Schools Learning Together!

I realise that colleagues are careful about joining things but I hope colleagues will want to sign up to this one...

We face huge challenges as authority teams disappear and the DfE have increased expectations of all of us and continue to raise the bar. The White Paper sets us all more challenges and asks us to account for what we are doing around 'failing schools' and disadvantaged groups. OfSTED have also raised the bar with Christine Gilbert's last Annual Report establishing good as the new baseline for everything we do. 'The Importance of Teaching' White Paper restates the role of local authorities as the champion and advocate for the child and their parents and carers and as the commissioner of services with outstanding schools at the heart of school improvement, system leadership and innovation and change. It also ratchetes up the game with more Academies and Free Schools at the heart of a new and exciting learning landscape. 

Increasing numbers of schools will find themselves below the new floor targets and in a category... more notices to improve, more schools in special measures, more takeovers and more Academies. We also face a series of challenges because of the rapidly changing world we all inhabit and we need to look carefully at the skills we need to develop in our children and young people in this new conceptual age. Dan Pink in his book 'A Whole New Mind' suggests that we need to focus on the following six key skills... design, story, empathy, symphony, play and meaning. We also need to focus on building cooperative and collaborative networks to create a critical mass of understanding and teamwork which can draw on what works and the aspects of brilliant practice that exist in almost every school.  

We must always remember to hold hands and stick together in difficult times and, together, to look after those who need us most. We need schools learning together!
Chris