February 2001

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From D- to A+: Dramatic Improvements at London's Calverton School

by Sharon Hollows

I work at Calverton Primary School in Newham, which is considered a very difficult part of London. My school has about 550 pupils. Fifty-seven percent of the children in their final year at my school haven't gone all the way through this one school; they are unplanned admissions. About 50 percent of the parents are unemployed. About 50 percent of the students come from non-white UK backgrounds, and a vast number of these children actually have very, very poor standards in English and quite often are very new to the country. Twenty percent of the children have special needs. We do not have special schools in Newham. (We did learn that lesson from Canada and, thank you very much, we feel it's working very well.) We have a high crime rate. You park your car in the school car park at your own peril. And we have a high rate of mental illness as well.

School testing begins

Nineteen-ninety-six saw the first publication of national school performance data. All eleven-year-old children right across the country were tested in maths, English and science. All of the tests were marked externally, and the same tests were sat across the country. In that first testing session, only 8 percent of our children achieved the required level in maths, only 16 percent in English, and only 20 percent in science. The tabloid press absolutely slaughtered us; we were named in the list of the worst 100 schools in the country.

On that particular day, I attended a conference with a lot of other head teachers, and I have to say I did not wear a name tag. I hid it in my briefcase.

I did not advocate publishing performance data. I made lots of excuses for my school's poor performance. I went around telling myself that our poor standing was a result of the nature of the children in the school. I told myself that the poverty in the area was the reason that our children had achieved such poor results. However, I decided I had better tackle the issue and raise standards.

By the year 2000, 98 percent of our children had achieved the required standards in maths, 88 percent in English, and 100 percent in science. A very high proportion of those scores were particularly high scores. We have lots of children, even though they are only 11, achieving the levels that 13- and 14-year-old children should be achieving.

In 1999, we were recognized as the most improved school in England. I had to go off to Downing Street to tell the prime minister how we did it. The Secretary of State then asked me to join the government task force which is, I suppose, why I'm here today. I'm here not because of what the PM and Secretary of State said but because of the school improvements.

Media interest

We had a lot of television and press coverage, both national and international. By this stage, I became less upset about the publication of school performance results. I know what it's like to be at the bottom of those league tables as well as at the top. It can be really demoralizing and upsetting and depressing, but it can also be extremely motivating to be at the bottom. I'm sure we would not have achieved such an enormous improvement if our results hadn't been published.

Success does breed success. We now have extremely long waiting lists. Parents are allowed to chose schools for their children in England, and obviously one of the first things they look at is the achievement standards of different schools. The publication of that performance data definitely enabled a lot of schools to improve their standards of achievement. Testing does help schools and individual teachers evaluate specific issues. The results show us where the strengths and weaknesses are. They show us where the strong and weak teachers are, and where the strengths and weaknesses are within the curriculum that we're delivering.

Our relationship with the media has been very interesting. Of course, when we were at the bottom of the league tables, the media gave us a very hard time. Some parents moved their children out of the school. Not many, but some did. On one occasion I told a television crew that I was out. On other occasions we've had some very sophisticated reporters walking around who ended up covered in paint and various others things that small children manage to produce unexpectedly. When we did hit the top of the school improvement tables there was a great deal more media interest, particularly as we're in such a deprived area.

How did things improve?

But what people really want to know is what happened between 1996 and the year 2000. One thing that really helped me to manage the school more effectively was my liaison with a business mentor—a stockbroker, in fact. This senior partner in a stockbroking company helped me to overcome some of the difficulties I was having in managing my school.

My business mentor's arrival came at a very opportune time, as I'd also become quite interested in what going on in the private sector when I carried out some academic research into performance appraisal. At the time, appraisal was very new for teachers in the UK, although there was a lot of appraisal taking place in the US in industry. I started adopting some models that were non-traditional.

When my mentor arrived, he wasn't sure what help he could offer; he claimed to know absolutely nothing about schools. However, we started discussing what was going on in the school and some of problems that I was having. I talked about unsatisfactory teachers, about difficulties in recruitment, about managing non-teaching staff, which was a skill I knew nothing about. We also talked about delegation and about time management for me and for the rest of the staff. My mentor had extensive knowledge of employment law. I'd been told by my district that I was putting too much pressure on people. In fact, I got into quite a lot of trouble with the district. But my mentor knew exactly what I could and couldn't do. Teaching practices began to improve dramatically in my school. The teachers liked it. There is nothing more demoralizing than seeing poor teachers getting away with it. That didn't happen for very long after I began implementing the changes.

One of the questions that my mentor used to ask was, "Why not?" I used to make lots of excuses for why things were going wrong and why standards were low. I couldn't get rid of unsatisfactory teachers. I couldn't change their habits. I could spend more money on some areas than others, and he used to say, "Why not?" Of course that made me think.

It made me think more creatively. It made me break away from traditional school management. When I go to meetings with other principals in England, I hear lots of people say, "They wouldn't put up with this in the private sector." Well, it's true. Private business managers will not put up with a lot of the things that principals put up with. But then why should we put up with those things? It's about time we started saying "No" to some of the difficulties we encounter.

Another thing I worked on was the reduction of bureaucracy. Too many of my teachers were spending time copying test papers. They were queuing up at photocopiers. They were stapling bits of paper together. They were marking spelling and maths. They were doing lots of low-level, time-consuming administration. So I decided to employ teacher assistants. Teacher assistants don't have formal qualifications although I do test them in maths and English because a decent standard in both is essential. I was able to finance this because I couldn't employ enough teachers. (Class sizes have started growing because there simply aren't enough teachers in the UK—especially now the Canadians have all gone back home because you've reduced your class sizes. Thank you very much!)

By spending some money on extra admin staff, I became freed up. I could go and watch teachers more, and give them constructive advice. Eventually I started realizing that there were people on staff who were going to be much better than me at monitoring teachers, so I started getting them to monitor others.

We also made sure that we had excellent computers. (That's not as difficult as it sounds in the East End of London because they got stolen so often that the insurance companies replaced them every few weeks. Nothing ever becomes obsolete. We also have excellent software.) Admin staff and teachers feed in test results. We press a few buttons and find out exactly where our curriculum is weak and exactly where it is strong. We can see which teachers are good at particular areas, and which teachers need help. We also know which teachers can help those who are weak in particular areas.

I was surprised to find that a lot of schools in Canada don't have financial autonomy, although some do. I get about Cdn $2.5 million a year to run my school. Every child in the school brings in about Cdn $4000. If a child leaves, that money is taken away from me. So obviously it's in our interest to make people want to keep their children in our school. My financial autonomy gives me the opportunity to meet my school's needs. Every school has a different situation and every school has different needs. School improvement would certainly be much more difficult if I did not have financial autonomy.

Managerial skills are critical

Schools are inspected every four years in England by external inspectors. Many schools fail or almost fail the inspections and that information is published. We are publicly accountable. We're spending public money, so we're publicly accountable.

People ask me what I do in my school that is different from what other principals are doing in their schools. It's quite difficult to say, actually, because when you're a principal you don't often get the opportunity to go into other schools. Now, because of our success, I have been asked by the district to visit other schools and give other head teachers advice on how they can improve their schools.

So I do go to these schools to find out what is going wrong. I find that there are both good enough and excellent teachers in those schools. I find principals who are committed to the children and committed to the staff and are certainly extremely hard working. They have excellent academic backgrounds. They often know what they need to do in their schools. However, they are unable to delegate, they are unable to motivate their staff, they aren't monitoring their staff, in many cases they aren't self-evaluating, and they certainly aren't managing their time or the time of their staff effectively. A lot of them are just too nice and they are afraid of upsetting people. A lot of them lack vision. And there's a lot of crisis management going on and very little strategic management. These principals often work seven days a week, 14 hours a day, and are too exhausted to be effective.

I go to schools and find principals looking for lost property; principals on the front line with parents; principals answering the phone often. They are talking to sales representatives about absolute nonsense. They are probably excellent teachers, but they have no management training. When I became a principal, all of my training had been in teaching. I'd had no management training at all. I had to learn the hard way. And it certainly took me longer to learn than if I'd had appropriate training.

Effective principals are managers first, and teachers second. In the UK, we are now providing prospective head teachers with management training. But we have a whole generation of principals who do not know how to manage and have not had that kind of training. They often feel overwhelmed by the school's problems. I certainly still do on occasions.

Many of them are unable to prioritize. Some of them are so overwhelmed that they are not even advertising to cover vacancies and they end up with a lot of temporary members of staff. They are not seeking relevant support. I urge these principals when I meet them, as I would also urge my colleagues here in Canada, to tap into the valuable resource that's in every successful country—the business sector. The director of a company doesn't expect to know everything, as principals sometimes do. They just make sure that they have staff who do. They have a clear vision about what their output should be and know if their strategies are working. I certainly don't know every aspect of my school. I just make sure that I have staff who do.

The Calverton example

We have achieved a great deal at Calverton. Children from very impoverished and uneducated families have achieved standards that are actually higher than many who have affluent and highly educated parents. We do have high expectations at Calverton. Our expectations used to be low; the expectations of our pupils' parents used to be low. However, achievement levels are now far higher than even I had anticipated. I had set high expectations, but the children exceeded them.

One of the most wonderful things that has happened is that the parent's expectations are beginning to change. The parents in this very deprived area of London are beginning to realize that their kids can get into higher education and they can get good jobs. Of course the parents are a key.

I was very interested and pleased to see parents lobbying here for the publication of results. It's tough at first, but it's worth it. And as a parent myself, I want to know where I'm sending my children. In fact, in my case, one of my children goes to my school.

Expectations will increase when results are published—expectations of staff, expectations of the government, and expectations from the parents as well as the children. Of course, most parents want the best for their children. Sometimes they have had a difficult childhood themselves and might not know what the best is. We can play a part in helping them to find that out. Some parents think that clothes and television and videos are what their child needs, if they are going to meet their child's needs and give them the best. Perhaps they are not too concerned about behaviour. We used to have many parents encouraging their children to be very violent. We started developing home school agreements. Sometimes they are called contracts. Obviously they are not legally binding, but we do talk to parents about things like punctuality about bedtimes, and about the kinds of things their children do outside school. We have specific targets for every child in our school. Many of the targets are repeated from year to year. Punctuality is still a problem, but we're getting better. We've managed to move attendance from 84 percent to 93 percent, but that still leaves us with 7 percent.

Sometimes it's been really tough working with the parents in London's East End. The problems usually arise over discipline issues. I have been thrown up against a few walls. I have been punched a few times, as have my staff, but it doesn't happen very often any more. I do say to parents, "If you don't like the rules here, if you don't like what's going on, we have parental choice in our country. Go somewhere else." It's very, very unusual for them to do so.

We are a "Beacon" school. This means that staff from anywhere in England can visit us. They can observe the teachers teaching, they can have discussions with the staff, they can talk about management responsibilities, and they can have copies of all of our policies and procedures. (We're not possessive about them.) We can arrange for our staff to visit them in their schools and offer constructive advice. We've had lots of visits, many of them at the ministerial level, from, among other nations, France, Japan, Germany, Australia, and the Seychelles.

The business sector/education sector mix

I am delighted to be in a room where there is a mixture of business leaders and principals. In England, our business leaders are disappointed in the quality of their new recruits. They're disappointed with their poor literacy, poor numeracy, and poor IT skills. (Mind you, I don't think their IT skills are very poor in the East End, because they've all got computers at home.) The business leaders want to see an improvement in standards. But those business leaders have excellent skills that we don't have as principals. They know how to measure input against output. They know all about value-added. And they know about taking risks, which is something that was a great revelation to me a few years ago. We need these skills in our schools in England, and perhaps you need them in Canada too.

Principals have not often had management training. We haven't been groomed early in our careers to really know what being a good principal is all about. I know when I'm absent, my deputy says, "I didn't realize you did all of these things." Well, she's beginning to learn now because I'm out quite a lot these days.

I urge you who are principals to make use of business leaders with whom you may come into contact. There may well be people in this room today who could give up some of their own time, or that of their staff, to help principals overcome some of the difficulties that they may be having in their schools—difficulties that the people in this room have probably already overcome. I can promise those of you who are business leaders that the principals will benefit from that experience.

Conclusion

There is no greater gift that anybody could give to a child than a good education. Once a community becomes more educated, crime and unemployment will drop, as will dependence on the state. Very subtly, we will begin to see society changing, as we are beginning to see in the East End of London. Being a teacher or a principal is about the most powerful and the most important job anybody can have. I'm sorry business leaders, but I think we've got better jobs than you do.

In 1994, after a career in teaching, Sharon Hollows became head teacher of Calverton Primary School in Newham while simultaneously completing her MA at Greenwich University. When she arrived at Calverton, standards of achievement, behaviour, and attendance were very low. But, by 1999, it was recognized as the most improved primary school in the country, and in 2000 achieved “Beacon School” status. Sharon Hollows recently joined the UK government's standards task force. In the 2000 New Year's Honours List, Sharon Hollows was named Dame Commander of the British Empire.

The Garfield Weston Outstanding Principal Awards recognize the critical role principals play in accomplishing their school's mission, and for inspiring excellence among their students and teachers.

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