Opinion: Policy

Three ways Labour can remove barriers to local leadership

To deliver a locally responsive education system, Labour must reform potent incentives that work against it

To deliver a locally responsive education system, Labour must reform potent incentives that work against it

12 Oct 2024, 5:00

This is an article about two obsessions of ours: place and leadership.

Everyone is talking about ‘place’. 

The government has committed to greater work in regions. The Confederation of School Trusts has made ‘anchor institutions’ a core part of its lexicon. And the Fair Education Alliance has highlighted place as one of its key themes for policy development.

Meanwhile, there are many examples of deep, hyper-local collaborations making a real difference in communities.

The C-Change collaborative in New Brighton is re-imagining the Wirral seaside town. National Literacy Trust hubs are innovating across the country, like the one in Bradford where local barbers are becoming reading role models for young boys.

For our part, we’ve been busy setting up and supporting the development of the Old Kent Road Family Zone, an authentic community co-production to design and deliver services. The Mayor of London’s violence reduction unit is on board, and we are supporting leaders across the capital to work in this way.

But what is remarkable about these examples is, well, the fact that they are remarkable. This kind of integrated, collaborative work has now become the exception rather than the norm.

A narrowing view of what school is for, with academic achievement dominating priorities for the past 14 years, has seen this kind of joined-up, integrated work falter. Where it happens, it does so in spite of incentives and accountability rather than because of them.

As a result, there is a yawning gap between the political desire to deliver what communities want and need, and the current reality of how we achieve that at scale.

That’s where leadership comes in, and in order to unlock its potential, we need to look again at what we mean by ‘system leadership’.

This phrase is often used to refer to executive roles in trusts, to the leadership of Teaching School Hubs and delivery partners for ITT and NPQs. It also stretches to include some with large social media followings. 

Potent incentives hinder real system leadership

But being in a job which is deemed a ‘system leadership’ role does not necessarily mean that those leaders are leading systemically.

Doing that requires leaders to acknowledge our system as complex and adaptive. It demands inter- and trans-institutional leadership. And it challenges us to do that even when it may not be in our own immediate best interests

But potent incentives hinder this. Schools and trusts, for example, are judged on our outcomes, our financial health, our policies and practices. Nothing in our current accountability context acknowledges or requires us to work beyond or outside these. 

As a result, genuine system leadership often entails significant professional and personal risk. We should rightly look to examples of this for inspiration, but also understand that it is reliant on circumstance, leadership and resource.

To deliver its vision of more place-based working, government will need to remove these barriers. Here are three ways to get started:

Review and adapt incentives

Ofsted reform and the proposed balanced scorecard are opportunities to embed greater awareness of (and accountability for) local outcomes.

Ofsted used to evaluate a school’s ‘contribution to community cohesion’ and ‘capacity to improve’. Why not revive these helpful rubrics and combine them into an evaluation of ‘commitment and contribution to local collaboration and community’?

Make it a development goal

All leadership development programmes including NPQs should include the knowledge and skillsto work in this way.

This should encompass the research, examples and need for this type of work, and support the development of the mindsets, skills and behaviours this kind of complex leadership requires.

Avoid deliverology

Much of this work is about relationships, culture and building capacity. These are not easy to put a number on. The Demos report, ‘Liberated public services’ gives a great argument for the use smarter metrics and resistance to the temptation to measure everything.

This week saw the publication of Unfinished Business, a tribute to the late Sir Tim Brighouse. The inspirational launch encouraged us all to ‘Be More Tim’ – i.e. get on with it.

We are, and many others just need more encouragement and support to join us. So go on, Labour: Be More Tim!

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