What matters most in school improvement

With the impending and much-anticipated release of the new UAE school inspection framework, many schools are taking time this summer to consider their improvement strategies.

In recent years, most UAE school improvement strategies have linked to the inspection framework. This makes good sense. The knowledgeable feedback provided as part of the inspection process and structured set of parameters provided a set of guardrails, ensuring that improvement efforts were focused.

Even with this clarity, many schools suffer from “improvement overload,” developing cumbersome lesson-planning frameworks, creating additional reporting mechanisms, and scheduling a wide range of professional learning to “check boxes.” This approach may result in better paperwork but is unlikely to result in improved school performance and student outcomes.

Recent conversations with clients and friends on this topic prompted our team to review what matters most in developing school strategies. We use several frameworks and resources for our work, along our combined 60+ years of experience: Millions Learning (Brookings Institution); Drivers of Student Performance MENA (McKinsey); Creating Communities of Innovation (Harvard Project Zero); How the World’s Most Improved System’s Keep Getting Better (McKinsey); the Play to Win Strategy (Lafely, et al); elements of design thinking; and a few clips of Mo Saleh playing football.

With this research and experience, we have distilled six drivers of high impact school improvement.

Inspiring and clear vision: The strategy must connect to a medium-term vision for the school. Where do stakeholders want to be in a year?

A winning strategy: What are no more than three things the school can do to achieve this vision in a limited time? These need to be:

• Achievable
• Affordable
• Measurable

Clear actions, outcomes, and milestones

Action biased: All improvement initiatives should provide immediate opportunities for engagement and regular review

Stakeholder-driven: All stakeholders (governors, parents, students, teachers, and school leaders) should be able to understand their role in shaping the future of the school.

Supported by the right human and system capabilities: More on that next.

At Mirai, we’re a little obsessed with the human side of change. A “knowing-doing gap” often marks school improvement. All of the strategies in the world won’t help if people aren’t ready for change. The following moves can help to close the “knowing-doing gap”:

• Stakeholders need to see how what they are asked to do is directly related to the strategy.
• They need to be provided with learning to close any gaps in delivering their part of the strategy, for example, using GL data to inform instruction.
• They need to be supported by systems, such as ongoing coaching, to help shape new practices.
• They need to be given time. Focusing on a single area of change will create deeper and more sustained impact.

Case study

We recently worked with a mid-cost American curriculum school to co-design a school improvement strategy using the model below from The Play to Win Strategy.

https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-playing-to-win/

While a good school, known for its strong leadership team, low teacher turnover, and solid results, the school leaders felt they had been on a journey of “initiative overload” and wanted to work more strategically, Beginning with top recommendations from DSIB, we distilled three areas of school improvement that would yield the greatest good for the greatest many. Senior and middle leaders evaluated their current improvement programs for alignment and impact and selected programs to remove, creating space for focused improvement. The senior and middle leaders then assessed stakeholder capabilities that would need to be developed for their winning strategies within the categories of reading and literacy, teaching and learning, and positive education. They devised professional learning cycles to allow sharing internal expertise and knowledge before bringing out outside trainers. They gave up the PD day model to focus on learning within the flow of work (Bersin, 2018), micro-skills building, and coaching. Finally, they established systems to support this strategy, including a modified organization chart, digital ways of collecting data, and school-wide to classroom-level data dashboarding.