Research School Network: Addressing disadvantage: a wicked problem that requires a ​‘clumsy’ response Phil Stock considers how collaboration is vital in addressing complex challenges.

I’ve found it increasingly helpful to frame the problems that schools typically face in one of two ways – tame problems and wicked problems. 

Tame problems are like puzzles in that whilst they can be highly complex, there is ultimately a way of solving them. Wicked problems, on the other hand, can never truly be solved and continually present as challenges in one form or another.

Strategies to manage pupil behaviour, methods of teaching children to read or ways of organising a school timetable might all be considered examples of tame problems. To a lesser or greater extent, they are problems that we have developed an understanding of how to solve, or at the very least can make a tangible improvement to the present situation.

Unlike the above list of school problems, however, we are much less clear about how to tackle rising absence rates, meet the increased challenge of SEND or close the disadvantaged attainment gap. These are problems much more likely to keep school leaders awake at night both now and for the foreseeable future.

In this sense they are wicked problems.

Defining wicked problems

The term ​‘wicked problem’ originates from a 1973 paper by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, who coined it to describe complex social problems that are difficult to define, have no definitive solution, and often involve conflicting stakeholders.

Because wicked problems are characterised by the absence of a definitive formulation, there is no ​‘stopping rule’, meaning they remain challenges despite our best efforts to address them. 

There is also no way to test a solution to a wicked problem because it can never be isolated from its environment, and unlike solutions to tame problems, which either work or don’t work, attempts to solve wicked problems can only ever be evaluated in terms of being good or bad.

Obviously, this is an oversimplification: depending on context, a tame problem in one school might present itself as a wicked problem in another.

Similarly, I’m also not suggesting that managing pupil behaviour is easy or teaching children to read is straightforward. What I am suggesting is that whether through our own experiences and/​or from research findings, there is knowledge in the system about how to do these things in such a way to make a big difference.

The challenge of the disadvantage gap

The same cannot be said for the problem of the disadvantage attainment gap. Whilst there are some schools that have met with individual success, the same is not true for the sector as a whole. And even in those schools where the gap has been closed, the problem hasn’t gone away: it will need to be ​‘solved’ again the following year and the year after that too!

Data from the Education Policy Institute’s 2023 annual report shows that the disadvantaged gap in GCSE English and Maths widened to its largest level since 2011. And whilst there had been some closing at different points between 2012 and 2022, there has always been clear daylight between the outcomes of disadvantaged pupils and their non-disadvantaged peers. This pattern is replicated across primary too.

Closing the disadvantaged attainment gap is the wickedest of wicked problems.

How using tame and wicked distinctions helps leadership

I find this distinction between tame and wicked problems useful because of the way it suggests that different modes of leadership are needed to address different types of problems.

The kind of leadership required to introduce a new coaching programme is probably not the same as that needed to address the underachievement of disadvantaged pupils. One has a playbook a leader can follow, whereas the other has nothing more than an empty page for them to stare at.

Keith Grint articulates this point brilliantly in his 2008 paper ​‘Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions: the Role of Leadership’. He suggests that the failure of most change initiatives is to do with the way the problems are framed by leaders and the consequent approaches they adopt to resolve them. His focus is the business world, but much seems to apply to education too.

So, for example, a tame problem, like introducing a new coaching programme in a school, can be addressed through a management style of leadership. There is, broadly speaking, a process that can be followed from explaining the benefits to teachers to providing them with the time, space and expertise necessary to engage with it meaningfully. Again, not easy, but doable.

Yet such a process-driven approach to change that follows all the ​‘rules’ – explaining rationale, setting aside time and space and providing tools and resources – is unlikely to be successful in tackling disadvantaged underachievement. This is because the disadvantage gap is a different kind of problem – one that requires a different kind of approach. Leadership not management.

The difference between leadership and management

Understanding the difference between leadership and management is often a consideration for middle leaders moving into senior leadership, and the focus of many SLT interview panels.

There are lots of ways of drawing this distinction but, for me, the most insightful one is the one offered by Glint: leaders ​‘ask the right questions rather than provide the right answers’.

And this idea of asking the right questions cuts to the core of how we should think about tackling the seemingly insurmountable challenge of educational disadvantage.

It shifts the responsibility away from leaders – they do not know how to solve the problem as no one does – to the whole staff body. 

As Grint sums up: ​‘Wicked Problems require the transfer of authority from individual to collective because only collective engagement can hope to address the problem.’

I like this model of leadership: it’s brave and brutally honest about the real complexities of some of the challenges that we face.

It also serves as a clear invitation for others to contribute to the decision-making process. This is not about buying-in to a leader’s pre-ordained vision but rather being-in the collective response to a collective (wicked) problem.

There is clear synergy here between the idea of distributed leadership and the main theme from the updated EEF implementation guidance report that implementation ​‘is fundamentally a collaborative and social process’.

Not only does collaboration help engage people ​‘so they have the potential to influence change’ but in the context of dealing with wicked problems, it’s absolutely crucial for people to work collaboratively, so they can share their individual knowledge, expertise and perspective to create what Glint calls a ​‘clumsy solution’.

I’m not sure that in my early years of leadership I would have been comfortable with the idea of clumsy solutions, preferring instead neat, internally consistent and logical responses.

Time and experience of dealing with the same problems continually presenting themselves has made me realise that this is not so much the ​‘best’ response to wicked problems, as the ​‘only’ response.

There are ultimately no solutions, only mitigations.