Ainscow y Howes SLM - 07 Working Together To Improve Urban

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Working together to improve urban secondary schools: a study of practice

in one city
Mel Ainscow a;Andy Howes a
a
University of Manchester, UK
To cite this Article Ainscow, Mel andHowes, Andy(2007) 'Working together to improve urban secondary schools: a study
of practice in one city', School Leadership & Management, 27: 3, 285 — 300
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13632430701379578
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632430701379578
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School Leadership and Management,
Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2007, pp. 285300
Working together to improve urban

secondary schools: a study of practice in
one city
Mel Ainscow* and Andy Howes
University of Manchester, UK
Downloaded By: [Universidad de Sevilla] At: 11:21 21 May 2010
Bringing about school improvement in economically poor urban contexts remains a major
challenge. In England the emphasis on competition between schools has further complicated this
agenda. At the same time, there is evidence of the emergence of a new policy emphasis that involves
support and challenge to school-led improvement efforts through collaboration with other schools.
This paper provides an evaluative account of an attempt to use such processes of networking across
all secondary schools in one city. The study suggests that schools working together can contribute
to the raising of aspirations and attainment in schools that have previously had a record of low
achievement, but that this is never a straightforward process / schools are complex organisations,
and collaboration between them involves the orchestration of action and purpose at many levels.
The paper concludes that the successful use of such approaches involves dealing with a number of
challenging dilemmas, and draws out the implications for policy development.
The issue of school improvement in economically poor urban contexts remains a

challenge. Whilst existing research literature provides accounts of individual schools
that have brought about improvements in their work despite facing challenging
circumstances, there are fewer examples of progress that has been maintained
beyond a relatively short period of years (Maden, 2001; Harris et al., 2003; West
et al., 2005). It is also the case that many of the examples that are described involve
schools that have chosen to participate in particular improvement initiatives
(Ainscow & Chapman, 2005). By their nature such schools tend to be exceptional
and it is, therefore, dangerous to build policies on the basis of such experiences.
During recent years schools in England have had to respond to a plethora of
innovations aimed at ‘raising standards’. This is one of the reasons why a close
scrutiny of what happened in the local authority we focus on in this paper is so
fascinating. It shows how collaboration leading to improvement was given impetus by
such external pressures. It also suggests patterns of collaboration between schools
that offer promising possibilities for achieving more sustainable improvement.
*Corresponding author. School of Education, University of Manchester, Oxford Road,

Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Mel.Ainscow@manchester.ac.uk
ISSN 1363-2434 (print)/ISSN 1364-2626 (online)/07/030285-16
# 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13632430701379578
286 M. Ainscow and A. Howes
The paper draws on the evidence of our evaluation of networking across secondary
schools in the city of ‘Bradcastle’. We start by describing the context and the strategy
adopted; we then provide a summary of findings, using extracts from case studies;
and we suggest an explanation for these findings in terms of the notion of coping with
organisational dilemmas. Finally, this leads us to draw out the implications for policy
development.
Changing relationships
In recent years, structures and relationships within the education service in England
have been fundamentally reformed. These changes have been reflected most
significantly in the evolving relationships between schools and their local education
authorities (LEAs). This movement, from dependency towards greater indepen-
dence, has been consistently orchestrated through legislation and associated

Department for Education and Skills (DfES) guidance. It was summarised in the
Government’s 1997 consultation document, ‘Excellence in Schools’, which stated:
‘The role of LEAs is not to control schools, but to challenge all schools to improve
and support those which need help to raise standards’ (DfEE, 1997, p. 67).
Relationships between schools have also been influenced by national policy
changes, in two main ways. On the one hand, competition between schools has
come to be seen as one of the keys to driving up standards. This was encouraged by
the introduction of grant-maintained status for schools (now known as foundation
schools) and by open enrolment, supported by the publication of league tables
of school text and examination results. Greater autonomy was intended to ‘liberate’
schools from the bureaucracy of local government and establish what has been
described as ‘school quasi-markets’ (Thrupp, 2001), in which effective schools
would have an ‘arms-length’ relationship with the LEA and, indeed, with each other.
At the same time, various national initiatives, such as Excellence in Cities and the
Educational Action Zones, built on and developed traditions of networking and
sharing between schools, focused on areas of relative social and economic
disadvantage, and aimed to improve the provision of education for children and
young people in those areas.
Overall, the move away from a dependent relationship between LEAs and schools
to ways of working that emphasise school independence has so far failed to provide
the system-wide improvement in achievement of the sort required by the community
(Ainscow, Booth & Dyson, 2006; Ainscow, Howes & Tweddle, 2006). At the same
time it is generally recognised that leadership for improvement efforts does need to
come from within individual schools. This suggests that attempts to move schools in
a more equitable direction are likely to be very demanding. They will, we suggest,
require an engagement with questions of principles and purposes within the
education system, and a greater emphasis on the sharing of expertise and resources.
Such an approach would be consistent with what Stoker (2003) calls ‘public value
management’, with its emphasis on network governance. Stoker argues that the
Working together to improve urban secondary schools 287
origins of this approach can be traced to criticisms of the current emphasis on

strategies drawn from private sector experience. He goes on to suggest that ‘the
formulation of what constitutes public value can only be achieved through
deliberation involving the key stakeholders and actions that depend on mixing in a
reflexive manner a range of intervention options’. Consequently, ‘networks of
deliberation and delivery’ are seen as key strategies. In the education service, this
would imply the negotiation of new, interdependent relationships between schools,
local authorities and their wider communities (Hargreaves, 2003).
We are now seeing the emergence of what as been described as a new school
improvement paradigm, one that places the emphasis on interdependence (Ainscow &
West, 2006). Within such an orientation attempts are made to support and challenge
school-led improvement efforts through collaboration with other schools.
The strategy
Such arrangements require massive shifts in thinking and attitude if the potential
benefits are to be achieved. In this sense, the Bradcastle strategy was particularly
interesting in that it involved an attempt to create a whole-LEA approach, albeit
focused only on the secondary sector. In addition, the involvement of a private
partner and another LEA offered other resources that could be used to support
successful implementation, whilst at the same time bringing additional complexity
and, perhaps, other unknown risks.
This paper draws on the findings of the project evaluation that we carried out over
a period of two years on behalf of the DfES. The study involved both a formative and
a summative dimension. In this way, data regarding the processes were used to
strengthen the strategy, whilst, at the same time, constituting evidence that would
help to make overall judgements as to the success of the initiative. The evidence for
the study was collected through approximately 30 interviews, observations of some
25 meetings and collaborative events, and analysis of documents and statistics
relating to each school group and to the LEA. This amounted to approximately 25
days’ fieldwork in the city over two years. In addition a repeated survey of staff
attitudes towards the project was carried out, with a total of 234 responses. Process
and outcome data were then analysed and compared in order to determine
conclusions as to the effectiveness of the initiative. As far as possible, findings were
validated with stakeholder groups in a final round of interviews.
It is important to understand something of the context of the LEA and its schools
prior to the start of the project. Its introduction reflected major concerns at the DfES
about levels of attainment at the secondary level in 2002. At that time there were 19
secondary schools in the city, with three in ‘special measures’ and four seen as having
‘serious weaknesses’ following inspections, and almost half causing concern through
a relatively low level of GCSE results (the national examination taken by 16-year-old
students). Some figures suggested that as many as 25% of students were migrating
out of the city at the transition to secondary school, and it was generally agreed that
children of parents more motivated towards education were over-represented in this

group. In addition, there were difficulties in attracting and retaining suitably qualified
teachers to the city.
It is impossible to be certain about exactly what relationships between the LEA
and schools were like at this time. However, it seems that LEA resources to support
and challenge schools in raising standards were stretched. Some of those involved
described a ‘culture of dependency’ on the LEA, associated with a lack of ownership
of the school improvement agenda at the school level. They explained that whilst
some headteachers and staff were driving their schools forward, this was against a
background of widespread, relatively low expectations on the part of city students.
Others thought that the LEA could have acted more strategically in relation to the
issue of admissions. Falling rolls, coupled with the increasing intake of some schools,
were generating the prospect of school closures, and planning for admissions was
becoming increasingly difficult.

The improvement strategy was described as a ‘twin-track approach’. The first
track involved short-term initiatives aiming to assist schools in raising standards for
all students, particularly to meet the Government’s ‘floor target’ requirements within
two years, in which 25% five or more A* to C grades in the GCSE examination were
to be achieved by all schools. These responses included the production of revision
guides in some subjects, booster classes for students just under the attainment
targets, and rapid introduction of alternative courses taught with additional staffing
in key areas. Some of these initiatives were put in place through coordination
between schools.
The second track was a longer-term strategy based on strengthening collaboration
amongst the city’s schools. As a relatively small LEA, Bradcastle’s education
department was seen to have insufficient resources to meet all the development
needs of schools, without input from expertise already located in the schools.
Collaboration was intended to facilitate more sharing of resources than had proved
possible under earlier schemes. The implication too was that changing relationships
between schools would gradually be mirrored by changing relationships with officers
of the education department. With this in mind, a school improvement adviser was
allocated to work with each school group.
The project involved the setting up of partnership arrangements within four
groups of secondary schools. These were unusual in that they were not based on
geographical proximity. Rather, they were created in order to achieve groupings that
would each include schools at different stages of development and with varied levels
of achievement, as measured by examinations. This also meant that schools within a
group were less likely to be in direct competition with one another. In addition, staff
members from the partner LEA were attached to each group.
Initially, those directly involved were headteachers and representative teams of
staff. However, variations developed almost immediately. In one case, school leaders
contributed monetary resources to a central fund and then determined their
priorities for meaningful collaboration, given the particular circumstances of the
group. By contrast, another group held back, whilst in the smallest group two
headteachers effectively determined the pace of what became a developing

‘federation’ (i.e. a more formally constituted arrangement). But in all cases it was
mainly the school leaders, supported by the framework of the project, who
determined what collaboration might mean in their group, and in their individual
schools.
Processes and outcomes

The evidence we collected demonstrates how the strategy of collaboration between
schools was stimulated by the project in Bradcastle, and how it led to some serious
efforts and creative ways of using educational resources in order to improve
effectiveness across the education system. These efforts led to significant changes
in attitude and expectations amongst staff in many of the schools. In particular there
were changes in their views of other schools and their staff, the nature of the
challenges they faced and, in some cases, the potential for change through various
practical partnerships. There was also some evidence that these processes of change
were associated with improvements in student attainment in examinations.
However, there was considerable variation between the school groups in terms of
both processes and outcomes, and it is this variation that provides much of the grist
for the arguments developed in this article. Taking outcomes first, causes are hard to
trace, so that there are numerous possible ways of explaining changes in student
outcomes in the LEA over the period concerned. Table 1 provides an indication of
attainment of successive pupil cohorts for each year from 2001 to 2004, across each
of the school groups. It shows that attainment in relation to national targets increased
between 2002 and 2004 in all four groups. Needless to say, these data are quite
limited as a representation of change in schools, not least because no value-added
data were available for the period concerned, so that no allowance for changing
cohorts is made in this analysis.
Nevertheless, crude as the measure is, this was the key indicator of success as far as
the DfES, and consequently many in the LEA and in schools, were concerned. The
intention to raise raw examination results was one of the central purposes of the
collaborative strategy, and as such was central to many of the activities put in place in
schools across the city. The fact that the raw results rose was widely considered to be
significant.
Table 1. Percentage of pupils in each school group gaining 5 or more A*/C grade GCSEs
2001 2002 2003 2004

Year (%) (%) (%) (%)
Group A 32 28 37 39
Group B 43 31 41 38
Group C 33 33 34 36
Group D 37 39 36 41
Explanations for the variation between outcomes in groups of schools are beyond
the scope of our study, or even the more detailed case studies available elsewhere
(Howes & Ainscow, 2006). However, it is possible to distinguish activities in terms of
the intentions as to the impact on student attainments. The accounts illustrate the
‘twin-track’ approach mentioned earlier. Some activities aimed directly at attainment
statistics, whilst others focused on the development of capacity in the longer term.
What is even more evident is that patterns of activity varied considerably across the
four groups, and the nature of the impact appeared also to be uneven. And in terms
of relationships and connections the four accounts also show how the groups
developed in very different ways, and give some indication of what changed in the
groups. Space precludes the inclusion of these accounts here; instead, examples of
the variation in activity and relationship are presented in cameo form.
Cameo 1: a focus emerges

In Group A, which included several schools facing challenging circumstances and
one high-performing faith school, almost a year passed before there was any
significant collaborative action involving teachers. But, gradually, the headteachers
moved from a generalised exploration of possibilities to a specific focus on the
sharing of resources between schools. In one instance this made it possible to retain a
teacher who subsequently became instrumental in facilitating school improvements
activities. The presence of an LEA adviser with an eye for collaborative opportunities
was significant:
We realised in a group meeting that we were all in dire straights in English. None of
us had a head of English, with the exception of one school. The headteacher there
said ‘I’ve got an excellent teacher’. The link adviser knew the teacher, and she
managed and facilitated the process. It is a middle leader post, and the four schools
interested share a quarter of the cost. (Headteacher)
The additional English teacher explained that the different circumstances in the
schools demanded flexible responses:
I go to each school, and meet with the head of department; sometimes it gets very
busy. I’m like a member of department, training newly qualified teachers, planning,
doing demonstration lessons. It can be powerful, but you need to know the group.
Mostly I work with groups of teachers, supporting department planning days. . . . You
get to see what is going on elsewhere, and I keep asking different people, ‘have you
tried this?’. All five English departments have strengths, but I’m the link between
them, the buffer. . . . My own teaching has improved so much. . . . Typically, I’ll do a
video of someone, and show it across the schools. That’s easier to arrange than
mutual observation, and becomes less of a show.
Headteachers considered that such activities made a difference to staff thinking. For
example:
My staff feel more confident, even if it’s just through the opportunity to get out and
talk with colleagues in other schools, to see that the grass isn’t always greener on the
other side of the fence, that other people share similar problems, and so the
possibility is to come up with some solutions together. (Headteacher)
Cameo 2: a federation based on trust

Given strong encouragement from the project to work together, two heads in Group
B, with very different experience and focus but with largely shared values, opted to
manage the process so that all activities fitted into their existing development
priorities. Their schools were very different. The headteacher of the voluntary aided
school, set up in the eighteenth century to serve the poor, considered collaboration
with ‘a freshstart school’ (i.e. a reopened school with a new headteacher and staff)
serving a less advantaged area as falling within that tradition. Both schools took some
responsibility for students affected by the forthcoming closure of a third school.
Gradually, joint arrangements developed around staffing, 16 to 19 curriculum

options, and site supervision. In this way the schools became constituted as ‘a
federation’ (i.e. a more formally designated partnership).
The headteacher of the freshstart school reflected on the impact of the collabora-
tion on her individual actions: ‘The project takes pressure off people. . . . Knowing
that you can ring someone . . . galvanises you to do things sometimes’.
Cameo 3: a group developing an identity

In Group C, there was evidence of a positive attitude towards the idea of
collaboration from the outset. It may well be that the ‘right mix’ of personalities
among the headteachers was significant. They consistently prioritised attendance at
half-termly strategy group meetings, where together they made sense of collaboration
in their context, and in so doing developed a stronger group identity. Four of the five
schools agreed to pool a large proportion of the additional funds made available
through the Government’s Leadership Incentive Grants (contributing £30,000 each
per annum for three years) to fund collaborative processes. The other school was in
special measures and was experiencing budgetary difficulties and, significantly, was
/
given direct financial support by the group, so that it could remain as a partner.
With part of that funding, the headteachers appointed a coordinator, at deputy
headteacher level, to work on deepening the collaboration. She saw this as a role that
demanded considerable skill in negotiating with the group of headteachers, each
having the will to collaborate but also with their own agendas and distinctive styles.
She acted as a connector, or broker, facilitating support for various teachers at the
struggling school. She created links between various nationally driven initiatives that
were experienced in schools as ‘innovation overload’. But it was a role full of
uncertainty; going beyond what already existed, in the name of sustainable and
positive change and all this necessarily without a guiding map to follow.
/
Unsurprisingly, then, the coordinator was faced with many personal dilemmas in
respect of where she should place her effort.
As the group became stronger, LEA staff began to consider which other
developments and initiatives should be linked to it, and at one critical point they
issued an agenda for a meeting to outline these. The headteachers reacted quickly to
this proposal, informing the LEA representative that they would construct the
meeting agenda, that a headteacher would chair the meeting, and that the LEA
representative, whilst a welcome partner, would be a participant. The headteachers
felt themselves to be exercising a powerful choice about their own future as a group.
The LEA project staff considered that this incident reflected the strengthening and
maturing of collaboration.
Cameo 4: the search for common ground

Establishing common purpose was highly problematic in Group D, and for over a
year, despite the commitment of some of the headteachers, there was little sense of
cohesion. Eventually, the LEA project facilitators pushed very hard for the
appointment of a coordinator, whose role was to pursue the development of
common interests in a practical way. Initiatives developed in respect of areas such as
vocational education. However, not all headteachers demonstrated commitment to
the group over the term of the project, but agencies outside the school found the
group structure very useful as a basis for developing projects with the schools.
In reflecting on the situation, two of the headteachers argued that the origins of the
problem lay in the way that the project was set up. In particular, they argued that it
was imposed without reference to existing collaborative networks. Early on in the
initiative we had picked up similar views from staff around the city who felt that the
collaborative patterns that had previously existed within the Excellence in Cities
initiative should have been used as the starting point. Later on, however, such
arguments were rarely noted in our discussions in schools, suggesting, perhaps, that
those involved had seen evidence that the new structures were having an impact.
Nevertheless, certain heads remained committed to the view that it was imposition
that had created the barriers.
Explaining differences
The findings of our evaluation study show that school-to-school collaboration has an
enormous potential for fostering system-wide improvement. Over a relatively short
period, secondary schools in Bradcastle demonstrated how such arrangements can
provide an effective means of solving immediate problems, such as staff shortages;
how they can have a positive impact during periods of crisis, such as during the
closure of a school; and, how, in the longer run, schools working together can
contribute to the raising of aspirations and attainment in schools that have had a
record of low achievement. These findings are, we believe, a significant contribution
to school improvement knowledge, particularly in relation to system-wide reform.
But there is more to learn through attempting an explanation for the marked
/
differences between the four collaborating groups.

It is evident, even in the cameos presented here, that behind the differences in
process and outcome there are considerable tensions playing out within and between
the organisations involved. An organisational perspective offers a valuable level of
explanation here, and a way for example of locating individual leadership as a part of
an under-determined change process (Glatter, 2006). In particular, Ogawa et al.
(1999) provide a powerful analysis of ‘enduring dilemmas’ of school organisation
that fall into two groups: dilemmas around ownership, or what the authors term ‘social
work and relations’ (around the value of professionalism, competing goals, task
structures and hierarchy); and dilemmas in relation to external influences (around
persistence, boundaries and compliance). These dilemmas provide a valuable lens
with which to look at the varied patterns of collaboration that developed in
Bradcastle.
We suggest that the development of collaboration within each of the four groups
can be explained as a result of staff in groups of schools grappling with such
dilemmas together and as individuals in relation to particular contexts. The nature of
these dilemmas will be understood in relation to these attempted explanations.
In what follows, then, key aspects of these processes are compared and contrasted,
and some explanations in terms of underlying organisational dilemmas are offered.
This analysis is structured in relation to five propositions that emerged from our
analysis, printed here in bold.
First, collaboration was part of a process whereby individual schools and
groups of schools felt more of a stake in the process of school improvement.
As a result, they found themselves able to act together in various combina-
tions to tackle complex and deep-rooted problems in schools. These perceived
shifts in ownership had profound effects on the relationships between the schools and
the local authority. For example, a LEA officer responsible for school improvement
expressed satisfaction with ‘strong groups of schools, if there really is co-ownership of
the school improvement agenda. . . . All it does is to mean you need better arguments
for what you want to do. And you get the energy of these headteachers, focused on
school improvement. That’s wonderful.’
The issue of ownership here is suggestive of the dilemma of professionalism: as in
cameo 3, there are inevitable tensions as professionals engage bureaucracies in
struggles for control, but the engagement makes possible a far broader range of
actions. In cameo 1, the English teacher represents one such professionally oriented
action, determined according to the professional judgements of the group of
headteachers, but considerable time was needed to build trust and move beyond
the bureaucratic version of collaboration.
Second, the accounts reveal how collaborating schools contributed to a
wide range of improvements, whether in terms of resources for teaching and
learning, the provision and preparation of teachers and other staff, the
development of alternative curricula and activities, and the measures used
to determine successful teaching. The processes used had impacts that ranged
from the direct and short term, to the indirect and longer term. As we have
explained, a version of this distinction between short-term impact and longer-term
sustainability was written into the original project specification, with the first part of
the two-pronged strategy aimed at raising achievement by any means possible, as
quickly as possible. Mapping the key processes identified through the accounts in this
way suggests a useful shorthand for understanding the nature of the different changes
that took place and the timescale for their impact:
DIRECT IMPACT B---------- 0 LONGER TERM IMPACT
Movement of human resources
Joint advertisements/appointments
Staff development activities
Widening opportunities for pupils
Drawing new resources
Mutual challenge
Re-defining quality
Sharing responsibility
Those activities with a more direct and immediate impact on achievement tended
to be relatively easy to implement. However, the accounts also demonstrate how
collaboration can help to foster more complex initiatives that may well contribute to
sustainable improvements. By their nature, these activities involve processes that take
longer to evolve, not least because they require the negotiation of common priorities
and shared values (Fielding, 1999). In one group, for example, debates amongst
headteachers became focused on the question ‘What are our values?’ and on finding
ways of making better use of difference to stimulate creativity and action; in another
group, working practices focused on finding ways of reshaping parental choices
around the schools involved; and in another group, the issue of priorities for
development were comprehensively addressed through the development of a funding
submission to sustain the collaboration.
The dilemmas faced here are around the nature of the goals of activities, and the
extent to which school leaders aim to meet organisational needs (represented by the
standards agenda, given the wider context of this project), or the needs of particular
individuals within the organisation (such as those on the margins of the community
of the school).
However, third, our evidence highlights the fact that collaboration alone
does not provide the models for development, and the accounts show that
when groups of schools are planning new initiatives, materials from external
sources can play an extremely significant role. Collaboration creates possibi-
lities for working together but does not provide much of the focus. In one group,
advances in English drew on the expertise of an individual teacher, and work with
local authority consultants. In another, improvement in creative arts drew on
expertise external to the schools. In a third group, attempts to share good practice
from within departments were seen as relatively unsuccessful, compared with the
coordinated access to materials from other sources. In the fourth group, moves
towards best practice in vocational education again drew on the advice of staff
external to schools.
Dilemmas of ‘task structure’ and ‘persistence’ are implicated in this element of the
process; the extent to which external bodies legitimately dictate the formality of a
task, and the extent to which it is legitimate to adapt that task, is central to much of
the debate over appropriate activities.
In addition, and fourth, there was an ongoing problem in relation to
sources of challenge. It proved difficult for collaborating headteachers,
working hard to share resources and build relationships, to address the
pressing needs either of individual schools or within the system, without the
assistance of outsiders to the group. The accounts demonstrate how
important the role of LEA staff can be in this regard. In attempting to develop
such longer-term commitments, members of the school groups sometimes experi-
enced what Johnson and Johnson (1994) see as tensions between the desire for task
completion and the need for social cohesion. This dilemma over goals arises because
group members engaging in task-related behaviour have to balance the individual
need for good relationships with the organisational need to effectively address the
task. This means that it is difficult to create a sense of mutual challenge within such
collaborative working arrangements. One LEA officer explained the weakness of
collaboration in these terms: ‘the primary thing is to preserve the harmony of the
group’. There were cases of explicit challenge within groups, but they were often
damaging to the group. So, for example, authentic peer review amongst groups of
heads proved difficult to engage without some form of external structure the /
dilemma around task structure was resolved in this case in favour of externally driven
formality.
It is not surprising, then, that monitoring discussions and strategy meetings with
individual headteachers continued to be the most significant opportunities to present
and assist with the challenge of improvement. It strikes us that such discussions with
individuals who are driving for an increase in standards will continue to be an
important source of support and challenge to headteachers, whatever the nature of
the collaborative structures that exist. The key difference now is that the locus of
responsibility lies within schools, leaving ‘outsiders’, such as LEA staff, to use their
wider experience to support and challenge those who are working together to lead
improvement efforts.
Finally, though, collaboration between differently performing schools

(serving largely different segments of the student population, in socio-
economic terms) helped reduce the polarization of the education system, to
the particular benefit of students on the edges of the system and performing
relatively poorly. Since collaboration was about active involvement of staff from
different schools, there was plenty of interaction close to classroom practice, set
within the context that schools are working in every day. As a result, staff began to see
and understand each other’s issues more clearly, and were able to contribute to
resolving the tensions that necessarily arise with the implementation of improvement
plans.
Collaboration involves working not with an abstract or distant model of ‘good
practice’ but through learning directly from neighbouring schools what is possible in
the context of the inevitable tensions and compromises with which school leaders
and teachers have to deal. Our accounts show how headteachers with different
priorities tended to emphasise different resolutions of these goal dilemmas, and how
these differences could be very productive. It was also clear that, where schools did
work together, possibilities were sometimes created which resolved these dilemmas
(albeit temporarily) in new ways. So, for example, in cameo 2 schools began to widen
their curriculum offer by systematically offering places on courses to students from
the other schools in the group.
Implications
All of this indicates that successful networking is not easy to achieve, particularly
within the English context, where competition and choice continue to be the driving
forces of national education policy, adding weight to the dilemmas faced by
collaborating headteachers. In essence, the experience and the analysis suggest
that school-to-school collaboration requires:
. the presence of external incentives that encourage key stake holders to explore
dilemmas over their goals, in order to view collaboration as potentially being in
their own interests, as well as in the interests of their competitors;
. leaders in schools and in local authorities who can cope with dilemmas of
professional and bureaucratic control, and centralised vs. decentralised control,
through commitment to effective dialogue and serious reflection;
. the creation of common improvement agendas that are seen to be relevant to a
wide range of stakeholders, offering a basis for an accepted resolution of the
dilemma of the needs of individuals vs. those of the organisation;
. external help from credible consultants/advisers (from the LEA or elsewhere) who
have the confidence to learn alongside their school-based partners, and who are
therefore able to assist in working with these dilemmas within and between
organisations; and
. LEA willingness and desire to support and engage with the collaborative process,
so as not to destabilise effective temporary resolution of these dilemmas.
It is our view that the absence of such conditions will mean that attempts to
encourage schools to work together are likely to lead to time-consuming talk, which
sooner or later will be dropped. These conclusions are in themselves important for
any national initiatives, such as the Leadership Incentive Grant and the Networked
Learning Communities sponsored by the National College for School Leadership,
that invest resources in the idea of schools working in partnership.
The implications for leadership of these conclusions are particularly significant.
Just like many other social organisations undergoing significant transformation, in
schools that are under pressure to change the search is on for what Fullan (1991)
describes as ‘order and correctness’. Teachers searching for correctness will
inevitably experience ambiguity and a lack of understanding of the direction and
purposes of the change. Thus, the search for order is a search to determine what
actions to take when faced with ambiguous situations.
Weick (1985) characterises schools as ‘underorganised systems’ in that although

they tend to be ambiguous and disorderly there is, nevertheless, some order.
Furthermore, he argues, anyone who can help to create more order within an
underorganised system can bring about change. This may, in part at least, throw
some light on what occurred in Bradcastle. Unusual and challenging factors,
emanating as they did from both outside and inside the schools, created a sense of
ambiguity. The structural arrangements introduced by some of the headteachers
helped to resolve these, and, as a result, they were able gradually to draw staff
together behind broadly similar principles. As Weick explains, because ambiguity in
organisations increases the extent to which action is guided by values and ideology,
the values of ‘powerful people’ (i.e. those who can reduce ambiguity) affect what the
organisation is and what it can become. Thus, according to Weick, those who resolve
ambiguity for themselves and others can implant a new set of values in an
organisation, which creates a new set of relevancies and competences, and, in so
doing, introduces a source of innovation. In this way ambiguity sets the scene for
organisations to learn about themselves and their environments, allowing them to
emerge from their struggles with uncertainty in a different form than when they
started the confrontation.
It follows, therefore, that the perspective and skills of headteachers are central to
an understanding of what needs to happen in order that the potential power of
collaboration can be mobilised. Their visions for their schools, their beliefs about
how they can foster the learning of all of their students, and their commitment to the
power of inter-dependent learning, appear to be a key influence. All of this means, of
course, that replication of these processes in other schools will be difficult,
particularly if those in charge are unwilling or unable to make fundamental changes
in working patterns.
All of this suggests that the Government’s current emphasis on ‘independent state
schools’ and academies needs to be handled sensitively if it is not to further
disadvantage groups of learners who are already underachieving. Whilst it is true
that, by and large, when schools improve it is as a result of leadership from the inside,
it is also the case that the wider context influences the progress of such improvement
efforts, for good or ill. This is the power of what we have characterised as ‘inter-
dependence’. It leads us to argue that, in order to improve, schools do have to
become more autonomous and self-improving; at the same time, it draws our
attention to the way that neighbouring schools can add value to one another’s efforts
whilst at the same time supporting a more equitable approach.
This being the case, we suggest that in its efforts to improve education across the
country the Government would be naive to overlook the influence of what happens at
the local authority level, particularly in urban contexts. Local history, inter-
connections between schools and established relationships are always there, even if
we choose to ignore them. We therefore suggest that real progress towards a national
education system that is geared to raising standards for all students, in all schools,
requires the systematic orchestration and, sometimes, the redistribution of available
resources and expertise at the local level, and that collaborative approaches are a
valuable element in achieving this.
Notes on contributors
Mel Ainscow is Professor of Education and co-director of the Centre for Equity in
Education at the University of Manchester, UK. He served as Dean of
Research from 1998 to 2001. Previously a headteacher, local education
authority inspector and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, his work
attempts to explore connections between inclusion, teacher development
and school improvement. A particular feature of this research involves the
development and use of participatory methods of inquiry that set out to
make a direct impact on thinking and practice in systems, schools and
classrooms. Mel was director of a UNESCO Teacher Education project on
inclusive education which involved research and development in over 80
countries, and is co-director of the school improvement network ‘Improv-
ing the Quality of Education for All (IQEA)’. He was until recently a
member of the National Curriculum and Assessment Committee; he is a
consultant to UNESCO, UNICEF and Save the Children; and is Marden
Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
Andrew Howes is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Manchester. He has
worked on secondary school development through action research and
collaboration between schools in diverse settings in the UK and China, and
teaches research methods and PGCE Science. He currently co-leads a
secondary school research project in the Teaching and Learning Research
Programme.
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School Leadership & Management

Working together to improve urban secondary schools: a study of practice

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Working together to improve urban

The issue of school improvement in economically poor urban contexts remains a

*Corresponding author. School of Education, University of Manchester, Oxford Road,

dence, has been consistently orchestrated through legislation and associated

origins of this approach can be traced to criticisms of the current emphasis on

children of parents more motivated towards education were over-represented in this

becoming increasingly difficult.

headteachers effectively determined the pace of what became a developing

Processes and outcomes

2001 2002 2003 2004

Cameo 1: a focus emerges

Cameo 2: a federation based on trust

Gradually, joint arrangements developed around staffing, 16 to 19 curriculum

Cameo 3: a group developing an identity

Cameo 4: the search for common ground

differences between the four collaborating groups.

DIRECT IMPACT B---------- 0 LONGER TERM IMPACT

Movement of human resources

Staff development activities

Widening opportunities for pupils

Drawing new resources

Finally, though, collaboration between differently performing schools

Weick (1985) characterises schools as ‘underorganised systems’ in that although

valuable element in achieving this.

Improving schools in difficult circumstances (London, Continuum).

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