Research School Network: Implementation under pressure Julian Grenier asks: can we implement change well when there’s so much else to worry about?

We’re all under pressure and having to make quick decisions. That’s life: but it also poses real dangers for schools, leaders, staff and children.

Why? Because decisions can be taken too fast and we can all get busy doing things which won’t necessarily be best for our pupils or our schools. Robbie Coleman from the Education Endowment Foundation puts this well: we shouldn’t be innovating and implementing, unless we’re also evaluating. That’s why the first live session of our Newham Learning Programme was all about pressing the pause button.

Let’s stop and make sure we understand where we are, before we jump into action.

Let’s not start putting solutions in place when we aren’t even sure yet what the problems are.

Let’s not be like Wile E. Coyote: legs spinning and over the edge of the cliff before we even realise where we are.

Approaches which we already know about, or can pick up quickly

1. Check out the Education Endowment Foundation’s Covid-19 page, which includes rapid evidence reviews and can support schools and parents in making the best use of home learning

2. Re-connect with existing expertise. In Newham, we are already expert in meeting the needs of children whose education has been disrupted. That’s because we have schools with high levels of mobility. Some of our schools are regularly bringing new arrivals to the country on roll. There is also expertise amongst school leaders in Newham who have taken on schools in difficulties. Those pupils may have experienced years of patchy teaching. Leaders have helped them through with ​‘recovery curriculum’ planning and implementation.

3. Remember that it’s invariably high-quality teaching that works for pupils. That’s founded on sound curriculum design. It also needs clear systems for checking that pupils have learnt and understood what we intended. All of those principles remain true. The endless focus on online lessons has been, as Alex Quigley argues, a complete red herring.

4. In the early years, there is huge expertise around re-settling vulnerable children. Many practitioners are skilled in developing positive relationships. We know how to help children to face and manage their emotions. We’re good at establishing supportive routines. That expertise can be applied to help children across the EYFS and Key Stage 1.

Schools often seem to be looking for things that are eye-catching, quick and easy to implement.

I know that’s a weakness I have as a school leader.

We need to challenge that.

Evidence-informed practice

Evidence and professional expertise are both useful in their own right. But they’re so much more powerful when they come together. That’s what’s often called ​‘evidence informed practice’.

​‘Evidence’ means information from credible sources, based on robust research. These are the ​‘best bets’ for us to act on as school leaders.

One of the quickest ways to find those best bets is to go onto the EEF’s Toolkit or Early Years Toolkit.

The Toolkits give us an accessible overview of what works in education.

The Toolkits tell us that approaches which focus on developing children’s metacognition are effective. A focus on metacognition helps children to monitor their learning as they go. That can aid them in knowing when they need more help to understand something. That’s potentially very important for children working at home, or children coming back into school after a long gap.

The Toolkits also tell us that a well-planned and structured programme to support social and emotional learning is a ​‘good bet’.

It’s effective in improving wellbeing. It also improves learning and raises levels of achievement.

Ideally, that will be a systematically-implemented evidence-based programme that a school buys into and implements consistently across all year groups. Alternatively, it can be a school’s own curriculum for social and emotional learning. But that has to be designed and delivered to a high standard.

Not so simple

But of course things aren’t as simple as that.

If we could just pick approaches off a website, our work in education would be easy.

And boring.

We need to remember that whatever the research suggests, no programmes work everywhere, every time. Dylan Wiliam puts this well

Every school and community is unique. The evidence can’t tell us exactly what to do in every context, for every decision, with every child. But it can help us to make more informed decisions.

Research and evidence supplement our professional expertise. 

But they cannot supplant it.

The challenge of implementation

The challenge we always face is around effective implementation. 

That’s fundamentally concerned with school culture.

If you got to 4, that’s remarkable. Most of us stumble somewhere around 2 and 3.

Generally, we launch new initiatives with great fanfare. We build up lots of enthusiasm. But once the initial training and launch are over, things start to run out of steam. Staff begin to experience difficulties, but there isn’t an obvious way of getting support and help to work through problems. Other staff keep plugging away, but maybe they don’t check carefully enough for the intended improvements in pupils’ learning. They don’t spot things that aren’t working.

It’s generally accepted now that a successful programme of professional development needs to begin with a clear vision.

It should be based on robust research and evidence.

It should also be backed up with continuous support and checking, over a period of at least 20 weeks.

The clearest implication of that, is that schools often try to implement far too much, far too quickly.

If that’s the case at the best of times, it might be even more true at this very difficult time for us all. It’s best for us to focus our efforts on the approaches which are most likely to make a positive difference for children and young people.

That’s why we’ve been focusing on the EEF’s guidance reports on Social and Emotional Learning and Improving Behaviour.

These are two areas which we definitely need to get right. We need to ensure that pupils can click back into learning and positive routines. We need to help pupils to manage some of the emotional difficulties which may have arisen for them.

So in this period, we need to focus on the process as well as the content of what we’re changing. Now, more than ever, we’ll need to:

1. Set the stage for implementing change through our day-to-day leadership behaviours e.g. building confidence, enthusiasm, trust and open-ness to change
2. Identify and support leaders of implementation throughout our schools, at all levels
3. Build the leadership capacity of our schools, through creating implementation teams

So we need to focus on choosing the ​‘best bets’ to make a positive difference to pupils’ learning. We need to prepare and plan carefully for implementation. But even then, things can go wrong if we don’t focus enough on creating the right climate for change. There are clear dangers of not focusing enough on school culture. As the old saying goes, ​‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’.

We can make the best choices – but if the culture is not receptive to change, then our plans will melt away like a snowflake falling on a hot summer’s day.

It’s worth spending time reflecting on and evaluating our school culture before we put together plans for implementation. Do we need to put some time into creating a more supportive culture, before we unleash yet another set of changes. Is there a tendency to blame individuals, for wider failures of our organisations cultures?

It’s useful to consider that:

What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity

What looks like laziness is often exhaustion

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

As we come to the end of this blog, there are two big questions I’d like to leave you with:

1. How can we plan for and protect time to think about our school culture and what implications this has for our plans for implementation? 
2. How can we make time to discuss our ideas with trusted colleagues at all levels in school?

With thanks and acknowledgement to colleagues at the EEF whose work informed this blog, in particular Stu Mathers