Is Britain Broken or Transforming?

Nigel Farage is the only politician to describe Britain as broken according to the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. The Labour Government talks about the many problems they inherited from the Tories. People complain that the NHS, transport, immigration, water, trains, etc are not working. We no longer have a rules-based international order and President Trump causes concern to many people daily. Change is needed – not just for a few people, but for everyone. Can we implement change that creates transformation to a new way of working? Can we get mainstream media to look positively at change, or must it always be a litany of failures and problems?

In the latest SSAT pamphlet – Deep Leadership for Educational Transformation – the focus is on change for the benefit of all young people. The changes need all stakeholders to contribute from their perspective and to be willing to listen to the views of others. The stakeholders must include young people and parents and carers, as well as political parties, employers, charity sector, HE. and FE sector. At SSAT, we believe the changes in the school system must be led by school leaders.

We see the changes as transformative. We recognise that money is scarce, so we must bring together public services together to provide improved services for young people e.g. NHS and schools. The first task is to determine the purpose of education – what do we want from thirteen years of investment in schooling? Schools have been accused of being examination factories. Of course, we want young people to be successful in exams, but how many and what else? The knowledge v skills argument is a distraction – students need both.

They are growing up in a high-tech world, and we are starting to see the impact and challenges of artificial intelligence. AI is not going to go away – it is going to be even more sophisticated. We need young people to recognise reality. This is difficult when we hear senior politicians and administrators in the USA telling us the opposite of what is captured on film or by eyewitnesses.  Schools must challenge their students to solve real-life problems and to recognise reality.

All of this must be done in a time when there is a shortage of teachers and school leaders to drive curriculum innovation and engage students in their own learning. Attendance and behaviour need to improve, and we must reduce the number of NEETs. We believe that local accountability is essential, and now is the time to radically reform Ofsted or abolish it. Stakeholders need to be part of the decision-making and creating a new system. We want intelligent accountability to parents and carers on a more regular basis. The context of schools is critical and there must be variations in delivery models according to locality. This does not mean lowering standards – we believe that every child can succeed.

The pamphlet is a stage in the school improvement story. There is a role for all stakeholders. It is time to come together to debate the changes needed. SSAT believes that school leaders should be a strong voice in identifying and formulating the changes to make our system world class.