Learning leadership, intelligent accountability and beautiful systems!

Another interesting and rewarding day in Nottingham talking about learning leadership, intelligent accountability and beautiful systems...

Education is a passionate enterprise built on the interaction between human beings: teachers, students and parents. We know that we can't make anyone learn; learners, teachers, headteachers and schools have to be active in their own learning and unless they come to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and how they might deal with them, they will never make progress.
The things that stop us learning are not cognitive. It's not that we can't learn; it's that we don't want to learn. If we invested a fraction of the energy and resources we spend on transmitting information in developing instead a love of learning in our young people supported by powerful assessment for learning and learning leadership we would achieve much better results. If our accountability measures fail to engage and involve learners, teachers and headteachers we risk undermining their motivation, ownership and sense of responsibility. The chances that we will be successful in driving up standards and outcomes are much greater if we trust each other. Our systems and mechanisms must foster and nurture trust, autonomy and accountability: between teachers and students, between teachers and headteachers, between educators and authorities, between educators and politicians, and between educators, parents and the wider community. We need to develop learning leadership throughout the system starting from the premise that everyone is a learner, including students, teachers, headteachers, the school as a community, the wider educational system and the community the school serves. Learning leadership involves maintaining a focus on learning as the key activity a school is engaged in; where everyone is a learner, while recognising that learning is highly sensitive to context and that  people learn in very different ways. Learning leadership also recognises that everyone can be a leader and that opportunities to exercise leadership enhance learning and that we can develop leadership abilities from any powerful learning experience. Learning leadership must be supported by intelligent accountability whioch preserves and enhances trust among the participants in any accountability process. It also involves participants in the process, offering them a strong sense of responsibility and initiative; promoting deep, high quality learning in whatever is to be assessed: the sort of learning that has a long-term impact on standards and outcomes. Importantly, intelligent accountability provides effective feedback that promotes insight into our performance and supports good decision making about what should be celebrated and what should be changed. We must celebrate good performance and challenge poor performance providing support on what needs to be improved and how to go about it. We must also build beautiful systems, processes and procedures to support our culture and our work. Systems, processes and procedures that reinforce and support the way we do things around here and naturally fit and complement the vision, values, beliefs and behaviours we are developing and fostering. Systems, processes and procedures that link all our work through golden threads to a child, a family, a school and a community.
Chris