Research School Network: Implementation in practice working with groups of schools

by Sarah Hosegood, Evidence Lead

One branch of our partnership work this year has been focused on supporting schools implementing whole school improvement change. We have worked closely with a range of leaders in order to offer intensive one to one support and coaching and have seen real benefits to this approach.

Now widely known, the implementation process designed by the EEF has four elements and I am going to explain the first two here. The first is to explore the problem or issues in the school you want to solve, ensuring that a tight area for improvement is identified using a diagnostic process. The second element is ​‘prepare’ and encourages leaders to make a clear, logical and well-specified implementation plan. This includes identifying the issue to be addressed and identifying the active ingredients (the tight, closely followed elements of the implementation idea). There are also planned activities and ideas to be followed in order to ensure effective implementation and the desired final outcomes. The diagram below illustrates the process (taken from the EEF Implementation Guidance Report, Putting Evidence to Work, a School’s Guide to Implementation),

Our partnership work in one particular location has been focussed this year on these first two stages of ​‘explore’ and ​‘prepare’ and has been structured into three extended meetings, follow up tasks set between the meetings and further individual support, if required.

The aim of our first meeting was to start the ​‘explore’ stage. We wanted to support a conversation which identified:

• The current school culture and their current successes and challenges.
• What they were currently implementing as a part of their plan for school improvement.
• Their future aims.
• Their current data gathering across the school community (data being seen as a broad term, which includes student and staff voice, behaviour data, attendance data, attainment data).

These structured conversations were supportive but challenged the leaders to consider the real issues facing their schools and those which they are able to influence and address. Frequently, leaders moved from what they thought should be implemented to identifying the underlying challenges they should be aiming to address. With this in mind, we discussed a range of data gathering ideas they could use in order to confirm these challenges and to learn more about them. To prepare for the second meeting, we asked the leaders to complete a range of data gathering in order to confirm the area of focus.

Key takeaways for leaders:

• Examine how ready your school is for change and the implementation of a new idea.
• This could include looking at your current challenges, the capacity of your leadership team and whether your staff are ready and able to take on implementation.
• Have extended, supportive but challenging conversations about the underlying challenges facing the school. Be honest about what you can impact and what the issues are which are stopping the progress of other initiatives.
• Use a wide range of data and information to find out more about the challenges facing your school. Do not presume you know the answers.

The second meeting started with the leader feeding back from their data gathering. They summarised their findings and we listened closely in order to summarise back the key findings and confirm their area of focus for implementation.

With the confirmation of the problem and the area of focus for implementation decided, we asked the leader to look forward to their desired outcomes of the strategy. We asked them to identify 3 or 4 specific and realistic outcomes which could be monitored or measured.

During the second half of the meeting we focused on the active ingredients for implementation. This is a hard concept to explain but is one of the most important parts of implementation. We asked the leaders to consider the essential elements of the changes being planned which they would like all staff to follow. A range of things could be considered, for example, the name of the change, the language used by staff, the processes to be explicitly followed or a teaching element which must be included by all. For some of the leaders there were three or four active ingredients and for others they broke down the different stages of the change they were going to implement and then had active ingredients for each stage.

Key takeaways for leaders:

• Take time to review the range of data which has been collected. It is helpful to have several people in this discussion in order to fully examine and discuss the data and confirm the area of focus. This may be an uncomfortable process as findings may not be what you had presumed.
• To ensure the implementation is successful, take time to consider the active ingredients which are the parts of the change which should be tight and closely followed by all. These are the areas which should be applied consistently and these are the areas which could be closely monitored by leaders.

The planning for meeting three is underway and we are going to focus on the activities needed for the autumn term and spring term. This will include the training, resources, possible coaching and planning needed for successful implementation. In order to support this work, we will be using the EEF Effective Professional Development guidance report and to help the leaders plan effective training.

We will then go on to consider which elements of the change will need to be monitored and evaluated and how this could be done.

So, why are we writing about this in our blog? The answer is that we think this really works! It enables leaders to successfully plan and start to implement change effectively. Leaders have been able to carve out specific time to focus on implementing change with a clear process to follow and not just a ​‘to do’ list. Our role became a mixture of trainer, research lead and coach and we were able to be supportive but ask challenging questions to ensure clarity and deep thinking. Working with the leaders has meant there were multiple eyes on the implementation planning but not too many voices, which can sometimes distract from the decision making process. The changes being planned now have a much greater chance of becoming embedded and sustained.