VISION AND COACHING MATTER!

The trouble with the release of the PISA results this week is that everyone jumps on the data and we start an endless blame game with politicians, unions and officials jumping up and down about the failings of their schools, their teachers, their governments, past and present!

We are told that the answers are out there somewhere and that we all need to get on a plane and go and see what they are doing in Singapore, South Korea and Shanghai. However, the truth is that we can't simply copy what they are doing in these countries or we would have cracked it long ago. Governments across the world have spent billions on learning, on schools, on teachers and we all want to get it right... to create brilliant learning and release the magic. 

We need to recognise that we have great teachers and great schools in so many places and the challenge is to make this commonplace. We need to coach our colleagues for brilliant performance and we must begin by thinking the best of them. Only then can we raise and stretch their awareness of their uniqueness, their strength, and their potential. By appreciating, supporting and caring we can help our colleagues overcome the limitations they have had imposed on them by the negative and destructive culture OFSTED and the DfE have created. We need school leaders to become great coaches who, like Dave Brailsford has done with our cyclists , create people who know their strengths, know their abilities and, as a result, reach beyond what they believed was possible. Great coaching is a relationship that sees colleagues at their very best; challenges them to examine their own gifts, talents and aspirations and, ultimately, holds them accountable to become their brilliant best.h