Why do schools lose their capacity to learn pt.4

This is the fourth and final post in a four-part series exploring why schools lose their capacity to learn. In the first post in this series, I asked why schools that start out genuinely innovative so often drift back toward the very institutional patterns they set out to replace. In the second, I looked at leadership – and noted that the founding principals who get these schools off the ground are, almost by design, gone before the second decade begins. In the third, I named trust as the missing ingredient that determines whether what they started endures. This final post is about what has to exist underneath leadership and trust, holding them in place once the people who built them have moved on. I want to call that stewardship.

Stewarding Innovation

Think about this for a moment. Somewhere, right now, a founding principal who is five or six years into a school they built from nothing, is starting to wonder who’s going to carry it once they’re gone. Somewhere else, a Minister is signing off on a new school’s establishment plan, satisfied that the hard part – the commissioning – is done. Neither of them is wrong about what’s in front of them. But both of them are working to a clock that has nothing to do with how long the thing they’re building actually needs to survive.

That’s the mismatch I want to end this series on. An establishment principal’s tenure may run for five or six years. A government’s runs three, if it’s lucky. A board’s runs in three-year cycles as well, and turns over one-third of itself most years. An ERO review cycle can be shorter still. And the culture of a school – the thing that actually determines whether an innovation is still recognisably itself twenty years on – takes a generation to either take root or rot. Nothing in that list is built on the same timescale as the thing it’s meant to be protecting.

Schools, obviously, are not civilisations, in the sense that was the focus of Toynbee’s work introduced in my first post. I’m not suggesting they are. But they are social systems, built by people, sustained by culture, and shaped by the stories they tell themselves about why they exist. And social systems, it seems, are susceptible to a version of the same dynamic.

And here’s where I think Toynbee has something to offer beyond the metaphor. His argument, stripped to its essentials, is this: civilisations rise because they respond creatively to the challenges they face. And they begin to decline not when the challenges become too great, but when they stop generating new responses – when they fall back, instead, on whatever worked last time. He has a phrase for this that I came across while reading his work: “the tendency of a society to start worshipping its former self, mistaking the response that once succeeded for a truth that will always succeed.”

History suggests that simply designing and establishing innovative new schools isn’t enough. Every generation seems to rediscover this for itself, convinced it has finally found the model that will solve schooling once and for all. Progressive schools. Open-plan schools. MLEs and ILEs. Charter schools. Online schools. Each wave has produced genuinely valuable innovation – I don’t want to be cynical about that. But none of them remained innovative simply by virtue of the design itself. What determined whether the innovation lasted was whether the school ever developed the capacity to keep adapting – whether it built a culture that could go on responding creatively, long after the founders had moved on.

Which is, of course, where Toynbee’s work on civilisations and the work of Peter Senge, Margaret Wheatley, and Edgar Schein on organisations start to converge on the same conclusion, arrived at from entirely different centuries: resilience was never really about the brilliance of the original response. It was about whether the system retained the capacity to remain responsive.

The real challenge isn’t innovation

Innovation isn’t a destination you arrive at and then occupy. It’s better understood as an expression of something deeper: organisational learning, sustained over time. Which means the graphic (below) I introduced earlier in this series is worth returning to – not as a sequence of phases a school passes through and leaves behind, but as two modes a mature organisation learns to hold at once.

Understanding how to hold these two things in tension and ensure they are being given attention through the life cycle of the organisation is, perhaps, one of the greatest challenges for leaders – and boards – as they seek to establish and sustain an organisation that remains true to its vision. This is what I mean by stewardship.

The timescale problem

It’s worth being precise about what stewardship is answering, because it isn’t really a leadership virtue. Leadership is a question about capability – does this person have what it takes to keep the innovation alive? Stewardship is a question about time – what happens when the person who has what it takes is no longer there?

Every structure (e.g. leadership, governance, evaluation etc.) we currently use to support new schools is scaled to the term of whoever is in charge of it. A startup principal is given roughly half a decade to build something before the natural churn of the profession moves them on. A government invests political capital in a new school’s founding for as long as it remains politically useful to do so – which is rarely longer than an electoral cycle. A board governs in three-year terms, and each new intake inherits a vision it did not build and may not fully understand. None of these are failures of commitment. They’re simply timescales borrowed from elsewhere – from careers, from elections, from governance conventions – and none of them was designed with a generation in mind.

This is precisely the gap that te ao Māori has a word for that English doesn’t: kaitiakitanga. Not ownership, and not management in the neutral, administrative sense – but the obligation to care for something on behalf of those who come after you, knowing you may never see it reach maturity yourself. A kaitiaki doesn’t ask “will this still be here on my watch?” They ask “will this still be here for the grandchildren of the people who aren’t born yet?” That’s a genuinely different question, and it’s the one our current structures for supporting school innovation don’t know how to ask.

Which is why I don’t think the answer to the timescale problem is simply better leaders, or even more trust, though the last two posts in this series argued both matter enormously. The answer has to be structural. If the person accountable for whether an innovation survives is always someone whose own tenure will end well before the answer is known, then survival can never be anyone’s actual responsibility – it will always be the next person’s problem, and the person after that, until eventually no one is holding it at all. Stewardship is what you build when you stop pretending any one leader, any one government, any one board term, can be trusted to carry something this slow on their own.

From commissioning to stewarding

Whether it’s a greenfields school or an approved charter, governments and ministries invest heavily in getting a new school open – legislative frameworks, proposal assessment, governance appointments, funding, facilities. This commissioning role matters. It’s what creates the conditions for a distinctive vision to exist at all. I’m very concerned about where we’re at in NZ with this part of the process at the moment, where efficiency and short-termism seems to be the drivers for the way new schools are commissioned.

But once a school is open, it largely disappears into the mainstream system. The initial advantage of starting with small class sizes, large space, access to ‘start-up’ funding and specialist support give way to operating within the same funding mechanisms, same accountability frameworks, same review processes as every other school. The implicit assumption is that having been launched well, it will go on fulfilling its original promise unassisted. Nothing in the system is actually watching for whether it does.

That’s the gap stewardship has to fill. Commissioning has processes, budgets, and named roles. Stewardship, in most systems I’ve seen, has none of these – it survives only for as long as an individual champion happens to care. I’ve been involved in enough of these new school startups to have experienced this first hand.

Recall the two clocks from the timescale problem above – the political and professional one, and the generational one a school’s culture actually runs on. Closing that gap means action on both fronts:

If you’re a system leader:

Plan succession for vision, not just for personnel – treat the loss of institutional memory when a founding principal leaves as a system-level risk, not a school’s private misfortune.
Build the cross-school networks that let learning travel sideways, so it doesn’t depend on any one person carrying it forward.
Review these schools by a different question than the one you use for everyone else: not “has it stayed faithful to its founding model,” but “is it still generating knowledge, still experimenting, still capable of a new response to a new challenge.”

If you’re a school or board leader:

Put stewardship on the board’s calendar. Make it a standing agenda item, not a crisis response.
Find one practice your school has been defending rather than examining, and reopen it.
Name – now, not when the founding principal announces they’re leaving – who is responsible for keeping the imagine if question alive.

Both lists are really the same instruction, aimed at the two clocks named above. Both argue to stop treating stewardship as something that will happen if the right person stays long enough, and start building it as something that survives whoever’s currently in the room.

Looking ahead

Over the years I’ve become convinced that the ultimate measure of an innovative school is not the originality of its founding vision, nor the attractiveness of its buildings, nor even the success of its first few years.

It is whether, twenty years later, it still possesses the confidence, curiosity and collective capability to respond creatively to the challenges of its own time.

In a world where educational policy, technology and community expectations continue to evolve, perhaps the question for every school leader is no longer:

“How do we build an innovative school?”

but rather:

“How do we cultivate a school that never loses its capacity to learn?”

So here is what I would ask of educators, whether you are a board member, a principal, or someone shaping education policy. Don’t wait for the five- or six-year mark to ask the question I have been circling throughout this piece. Ask it now, whatever phase your school is in.

If you are still dreaming or designing, build the capacity for renewal into the foundations. Write it into your vision documents not as an aspiration but as a discipline, and name, now, who will be responsible for keeping the question what if alive once the building is finished and the roll is full.

If you suspect your school has settled into protecting what it built, take the phase table back to your next board or leadership meeting and ask, honestly: are we still experimenting, or are we simply managing what we already made? Name one practice, routine or policy the school has been defending rather than examining, and put it up for genuine reconsideration.

And wherever you lead, go looking this week for one place where trust has quietly narrowed into compliance, one place where “we’ve always done it this way” has become the answer rather than the beginning of a question. Then ask what it would take to reopen it.

Challenge creates innovation. Success creates stability. Stability can become institutionalisation. Renewal restores the capacity to respond creatively. Learning organisations are organisations that make renewal a permanent capability.

Tags education leadership, educational change, educational transformation, school leadership

Why do schools lose their capacity to learn? pt.2

This is the second in a four-part series exploring why schools lose their capacity to learn. In the first post, I explored a pattern I’ve watched play out again and again over the two decades I’ve spent working alongside schools built to do things differently. However genuinely innovative their founding vision, so many gradually lose the capacity to keep learning, and drift back toward the very institutional patterns they set out to replace. It’s not a failure of nerve, and it’s rarely a failure of the original idea. Something else is going on. In this post, I want to look closely at one part of that story – the critical role leadership plays, both in getting these schools off the ground, and in determining whether they ever find a way of scaling and sustaining the innovation they began with.

The importance of leadership

So why do organisations that were created to challenge established ways of thinking so often find themselves becoming established institutions themselves? It’s a question that’s followed me through every school I’ve helped establish over the years, and while I don’t think there’s a single answer, I’ve come to believe leadership sits close to the heart of it.

The leadership challenge isn’t simply starting something innovative; it’s knowing how to lead differently as the organisation evolves without losing its capacity to experiment and learn.

I’ve started to think about the schools I’ve helped establish in terms of phases – not as a rigid model, but as a rough map of the terrain I’ve watched schools travel through. Reflecting on this (and using the inspiration from Toynbee’s work as introduced in my previous post) I’ve created an image to try and illustrate shown below. In this diagram the phases are named across the top of each section and the associated leadership style at the bottom.

The more I’ve reflected on this, the more I’ve come to understand that the issue isn’t simply whether a leader is “innovative”. Different phases of a school’s development call for different leadership dispositions. In the illustration above I’ve identified six different approaches to leadership that are matched to the six phases of the development life-cycle.

It takes a visionary leader to get things started – to keep an eye on the big picture and bring others on board with that vision, but as the work of establishing the school begins, the leadership style must shift more to an entrepreneurial one as the focus must move to the execution of the vision that has been created.

I’d note here that these aren’t necessarily roles occupied by different people – or by the principal alone. Consider, for example, where do you see visionary leadership among your teachers? Who are the entrepreneurs in your staff?

As the school continues to grow and the underpinning processes and supports have been successfully put in place, the challenge becomes how to respond to the pressures of roll growth and new staff – so the leadership needs to be more adaptive as some of the things put in place to work with the original (often small) group of students, staff and community need to be expanded and to accommodate needs that may not have been previously considered.

This transition can be difficult for some, and may explain why, in so many cases, the establishment principals of many of these new schools move on after 5-6 years in the role. It isn’t because they are poor leaders – it’s simply that their core strengths as visionaries and/or entrepreneurs, while valuable in the start-up phase, will no longer serve them well as the organisation grows and matures.

Once things have settled into what may be considered as ‘normal’ for the new organisation, the leadership must become focused on scaling and sustaining the innovation that was started, and ensuring the school operates effectively as a learning organisation. The key to this is a collaborative leadership style, that recognises the strengths of the team and power of networks to help shape practice. Any form of ‘hero’ or ‘iconic’ leadership at this stage will result in the leader becoming overwhelmed and burned out, and members of the organisation feeling disempowered and lacking opportunity to contribute or participate in the changes taking place.

For me, this is the critical phase of leadership. Collaborative leaders are able to manage their role effectively by the agency they provide their staff, with various forms of distributed leadership evident in the way things operate. Collaborative leaders also recognise the importance of networks. They are active in professional learning groups and encourage staff to do the same – whether in person or virtual. They (and their teams) are constantly scanning the environment, subscribing to various forums and newsletters to remain informed about where innovation is occurring in the sector.

Consider where this happens in your context, for example. Who notices that something isn’t working and experiments with another approach? Who connects the school to ideas and practice beyond its walls?

Crucially, this doesn’t mean the visionary and entrepreneurial impulses get retired once collaborative leadership takes hold. The best collaborative leaders I’ve observed make a point of keeping those impulses alive somewhere in the organisation – sometimes in themselves, more often by deliberately creating space for others to hold them. It’s less a changing of the guard than a redistribution.

What happens when leaders & teachers become the custodians of “the way we do things here”?

At this point things can change markedly. If an organisation can maintain people within it who are the visionaries, entrepreneurs, adaptors and collaborators, it is more likely to succeed as a learning organisation and successfully navigate the complexities of change that will inevitably be encountered.

Sadly, this is also where I’ve seen some schools default to what I’ve labelled a managerial mindset. At this point I need to emphasise that I’m not suggesting we don’t need good managers. Good management is essential to embedding and sustaining innovation. The problem isn’t management; it’s when management becomes the dominant leadership response to a changing environment. Where this is the case maintaining established systems and structures dominates any open-ness to change.

This is what I referred to as the ‘decision point’ in the illustration in my previous post. This is the point at which a school can either continue to treat itself as a learning organisation, or begin to protect what it has established.

What becomes important for some at this point is the preservation of what has been put in place. The idea of establishing and maintaining ‘traditions’ can appeal as a way of building loyalty and a sense of belonging (which, one could argue, has its place) – but often these traditions can also act as a hinderance or roadblock to change that may be important to pursue. (Consider here the challenges face by some single sex schools when the idea of becoming co-ed is introduced, or when a suggestion is made to abolish long-established ‘departments’, for example, in favour of some other staffing structure that is better suited to the needs of the students and/or curriculum).

The longer the manager-leadership style continues, the more likely then that we see the emergence of the defensive leader – whose priority is to defend the status quo, and to actively resist change. In fact, change is often used as the reason to excuse poor performance. Often, a defensive leader will feel they are ‘trapped’ with few options as the relentlessness of change cascades upon them, and they lack the network of support and understanding that the collaborative leader encourages for example.

This has particularly important implications at a time where we see a plethora of leadership development programmes emerging – the question I’d be asking is “Are we preparing leaders to lead schools at different stages of development – or simply preparing people to occupy leadership positions?”

To summarise how these approaches differ I’ve created the table below:

The six leadership dispositions across the life of a school

Disposition	Core Focus	Risk Profile	Relationship to Change	Working Style
The Visionary	Imagining big, new concepts and long-term changes	Intellectual risk: Risks being misunderstood	Future-focused: Driven by what could be	Big-picture thinker: Ignores small details for the ultimate goal
The Entrepreneur	Turning ideas into real, working businesses	Risk-taker: Puts personal time and money on the line	Problem-solver: Adapts fast when things go wrong	Action-driven: Focuses entirely on tangible execution
The Adaptive	Continuous improvement and fluid execution	Calculated risk: Experiments with new workflows	Highly responsive: Constantly reacts to internal/external shifts	Flexible: Refuses to get locked into a set way of working
The Collaborative	Collective intelligence and horizontal networks	Shared risk: Relies on group buy-in	Network-driven: Uses shared learning to navigate transitions	Involving: Scans external practice and involves others to learn
The Manager	Rules, plans, and steady daily work	Risk-averse: Works to keep things safe and avoid losses	Stability-focused: Preserves current functional systems	Organiser: Directs people and tasks to make systems run well
The Defensive	Status quo preservation and personal comfort	Risk-phobic: Minimises personal exposure	Resistant: Looks for ways to avoid or stop change happening	Obstructive: Uses top-down, imposed change as an excuse

In my representation of the phases I see the first four phases of development and leadership as being a ‘healthy’ development and one we should be intentionally seeking to encourage and nurture through the leadership programmes available in our sector. Sadly, I don’t see this being the case – there’s too much simply left to chance at a system level and many school leaders (i.e. principals already in the role and senior leaders who may be aspiring to those roles) left to navigate their own way through this maze of decision making etc.

The fortunate ones may have been mentored by effective leaders in the past and experienced the sorts of collaborative and responsive approaches that are necessary. But there are those who have missed this experience and suddenly find themselves in a position of leadership without the broad range of knowledge and skills required to make them effective in any of the first four approaches outlined above – and in worst case scenario, start their role by adopting a managerial approach.

The education half-life of schools

The tragedy, as I see it, is that so many schools get stuck in that fifth phase – managing and protecting what was built rather than continuing to build. Every educational innovation, I’ve come to believe, has a half-life. Not because the original idea was wrong, but because the problem it was designed to solve doesn’t stay still. Schools don’t become less innovative because their founding vision was flawed. They become less innovative when a vision that once answered a real question keeps being applied to questions it was never designed for. That is, new questions – not the original question.

As I worked to develop this table it occurred to me that what I’ve seen happening in these new schools as they grow and respond to change is that one of two things occurs. Either the original visionary or entrepreneurial leader moves on to another ‘startup’ challenge, handing the reins to another leader chosen because of their ability to advance things to the next level of organisational maturity. Or, the original leader continues in the role but is able to change the way in which they lead. These leaders are the ones that succeed in scaling and sustaining the innovative practices that were there in the beginning, but are agile in their approach to establishing the organisational systems and processes to avoid them becoming locked into something that can’t be changed.

Before I am accused of making too broad a generalisation here I need to acknowledge that there are schools I’m aware of that haven’t followed this pattern. In these schools I’ve observed the principal and senior leadership demonstrate the ability to shift their leadership focus and approach to successfully navigate the next phase of the school’s development. It’s this recurring pattern that intrigues me most: leading a well-established school is a genuinely different challenge to leading a new one. One isn’t better than the other – they simply require different strengths.

The Real Challenge Isn’t Innovation

Innovations don’t necessarily fail. Sometimes they simply outlive the question they were designed to answer.

The challenge then isn’t building an innovative school. I’ve shown, throughout this piece, that a visionary and an entrepreneur can do that. Give a group of committed educators a clear philosophy, a blank site, and a bit of room to move, and something genuinely new will emerge. That part is the easy part.

The harder challenge – the one that actually determines whether any of it lasts – is leadership that keeps learning long after the founding vision has been realised. Innovation isn’t a destination a leader arrives at and then occupies. Transformation isn’t a programme a leader runs once and rolls out. Both are better understood as an ongoing leadership discipline – keeping the organisation’s capacity to learn alive, deliberately, over time.

Pathways, not a sequence

At this point it’s worth returning to the table from earlier, because I think it points somewhere different when you read it a second time – not as a sequence of phases a leader passes through and leaves behind, but as two modes of leadership a mature leader learns to hold at once. I’ve attempted to illustrate this below:

And here’s the point I think matters most – this isn’t a sequence. It’s not that a leader runs the left-hand column for a few years and then graduates to the right, retiring the visionary and the entrepreneur along the way. It’s a constant weave, and what distinguishes the leaders who sustain it is that they’ve learned to hold both columns at once – they don’t stop experimenting once they start embedding and scaling, they get better at experimenting, precisely because they’ve learned how to learn from what they try.

That’s really what a culture of experimentation means, in practice. It’s an ongoing willingness to take risks, to treat failure as information rather than embarrassment, and to keep asking “what if” even once the systems and processes that made the school work are firmly in place. The danger isn’t that a school stops innovating on some identifiable date. It’s quieter than that – it’s that the systems built to embed and scale the early innovations gradually harden into the very things that make asking “what if” feel risky, or irrelevant, or someone else’s job.

There’s a really important distinction to be made here between embedding innovation (i.e. making successful practice easier, more sustainable and less dependent on individuals), and institutionalising innovation (i.e.turning something that once solved a problem into a fixed way of doing things.)

A school that’s stopped experimenting rarely notices the moment it happened. It just notices, years later, that no one’s asking the question anymore. Which is, in the end, a leadership choice as much as a cultural one – and perhaps the clearest marker of the leaders who make the whole arc, from dreaming through to a mature, sustaining organisation, actually work.

A final thought

Having presented my thoughts based on the observations I’ve made over the past couple of decades, I want to suggest a revision to the original illustration of the six phases I introduced earlier.

The six phases remain useful for describing the different leadership dispositions I’ve observed, but presented as a sequence they can imply an inevitability to the journey – that schools move from vision and innovation towards management and, ultimately, defending the status quo. But that needn’t be the case.

As I’ve argued in the previous section, effective leadership must hold the tension between the dispositions that are important in the early stages of a school’s development and those that become increasingly important as the organisation matures. The challenge is not to move from one set of dispositions to another, but to find ways of keeping them alive and in productive tension.

Again I argue that the key lies in creating a culture of experimentation – one where established practices are continually examined rather than simply protected; where reflection leads to adjustment; and where there is an ongoing willingness to try, learn and adopt new approaches when circumstances demand it. In other words, the goal is not simply to sustain the organisation we have built, but to sustain the school’s capacity to learn.

The illustration below is therefore not intended to replace the six phases, but to offer another way of seeing them. I’ve condensed the six into three overarching themes: the start-up phase (starting something); the growth phase (growing something); and the sustaining phase (keeping something alive). Each brings together two of the leadership dispositions identified in the earlier illustration.

Importantly, I don’t see these as three steps that a school simply moves through. Rather, they represent three ongoing leadership challenges that need to be held together if a school is to remain capable of learning, adapting and renewing itself.

Seen this way, the sustaining phase takes on a rather different meaning. It is not the point at which innovation gives way to management, and ultimately to defending the status quo. It is the point at which the real leadership challenge begins: how do we sustain what we have built while continuing to question whether it is still what our learners and our community need?

This requires holding a productive tension between two impulses. One is the need to manage well – to establish systems, embed effective practice, provide consistency and ensure that the organisation functions effectively. The other is the need to keep experimenting – to remain curious, to notice when something is no longer working as well as it once did, and to be willing to try something different.

The danger comes when the first impulse overwhelms the second. What was established to support innovation can gradually become something that is protected from challenge. Practices that were once experimental become “the way we do things here”; systems designed to make things work become reasons for not changing them; and the organisation’s capacity to learn begins to diminish.

The alternative is not perpetual change for its own sake. It is a culture in which embedding and experimenting coexist – where we are prepared to hold on to what works while remaining willing to ask whether it could work better, or whether changing circumstances call for something different.

That, for me, is the real meaning of sustaining. We aren’t simply sustaining the school we have built. We are sustaining its capacity to learn, adapt and renew itself.

Perhaps this is what distinguishes schools that remain learning organisations from those that become institutionalised. The former don’t abandon stability, systems or established practice. They simply refuse to let those things become the end of the story.

The question for leadership is therefore not, “How do we stop things changing?” or even, “How do we keep innovating?” It is: “How do we create the conditions in which a school can be both well established and continually learning?”

Reflect

If there’s one thing this piece has tried to argue, it’s that leadership itself needs to keep learning. That the skills which get a school off the ground aren’t the ones that sustain it, and that the leaders who last are the ones who never quite retire the visionary and the entrepreneur, even as they grow into something more collaborative.

So before moving to the next part of this series – where I want to look at what schools themselves can do to guard against decline – it’s worth pausing on your own leadership, wherever you sit in an organisation. Use the following questions as a starting point:

What are we protecting that was originally created to help us learn?”
What are we doing today because it still serves our learners – and what are we doing simply because it has become the way we do things?
Is there a “what if” question your school has quietly stopped asking? Who would need to ask it again?
What needs to change so that we hold ‘both columns at once’ in the leadership in our school?

None of these have comfortable answers. But that discomfort is probably the point – it’s the same “keeping learning” this whole piece has been arguing for, just aimed inward instead of at the organisation.

[Confession time: the illustrations in this post were created with the help of AI after experimenting with several prompts and further work in CANVA]

Tags education leadership, educational change, educational transformation

System Persistence

This post is taken from some thinking I’ve been doing as I begin to construct my next ‘thought piece’. The motivation comes from reflecting on many years of effort in our education system to address many systemic issues that create pressure on schools, educators – and ultimately impact on the quality of educational experience of our tāmariki. As I’ve been working again in schools as yet another school year begins and witness the anxiety, confusion and frustration being expressed in so many places, I’ve been pondering again the challenge of the ‘revolution vs evolution’ argument re system change, and the extent to which system persistence represents a significant barrier to meaningful education reform.

Beyond Reform: The Case for Transformation

Our education system is not broken – it is functioning exactly as it was designed. This is precisely the problem. Created in an industrial era to produce standardised outcomes, sort learners into predetermined categories, and maintain existing social structures, the system continues to fulfil its original purpose with ruthless efficiency. The issue is not that the system needs improvement or reform – it needs complete transformation.

When we frame the challenge as one of “reform” or “improvement,” we perpetuate the fundamental misconception that the current system’s basic premises are sound. We cannot simply enhance a system designed for a bygone era with different societal needs, values, and understanding of human potential.

The Current Reality

Our education system stands at a critical juncture. Despite promises of reform and declarations of intent to create an inclusive, learner-centred system, we remain tethered to outdated paradigms that fail our tamariki and rangatahi. The statistics tell a stark story, particularly for Māori and Pasifika youth, whose disproportionate rates of academic failure, depression and suicide attempts reveal the human cost of our systematic shortcomings.

When you consider the current changes in education being made in New Zealand – and around the world – they reflect the ‘reform and improvement’ mindset, rather than transformation (with a few significant exceptions). Concerns about falling literacy and numeracy rates are being addressed by initiatives aimed at improving the way maths and reading are taught – and assessed. Solutions for poor attendance are seen as involving a range of measures to get students back to school, and difficulties with attracting and retaining suitably qualified teachers are being addressed through lowering entry standards and time for training. We continue to seek improvement without seriously challenging many of the assumptions upon which our current system is based.

Learning from Past Reform Efforts

The history of education reform in recent years in Aotearoa New Zealand provides compelling evidence for why transformation, rather than reform, is essential. Consider these examples:

Initiative	What was Promised	Shortcomings
Tomorrow’s Schools (1989)	Increased local autonomy and community involvement in school governance Improved educational opportunities and achievement for disadvantaged groups, particularly Māori children and those from low-income homes More efficient and less bureaucratic administration of schools Enhanced home-school partnerships Better targeted resource allocation to schools	Greater competition Wide variability in performance both between and within schools Widened gaps between communities – greater inequities Increased administrative burden Uneven outcomes between schools over time Reinvention of the wheel in many schools without overall system improvement
NZ Curriculum (2007)	A vision for young people as lifelong learners who are confident, creative, connected, and actively involved A curriculum that reflects New Zealand’s cultural diversity and values the histories and traditions of all its people Capabilities alongside content Flexibility for local contexts “Learner-centred” pedagogy	Emphasis on the ‘back half’ only Achievement objectives dominate planning Significant reduction in prescribed content compared to previous curricula, potentially leading to knowledge gaps Overemphasis on preparing students for workplaces at the expense of broader educational goals Concerns about a decline in academic achievement and persistent disparities between advantaged and disadvantaged students
Kahui Ako (Communities of Learning)	Develop collective responses to local challenges Build professional capability through collaboration Focus on student achievement challenges Create pathways across education levels Enable smoother transitions for learners between schools	Achievement challenges often became compliance exercises Leadership roles sometimes created tension within and between schools Bureaucratic requirements overshadowed genuine collaboration Time and resource constraints limited meaningful engagement Artificial groupings that didn’t always reflect natural communities Funding model reinforced hierarchical rather than collaborative relationships
Ka Hikitia	Māori achieving success as Māori Building cultural responsiveness System-wide change for equity	Focus on activities rather than deep change Limited impact of core teaching practices Overburdened Māori staff – system barriers
NCEA	Recognition of diverse forms of learning Promoting lifelong learning competencies Recognising success as progression	Schools continued to translate achievement standards into traditional numerical grades The focus shifted to credit accumulation rather than genuine learning progression Assessment became more granular and bureaucratic, rather than holistic The system’s flexibility became viewed as a weakness rather than a strength Its potential for recognising diverse forms of achievement was largely unrealised
Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs)	Fostering creativity, collaboration and student-centred learning Intentional linking of pedagogy and space	Adoption of physical changes without transforming pedagogical approaches Teachers were expected to work in new spaces without adequate professional development in new ways of teaching Traditional timetabling, curriculum delivery, and assessment practices remained unchanged Tension between innovative spaces and conventional practices leading to frustration and calls to return to single-cell classrooms
Modern Learning Practice (MLP)	Learner-centred approaches Project/problem-based learning Digital integration, collaborative teaching Flexible learning pathways	Technology being used to replicate traditional practices Collaborative teaching hindered by traditional timetabling Assessment requirements limiting innovation Professional development not matching ambition Parent resistance to unfamiliar approaches
National Standards (2010 – 2017)	Clear expectations of achievement Better information for parents and whānau Earlier identification of learning needs Ability to target resourcing to areas of need based on data	A narrowed curriculum focus Increased testing and labelling Contradictions with NZ Curriculum’s flexibility Creating artificial benchmarks Damaging student confidence and motivation

As illustrated in the table above, each of these large-scale, system-change initiatives has been introduced with the best of intentions, with promises made of delivering positive change that addresses identified areas of need that will ultimately benefit the learners we are seeking to serve. The column titled ‘shortcomings’ illustrates that, despite these best intentions, and the fact that there are unquestioningly many benefits that have been gained from them, the scale of impact that may have been achieved has not been fully realised – certainly not in a sustainable manner.

Structural Persistence

A key reason for these shortcomings existing is the issue of structural persistence – the deep-rooted tendency of educational institutions and broader educational systems to maintain their fundamental structures despite reform efforts.

At the school level, this manifests through the unwavering adherence to traditional organisational elements that have defined schools for generations. The rigid timetable structure, with its fixed periods and subject-based divisions, continues to dictate the rhythm of learning, leaving little room for more flexible, integrated approaches. Similarly, the classification of students by age into year levels persists, even when evidence suggests that ability-based or mixed-age groupings might better serve learning needs.

Equally significant are the system-wide structures that resist change: standardised funding models that perpetuate resource inequities, inflexible teacher accreditation systems that may not recognise diverse forms of expertise or emerging pedagogical approaches, and policy frameworks that struggle to adapt to rapidly evolving societal needs and technological possibilities. These entrenched structures at both levels – institutional and systemic – create a complex web of resistance to meaningful change.

Traditional approaches to assessment represent another critical aspect of system persistence. Despite calls for more authentic evaluation approaches, standardised testing and summative assessments continue to dominate educational practice. These assessment structures often drive teaching methodologies backward, encouraging educators to “teach to the test” rather than embrace innovative pedagogical approaches. This assessment-driven culture reinforces conventional teaching methods and can stifle attempts to implement more progressive, student-centred learning experiences.

Perhaps most significantly, system persistence manifests in the maintenance of existing power relationships within educational institutions. Traditional hierarchies between officials, leaders, teachers, and students remain largely unchanged, with decision-making power concentrated at the top. This power structure can resist bottom-up innovation and limit the agency of both teachers and students in shaping their educational experience. When combined with entrenched structural practices, these power dynamics create a self-reinforcing system that naturally resists substantial change.

Where to from here?

Over the next few weeks I intend to continue exploring this thinking and in my next post I’ll write about three more things I see as contributing to reform failure: (a) Implementation gaps, (b) cultural resistance and (c) system contradictions. I’m also building a set of ideas and actions that may be useful for people at any level of our education system to become more thoughtful about the need for transformation in the work they do.

In this post I’ve attempted to develop a compelling argument for transformation over reform in education, highlighting the persistent structures and shortcomings of past initiatives. Here are some questions you might like to ponder and discuss with your colleagues as you think about what I’ve written…

“In what ways might the deeply ingrained power dynamics within educational institutions – from national agencies to classrooms – be the most significant barrier to transformative change? What strategies can be employed to redistribute decision-making power and empower teachers and students to shape their educational experiences more fully?”
“Given the history of well-intentioned but ultimately limited reforms in Aotearoa New Zealand, how can educators and policymakers move beyond incremental changes to address the core structural issues that perpetuate inequities – in particular for Māori and Pasifika youth?”
“Reflecting on the persistence of traditional structures like rigid timetables and age-based groupings in schools, what innovative, practical steps can you take in your context to foster more flexible, learner-centred environments within the existing system, even while advocating for broader systemic change?”

Tags education leadership, educational change, educational transformation, school leadership

Leading for Transformation

One of the amazing things was how well this group from across a range of sectors and experience levels in leadership just came together and supported each other a grew together.
2024 Programme Participant

Around this time last year I caught up with friend and colleague, Maurie Abraham, who had recently retired after 11 years as foundation principal at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. Maurie was keen to canvas some thoughts on how he might work with a small group of principals who were keen to engage with him now that he’d retired, to learn more about how they might develop further in their leadership journey.

During our conversation we discussed how principals have access to a wide range of professional learning opportunities that fall broadly into the following areas of focus:

Maintaining – Developing the ‘mechanics’ of principalship – understanding their role as leaders of organisations. Equipping them with the knowledge and skills required to function as a leader in the school as it exists, ensuring they can manage and sustain current practices that focus on providing a quality education experience for their students. These programmes assume the system is operating effectively and focus on inducting leaders into understanding how to sustain it.
Improving – Recognising the need to make changes that address areas of weakness or concern in what is happening (e.g, student motivation and engagement, achievement in identified areas, attendance, the capability of staff etc.) and introducing specific strategies to change/lift performance and monitor outcomes. These programmes operate on the assumption that the current organisational structures are fit for purpose, but that there are areas where the school system should or could be adapted, modified or improved to deliver on better outcomes for all learners.
Transforming – Questioning the systemic factors that shape how schools operate, and unpacking the reason and purpose behind these things. Involves connecting with the ‘why’ behind what is being done currently and being prepared to challenge and change these things. Recognising that simply improving things won’t achieve the systemic change required to achieve an equitable, future-focused approach to teaching and learning for all. These programmes require a high level of commitment, buy-in and trust and support for pushing the boundaries to make change happen.

The image below provides a more simplified way of thinking about this relationship…

Maurie and I agree that there is value in all three of these approaches, but that while there are many opportunities available for school leaders to engage in the first two types of professional learning – there are far fewer in the third, and that of these, few are designed to fully support the transformation actually happening back in schools. This is because such change initiatives will inevitably encounter all sorts of roadblocks and challenges, causing leaders to loop back to the things addressed in the ‘maintaining’ or ‘improving’ approaches.

We talked about the approach that would be most appropriate for achieving the sort of transformational change that we were discussing I referred to the research-based principles I’ve referenced previously in which I identified following four characteristics of effective professional development:

It is in-depth

It is sustained over time

It is related to practice

It is contextually relevant

With these principles in mind, we set about designing an experience for school leaders with a vision for transformation within their school and the education system. As we explored this further we agreed that whatever we did needed to address the needs of participants at three levels:

Changing themselves – helping participants understand what motivates and drives them as a leader, the beliefs that shape their practice and the strategies they have to care for self in the midst of a challenging and demanding role.
Changing others – learning how to build trust so that others will be motivated to engage with and contribute to the change. Providing support for individuals while building a sense of collective ownership around an agreed direction and purpose.
Changing the environment – developing a ‘system mindset’ – understanding the school as a system and as part of a wider system, and the ‘connectedness’ between various parts of the system. Understanding how change made in one area will inevitably impact other areas.

(Astute readers will recognise this framework from our Agency By Design playbook)

And so the foundation for a programme we’ve called “Refresh, Reconnect, Refocus” was laid, and over the next few weeks we worked to design the elements of the programme and advertise it among our networks to see if we might find a group of principals willing to participate. The rest is history – the initial programme began with a retreat held at Hanmer Springs in March of this year, concluding with a day of celebration in July where participants were able to share the changes they’d achieved in their local contexts.

The programme we designed, as described on our web page, was spread over a period of 20 weeks, beginning with the retreat where relationships were formed, key themes and ideas explored, and tools to guide further action introduced. Over the following 20 weeks participants were involved in regular one-on-one coaching sessions with Maurie and I, ongoing contact with a participant ‘buddy’, and periodic group sessions where they could engage with international experts in different aspects of educational transformation. The programme concluded with the ‘celebration’ event where each participant shared what had been achieved in their personal context.

Sarah Martin was one of the participants in our 2024 cohort. Sarah has been principal at Stonefields School in Auckland for more than a decade, and she had this to say about her experience of the programme and how these elements wove together to help shift her practice and thinking as a school leader:

Much of what Sarah says here is captured by the feedback received by another of our participants in this year’s programme:

“It’s not often that you will find a professional learning programme that reignites your leadership fire for education! As well as being supported and encouraged throughout the six months; I feel like I have had an over-qualified cheerleader working alongside me! This programme offers all the good stuff: a retreat but guilt-free workshop, a new network, practical and tested ideas for leadership, future of education insights, 1:1 coaching, ongoing peer support and bite size professional learning invites – all with just the right amount for busy Principals to engage with.“

Weaving all of these things together to provide the right balance of personal reflection and growth alongside developing the capacity and capability to lead change lay at the heart of our programme design, and lies behind choosing the name ‘Refresh, Reconnect, Refocus“.

As we suspected, the importance of maintaining a purposeful, supportive connection with and between participants during the 20-week period proved to be a key element of the programme. This is highlighted well in the feedback from another 2024 participant, Dyane Stokes who is at the start of her principalship journey at Paparoa Street School in Christchurch:

Each of these participant views highlight the success, for them, of the programme design and how this has helped them in their personal and professional motivation to achieve the goals they have for their schools, their staff and their students – and for themselves as leaders.

Throughout the process Maurie and I emphasised the importance for participants to think of themselves as system leaders, rather than simply leaders of an organisation. While it is both inevitable and important that attention is given to addressing the everyday and often urgent matters that face leaders within the organisational context of a school, to be effective as a transformational leader you need also to sustain a broader scan of the education environment, and be skilled at understanding and managing the complexity of relationships that exist within the learning ecosystem.

Would you like to be involved?

Now that we’ve crafted a successful programme design, Maurie and I are offering this opportunity to fresh cohorts in 2025. Next year we’ll be offering a repeat of the programme for principals beginning with a retreat at Hanmer Springs from 13-15 March.

In response to numerous requests from a number of people, we’re also offering a modified version of the programme to specifically address the needs of AP/DPs, beginning with a two-day hui in Wellington on 23-24 January.

In addition, we’re working with the Lutheran Schools Network in Australia to co-construct a variation of the programme for a mixed group of principals and senior leaders in Melbourne, starting in April.

One of the key benefits of these programmes is the level of personal attention you will receive. We have deliberately designed for smaller cohorts of around 20 participants, so that there is a greater degree of intimacy and personal connection in the experience.

If this sounds like you please click on the image below to take you to a page where you can find additional information and links to the registration forms. I encourage you to share this post with anyone in your network that you think may benefit from being a part of a programme to support them in becoming a leader of transformation in their school or context.

Tags education leadership, educational change, educational transformation, environment scan, school leadership

Looking for more ambition in 2024!

Photo by Leif Christoph Gottwald on Unsplash
Rocket image: https://www.needpix.com/photo/174049/

“There’s no definite roadmap for a successful moonshot; the path is littered with obstacles and failure. It takes passion, grit, luck and sometimes a decade or more of hard work to see a moonshot materialise, much less succeed.”
Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur, futurist, technologist, New York Times Bestselling Author

I was at secondary school when the Apollo 11 mission made a successful moon landing. I was one of those completely caught up in the wonder of that event – I still have the scrapbook I kept of every newspaper clipping I could lay my hands on at the time! 1300 of us gathered in the school assembly hall and sat in silence for almost three hours, listening to the broadcast on a single speaker that had been set up on the stage. (Yes, no live-stream TV in those days – in fact, no colour TV even, we watched the fuzzy, black and white images a day or two later!)

That was 1969! Just a few years earlier, in 1962, US President, John F. Kennedy, planted the seeds of a dream when he declared “We choose to go to the moon this decade.” At the time this must have seemed near impossible to many, yet it inspired a nation to believe – and to act. The president didn’t say precisely how it was going to happen – he simply set a timeframe for something ambitious, something incredible to happen. It was his ‘moonshot’ moment.

Decades later this concept has become known as ‘moonshot thinking’, when you choose a huge problem, such as climate change, and propose to create a radical solution to the problem using a disruptive technology.

I reckon we could do with some ‘moonshot thinking’ in education at present. There’s no shortage of huge challenges facing us, but there is a distinct lack of any ambition in the solutions being proposed. Mostly we see the same old ideas being re-cycled like the re-runs of Home Alone movies at Christmas. It all seems so tired, unambitious and focused narrowly on short-term wins that pander to the populist vote. It’s been like that for many years now, and there appear to be no changes on the horizon despite a change in government. The table below illustrates just a few examples of the challenges schools face currently and the responses we are seeing…

Consider our current approach…

Problem	Solution	Concerns
Students not attending school, truancy.	Employ people to track students down and bring them back to school. Punish parents for not sending them to school.	Why are they choosing not to attend in the first place? How might we make schools and learning more engaging and meaningful for all learners?
Digital Distraction.	Ban mobile devices at school.	How do we prepare young people (and teachers!) to function effectively in an increasingly digital world – including understanding the safety and moral issues of being a digital citizen?
Declining literacy and numeracy achievement.	Spend more time on structured approaches to reading, writing and maths, focusing primarily on the mechanics.	How do we inspire writers, authors and mathematicians for the future? How to sustain an interest in literature, story-telling and mathematics in the world around us?
Bullying.	More supervision, more punitive measures for those responsible.	How to address the social influences and generational patterns of behaviour that are behind this sort of behaviour?
Recruitment and retention of high quality teachers.	Introduce teaching standards, recognition of excellent teachers and punitive measures for those not performing.	How to make teaching a profession that attracts the very best candidates. How best to design initial teacher education programmes and professional learning programmes that sustains a dynamic profession?
Low level of participation in STEM subjects to meet demand for employment in the tech sector.	Privilege resourcing of STEM programmes and STEM teachers.	What about the arts subjects where creativity (a key element in innovation) is cultivated?
Increasing numbers of learners with special learning needs (incl. ADHD, autism etc.)	Limited funding for special needs teachers and support people. Teachers expected to become skilled in dealing with these demands.	What are the conditions that are most suitable for these learners, and what support is most helpful? How can we personalise/individualise programmes within the traditional one-class, one-teacher structures?
Ongoing disruption and change (e.g. natural disasters, weather events, pandemics etc.)	Short term mitigations, targeted resourcing to bridge the gap until things ‘return to normal’.	What if ongoing disruption of this nature is the ‘new normal?’. How might we structure schooling to take account of the ongoing challenge to sustain an approach that is historically dependent on attendance at a single site?

As the table above attempts to illustrate, it’s not that the solutions being suggested or implemented are inherently wrong – indeed, many have sound research supporting their use in defined contexts. The issue is that while they may provide an effective solution for particular learners in particular contexts, they are unlikely to address some of the wider (and more complex) concerns that are a part of the problem they are attempting to address. It’s not a binary argument – it’s about understanding the broader, richer and more complicated tapestry of interactions among and between these areas that create the current form and function of schools and schooling.

I believe we need to see more ambition our efforts to identify (and courage to follow through on) solutions that matter. Of course, there’s plenty of ambition around at a personal level, with individuals seeking to ‘climb the ladder’ of personal success, or schools seeking to outdo their rivals down the road – but this sort of ambition is counter-productive in terms of achieving the solutions required to some of our ‘wicked problems’ in education.

I’m talking about the sort of ambition that is linked with taking risks (something that is frowned upon in our current bureaucratic structures), to ‘stretch’ beyond the current limits and push the boundaries of educational possibility. This sort of ambition sets aside personal interest for the corporate good. It involves releasing dreams and capturing the interest and trust of others to pursue those dreams. It’s about letting go of conventional thinking and ways of working, and experimenting with new forms of teaching, schooling and learning to find what works and what will help us achieve our ‘moonshot’ ambitions.

In the table below I’ve shared just a handful of ideas that could form the basis of the sort of ambitious ‘moonshot’ thinking that we’re talking about here. There will, of course, be others you can think of (hopefully!), so regard these as they are intended – something to stimulate your thinking. It might be helpful to consider taking one or more of these and using them as a starter for a conversation with colleagues, or at a start of year staff meeting – anything to help stimulate conversation and lift the level of thinking beyond ‘the ordinary’ as we seek to find ways of resolving the increasingly challenging problems we face in education.

Could these be your moonshot…?

Moonshot 1:
Agency and Joy!

Imagine if…

…we were to create schools where learners come curious and leave inspired? Where learners were eager to attend because they found what happens there, day by day, exciting, engaging and relevant to their needs and interests. Where learners ( and teachers) experience JOY each day, where their physical, mental, social and academic health and wellbeing were all being addressed as a matter of course. Where there is a definite ‘shift in ownership’ of learning, and learners (and teachers) experience agency in all aspects of their learning.

Moonshot2:
Learning Laboratories

Imagine if…

…we were to design our schools as learning laboratories, and our learning programmes around a culture of experimentation, where teachers and learners are open to risk and learn from failure? What if our approach to learning across the curriculum left space for teachers and students to experiment with new ideas and pursue the questions that are important to them. What if, instead of following prescribed methodologies we encouraged innovative approaches to solving problems, including how to address individual learning challenges or needs (e.g. as those in the medical profession do when making a diagnosis).

Moonshot 3:
Boundary-less Schools

Imagine if…

…we conceived of schools as ‘boundary-less’ entities, as nodes in a network or learning ecosystem. Where physical attendance to participate in social, sporting, cultural and collaborative activities, is valued alongside access specialist teachers in other contexts, including community settings and virtually. And what if that learning was all recorded and tracked in a single ‘record of learning’ that recognises the value of what is learned in all of these contexts? What if we recognised the roles of those providing support for learners differently – as specialist teachers, as pastoral support, as virtual teachers etc. as opposed to assigning all tasks to a ‘generic’ teacher. How might we include the link with home and partnership with parents as an essential aspect of this ‘boundary-less-ness’?

Moonshot 4:
AI Enhanced Personalisation

Imagine if…

…we could harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create truly personalised programmes of learning for both individuals and for groups based on an analysis of their needs and preferences? What if the AI platform could then provide personalised support and feedback as the learner/group worked on the learning task, scaffolding and shaping the learning activity based on the learner response and evidence provided. What if the platform could also maintain a record of learning for each learner with dynamic links to the evidence provided by the learner to illustrate achievement against the criteria set.

Moonshot 5:
New Structures

Imagine if…

…we were to completely suspend all of the structures around which our current school system is designed – learning spaces, timetables, curriculum, staffing allocations, assessments/exams etc. How would we design things differently? How would the school day work? What would the curriculum look like? What if we were to create the opportunity for learners to be immersed in learning for as long as it takes for them to become accomplished in what they are doing? How might we keep track of what is being learned, how it is being learned and when it has been learned?
What would be the role(s) of educators in all of this? How would they be supported?

Moonshot 6:
New Measures of Success

Imagine if…

…we adopted completely different ways of measuring success? Where exams and summative assessments were replaced by more dynamic and ‘real-time’ provision of evidence to match against the progression indicators linked to criteria established at the beginning of the learning activity? What if learners were actively involved in the decisions around the criteria and the indicators? Instead of designing learning to match the assessment criteria, what if learners were able to immerse themselves in meaningful learning activity, and then select the criteria that they have evidence for – from across different ‘subjects’ and different levels?

[Rocket image: https://www.needpix.com/photo/174049/]

None of the scenarios above are particularly original. In fact, examples of each of these innovative approaches already exist in various jurisdictions and contexts around the world. As William Gibson once said, “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed yet‘. Also, while the scenarios have been separated out here to emphasise a specific idea, there are many overlaps between them and in most cases, a ‘moonshot’ idea will likely include elements from two or more of the scenarios above (and others not mentioned here).

Create your own moonshot:

Being ambitious in our thinking like this doesn’t come naturally. For many of you reading the list of ‘imagine if’ statements above you may find yourself thinking immediately of all the reasons why this couldn’t happen. That’s quite normal. It’s how we’ve been programmed – a consequence of the education we’ve received and the structures and systems we conform to. But you can break the habit – all it takes is some courage to allow yourself a little space to dream and ponder.

The important thing is that, like JFK, you don’t have to have it all sorted from the beginning. You simply have to imagine, put the idea(s) out there, and be relentless in seeking to find ways of making it happen.

Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur, futurist, technologist, and writer of the TechBlog has a simple five step approach for MoonShot Planning:

5-Year Goal: Briefly describe your 5-year Moonshot goal in a clear, objective fashion using specific dates and numbers.
1-Year Goal: What concrete, measurable milestones can you achieve in 12 months that will put you on track? Remember, your progress is exponential. You just need to hit 6.25% of the target.
30-Day Goal: What can you do in the next 30 days to test and ‘de-risk’ your 1-year and 5-year objectives?
PROOF: What evidence can you provide to your team that this Moonshot is possible?
ACTION: What single action can you take right now to make immediate progress? (Do it in the next hour).

Why not use this framework to create your own moonshot and consider the ambitious approach you want to take in 2024? You don’t have to do this alone. In fact, it’s best if you do it in collaboration with others. Build the dream collectively. Get the buy-in of those who need to be involved and for whom it matters.

Imagine if, across the country, school leaders and teachers found time in these last few weeks before the next school year begins to work through the five steps outlined above, so that as you return to school for 2024 it isn’t simply to repeat what you did in 2023 with a few minor tweaks and improvements, but is something more revolutionary, more purposeful and more life-changing!

Instead of planning to get ‘back to normal’, let’s make 2024 a year of being extra-ordinary, of being ambitious in what we seek to achieve for our learners and our schools!

Check out some of these links for further ideas…

Tags education leadership, educational change, educational transformation, learner agency, learner engagement, school leadership

Growing as Principals

Announcing an exciting opportunity for New Zealand principals to engage in an innovative professional learning programme in 2024!

Are you a primary or secondary school principal in a New Zealand School who is…

passionate about making a difference for your students?
looking for fresh and innovative ways to engage them in powerful learning?
seeking ideas and support to manage the complex task of leading change in your school?
wanting to push the boundaries of the traditional model of schooling?

Then read on… this post is for you. (If this isn’t you, then please forward this post to someone you think would appreciate hearing about it!)

Over the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with a friend and colleague, Maurie Abraham, to design and develop a unique professional learning opportunity for principals which we’ll be offering in early 2024.

Until recently, Maurie was the principal of Hobsonville Point Secondary School – a highly innovative secondary school in Auckland, a school that emphasises project-based learning and has a strong focus on digital technology and innovation. It also promotes a collaborative and inclusive learning environment. Having been principal at HPSS since it started back in , Maurie now heads up his own consultancy called How Might We Lead.

Our recent collaboration has resulted in the development of a powerful and sustainable approach to support principal wellbeing which focuses on leaders reconnecting with their personal ‘why’ and being equipped with tools to bring that to life in their schools, supported by a strong network of like-minded leaders who maintain a strong connection throughout the 20 week programme.

We’ve called our programme Refresh, Reconnect, Refocus – highlighting the triple focus we have incorporated into our programme design:

Refresh – We provide opportunities to address physical, mental and social well-being, and introduce tools that you can use beyond the time of this experience.
Reconnect – You will explore your personal ‘why’ – the things that motivate and drive you in the work you do. We introduce tools and processes to help you focus on what’s important and to plan forward from there.
Refocus – We will be designing a personal and collective view of a future-focused approach of schooling, supported by a community of other like-minded people. We assist you to plan out practical steps to make this happen in your context.

We believe that while addressing personal wellbeing as school principals is crucial, true transformation lies beyond individual practices. Merely attending to personal wellness, while essential, may not resolve the foundational issues contributing to the lack of wellbeing in the first place. To truly rejuvenate, principals must dare to envision a new paradigm for their schools. This demands the courage to reimagine the very essence of their educational institutions and take bold steps toward profound systemic changes. It necessitates a radical shift in how staff, students, and the entire school community collaborate and operate together. Only by embracing this courageous approach to rethinking and reshaping can principals pave the way for lasting, holistic transformation within their educational ecosystems.

If you or someone you know would like to join us for this 20 week programme please check out the details here, and register your interest in participating. We’ll send you more details of what’s involved and how you can secure your place in the programme which we have limited to just 20 principals. Already half of the places have been taken since we first let people know about it less than a week ago.

Click here to register your interest

Tags education leadership, educational change, school leadership

A theory of stupid

Photo by Andrea Lightfoot on Unsplash

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When I read the quote above it’s difficult to imagine how on earth we might achieve the status of being a ‘moral society’ when we consider the prevalence of inequity and injustice that exists in so many areas of our society and world – along with the evidence of corruption, dishonesty, lack of integrity and failures in leadership at so many levels.

It’s easy to focus simply on what we see as the problem and find someone to blame for it all. Blame is, after all, is the fodder of politicians around election time – with problems orchestrated, blame apportioned and ‘quick-fix’ solutions promoted in order to win favour at the ballot box. Seldom to we engage in an informed and constructive debate that looks beneath the ‘tip of the iceberg’ that is the problem or issue we can see or is affecting us, to explore the underlying conditions that gave rise to that in the first place, and the underpinning mental models and beliefs from which they arise.

In this process we too often focus our attention on those we see as the ones responsible for the dilemmas – the decision-makers, politicians, business and community leaders etc. And often this perception is justified – we are constrained by particular policy for example, alienated because we don’t qualify for a particular support or impacted because of a decision that affects us in a negative way (e.g. being made redundant at work, losing a home due to the rise in interest rates or being unable to meet transportation needs due to rising cost of fuel etc.)

We see this sort of behaviour in various jurisdictions around the world (including NZ) – with political leaders being held to account for all sorts of problems, whether they are responsible for initiating war or suppressing the rights of citizens, or are trying to introduce policies and legislation that isn’t welcomed by some groups in society (e.g. reducing CO2 emissions, capital gains tax, anti-racism legislation etc.)

But becoming pre-occupied with this sort of ‘blame’ mentality seldom leads to any sort of constructive solution-finding. More likely, we become consumed with negativity and end up feeling overwhelmed with the feeling that there’s noting we can do that will make a difference, and so, like sheep, we simply follow the leader and comply with what we’re being told to do. Worst case is that we end up suffering from depression or more serious mental health issues arising from our feelings of personal powerlessness.

So how do we achieve a state where we have good and effective leadership, where decisions are made and agreements reached on the basis of a strong sense of moral purpose? And what is the responsibility of every citizen in this process?

In a country or organisation led by those who are patently corrupt or even ‘evil’ this can seem impossible. It’s the challenge contemplated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who spent that last 18 months of World War 2 in prison (until his execution in April, 1945) as a result of his opposition to the Hitler regime. While imprisoned by the Nazis for his involvement in the resistance, Bonhoeffer continued to write prolifically. His prison writings reveal a profound moral and spiritual struggle, as well as a keen analysis of the political and ethical implications of the Nazi regime.

In an article titled We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones, Oxford University lecturer Jonny Thomson references Dietrich Bonhoeffer saying that “stupidity is worse than evil because stupidity can be manipulated and used by evil.” Thomson’s article and the short video below provides a succinct overview of this thinking…

The transcript of this video can be found on the Sprouts site here.

While in prison, Bonhoeffer wrestled with how it could be that so many people could end up being persuaded to submit to such a corrupt system. Reflecting on this he argues that stupidity tends to go hand-in-hand with acquiring power — and that being in power so often means we surrender our individual critical faculties.

Thomson sums up the Bonhoeffer perspective by saying…

Because evil people find it hard to take power, they need stupid people to do their work. Like sheep in a field, a stupid person can be guided, steered, and manipulated to do any number of things.
Jonny Thomson

So while Bonhoeffer identifies the perpetrators of the terrible things going on around him at the time as ‘evil’, the more serious problem he sees is the ‘stupidity’ of the population who have bought into the ways of thinking and behaving that are patently dehumanising and corrupt – victims of the relentless campaigns of mis-information and propaganda.

This is an important message for educators. In an era of mis-information and conspiracy theory, our focus should be less on the evil of the messaging and more on addressing the “stupidity” [where stupidity equates to the lack of critically-informed engagement] that causes people to subscribe to these ideas in the first place.

Instead of focusing on the “evil” of the messaging or the messenger, we should be addressing the “stupidity” that causes people to subscribe to these ideas in the first place.
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The recently announced TVNZ series Web of Chaos looks to provide some interesting insights here. It promises to provide a deep dive into the world of disinformation, exploring why it’s spreading at pace throughout Aotearoa and the world, with specialists warning of striking consequences for social cohesion and democracy.

Promoting critical thinking and media literacy among our young learners is therefore and essential in our modern world, where misinformation and conspiracy theories can spread rapidly. Here are some practical ways teachers can support learners in understanding the dangers of disinformation and conspiracy theories and help them become more critically engaged in current issues:

Critical Thinking Skills: introduce activities and discussions that challenge students to consider issues from multiple perspectives, and to analyse information critically. Encourage them to question claims, examine evidence, and consider alternative viewpoints.
Media Literacy: teach students how to evaluate the credibility of sources, identify bias, and distinguish between fact and opinion. Encourage them to use reliable sources for research and information.
Debunking Activities: introduce activities where students can collaboratively research and debunk popular myths, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. This will enable them to understand the process of fact-checking and critical analysis.
Guest Speakers and Workshops: invite guest speakers, such as journalists or experts in media literacy, to hold workshops and discussions with students about the dangers of disinformation and the importance of critical thinking.
Current Events Discussions: engage students in discussions about current events and news stories. Encourage them to express their opinions while providing guidance on analyzsng information from diverse sources.
Fact-Checking Tools: Introduce fact-checking tools and websites that students can use to verify information before sharing or accepting it as true. Teach them about the importance of reliable sources and the consequences of spreading false information.
Encourage Source Diversity: teach students the value of seeking information from various sources with different perspectives. This will help them gain a more comprehensive understanding of complex issues.
Create a Safe Environment: foster an open and non-judgmental classroom environment where students feel comfortable discussing their beliefs and uncertainties. Encourage respectful debates and conversations.
Social Media Awareness: discuss the role of social media in spreading disinformation and how algorithms can create echo chambers. Encourage responsible social media usage and critical evaluation of information found on these platforms.
Role-Playing Scenarios: use role-playing scenarios where students can act as both creators and consumers of disinformation. This will help them empathise with the impact of false information and understand the responsibility of media literacy.

Tags competencies, critical thinking, education leadership, misinformation

Overwhelm

Overwhelm is the fact or feeling of not being able to cope or deal with something.
Collins Dictionary

The headline in a paper this week, quotes a new report from MFAT that says the ‘Future looks grim“. The report details what MFAT believes Kiwis should know about risks to NZ’s security, and that conflict in our region ‘could occur’. According to the report the globe is experiencing “heightened strategic tensions and considerable levels of disruption and risk“, with New Zealand just as affected as others due to its interconnectedness, the changing nature of the Pacific and the evolution of new threats. Grim reading indeed!

All of this on top of the disruptions we have faced through pandemics, weather events, political unrest and the impact of rising interest rates and housing (un)affordability! It really is a bit overwhelming.

As if that’s not enough, in education there’s yet another avalanche of disruption and change being experienced as a result of declining achievement in key areas, the introduction of a new curriculum, changes in assessment practices, changes in PLD allocations plus ongoing issues with truancy and low levels of learner engagement – just to name a few.

No wonder educators are feeling overwhelmed and looking to other career options. According to NZ’s Newshub teachers are leaving in droves currently. And not just in New Zealand. The USA Today reports that the number of teachers quitting has hit a new high, with one teacher quoted as saying ‘I just found myself struggling to keep up’.

Understanding the perceptions teachers have about all of this was the focus of a recent FutureMakers report titled Roadblocks and Drivers, which provides an analysis of the responses received through submissions to an online survey posted on the FutureMakers website in early 2023. The analysis reveals a comprehensive list of perceived drivers and roadblocks in our system, highlighting a range of complex and interconnected issues. The most prevalent challenges reported include:

initiative overload leading to fatigue and lack of follow-through
inadequate resources in terms of staffing and funding,
resistance to change driven by a focus on tradition, and
difficulties related to leadership, such as vision deficits and poor communication.

One word that sums up the feeling across all of the responses received is overwhelm. While it’s true to say that the notion of overwhelm has been impacting many for a number. of years now, the evidence in the survey analysis reinforces the view of may others that the level of change and disruption being faced in our profession (and society) is escalating rapidly, and is also becoming increasing diverse – impacting us on many fronts.

The survey responses paint a picture of teachers who are facing an increasingly challenging and overwhelming environment in schools. They are bombarded with a multitude of new initiatives and requirements, not giving them time to reflect or renew their energies. They are also overwhelmed by the constantly changing demands from parents and communities, and the evolving behaviours and learning needs of their students. This overwhelming situation can lead to a sense of paralysis within the education system.

This sense of overwhelm is captured in the following from one respondent:

“It’s just too busy. There never seems to be enough time to do the day to day job as well as learn new and better ways. When under pressure, we often revert to old ways. Teachers don’t fully adopt new ways because they don’t really understand the why and how….and they don’t get a chance to spend time on these. Usually they do want to do things better, but get caught up in their day to day work and have no capacity for more.”

Some respondents referred to the notion of ‘burden’ – the sense that everything is being added to what they are already doing, and that there really needs to be a ’letting go’ of things that they are already doing in order to create space and have the freedom to change. Others raised concerns over change initiatives occurring on multiple fronts of activity, often overlapping or causing conflict.

Addressing this level of ‘overwhelm’ must surely have to be a key focus of our system leaders you would think. But what we see at present appears to be even more layers of disruption and change being imposed – most of it appearing as a re-hash of previously tried (and failed) approaches. As Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!” My concern is that Continuing to do what we’ve always done and expecting better results is not only a sign of insanity, it is depriving our young people of their future!

Continuing to do what we’ve always done and expecting better results is not only a sign of insanity, it is depriving our young people of their future.
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Fortunately the survey responses weren’t all negative. There were some useful suggestions provided in the responses, offering some ways to address the issue of ‘overwhelm’ including:

Streamline initiatives and requirements: Rather than overwhelming teachers with a constant influx of changes, focus on implementing a few well-thought-out initiatives that have a proven track record of effectiveness.
Provide targeted professional development and support: This may include mentoring, coaching and wellbeing programmes to provide guidance and help teachers cope with the demands they face.
Foster more collaboration: This reduces the burden on individual teachers and allows them to leverage collective knowledge and support.
Prioritise well-being and work-life balance: Provide resources and support for managing stress and burnout. Encourage schools to adopt policies that promote reasonable workloads and create opportunities for self-care and rejuvenation.
Engage stakeholders in decision-making: When stakeholders feel heard and valued, it can reduce the sense of overwhelm and foster a sense of ownership and collective responsibility.
Research and evidence-based practices: Ensure that initiatives, requirements, and interventions are based on sound research and evidence. Avoid adopting trends or fads without a solid foundation.
Advocate for systemic change: We must recognise that the sense of ‘overwhelm’ experienced by teachers may be indicative of broader systemic issues within the education system.

None of the things on this list will come as a surprise. In fact, I’d recognise most as being the things I observe in the practice of some of our more effective school leaders as they provide leadership for their staff and communities through these times of change.

In times of crisis and overwhelm one would look to the leadership at a system level and in our schools for a strong and robust response, but it would seem that this sort of practice is not uniformly experienced. This may have something to do with the quality and experience (or lack of) of our current school leadership.

A recent ERO report has found that a third of principals in our schools have less than five years of experience. It also notes the difficulty in recruiting and retaining quality leadership at principal level. How can we expect great leadership in times of disruption where the depth of experience simply isn’t there? This is yet another indicator that we have an education leadership crisis in our country.

Sure, there’s always the exception to the rule, the outstanding individual who has been well mentored and understands intuitively what to do when faced with complex issues or a crisis event, but they are a small minority. Good leadership becomes great on the basis of experience – in the same way a good athlete becomes great through putting in the ‘hard yards’ of training in all circumstances.

One thing is for certain – there is no returning to the (imagined) stable state of what we experienced in the past. Research suggests that this is a sign of an inexperienced leader – that when the chips are down they resort to using strategies they remember having experienced, and not the sorts of things that evidence is suggesting need to be employed in a VUCA world. We see evidence of this on a daily basis it seems, particularly right at the moment as the political parties are putting forth their ‘solutions’ for what they see as a failing system. These are yet more examples of what I wrote about in a previous post listing signs of system and organisational distress.

What can leaders do?

Two thoughts as suggestions occur to me. There’s no silver bullet here, but we can take responsibility for the things that fall within our locus of control, so here they are:

Start by acknowledging that the sense of ‘overwhelm’ that your staff and community may be feeling is a natural response to the pressures they may be feeling from the continual barrage of change initiatives and demands that come with that. It isn’t their fault or a sign of weakness. But it can be addressed.
Next, make time for your own personal reflection and become self-aware as a leader. The minute you find yourself falling back into the ‘old ways’ or defending actions that are indefensible, stop! Seek support, seek guidance and seek the assistance from those who can help you work through what you need to do with a fresh set of eyes.
Then, determine to do something to address this. The list of actions above provide a pretty useful starting point. Read each carefully and consider how you could take some positive steps to make this a reality in your context. Don’t waste valuable time trying to create a comprehensive plan that has everything covered before you start – just do it, reflect often and change as required. If you can’t think of anything, don’t give up – seek the counsel of a wise colleague, listen to what they have to say. And make time for some professional reading as a way of understanding what successful leaders are doing in other contexts.
Finally, understand that the pace of change that we’re currently experiencing isn’t likely to ease, and that our traditional ways of managing change are simply not fast enough or effective enough to keep up, let alone get ahead of the situation. We have to do things differently – starting with letting go of some of our sacred cows of management (e.g. complex bureaucracies, top-down management, positional authority, organisational silos, KPI-driven performance etc.) and be prepared to embrace experimentation, risk taking and learn from failures. Look to release staff to pursue short-cycle experiments that empower them to discover new ways of working where the old ones aren’t. But make sure as you’re doing this, you have a clear eye on the horizon, and are mission-led in your leadership style, and not tangled down in the weeds.

Tags education leadership, educational change, educational transformation, school leadership

Educational Leadership Crisis

CRISIS – “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs
in which decisive change is impending”
Miriam Webster Dictionary

A headline in yesterday’s newspaper read:

The article quotes NZEI Te Riu Roa president Mark Potter who says; “… it’s clear that New Zealand has an imminent problem with a shortage of school leadership. Even new leaders in the profession are facing burn out and ultimately, it’s the children who will suffer if we can’t attract people to the role and retain them.“

I was particularly captured by the use of the word ‘crisis’, not so much in the headline as that’s the sort of thing you expect from a media release – but in the title of the summit itself. From my experience the government, MoE and education agencies generally avoid using the term ‘crisis’ because of the inevitable door it opens for criticism, blame and fear mongering among those who have an axe to grind or who are seeking to promote their own agendas. Given the Miriam Dictionary definition at the head of this post however, I think that the word may perhaps be appropriately used here.

Which brings me then to the purpose of the gathering held in Wellington that is referred to in the newspaper article. In my Twitter feed I noted the following from a principal travelling to attend the event:

The principal appears optimistic about what may be achieved at the event. He notes that “we have admired the problem, talked the problem, worked around the problem...” before calling for concrete solutions – not surprising in a crisis situation.

I think a large number of people would agree. We have spent a lot of time debating, future-gazing, analysing etc., but all too frequently, fail to identify any actions of a significant or strategic nature that are actually actionable or followed through (another sign of failing leadership).

So what are the chances of this event achieving anything different? I guess I’m not as optimistic as my principal colleague. I’m not saying this simply to be cynical, rather, it’s my observation borne out of a number of years of experience both in participating in problem-solving and strategic fore-sight events and in facilitating them.

To clarify, here’s what I’m thinking…

There is indeed an education leadership crisis – and it exists across all levels of the system, from the offices of the Ministry of Education down to the principals in schools and even further, to the teachers-as-leaders in classrooms. Successive decades of a neo-liberal approach to how our system operates has seen significant emphasis on accountability based on assumptions about the intrinsic leadership capability of those appointed to leadership roles.

This has created a climate of competition, blame and punishment for underperformance, when what is desirable is a positive focus on building, nurturing and sustaining the qualities of good leadership in our leaders. In other words, if we want good leadership we must be focused on what that looks like and invest in what’s required to achieve that.
The problem is ill-defined. – One of the things that makes me wonder how effective this event will be over others that have been held in the past is the impression gained from reading through everything available to me (and remember, I didn’t attend or receive and invitation to attend which may have had further information available). All of the material I see, including on the NZEI website, focuses on the identification of solutions to be put in place. According the survey of principals quoted, these involve the provision of more teaching staff, more management staffing, and increased access to specialists for children with additional needs. What I don’t see is a deep analysis of the issues, concerns and problems that can then be approached in a more strategic and disciplined way.

This sort of approach is exactly what leads to inaction. We’ve all experienced it. It can feel great, at the time, to be able to give voice to the frustrations we are feeling, and even better when in an environment where we hear others saying similar things to us, and better still, when someone with positional leadership (in this case the Minister of Education) is there to share in the conversation. But as valuable as that may be, it is a classic case of the ‘externalisation‘ of the problem. By that I mean we project onto ‘them’ the things we feel need to happen, and, having voiced our concerns, leave the meeting feeling it’s now ‘their’ responsibility to get on and use what we’ve told ‘them’ to fix it.
The answers lie within – always. – in a recent blog post I referred to the concept of ‘clarity’ as a foundational attribute for an effective, transformative leader. I referenced the work of Shawn Ginwright who I met earlier this year in the US, and whose work has significantly impacted my perspective on the personal qualities required of each of us as leaders. Dr Ginwright coined the term ‘mirror work’ to describe a commitment to self-reflection and truth telling (to ourselves) about ourselves and our performance.

Clarity comes when we shed all of the barriers, confusion, distractions, indulgences and excuses that get in the way of what we really want. Without this clarity we struggle in a cloud of confusion, distraction and ambiguity. We end up feeling overwhelmed and delay important decisions and procrastinate on tasks. We fail to recognise that we, and the systems, traditions and expectations we hold so tightly to, may actually be a key part of the problem that we are busy externalising for others to take responsibility for.

My point here is that no matter how well intentioned the gathering of affected people might be, it can only really serve as a forum for expressing concerns and sharing grievances. Without the mirror work and personal clarity described by Ginwright, it’s unlikely there’ll be any ownership of the fact that a part of the problem exists in the room.
It’s difficult to lead if you don’t know why! – Clarity is tied also to our sense of purpose. When we are unclear and vague, we can simply cannot practice transformative leadership because we lose sight of our destination. This is compounded when that sense of purpose is something that is missing from our corporate understanding. I see this as a particular issue in our education system today. After years of reform efforts and the introduction of different regimes or point solutions, I’d argue that we’ve lost sight of the purpose we have for our education system.

If you asked any group of educators to explain what the purpose (i.e. our ‘why’, our aspiration) of the NZ education system is I’d wager you’d get as many different answers as there are people you asked. This could be difficult if they were all from one school. There are many schools that have done an excellent job of defining their ‘why’ and regularly referencing this with staff and the community – but there’s no real evidence of a common sense of purpose for the whole of our system.

I realise now that there’ll be a number of people who will defensively point me to statements that exist on different websites – but of that’s the case, why do so many educators struggle to recall these, and why don’t we see our system leaders more regularly in the media inspiring us to work together towards these aspirational goals?
We lack change literacy – Simply put, we don’t understand how to lead change, or even how to lead in a time of change. in a conversation with a colleague this afternoon we were discussing the qualities of principalship, and what is required to operate effectively as an education leader in today’s world. My response was change literacy (to add yet another term to our lexicon of educational jargon). My reason for this is that we live in a VUCA world, where change is the constant and the idea of achieving again the ‘stable state‘ is simply not possible.

In education we’re constantly bombarded with change, usually imposed change, change that we’re expected to implement or take responsibility for – be it change in curriculum, health and safety demands, roll growth, change in pedagogical practices for literacy etc. We all assume that those who are mandating the have a valid reason for it, and that it will produce the anticipated results – eventually in terms of outcomes for learners as they are or should be at the peak of our education value chain.

Too often we end up implementing point solutions in response to the problems we face (such as those identified by the NZEI principals above) and while not arguing the merit of these as possible solutions, we fail to understand or align these things with a theory of change that has been developed to demonstrate the causal links (or intervention logic) between the particular intervention (or ‘solution’) and our overall goals for our education system.

Not sure. if this is helpful or clarifying, but it’s certainly been a useful exercise teasing out what I’m thinking. It’s not meant to disrespect any of those who are putting in tireless hours to support their colleagues, or to those who have given up a day to address the concerns they share – I only hope that somewhere in the mix there is the will, the expertise and the commitment to address some (all?) of the things I’ve reflected on here to help us move from a position of suggesting solutions to a where we might achieve a truly transformative set of actions that will genuinely change how we work as a system, how we serve those learners in our schools and classrooms and ultimately, how all of this will contribute to a equitable and thriving future for Aotearoa/New Zealand. You can count me in on that!

Tags education leadership, educational transformation, school leadership

Congratulations CORE Education – 20 Years!

It’s not everyone who gets the opportunity to be part of a ‘start-up’ that grows to employing more than 250 inspiring people located across the country, then stand aside to watch it being led into an exciting new future by a new team of leaders. I feel very privileged that I have had that experience!

This week marks 20 years since the official launch of CORE Education in Christchurch and I’ve been privileged to receive emails from a number of educators who have worked for or with CORE over those years, reminding me of this fact!

A couple of years prior to March, 2003, Nick Billowes and I had been in conversation with Stephen Heppell from Ultralab in the UK, together dreaming of what we could achieve by setting up a ‘sister’ organisation to Ultralab UK here in NZ. We were joined soon after those initial conversations by our colleague, Dr Vince Ham, and these dreams began to take shape as we then worked with the Canterbury Development Corporation to establish what was originally UltralabNZ, then to become CORE Education. Ali Hughes joined us soon after we’d started and became the perfect complement to our spread of skills and background in education.

Reflecting back I came across the proposal we submitted to the CDC and UltralabUK – here are some extracts:

The development of Ultralab NZ will be through the formation of a Trust where the interested parties (Ultralab UK and Canterbury Development Council, CDC) will act as trustees as set out below and will move to set in place a management structure as described to ensure the running of Ultralab NZ conforms to the proposed management plan.

The development of the Lab will take account of the fundamental mission to act regionally to facilitate “learning with, by and through technology and through research opportunities to assist in developing educational pedagogy and practice.

Ultralab NZ will actively develop programmes in professional development (UltraPD), research and development (UltraResearch), resource and programme development in new media (UltraResource), enterprise and innovation development (UltraInnovate) and establish a Fellowship programme that will reach regionally into both education and industry for a wide range of research and development projects (UltraFellowship)

Through collaborative and collegial development of the potential of learners internationally, we will assist in the creation of a wider understanding between and within nations and provide for the needs and desires of all learners to have their learning needs met in individualized and effective ways that engage a desire for life long learning and understanding. The key words that define the operation of the Lab will be “Learning, Technology, and Research”. These will form the litmus test for the development of all programmes within Ultralab NZ
From Proposal submitted to CDC, 17 April, 2002

Reflecting back, this was a pretty lofty ambition, and I would venture to suggest, at that time none of us were entirely sure of just how we would achieve it, but time has demonstrated that, to a fairly large extent, we have done so, and, with the support of a great number of people, managed to drive towards our goals, having a positive impact on teachers, schools and the education system here in NZ along the way.

As I think back to what it was that made this organisation such a joy to work for and with, experiencing lots of successes along the way (along with a few failures :-), there are two things that stand out for me. These weren’t just things that happened accidentally – we identified them as foundational to what we wanted to achieve and how we wanted to achieve it right from the start – as recorded in that early proposal document and others. Those two things are:

1. Being clear about our purpose

It should be no surprise to see this one here – we worked hard on this for over a year, gradually re-shaping and refining what we thought to be important and how we’d articulate this to the world 🙂 What started as a 3-4 page document was eventually whittled down into a simple phrase that stood the test of time for at least the first 15 years of CORE’s existence:

“Pushing the Boundaries of Educational Possibility”

This mission statement focused our minds on our purpose as it encapsulated everything we agreed would be our business moving forward:

Pushing – we didn’t want to be just another organisation doing what everyone else did. We wanted to become known for being future focused, and for acting in a way that took ourselves and the educators we work with out of their comfort zone, to become used to working in the unfamiliar, and for being risk takers rather than risk averse.
Boundaries – meant that we had to have a really good grasp of what those boundaries are/were – which is why our emphasis on research-informed practice was so important. Involved understanding the past in order to challenge the future, and being aware of the interconnectedness of the education ecosystem to be understand the impact of actions at one point on another.
Education – this was our domain. It’s what we understood and were familiar with. It is where our passion lay – for transforming things so that the experience of everyone was ‘fit for purpose’ in our rapidly changing and evolving world. A relentless focus on learning – for teachers and students – lay at the heart of this, not as vessels to be filled, but as fires to be lit!
Possibilities – we were motivated by wanting to explore the new and emerging horizons for education – leading us to publish the annual ten trends, and to engage in the complex issues of becoming Te Tiriti honouring in the way we worked (and ultimately, how we were structured) and with becoming more inclusive, leading in areas of Universal Design for Learning, and in working alongside numerous cultural and other groups in society.

This mission statement is something of a personal mission for me – which is why, when I stood aside from CORE, I established FutureMakers, which is committed to supporting and promoting a future-focused view of education. I acknowledge, though, that for CORE, the journey is now taking a slightly different tack – championing the goal of equity across all areas of our education system. This, for me, is an exciting development for an organisation led now by those with a passion for this area, and a clear vision for what needs to be achieved.

2. Being intentional about building an inclusive culture

The second thing I believe we managed to get fairly right was an unrelenting focus on developing the internal culture of the organisation. Without the support of a highly skilled and knowledgeable staff who were as passionate as we were about our mission, we knew we wouldn’t succeed.

In those early years in particular we were very focused on ensuring we created a culture where everyone felt they could participate in the decision making, and where they could bring new ideas to the table to be considered. We had regular ‘whole staff meetings’ online, with people from all over NZ, experimenting with all sorts of emerging software to get us there long before we had skype, zoom or Teams to help us.

Our conferences were another key part of this intentionality. The Learning@School and ULearn conferences became places that not only teachers would want to come, but we made sure we could get as many of our staff there as well – not just because we needed their help to run the event, but because it was an opportunity to gather physically together and to experience in person the relationships we tried so hard to establish among our staff, with our schools and with the many businesses that supported a lot of what schools were doing.

We held whole staff ‘retreats’ on a semi-regular basis, and made sure these were times where we could enjoy being the ‘people of CORE’, but where there was a huge emphasis on participating in developing innovative ideas for taking us into the future. We endeavoured to operate a ‘flat’ as possible when it came to leadership and management, providing teams with permission to manage their own projects, and doing what we could to support and develop those who showed a particular flair for leading in areas of innovative thought and action.

For some years, as we grew, we saw very few people leave the organisation to take up roles elsewhere. After time, the experience at CORE became a stepping stone for a number of people, with their future employers recognising the value of the experience they’d had in our organisation. For a while it became commonly said that ‘you never leave CORE, they just stop paying you!”

Of course, 20 years is a pretty long time – half of a working career – and in that time lots has changed. I write here with rose-coloured spectacles, I know, but I’m pretty confident that for so many of those I’ve worked alongside at CORE, the things I’ve written about here would resonate.

The privilege of contributing to the establishment of this wonderful organisation will remain one of the high points of my career. Having stepped aside four years ago to allow a new team of (younger!) leaders to take the organisation forward, I can now only watch with pride as the organisation sets a new course to address the things that are topical and demanding attention as we progress further into the 21st Century. I wish Hana O’Regan and her team all the best as they do so – and wish CORE a very happy 20th birthday!

I’m looking forward to catching up with lots of those old friends (and new) at ULearn23 in Manukau, Tāmaki Makaurau from 4-6 October this year! Why not come and join the celebration.

[This post is dedicated to all of those who have worked for or been connected with CORE over the past 20 years. Your passion, focus and commitment has helped serve teachers, schools, kura and EY centres in inspiring and future-focused ways.]

Tags education leadership, educational transformation

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Would you like to be involved?

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1. Being clear about our purpose

2. Being intentional about building an inclusive culture

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