Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
For decades, education has faced the same persistent and entrenched challenges. From how to organise our school system, reform the curriculum and qualifications, ensure teacher efficacy, and develop vocational skills- education policy has too many perpetual problems, and too few lasting, high impact solutions.
Policies come and go, much like those who champion them, but in an era of rapid change, one thing is a constant- the desire to improve our country's schools and the outcomes of the pupils that attend them.
Speak to any teacher, support staff, principal or trust leader across the country: their relentless drive to improve pupil outcomes is the golden thread that binds them together.
It’s a collective mission and endeavour.
But the unavoidable truth is that in 2022, still only 59% of pupils leave primary school meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics.
Worse still, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is reportedly at a 10 year high and we’re forced to confront a gaping regional divide- where the proportion of GCSE results at Grade 7 or above in the North East was 22.4%, compared to London’s 32.6%.
While we can bemoan the lack of funding, leadership, political interest or understanding of the reality in schools - genuine grievances affecting the daily lives of teachers and school leaders - it does little to address the immense task at hand.
For all the excellent efforts of high quality research and hard working practice, the harsh reality is we don’t know enough about how to do this at scale.
We simply don’t know what works in every organisation, every school, in every classroom for every pupil- no matter where they grow up or their circumstance.
So today, AET is launching a platform and approach to overcome this: Project H.
The goal is simple- to openly and honestly document AET’s school and network improvement journey- the highs, and the lows, warts and all- as a tool to share and learn with others.
Over the last few years, a number of trusts have launched open source platforms and published their resources. We have seen fantastic leadership from the sector to galvanise a new wave of trust-to-trust and school-to-school learning and development.
But for collaboration to be made a reality, we need to make a collective shift to not just talking about ‘what works’, but reflecting openly on what doesn’t.
Change is constant, but improvement that is sustainable is far less common.
In an era where the educational divide is growing, we need to rapidly increase capacity in the education system to produce successful outcomes, reliably, for different sub-groups of students, being educated by different teachers and in varied school contexts.
So this is AET’s contribution to that cause. It is what our CEO Becks Boomer-Clark means when she talks about ‘system generosity’ - the ethos that Project H is founded on.
But we do this with a deep sense of humility, recognising that AET, while one of the largest trusts in the country, is not the highest performing.
The diverse nature of our schools, from Torquay to Middlesbrough, Bristol to Clacton, is key to unlocking our learning and development as a network. We have schools in all nine Government regions and 26 local authorities- with pockets of excellence, as well as schools that require real support.
This diversity is our real strength- and we believe every school across the country will be able to take something from our approach.
So as we make our organisational shift from turnaround to high performance, we will showcase this journey. All of our schools, regardless of circumstance, will contribute to this project.
We have high ambitions for Project H and we know that it will be a work in progress. As it’s not just a platform, but a way of thinking.
Our mission statement has a deliberate emphasis on mobilising others. This isn’t simply about showcasing AET schools- we are encouraging others to take the same approach.
Our aim is for Project H to be a shared space to explore the interconnected parts of education so that we can bridge the gap between policy and practice. To that end, you will hear from voices across our network and I hope, in time, beyond that.
We’ve set the bar deliberately high. Because if we really want to transform outcomes at scale it requires not just a changed strategy or set of improvement initiatives; instead, a collective mindset shift to discover ‘the art of the possible’.
Over the next few months, we’ll set out more of our thinking about the challenges we want to address and our approach. We will doubtless get things wrong just as often as we get them right, but we are committed to being honest about both- to learn from and rapidly adapt to any failure. And it is that, surely, which will lend to a more open culture in education where we improve at pace - together.
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