• The most important part of leading a school, especially in difficult circumstances, is follow through. The surprisingly common thing to find when looking at a school’s journey is a 5-year-old SIP that looks the same as it does now.

• Lack of follow through could be due to a lack of clear success criteria, an inappropriate or irrelevant impact measure, or blurred areas of responsibility, but the biggest problem is a lack of persistence.

• If you say you are going to do something, you must do it. If you don’t, even once, the next time you want to introduce something, however urgent or needed, it will be harder.

Everyone, every time
Walk past a piece of litter a hundred times, pick it up, and maybe the next child will do the same. Walk past it once and don’t, and the next child will always do the same.

Uphold the rules – they exist for a reason
It is the duty of all staff to uphold the rules, which form a framework for supporting the school ethos. Every exception weakens the rule, the teacher, and the next teacher.

Unclear is unkind
Pupils may want to be excused for breaking a rule, but in the long run it does them no favours, leaving them and other pupils who see the exceptions, unclear about expectations.

• Keep the focus narrow – too broad a scope threatens the achievement of all goals.
• The surprisingly common thing to find when looking at a school’s journey is a 5-year-old SIP that looks the same as it does now. That is often because the net has been cast too wide.
• A mistake often made is to believe that including an area as a priority on the SIP protects it against regression (if it’s going to slip, it will anyway if it sits among a host of other ‘priorities’).

• What does success look like? How will we know when we’re there?

• Staff and pupils need to know what they are aiming for and how to achieve it

• All stakeholders should understand how the targets will bring about desired change.

• Continual reviews of progress highlight progress, revitalising motivation, or throw up areas that need attention.

• Capitalise:
  • on success, where it can positively impact other areas (but be wary of mission creep).
  • on failure, where it can be an opportunity to learn and improve.

Peer culture

• A strong peer culture provides the best kind of accountability. If staff members know others are dependent on their part of the process, which is transparent and measurable, they will feel a keen sense of peer pressure to perform and learn.

Communication

• Whether then and there, face-to-face or later by email, behaviour/actions that fall below expectations identified through your rigorous QA processes must be addressed; it is almost never better (but sometimes strategic) to ignore it.

Demeanour

• Professional: calm, non-judgemental, emotionally neutral, to-the-point, short, undisguised by praise, and respectful.

Appearance

• Appearance says everything about how much pride staff and pupils have about their school – a smartly worn uniform, neatly presented work, clean and tidy classrooms, uncluttered corridors and foyers with eye-catching displays – all tell a story about how all stakeholders feel about the school.

Belonging

• All members of the school community should engender and communicate pride of belonging to the school community and, hopefully, a sharing in its identity.

Detail matters

• ‘Sweat the small stuff.’ The action we take after noticing the small things symbolises their importance of those small things to the vision. The devil’s in the detail, and those details, no matter how small, can derail a change process.

• A tangible ethos is one that you can feel the moment you walk in. Staff and pupils are charged with it, and the atmosphere in classrooms crackles with its energy.

• ‘100% classrooms’ and ‘high expectations’, as phrases, do some heavy lifting in the world of school improvement but can be defined as holding pupils to account for meeting standards achievable by everyone.

• Without a strong ethos, the school lacks the identity that binds together the components of the plan and guides decision making when the road ahead is difficult.

Snowball of Accountability (Leadership Transformation) – YouTube

Come rain or shine, it’s a lovely day in a school where the leaders smile with genuine pleasure as they purposefully, meticulously, and resolutely support staff to execute the plan.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of seeing the positives in everything. There is nearly always a bright side, and it is a skill, especially when progress is faltering and morale is fragile to:

• find it
• illuminate it, and;
• communicate it as evidence of a future that has already arrived

That does not mean ignoring data that reveals an undesirable or unforeseen story line, and such setbacks are an opportunity to show resilience, spirit, and togetherness.