Is collaboration the key behind CPD for MATs?

MATs face many challenges when it comes to CPD, but is collaboration the missing ingredient?

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Iris

When developed well, collaborative CPD has a lot to offer MATs, including bringing academies together across multiple sites and geographical locations to work collectively to share challenges, good practice and cost efficiencies.

But before we discuss the different ways in which collaborative CPD can be developed it’s important to understand the challenges – sometimes overlooked – that can arise when working in partnership with other schools.

Challenges of collaboration across MAT academies

Competition between schools

Competition among academies within a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) can potentially impede collaboration, stemming from factors such as uneven allocation of resources, differential performances in areas such as academic outcomes, student attendance or retention rates. Moreover, school leaders might put their individual academy’s achievements ahead of the overall success of the trust, thereby intensifying the challenge.

Building and sustaining trust

Building and sustaining trust within a MAT is a challenge because of the difference in school cultures, values and methods of working. Differences in policies and procedures may introduce a divide in how much trust is given to other academies. 

Ensuring consistency and quality

A lack of alignment in terms of vision and values is a challenge which could lead to inconsistencies in the quality of education provided. As mentioned, quality is always going to vary between academies so allocating the right resources and attention is a challenge for all MATs. 

It’s challenging for MATs to provide consistent trust-wide CPD when schools and individuals are so varied in terms of abilities, career progression and geographical locations. If a solution exists, how can MATs afford such a solution in the current educational climate?

Autonomy

TDT reports a strong correlation between autonomy and a sense of job satisfaction. While academies within MATs have a certain level of autonomy, collaboration requires some level of coordination and standardisation. Balancing autonomy with collaboration can be a challenge, as academies may have different approaches to teaching, staffing, and resource allocation. 

Six ways you can support schools in your trust and lead collaborative CPD

Set clear expectations

Ensure every school is clear about what’s expected of them and what they can expect in terms of support by developing a trust-wide school improvement model. This will also make sure that trust leaders have a consistent understanding of the best ways to improve standards. 

Have a clear focus

Keep it simple to make teaching as good as it can be. This should be at the heart of everything your school leaders do and ensures everyone is working towards the same goal. Having a clear, common goal makes decision making easier, as you can always ask yourself if the decision is in the best interest of the teaching and learning.

Harness the expertise of Lead Practitioners and SLEs

Share your best teachers so that their expertise is accessible to everyone else and contributes to their development. Enable SLEs to work between schools – either one day a week or for a whole term or year – so they can work with a new set of colleagues in JPD activities.

Know your schools

Be aware of any underperforming schools and be able to identify what they need in order to improve. Consider, also, how you can make the most of your capacity to help them develop. 

Done with, not to

Every school should be both a giver and a receiver of support. There will be pockets of strong practice in weak schools as often as there will be pockets of weak practice in strong schools. Adopting a reciprocal model of support leaves teachers and schools feeling valued, making them more keen to nurture and grow themselves as well as staff across your trust. 

One size does not fit all

Recognise that you will need to give different schools different levels of support – some trusts describe this as ‘tighten to improve, loosen to be great’. You should always seek to fully understand and evaluate different school dynamics ahead of helping to bring about change. You could also provide a Directory of Expertise listing all lead practitioners available to offer school-to-school support.

 The role of leadership in successful collaborative CPD

For collaborative CPD to be successful, Senior Leaders need to drive improvement beyond their own school and find ways of sharing your good practice, so that everyone across you MAT can benefit from existing expertise. 

In his presentation on Deepening a School-Led System of Improvement Through the Lens of Leadership, Sir David Carter mentions that Senior Leaders must demonstrate:

• Their ability to improve the performance of the school they lead
• Transmit effective strategies from one school to another
• Identify and develop talent and potential in others 

 How can leaders ensure successful collaborative CPD

Investigate teaching and learning

No one school has all of the answers and there will be excellent examples of teaching across your whole network that everyone can benefit from. 

By auditing the teaching and learning across your MAT you can ensure that good practice is shared effectively and efficiently with others who need it, and vice versa.

Leaders should be able to have open and honest conversations about the respective weaknesses and strengths of their schools.

Model and build trust

This must begin at teacher level and permeate through everything you do. Leaders can start to increase trust by modelling it, helping to create a climate that shows trustful relationships are the norm.

Create healthy (not comparative) competition

Whilst things are changing, the nature of our school system can often mean there is an inherent sense of competition that exists between schools. A competition that comes from parents wanting to choose the ‘best’ school for their children, and politicians believing it will raise standards. 

While this sense of competition exists, collaborative CPD will struggle to thrive. According to Professor David Hargreaves (2012), it’s therefore essential to establish collective moral purpose among staff i.e. a common understanding and commitment to make a difference to all pupils (not only those in their own schools and classrooms).

Leaders must lead by example here, showing that they are willing to work across classrooms and schools in constant pursuit of what works for all pupils. 

Evaluate and challenge

For collaborative CPD to have an impact across schools it must be evaluated and challenged so it can continue to grow. 

Leaders must agree on how projects will be assessed and to share what is working well. Teachers must be given time to analyse and refine their findings in and outside of the classroom. 

Ensuring consistency

To ensure consistency across academies, it’s important to align with all executives, principals and senior leaders to establish trust-wide goals for CPD. Ensure you are all on the same page about where you would like the trust to be in five years, and then you can make objectives to establish how those goals can be accomplished. 

Create a CPD plan that ensures every teacher has the opportunity to develop professionally, and that CPD is tailored to every teacher. There must then be tools in place to evaluate the effectiveness of this plan.

Providing CPD activities that impact on pupil outcomes

When creating a CPD plan, it is important to consider not only the needs of the staff, but also the students and their outcomes too. It will be worthwhile to incorporate CPD activities that are backed by research, like self-reflection, coaching and collaboration. 

Autonomy

As mentioned earlier, there is a strong correlation between autonomy and a sense of job satisfaction. So how can trusts improve autonomy across their academies? Firstly, they can give teachers control over their own CPD. By allowing teachers to take ownership of their CPD, they become ‘centrally involved in decisions concerning the direction and processes of their own learning’. (Day, 2017) 

Inter-Multi-Academy Trust Collaboration

It is one thing to achieve trust and collaboration within a school, but establishing these types of relationships across MATs is a whole other challenge.

However, if we are to truly achieve a self-improving system it is imperative that MATs are not siloed, as schools once were, but work together to improve the education landscape as a whole.

To ensure that collaborative CPD does not get stifled across MATs, it’s therefore important to achieve collective moral purpose for the entire system.