Caracteristicas y diferentes tipos de lamparas de vapor de sodio

We end by setting out four themes that emerge from the research and which, we argue, merit further focus and attention among policy makers, researchers and practitioners.

i) A new economy of knowledge: in the context of our findings that highlight the incentives for higher-status schools to codify and sell ‘best practice’ knowledge geared towards the demands of the accountability system, we ask how the system could be reshaped to encourage more effective and inclusive forms of knowledge development and mobilization.

Drawing on the research of Fielding et al. (2005), Hargreaves (2012) argued that joint practice development between teachers across schools offers both a model for professional learning and disciplined innovation and a way of building shared cultures and commitment to the success of all schools. The existing evidence on effective approaches to professional development and learning for teachers does not fully support this assertion (Cordingley et al., 2015), but it seems unarguable that any school system (whether ‘self-improving’ or otherwise) must enable all teachers to enhance their professional practice in support of inclusive learning for students.

Throughout the report we have outlined examples of how schools, TSAs and MATs are working to support professional development for staff. Two observations stand out from this. The first is that very few of the leaders we interviewed appeared to have a clearly articulated approach for how they worked to identify, develop and share evidence, knowledge and/or expertise across their school/s so that it genuinely changed practice. Second, we identified three dominant approaches to knowledge mobilization – ‘protect’, ‘sell’, ‘share’. We argued that the SISS incentivizes the ‘sell’ model above the ‘share’ one, for example in the way that Teaching Schools are encouraged to generate income in a competitive marketplace. Yet where knowledge and expertise are ‘sold’ in this way, there is a tendency to focus on the types of knowledge that can be easily codified and commoditized (as ‘best practices’), rather than on the kinds of developmental learning processes that are argued to support professional growth (Winch et al., 2015).

ii) Fragmentation: in the context of our findings on Ofsted and student intakes, we ask how could changes to the existing model of hierarchical and market governance, including changes to the ‘middle tier’ above schools, reduce the trend towards a system of ‘winners and losers’?

The research revealed widespread concern that the system is becoming more fragmented; one interviewee argued that this is creating ‘winners and losers’ among schools. We have detailed specific examples of this: for instance, the schools at the bottom of their local hierarchies that struggle to

recruit students, or the networks that form between the higher-performing schools, but leave lower-performing schools out if they are not prepared to engage on the terms of the former.

These concerns around fragmentation often relate to the role of ‘the middle tier’ and how proactive it should be in securing a level playing field for schools. One premise of the ‘self-improving’ system agenda is that schools should be more autonomous, with existing bureaucratic structures stripped back. Yet if schools are left to find their own improvement solutions, then in a quasi-market context it is inevitable that some will have more capacity than others to succeed. Therefore we argue that the middle tier must play a mediating role – with sufficient formal powers to: create and enforce common ground rules, for example on local admissions; and to identify and support schools that are struggling to meet national performance indicators. Since this research was conducted, the RSCs have been charged with establishing sub-regional improvement boards to try and co-ordinate activity and to distribute central funding for school improvement, particularly in the government-defined Opportunity Areas. It remains to be seen how effective these sub-regional and area-based approaches will be, but they largely appear to replicate the existing ‘school-led’ approaches described in this report, albeit at a smaller scale. As we discuss below, we argue any new arrangements for the middle tier need to have a clear democratic mandate if they are to be seen as legitimate.

iii) Equity: in the context of our findings on the concentration of vulnerable children in the most deprived schools, we ask how could key aspects of policy on admissions and fair access be reformed and how could services for the most vulnerable children be reshaped to redress the trend towards further stratification?

Three themes emerge from our data in relation to equity across the system. Firstly, we noted in Chapter 3 the ways in which the accountability framework can encourage school leaders to place the needs of the school ahead of the needs of particular groups of, usually vulnerable, students. The recent debates about ‘off-rolling’ – essentially by excluding children, echoes this point.32

Secondly, local school systems remain highly stratified by socio- economic status. Chapter 4 explored examples of ‘selective competition’ by schools and outlined the analysis of Ofsted data, which showed the correlation between schools improving their Ofsted grade between 2010 and 2015 and relative reductions in proportions of children with free school meals in those schools.

Thirdly, support for the most vulnerable children is reducing, with a tendency for these pupils to become more concentrated in certain schools as

Conclusion

a result of systemic pressures and practices and also for specialist educational support services to support vulnerable children to have been cut back.

We outlined some of the ways in which LAs in particular were attempting to co-design and enforce common approaches, such as fair access protocols and panels, as a way of ensuring that all schools, including academies, abided by their obligations. But these approaches were often seen to be ‘sticking plasters’ for a wider set of systemic issues.

Overall, two-thirds of our survey respondents (66 per cent) agreed that inequalities between schools are becoming wider as a result of current government policy.

iv) Legitimacy: in the context of our findings on an increasing local democratic deficit, we ask how could the school system secure trust among professionals as well as parents and students, and what might be required to create meaningful engagement for these core stakeholders?

This final theme is one that was rarely raised explicitly by our interviewees and the study was not designed to capture views from parents, so we raise it as one that is worthy of consideration, rather than as a direct finding.

Several observers of recent developments in England have raised legitimacy as an important issue for an academized system to consider (Gibton, 2017; Glatter, 2017; Hatcher, 2014). Without oversight of schools by democratically elected LAs and with the power of local governing bodies largely neutered in MATs, parents can quickly feel that they have no mechanisms to influence the schools that their children attend. Further concerns arise from the frequent scandals that have hit the academies sector, and MATs in particular, as a result of poorly managed conflicts of interest and other financial scandals (Greany and Scott, 2014).

These concerns can spread from teachers to parents more widely (Waslander, 2010). We note, for example, findings by YouGov, that there is shrinking support for academization among both the public and education sector. While 40 per cent of people supported the idea of schools being encouraged to convert into academies in 2011, by 2016 that support had fallen to 25 per cent with more people unsure. Among teachers, only 17 per cent asked by YouGov in March 2016 agreed that academization would make standards better; 48 per cent thought it would make standards worse (YouGov, 2016).