Chapter+14

=Creating the vision and making it happen= by Mark Wasserberg

This chapter focuses on Mark's headship in the early 90s in a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school in Cheshire. Marl is now the Head of the largest Secondary Comprehensive in the UK - Stantonbury in Milton Keynes.


 * What was the culture of the organisation prior to the change?**

Key events led to the development of the vision of the school's culture as a learning community:
 * Preparation for an OFSTED inspection. Few teachers had experience of this. The original staff seem naive about the process.
 * SMT used the inspection as a basis to improve teaching and learning, however, there was staff anxiety.
 * There was staff openess to training events which helped embed the need to focus on the quality of classroom work.
 * Training events help staff to reflect on the existing good practice, therefore, staff approached the inspection from a position of strength.


 * What were the triggers for change and how did the leader build on these?**

A new Head Teacher!

The Head Teacher followed through on the OFSTED inspection by sharing the aspects of good practice with staff as well as using this as a catalyst to bring staff together to develop a shared language for talking about teaching and learning.

The Head Teacher/SMT highlighted some areas for improvement:


 * Improving achievement in boys
 * Understanding learning and teaching styles

These development strands were addressed initially through staff attending CPD courses. In fact, the SMT put an emphasis on the importance of staff development and that it was central to the development of the school as a whole.

The Head Teacher's own professional development course triggered personal reflection that had a bearing on those around him.


 * What strategies were used to motivate staff/pupils/parents to participate**

Members of staff were encouraged to observe lessons and there was management of finances to allow mutual observations.

The Head Teacher acted as a role model and participated beyond the leadership and management role eg refereed a football match. He actively met with pupils in and out of class to discuss the school and teaching and learning issues.

The Head teacher was open to challenge by the SMT - this allowed issues to be discussed in a productive manner.

All members of staff were encouraged to see themselves as leaders.

There were whole school community events specifically organised to involve all: pupils, parents and teachers.

There was substantial re-organisation of the SMT (and extended SMT) to encourage distributed leadership.

Subject faculties were encouraged to help share the school's vision.

The school's development planning cycle was often revisited to ensure that it was effective and impacted on pupil learning.

Faculty reviews were developed to provide the most useful feedback to impact pupil attainment.

SMT identified the crucial role of deploying support staff to support teaching staff in their bid to raise attainment.

The SMT put an emphasis on the need to explore pupils' learning styles. The following were used to further investigate this: mentoring programmes, using attainment data to set individual pupil targets, personalising learning targets by placing an emphasis on pupil and tutor teacher dialogue, developing the use of pupils' study planners and providing study skills training.


 * What impact did the development have on pupil learning and achievement?**

The Head Teacher moved on to another school, however, the vision was reported to be well established and good relationships in place.


 * How was effectiveness measured?**

There is little in this chapter about the measurement of success, merely the process that took place to bring the school together to achieve a common vision and the steps that were necessary to achieve it.