Flying in formation

At the heart of school leadership is our desire to continually improve the provision in all our classrooms so that our children receive the best possible teaching. We will have a view of what this teaching and learning looks like and in every school this will look slightly different. We set up our CPD provision to enable teaching staff to receive advice on how their practice can be highly effective and look to provide coaching and mentoring for bespoke individual conversations.

No Silver Bullets 2.0: Heart and Soul of School Improvement’ is published on Monday the 4th March – A guide for your school improvement journey.

What will you read about?

This blog will give leaders a brief explanation of developing consistency in a school. It will consider how the Red Arrows fly in such a tight knit formation and then give a suggestion that the method they use to achieve this could also be used so that all colleagues are involved in quality assuring the consistency of provision from one classroom to the next.

‘No silver bullets: Day in, day out school improvement’ contains 108 strategies to help improve your school or the schools you work with.

A golden thread of teaching and learning

Many schools are developing their golden thread for teaching and learning so consistent methods are being used across their classrooms. In short, this consistency allows children to transition more easily from one classroom to the next and means that teachers are clear on ‘what a good one looks like?’ a WAGOLL.

Both middle and senior leaders can build this consistency through careful monitoring and quality assurance. Constant monitoring and QA by leaders take considerable time. Which in turn means there is not the capacity to move develop the next steps in the improvement journey. Instead, we can be stuck in an endless circle of quality assurance.

So is there another way that we can monitor, QA and encourage the rich conversations between practitioners to ensure our children receive the consistent diet we want them to have?

Small numbers in tight formation

In the world of primary education, most schools are one form entry with approximately nine teachers including the Head and in secondary schools; subject groupings, departments or faculties contain fewer teachers than this.

 Living in Lincolnshire as I look upwards, I see another group that looks to develop excellence and consistency. That is the pilots of the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows aerobatic team. They are considered among the best in the world, and their ability to fly in tight formation with near-perfect precision is a testament to their belief in ‘world class basics.’ 

‘World Class Basics’

One of the key elements of their training is their focus on mastering the basics of flight, including how to maintain their position relative to the nearest other aircraft in the formation. Flying at that speed, pilots cannot be scanning all the planes in their famous v. Instead, each pilot will focus on their immediate neighbours to the left and right and look to carefully manage their position, relative to just two others.

From aerobatics to the classroom 

This is a mechanism that we could easily use in our schools with colleagues using comparative judgement to check their provision with the classrooms nearest or adjacent to them. Each teacher could take a moment to compare their classroom with those next to them and discuss with their colleagues how they could make small adjustments.

All teachers come into work each day, trying to do their best. Often problems arise the through lack of clarity. When school communities work together to agree consistent practice colleagues are then aware of what they need to do. Mutual monitoring of classroom delivery in neighbouring classroom allows teachers to quickly modify their practice and give their best.

Challenges of larger organisations

In my next blog, I will consider how this approach can be extended to larger organisations whether that be schools or Multi-Academy Trusts over multiple sites.

Next steps:

• Discuss with senior leader the concept of a golden thread of teaching and learning.
• Is this clearly established in your school?
• If it isn’t what could it look like in your school?
• How could your colleagues take responsibility for quality assurance?

The Author:

Paul K Ainsworth is an experienced system leader and facilitator. He has supported many schools and leaders that have been in difficult positions which they then have been able to recover from. ‘No Silver Bullets: Day in, day out school improvement’ was published in February 2021, republished in September 2022 and now contains 108 strategies for improving schools.

The sequel ‘No Silver Bullets 2.0: Heart and Soul of School Improvement’ was published in March 2024.

He is the author of Bloomsbury’s, ‘CPD Library: Middle Leadership’,  ‘The Senior Leader’s Yearbook’ from Optimus and six other books. He is well versed in developing Middle leader, Senior Leaders and Trust leaders.

Please contact him via LinkedIn or twitter for more information. He can be commissioned through Infinity Academies Trust.