Letting Staff Do Leadership Courses Isn’t Enough
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With the plethora of courses available to teaching staff now-a-days, there’s something for everyone. Leadership, subject specific, SEN, online, in-person…. Where there’s a desire, there’s a course. For many, funding is also provided in many circumstances too (see NPQs recently). Moreover, we know that teaching staff value high-quality and personalised CPD (Education Support, 2023). Therefore, if school leaders are getting their staff onto these courses, they’re doing everything they need to. Right? Not so.
My thinking around this is inspired by a brilliant session that I attended at Research Ed South-West with Nikki Sullivan and Sam Gibbs. In their talk, they commented upon up-knowledge and upskilling staff.
Up-knowledge is the key focus for most courses. This is the process of providing individuals with more knowledge in a certain area, as well as strategies, theories and approaches to inform their thinking. Each course an individual goes on will come with a list of new knowledge that the attendee will get. For example, let us look at the NPQ for Leading Behaviour and Culture. As detailed on the government website, content includes:
How to create a culture of high expectations
How to establish conditions for good behaviours
Dealing with complex behavioural needs
Developing appropriate professional development
Implementing improvement plans
These are all extremely worthy spends of time and high-quality examples of up-knowledge for leaders in our schools.
But what is missing? It is upskilling of staff. Upskilling refers to:
Time (to consider all the new knowledge gained, e.g. through one of these courses)
Exploring (how these new ideas, knowledge and theories can work in the context that the individual is in).
Practice (with some of these new ideas to see how they can work in the classroom or in school policies).
Discuss (these new ideas with other staff around this new knowledge and how it can be introduced into their practice).
Reflect (on how all of this has worked, how it can be improved on, and how changes can be sustained).
It is the upskilling part of learning that schools are so often poor at providing to those whom they send on courses, and the key argument to this blog.
Let us consider a lesson. In a standard period, we will model a new concept and/or provide new knowledge to students. Following this, we would provide a lengthy period of deliberate practice. During this time, students would have an opportunity to consider their new knowledge, apply it to new context (answering questions), reflect on this and improve. This is the standard process of a high-quality lesson.
Let us now go back to the course. A member of staff goes away for half a day, and receives input around, for example, create a culture of high expectations. They come back to school with great swathes of new knowledge, theories to consider and approaches that they would love to consider and implement. This is the equivalent of the modelling part of a lesson.
After this stage, the member of staff now needs that time to consider, explore, practice, discuss and reflect, much like a student would have after modelling. But far, far too often, they don’t have this. All of that new learning is somewhat wasted. It isn’t attended to; it isn’t acted upon. And the positive impact that learning from this course could have had on the school is also wasted. Why send a member of staff out for a course if they never get the opportunity to consider and implement anything that they have learnt?
This is a major problem, and probably one that we have all had. Teachers aren’t awash with free time. Leaders even less so. How can we overcome the lack of upskilling time that staff have?
Here are some ponderings.
Ensure that the member of staff who goes away on a course has a carved-out period of time when they can review their learning and start making some plans. Ideally, this should be above and beyond non-contact periods (as these will be needed for the requirements of a teacher’s role), otherwise workload will just be increasing massively.
Where suitable and possible, and even if it is not a course requirement, identifying a coach or sponsor for a staff member on a course is helpful, for two reasons. Firstly, having coaching meetings will provide a carved-out period of time when staff can focus in on their new learning and nothing else. Secondly, it provides a second individual to have a discussion with, and critical challenge some of the thoughts and plans that the individual may have.
The course attendee needs a project or area that they can work on when they return to school. Lots of new knowledge is great, but if it isn’t taken anywhere, then it is somewhat wasted. Ideally, identify an area for the attendee to be working on before they go on the course so that you know they will be working on a key area in the school.
Those senior to the course attendee needs to have a plan for the roll-out of the new strategy or ideas that are being implemented. If stages 1 through to 3 have gone well, this is great, but if a new project is working well, there needs to be a plan to stablish and sustain these changes. Otherwise, something so powerful can disappear as quickly as it came.
If you are going on a course, or are sending staff members on a course, then there is plenty to consider. Up-knowledge of staff is crucial to their job satisfaction and autonomy, but equally, if not of greater importance, is the opportunity for upskilling. How can you ensure that these opportunities occur?