; lack of funding; costs often occurring before

benefits.

Leadership apprehension of staff not acknowledged; poor

communication; silo mentality; unwillingness to negotiate
sovereignty.

History a culture of competition; difficulty of working across old

structures.

What is significant, in many places, is that obstacles to collaboration are

being surmounted and a new interconnectedness developed. In research with
urban schools, Ainscow and West (2006: 137) found headteachers were
beginning to identify shared ‘principles around which their staff could be
drawn together’. This was generating a new impetus for change across
 POWER TO THE PROFESSIONALS: THE EMERGENCE OF SYSTEM LEADERSHIP 7

schools, wider ownership of the improvement agenda and reduced polariza-

tion. They conclude that, despite the longer-term deepening of socio-
economic inequalities by market reforms, there are reasons for optimism as
‘the system has considerable untapped potential to improve itself’ (2006:
131). This exists in the accumulated skills, knowledge and creativity within
and between schools and their local communities.
Putting these resources to the task of improving outcomes beyond the
individual school is a challenging but vital leadership task. Resolving tensions
between collaboration and competition will demand leadership of people and
organizations beyond restrictive institutional boundaries and cultures. Sys-
tems of collaborative organization may start to complicate formal structures
(Bentley 2003). But tapping ‘system potential’ holds out the promise of far-
reaching progressive effects on the nature of schooling. Through extending
school leadership beyond the insular school unit, schools acting collabora-
tively can take greater joint responsibility for the life chances of a wider
community of young people.

Top-down versus bottom-up

This is a very different vision of school leadership to that implied by a range of

government policies and external accountabilities. It also implies some
appropriation of decision-making power by the school or school collaborative
– at least in pooling or aggregating school-level resources to take risks,
innovate and lead a renewal of learning and social inclusion from within
schools.
Debates over effective forms of system organization, leadership and local
autonomy have gathered pace since the turn of the millennium. A range of
analyses can be traced to the plateau in student attainment as recorded by the
national tests in English primary schools between 2001 and 2004. This fol-
lowed several years of impressive system-wide improvements from 1997
which had been driven by central government policy. This included the
Primary National Strategy (previously the National Literacy and National
Numeracy Strategies), clear external targets and substantial new investment.
For many, the subsequent plateau in attainment was evidence that rapid
increases in attainment through central prescription could never be sustain-
able in the longer run (Hargreaves and Fink 2006). The argument goes
something like this:

* Most agreed that standards were too low and too varied in the 1970s
and 1980s and that some form of direct state intervention was
necessary. The resultant national prescription proved successful,
8 SYSTEM LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

particularly in raising standards in primary schools – progress con-

firmed by international comparisons.
* But progress plateaued and, while a bit more improvement has
continued to be squeezed out nationally since 2004, and con-
siderably more in underperforming schools, one has to question
whether prescription still offers the recipe for sustained large-scale
reform into the medium or longer term.
* There is a growing recognition that schools need to lead the next
phase of reform. But, if the hypothesis is correct, and this is much
contested terrain, it must categorically not be a naı̈ve return to the
not so halcyon days of the 1970s when a thousand flowers bloomed
and the educational life chances of too many of our children wilted.

Getting beyond this top-down approach, while avoiding the limitations of

highly decentralized strategies, was the purpose of Michael Fullan’s (2004a,
2004b) seminal work on ‘system leaders in action’. The priority, he argued,
was to ‘reconcile the power and action of the centre, with the ideas, wisdom
and engagement of the field’ (2004a: 6). Three key principles were offered for
doing so: first, the fostering of a collective commitment in which the centre,
local government and schools moved towards mutual influence; second,
following David Hargreaves (2003), the widespread development of networks
that enable the lateral transfer of disciplined innovation between schools;
third, the mobilization of a critical mass of leaders at all levels of the system
who work intensely in their own organizations and, at the same time, parti-
cipate in the bigger picture.
This draws on Peter Senge’s (1990) notion of ‘system thinking’ with the
implication that leaders need to look beyond their own discrete activity to
consider wider interconnections through which they can collectively lead
change. In this way, the central state needs to play a more enabling role.
School leaders need to take direct action by sharing knowledge and learning
with other schools and by taking on explicit assignments to promote system
improvement (Fullan 2004a: 14–15). A key indicator is ‘when individual
school heads become almost as concerned about the success of other schools
as they are about their own school’ (2004a: 9).
This is perhaps the most appropriate guiding motif for a growing number
of school leaders whom we have termed ‘system leaders’. But if system leaders
are to provide a solution to the problems of top-down reform, the test should
be whether they can create the conditions for a new professionalism. In
particular, such professionalism should be capable of harnessing local own-
ership and ideas and measuring success in terms of improving student
learning and well-being and tackling inequalities.
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