In 2003 London’s schools were behind the rest of England. Eight years later they led it, and they still do. Last summer 28.4 per cent of GCSE entries in London were graded 7 or above. The North East managed 17.8.
Here’s what actually did it.
Tim Brighouse (hero of mine) brought an idea over from Birmingham called families of schools. All four hundred odd London secondaries were sorted into groups of thirty, matched on the deprivation and prior attainment of their intake. Then each school saw its results sitting next to the others in its group.
That killed the most useful excuse in the system. Hard to ask what more you can do with children like these when a school across town with your exact free school meal numbers is getting better results.
Then the Keys to Success schools, the lowest attaining ones. Each got a named adviser who could walk into the department and get funding moving without a bidding round.
The whole thing ran on £25 million over three years, which against London’s total schools budget is not a lot of money.
An annual data report. Groupings. Heads visiting each other’s schools. One person with the authority to say yes quickly. Repeated for eight years while ministers came and went.
Nobody was told they had to become an academy or change their leadership. It was worked out school by school.
(And people do argue about the credit. The strongest challenge is that London’s primary results were already climbing from 1999, which would have shown up at GCSE from about 2004 anyway. Worth knowing before you quote any of this at someone.)
So try the first bit. Work out which schools genuinely match yours on intake rather than the ones you’d like to be compared with, put your results beside theirs, and if someone with your demographics is beating you on something, ring them.
That’s a lot of what we ended up writing about in Schools Know Best, the paper on organisational development in schools. Have a read and hit reply with where you land, especially if you think I’ve got this wrong.
Shane
PS the September Intensive cohort is filling. Details here if this is the sort of work you’d like some company with.
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