This document discusses the challenges of ensuring high quality education for all students in an era of rapid change. It outlines 7 propositions on governance and professionalism, noting increasing expectations on schools and challenges to translating aspirations into classroom reality. New, more organic approaches to school improvement are needed. Current policy approaches tend to be reductionist and ignore opportunity costs. Strategic agreement on long-term purposes and competencies is vital, with governance focusing on vision, capacity building and constructive accountability. Professionalism requires a capable, empowered teaching profession. Accountability must support long-term vision. A new reform paradigm is needed with schools as learning organizations and quality driven by collaboration rather than prescription.

1. PROFESSIONALISM AND GOVERNANCE
(40 years of frustration!)
Professor Graham Donaldson
OECD
Brussels
October 2016

2. How do we ensure that every young person in the country
is purposefully engaged in relevant and high quality
learning throughout their time in school?

3. 7 Propositions
• The world is changing fast leading to growing expectations of schools, a multiplicity of
well-intentioned but often incoherent short-term responses and challenges to political
confidence in the teaching profession. The translation of educational aspiration into
classroom reality is problematic. We need a new and more organic approach to school
improvement.
• The policy discourse drives approaches to effectiveness and improvement that tend to be
reductionist and unimaginative; to ignore opportunity cost and focus on structures; to
value unduly limited accountability metrics–do not reflect the imperatives of rapid change.
• Strategic agreement on long-term purposes, increasingly expressed in terms of capacities
or competences, is vital to coherent change and improvement.
• Good governance should be less about structures than vision, capacity building and
constructive accountability.
• Professionalism needs to be understood as involving collective values, responsibility and
challenge as well as individual expertise and commitment. That means a capable,
empowered and collegiate teaching profession.
• Accountability processes must be constructive and true to the longer-term vision.
• We need a new paradigm of reform within which schools are learning organisations with an
inclusive leadership culture. Quality and improvement should be more about pull than
push.

4. Some Ambitious Challenges
Agreeing and pursuing ambitious goals for all our young people – equip them as
people for future lives
Raising ‘standards’, including basic literacy, numeracy and digital competence,
but also creativity and entrepreneurship
Developing values and ethical understanding
Defeating destiny – deprivation/experience/expectation/aspiration
Establishing a broad, secure and enduring base of education
Creating space for engaging teaching and learning – enjoy the experience and
challenge of learning
Sustaining high quality, relevant and challenging education
Building the confidence and capacity of teachers, individually and collectively
Establishing a constructive accountability culture

5. Creating the conditions for all young people to experience education of the highest quality requires 2
complex challenges to be addressed successfully –
The Learning Challenge -
Creating an inclusive, engaging and challenging set of learning experiences in pursuit of ambitious
and agreed purposes of education.
“What our children and young people learn during their time at school has never been more
important yet, at the same time, the task of determining what that learning should be has never
been more challenging.”
Donaldson G ‘Successful Futures’ 2015
The Realisation Challenge –
Bridging the gap between aspiration and the reality of day-to-day classroom life.
“A major, sustained change programme will be required to convert the recommendations of the
Review into practice.”
Donaldson G ‘Successful Futures’ 2015

6. THE LEARNING CHALLENGE

7. Strategic Direction
Agreeing and pursuing relentlessly ambitious goals for all our
young people
Raising and broadening ‘standards’ across the board –
‘subject’ as well as basic literacy, numeracy and digital
competence.
Addressing issues of wellbeing and the development of ethical
understanding and personal values
Feeding a desire to learn and keep learning
Learning Challenge

8. Learning Challenge
Technical Design
Creating a framework that
• pursues the strategic purposes
• is progressive and stretching and that embodies the best
of current knowledge
• can be realised in practice
• provides space for engaging and effective teaching and
learning
• embodies assessment as integral to (deep) learning

9. ~
“…the wants of this age are indeed very special and very
urgent. It is a time of rapid progress; and rapid progress
is in itself good. But, when the velocity is great, then, as
in the physical so in the moral world, the conditions of
equilibrium are more severe, and the consequences
of losing it are more disastrous.”

10. W E Gladstone Rectorial Address to the
Students of Glasgow University Dec 5 1879
)

11. “...no education system can remain static. The world is changing
rapidly, Technology is transforming our lives. The skills needed
in the future will be very different from those needed today.
Education offers each individual and nation the best chance of
navigating an unknown future – coping with uncertainty,
adapting to evolving conditions and learning how to learn.”
Lee Hsein Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore 2012 (Oceans of Innovation, IPPR 2012)
Strategic Direction
Trends and Forces Shaping
Twenty-First Century Education

12. ‘Average is over’
“This maxim (average is over) will apply to the quality of your job, to your
earnings, to where you live, to your education, and to the education of your
children…if you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage
and labour market prospects are likely to be cheery…” (pages 4/5)
“…a modern textile mill employs a man and a dog – the man to feed the dog and
the dog to keep the man away from the machines.” (page 8)
“The ability to mix technical knowledge with solving real-world problems is
the key…” (page 21)
“It might be called the age of genius machines, and it will be the people that
work with them that will rise…we (will have) produced two nations, a fantastically
successful nation , working in the technologically dynamic sectors, and everyone
else.”
Tyler Cowan 2013 ‘Average is Over’

13. TECHNOLOGY AND EMPLOYMENT
‘According to our estimates, about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk. We further provide
evidence that wages and educational attainment exhibit a strong negative relationship with an
occupation’s probability of computerisation.’
‘…current trend towards labour market polarization, with growing employment in high-income cognitive
jobs and low-income manual occupations, accompanied by a hollowing-out of middle-income
routine jobs.’
‘…while technological progress throughout economic history has largely been confined to the
mechanisation of manual tasks, requiring physical labour, technological progress in the twenty-
first century can be expected to contribute to a wide range of cognitive tasks, which, until
now, have largely remained a human domain.’
‘…computerisation will mainly substitute for low-skill and low-wage jobs in the near future. By contrast,
high-skill and high-wage occupations are the least susceptible to computer capital…’
‘…as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to
computerisation – i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the
race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.’
Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne (2013) The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to
computerisation? (www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academicThe_Future_of_Employment.pdf)

14. Technology and Learning
‘…as humans live and work alongside increasingly smart machines, our education systems will
need to achieve at levels that none have managed to date.’
If we are to bring about a step-change in the breadth and quality of learning for all learners, if we are to
tackle the persistent and unsolved challenges of learning in the 21st century, funders and
researchers need to go deeper and wider.
…begin with the pedagogy and be more ambitious!’
Luckin, Holmes,Griffiths & Forcier (2016) Intelligence Unleashed Pearson

15. Strategic Direction
In a generation
• Real incomes have nearly trebled
• Inequality has increased sharply
• More people are living alone
• Life expectancy has risen by around 8 years
• More children are born to single parents
• Migration and diversity have increased significantly
• Air travel has grown six-fold
• Most households have internet access
• Consumer debt has trebled
• UK election turnout 77.7% in1992 to 66.1% in 2015

16. ‘The Velocity is Great’
Globalisation
• Interdependence
• Competition
• Offshoring
• Reshoring
• Migration
• Scarcity
• Climate
Employment
• Skill demand changing
• Portability
• Employability
• Digital competence
• Fluid job market
• Lifelong learning
Society
• Inequality increasing
• Demography
• Life expectancy
• Single households
• Civic participation
• Changing family
structures
Education
• New and growing expectations
• Instrumental pressure? Education is for
work?
• Education for democratic participation /
citizenship?
• Uncertainty and lifelong learning
• New conceptions of knowledge?
• Creativity, teamworking, problem-solving?
• Deprivation and educational achievement?
• Better learning or different learning?
• Anywhere, anytime learning? Hand-held
connectivity?
• Social networking
• Internationalisation – PISA/PIRLS/TIMMS
Resources
• Scarcity
• Efficiency
• Accountability

17.  New markets and jobs but also volatility, insecurity and migration
 Complexity, diversity and inequality
 Ambiguity and citizenship
 Connectivity, collaboration and cybersecurity
 Personal and collective learning and innovation or obsolescence
“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”
John Dewey (1915) Schools of Tomorrow
Future Opportunities and Challenges?

18. European Framework of Key Competences
for Lifelong Learning (2006)
Communication in the mother tongue
Communication in (multiple) foreign languages
Math competence
Science and technology competences
Digital competences
Learning to learn
Social and civic competences
Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship
Cultural awareness and expression

19. European Commission
‘transversal skills’
Critical thinking
Creativity
Initiative
Problem solving
Risk assessment
Decision taking
Communication
Constructive management of feelings

20. Importance of
 strong basic skills including digital competence
 deeper conceptual understanding
 connected and coherent knowledge
 authentic knowledge in context
 creativity and problem solving
 learning in collaboration and to collaborate
 ethics and values
 personal agency
Move from what students should be learning towards what they should become?
(Priestley and Biesta 2014)
21st Century schooling?

21. INTERNATIONAL
CURRICULUM RESPONSES
AUSTRALIA
Successful learners
Confident and creative
individuals
Active and informed citizens
FINLAND
Knowledge and skills for life and for further study
Support each pupil’s linguistic and cultural identity – passing on
the culture but also create new culture
A tool for developing educational capital and enhancing
equality and a sense of community
SCOTLAND (2004)
Successful learners
Confident individuals
Effective contributors
Responsible citizens
WALES (2015)
Ambitious, capable learners ready to learn throughout their lives
Enterprising, creative individuals ready to play a full part in life and work
Healthy, confident individuals ready to live fulfilling lives as valued members of society
Ethical, informed citizens ready to be citizens of Wales and the world
NORTHERN IRELAND
Empower young people to achieve their potential
and to make informed and responsible decisions
throughout their lives;
Develop the young person as an individual, as a
contributor to society, the economy and the
environment
ENGLAND
Provide pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they
need to be educated citizens
Introduce pupils to the best that has been thought and said, and help
engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.
SINGAPORE
Confident person;
Self-directed learner;
Active contributor;
Concerned citizen.
IRELAND
• to enable the child to live a full life as a
child and to realise his or her potential as
a unique individual
• to enable the child to develop as a
social being through living and co-
operating with others and so contribute to
the good of society
• to prepare the child for further education
and lifelong learning.
ALBERTA
Engaged thinkers and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit;
Strive for engagement and personal excellence in their learning
journey;
Employ literacy and numeracy to construct and communicate
meaning; and
Discover, develop and apply competencies across subject and
discipline areas for learning, work

22. THEMES
• Ambitious goals directed towards the development of the person
• Balance between development of basic skills, subject knowledge,
application, creativity and broader preparation for future life
• Broader purposes usually relate to lifelong learning, citizenship,
creativity/entrepreneurship, personal wellbeing and efficacy
• Pervasive tension between ambitious purposes and the curriculum as
experienced by students

23. THE REALISATION CHALLENGE

24. “Many of today’s schools are not teaching the deep knowledge that
underlies innovative activity.”
“...if the economy is no longer an industrial-age factory economy, then
our schools are designed for a quickly vanishing world”
“The standard model of schooling emerged during the industrial age and
it has been effective at generating the kinds of graduates needed by
the industrial economy...Existing schools should redesign
themselves...to develop new models of learning for the future.”
Sawyer ‘Learning to Learn Learning to Innovate’ OECD (2008)
21st Century schooling?

25. ‘...there is strong evidence from a variety of sources that two decades of
reform have not led to anticipated levels of educational improvement, and
certainly not commensurate with levels of investment in education, but have
led to widespread teacher and headteacher dissatisfaction’
Hoyle and Wallace Educational Leadership: Ambiguity, Professionals and
Managerialism 2005, pp. 4-5
The impact of policies has been, at best, mixed. Neither general nor targeted
interventions have, thus far, demonstrated substantial sustained
improvements that can be spread widely.
Kerr & West BERA 2010 Insight 2
“We have in education a long history of innovation but it rarely touches but a
chosen few.”
Hattie, Visible Learning (2009) p254
“Cultures do not change by mandate…the process of cultural change
depends fundamentally on modeling the new values and behavior that you
expect to displace the existing ones.’
Elmore, R (2004) School Reform from the Inside Out Harvard University Press
The Reform Conundrum

26. OECD “Education 2030” project
Experience identifies implementation issues of
• Time lag
• Overload
• Quality
• Universality
• Implementation

27. Complex Governance
• Increasing complexity in education systems
• Move away from hierarchical relationships
• Division of labour, independence & self regulation
• Multi-level governance – fluid and negotiated relationships
Burns T& Koster F (2016) Governing Education in a Complex World OECD

28. THE AMBITION VORTEX
METRICS DRIVEN
SHORT-TERM
REDUCTIONISM
EVENTS
NATIONAL &
INTERNATIONAL
SURVEYS
eg PISA

29. Addressing the Conundrum
Research and experience points to
• ‘Better’ teachers
• ‘Better’ leadership’
• ‘Less’ prescription
• ‘More’ collaboration
• ‘Rigorous’ accountability
BUT
What about the improvement trap?

30. THE IMPROVEMENT TRAP
RESEARCH,
EVALUATION
&ACCOUNTABILITY
LESS
PRESCRIPTION
MORE
COLLABORATION
‘BETTER’
METRICS DRIVEN
SHORT-TERM
REDUCTIONISM
EXPERT
TEACHERS
EFFECTIVE
LEADERSHIP

31. APPROACHES TO GOVERNANCE IN
COMPLEX SYSTEMS
• Stakeholder involvement and ownership of agreed goals and principles
• A whole-system vision that keeps the focus on processes, and does not get mired in discussing
structures
• Alignment of roles and responsibilities
• The ability to identify needs and develop capacity in a realistic and timely manner
• A flexible and adaptive education system that can react to change and unexpected events
• Harness evidence and research
Burns T& Cerna L Enhancing effective education governance in Governing Education in a Complex
World OECD (2016)

32. Winning both the hearts and the minds of diverse stakeholders for
ambitious purposes
Determining and building on the interaction of non-linear and non-
hierarchical dependencies - ecosystem
Sustaining education for all young people that is both high quality
and relevant needs a continuous learning system
Establishing a dynamic and ambitious leadership culture
Building the individual and collective capacity of practitioners,
particularly the teaching profession – knowledge creation and
mobilisation
Establishing an accountability culture that is constructive and
founded on mutual respect
Some Interesting Elements of the
Realisation Challenge

33. Creativity Narrow accountability
Ambition Limited capacity
Intrinsic drivers Extrinsic drivers
Dynamism/adaptivity Compliance
‘Autonomy’ Uniformity
Emerging Tensions

34. STICKY CHANGE

35. Package and push?
Direct and demand?
Manage and measure?
Promise and punish?
Reassert and restructure?
Hearts and heads?
Network and nourish?
From Storming
to
Collaborative Partnership

36. Promoters
Drivers
Clear and
agreed
purposes and
building
blocks
Motivated
teachers
supported by
guidance and
resources
Teachers’
(individual &
collective)
professional
learning and
development
Leadership
Accountability
Inspection
Assessment,
reporting and
qualifications
Support from
parents, young
people,
employers,
universities,
colleges

37. NEW PARADIGM
EXPLORATION MORE THAN IMPLEMENTATION?
‘Too many of the developers take the McDonald’s approach: the significant thinking and planning are
done at corporate headquarters and the franchise holders are expected to adhere to corporate policies
and regulations…Developers have both idealized and simplistic notions of educational leadership’
FAITHFUL IMPLEMENTATION
‘Why should any effort at innovation be expected to be other than a first approximation of what needs
to be done?...The educational reform movement has been almost totally unaware that its initial models
are…just that: first approximations...that would lead to better ones’
Sarason (1996) Revisiting the culture of the school and the problem of change’
STRATEGIC EXPLORATION

38. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS AND
LEADERSHIP
• Profession not simply workforce
• Value and peer-driven intrinsic drivers
• Re-imagine a ‘teacher’
• Distributive leadership that recognises professionalism and
supports teacher agency.
• Learning school

39. We need teachers who -
have high-levels of expertise – subject, pedagogy and
theory
have secure values – personal and professional
accountability for the wellbeing of all young people
take prime responsibility for their own development
and sustain that development
use and contribute to the collective understanding of
successful teaching and learning
see professional learning as an integral part of
educational change
engage in well-planned and well-researched
innovation.

40. Teachers Matter but…
“For commitment to flourish and for teachers to be resilient and effective, they
need a strong and enduring sense of efficacy…They need to work in schools
in which leadership is supportive, clear, strong and passionately
committed to maintaining the quality of their commitment.”
Day et al ‘Teachers Matter’ OUP 2007 quoted in Hargreaves & Fullan
‘Professional Capital’ Routledge 2012

41. Leadership Matters Also
“The importance of the headteacher’s leadership is one of the clearest
messages emerging from research. There is no evidence of a school
being effective with weak leadership”. J Gray (1990), British Journal of
Educational Studies
Leadership second only to classroom instruction in affecting what
students learn at school and that leadership effect largest in the most
challenging schools (Leithwood et al 2006)
“Headteachers are perceived as the main source of leadership by key
school staff. Their educational values and leadership practices shape
the internal processes and pedagogic practice that result in improved
pupil outcomes.” (Day et al., The Impact of School Leadership on Pupil
Outcomes, University of Nottingham, 2009)
“A culture of initiative and collegiality within which learning is always the
prime focus embodies the kind of distributive leadership which is the
hallmark of our most dynamic and effective schools”(Teaching
Scotland’s Future, 2010)

42. 0.27
0.84
0.42
0.31
0.42
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
5. Ensuring an Orderly and
Supportive Environment
4. Promoting and Participating in
Teacher Learning and
Development
3. Planning, Coordinating and
Evaluating Teaching and the
Curriculum
2. Resourcing Strategically
1. Establishing Goals and
Expectations
Effect SizeRobinson, V., Hohepa, M. and Lloyd, C. (2009), School
Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying What Works and
Why: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration, Wellington: New
Zealand Ministry of Education.
Relative impact of leadership activities

43. Leadership
NOT
Followership
• Purpose, purpose, purpose
• Culture, culture, culture – flexible, impact-focused, collegiate, outward looking
• Relentless focus on capacity-building
• Use professional standards to promote alignment and growth, including
leadership qualities
• Extended professionalism/discretionary effort –
professional learning as key dynamic
• Talent spotting and coaching
• Mentoring as role of experienced teachers
• Manage the authorising environment – risk and reward / permission and
forgiveness

44. 12 FEATURES OF A LEARNING SCHOOL
• High expectations of all students in pursuit of ambitious purposes and early
intervention as issues emerge
• The culture is both grounded and creative – critical, flexible and open to ideas
• Research aware and active
• Technology rich – as and for learning plus networking
• Focused on impact on students’ learning – evidence, interpretation & action
• Build capacity by focusing on growth not deficits
• Teachers grow, develop and learn as part of normal work
• Culture of collaboration
• Constant focus on improving the practice of learning and teaching
• Outward facing – parents and wider community both partners and a resource
• Distributive leadership - empowering
• Self-evaluative - sceptical

45. IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
SYSTEMS AND GOVERNANCE
• Move away from implementation and delivery paradigms
• Apply principle of subsidiarity
• Invest in building professional capacity
• Engage professionals and wider stakeholder group creatively in policy
• Support distributive leadership cultures
• Apply intelligent and constructive accountability

46. Broad purpose -
Accountability
Control/Compliance
System monitoring
Informing ‘consumers’
Agent of improvement through expectations
Agent of improvement through capacity-building
Build confidence and create a ‘safe’ space for innovation
Focus -
Legislation/policy
Outcomes – learning/processes
Teachers/teaching
School compliance/effectiveness
System performance/policy impact
Evaluation/Inspection Traditions

47. STANDING INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
OF (EUROPEAN) INSPECTORATES
(Bratislava Memorandum 2013)
Inspection must not take the responsibility for achieving high quality away from schools
themselves. Self‐evaluation leading to improvement rather than passive compliance with an
externally determined agenda is central to sustained enhancement in the quality of students’
learning.
As the need for greater flexibility and innovation in education systems has become central to
educational policy, inspection needs to achieve a balance between its traditional roles and helping
to stimulate well‐founded innovation. Inspection itself must be flexible and innovative as it
meets the challenges of the changing educational context.
The ways in which inspection can support innovation in education will be circumscribed by policy and
practice within individual countries. Inspection will always be only one element in a complex
process. However, irrespective of such constraints, its influence can be profound, particularly in its
potential to challenge thinking, evaluate impact, and stimulate improvement.
The relationship between inspection and innovation can be complex. Innovation will only be
successful if it is embraced by teachers and the strong focus of inspection on classroom
practice can both highlight and illuminate the impact of innovation on learning.
Governments should ensure that the potential of inspection to make a major beneficial
contribution to innovation is built into improvement and innovation strategies from the
outset.

48. Agreed, inspiring and driving purposes
Curriculum not imprisoned by the past or the context
Embodies principle of subsidiarity
Confident, expert & empowered teaching profession
Active and extended collegiate culture
Distributive leadership
Constructive accountability/evaluation
A revitalised and energised teaching and learning
community
Broad experiences, better outcomes & higher
standards for our young people
A revitalised and energised
teaching and learning
community

49. Improving Schools in Scotland
OECD 2015
The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is an important reform putting in place a coherent 3-18 curriculum
around capacities and learning. There is a holistic understanding of what it means to be a
young Scot growing up in today’s world promoted by the curriculum…It rests on a very
contemporary view of knowledge and skills and on widely-accepted tenets of what makes for
powerful learning.
BUT
It needs an ambitious theory of change and a more robust evidence base, especially about
learning outcomes and progress.
Unless a range of metrics is available that reflects the full ambition of CfE, the nature of quality and
equity always risks being reduced to the most readily measurable. Develop metrics that do
justice to the full range of CfE capacities informing a bold understanding of quality and equity.
The Scottish Government has outlined a National Improvement Framework, which was still at
proposal stage at the time of this review. This Framework has the potential to provide a robust
evidence base in ways that enhance rather than detract from the breadth and depth of the
CfE.
Move the Curriculum for Excellence on from ambitious underpinnings to an approach to
curriculum, assessment and pedagogy, with supporting leadership and capacity-building,
that is a genuine 21st century system to be among those leading the world.

50. SCOTLAND’S NATIONAL IMPROVEMENT
FRAMEWORK

51. A Curriculum for Wales –
A Curriculum for Life

52. KEY FEATURES OF THE WELSH
APPROACH TO BOTH CHALLENGES
Strategic and inclusive approach based on agreed purposes
Focus on deep learning, the ability to apply learning creatively and the
development of personal qualities
Reflects current evidence about successful reform
Not top-down but collaborative, ‘all-Wales’ reform - pioneer network
Strategic legislation– subsidiarity
Recognises the need to take time to build understanding and ownership
Strong commitment to realism through pioneer approach - capacity
building and professional learning
Critical importance of distributive leadership embracing all levels
Synergies across development and accountability

53. Digital Competence Framework
creating, evaluating, redefining and remodelling
Pioneer Schools open discussion

54. 7 Propositions
• The world is changing fast leading to growing expectations of schools, a multiplicity of
well-intentioned but often incoherent short-term responses and challenges to political
confidence in the teaching profession. The translation of educational aspiration into
classroom reality is problematic. We need a new and more organic approach to school
improvement.
• The policy discourse drives approaches to effectiveness and improvement that tend to be
reductionist and unimaginative; to ignore opportunity cost and focus on structures; to
value unduly limited accountability metrics–do not reflect the imperatives of rapid change.
• Strategic agreement on long-term purposes, increasingly expressed in terms of capacities
or competences, is vital to coherent change and improvement.
• Good governance should be less about structures than vision, capacity building and
constructive accountability.
• Professionalism needs to be understood as involving collective values, responsibility and
challenge as well as individual expertise and commitment. That means a capable,
empowered and collegiate teaching profession.
• Accountability processes must be constructive and true to the longer-term vision.
• We need a new paradigm of reform within which schools are learning organisations with an
inclusive leadership culture. Quality and improvement should be more about pull than
push.