Driving education reform from the bottom up

Schools matter. The UK's social, economic and cultural future relies upon schools that ensure young people develop, learn, and fulfil their potential. The pressure on UK schools to improve is therefore unrelenting.

Increasingly, the consensus is that putting communities in control of the schools that educate their children should be at the heart of reform; the passion people feel for education should be harnessed to achieve schools that are focused on children and best equipped to deliver the education that parents want.

The challenge now is implementation – defining the practical steps needed to make change happen. In the past, education reform in the UK was implemented through two types of intervention: by applying new and ring-fenced money, and by setting rules, targets and performance frameworks. But neither approach is now applicable – it goes without saying that there will be no new money (indeed substantial savings will be required) and where the very purpose of
reform is to enable localism and decentralisation, top-down centrally-managed implementation is hardly likely to be appropriate.

A new way of making change happen is therefore required. Instead of top-down planning driving action, this new approach must release the latent energy within the system and create change bottom-up. Instead of issuing directives to be cascaded down through management structures, it must take a system-wide view of the schools sector and promote those elements of that system that will drive reform.

There cannot be a blueprint for every school, but it is possible to set out a range of models for how schools can operate – how they can collaborate, how they can define their distinctive identities, how they can source their support services, how they can innovate, and how they can meet the aspirations of the communities they serve.

Above all, implementation must reflect the fact that schools are not just institutions: they are the sum of the children, teachers, heads, governors, parents and partners that make them up. Policy implementation must recognise that school reform depends entirely upon them.

To find out more about how to drive education reform from the bottom up, contact us now.