Inter-school collaboration and the self-improving system
Is inter-school collaboration (ISC) the new normal? The current situation in education indicates that we have reached a tipping point. If we consider the most formalised form of ISC, the formation of a multi-academy trust (MAT), and picture MATs at the tip of an iceberg with various forms of ISC beneath it, then the iceberg is growing at a rapid rate. There were 1,010 MATs in operation in England in 2016 (DfE, 2016a), and this rose to 1,230 in 2017 (DfE, 2017). Considering that the average MAT consists of two to nine academies (Andrews, 2016), these figures represent a significant number of schools.
The Coalition government launched The Importance of Teaching White Paper in 2010 (DfE 2010a), which encouraged schools to academise and form or join MATs. It also proposed the development of a self-improving school system, with ISC, MATs and Teaching School Alliances at its core. The self-improving school system required schools to find their own local solutions to school improvement challenges, which they would identify through collaborative self-evaluation, with minimal ‘hands on’ government intervention. The Academies Act 2010 (DfE, 2010b) facilitated this process by granting additional freedoms to schools converting to academy status, which stemmed from their removal from Local Authority (LA) control.
Proliferation and challenge
ISC was encouraged by Coalition and Conservative governments (2010 to present), but was not mandatory unless a school exhibited serious concerns, in which case the Education and Adoption Act (DfE, 2016b), required them to join a MAT. Therefore, the rapid increase in ISC is largely due to school leaders voluntarily making the choice to collaborate with other schools, and this raises three key questions:
- What are the reasons for the proliferation in ISC?
- If there are compelling reasons for ISC, why is every school not fully engaged with it, and what challenges are preventing some schools from committing to it?
- If challenges to ISC do exist, how can schools overcome them in both current and proposed ISCs?
The Research Overview
The research was based on a dissertation exploring inter-school collaboration, the self-improving school system, and their impact on pupil equity and outcomes, which formed part of an MBA in Educational Leadership. The aim of this aspect of the research was to attempt to answer the three key questions identified above. An online questionnaire was emailed to a systemic sample of 128 primary and 108 secondary headteachers selected from 20 Greater London boroughs, and 3 boroughs in the Home Counties. The Greater London boroughs were selected by repeatedly choosing the fifth name on an alphabetic list, whilst the 3 boroughs in the Home Counties were selected using three points of a triangle drawn over a map of London for geographical coverage. The headteachers were identified by repeatedly selecting the fifteenth (primary) and the fifth (secondary) school from an alphabetic list of schools in each borough, to ensure full coverage of each list. In anticipation of a low response rate to the systemic sample, the online questionnaire was also emailed to a convenience sample of 15 primary and 10 secondary senior leaders, including headteachers. These potential respondents were encouraged to forward the questionnaire on to other school leaders via a snowballing sample technique, in an attempt to increase the response rate. Completed questionnaires were received from 16 primary and 7 secondary respondents from both the convenience and snowballing samples. No completed questionnaires were received from the systemic sample.
The online questionnaire consisted of 26 questions and statements: 20 statements were followed by Likert Scale options ranging from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’, and 6 questions allowed school leaders to write free-text responses. The questions and statements focused on the key reasons for ISC, the types of activities school leaders would consider collaborating on, and the key challenges to ISC.
However, before we discuss the outcomes of the above research, it is important to explore what we mean by ISC.