Strategic Leadership

- Introduction

- Shaping vision, values and culture

- How is data used and how are trends analysed by the school’s owners
and the school itself to inform strategies and culture formulation?

- Decision making processes and implementation of strategies

- Conclusion
Introduction

Prior to be being head of music at school A, I was a teacher of music at school C

(part of a multi academy trust), where between 2013 and 2016 I witnessed and was

part of possibly one of the most dramatic changes in a school one could possibly

experience. School C had been in special measures for over a decade and was on

the verge of being permanently shut down, were it not for a huge cash injection that

resulted in a brand new £40m building in September 2014 that would educate some

2000 pupils of the local, very diverse and socio-economically deprived, community.

Shortly after moving into the new building, a new, Future Leaders, headteacher was

appointed. The new head took swift and decisive actions that transformed the

organisation into was deemed by Ofsted as a ‘good’ school, this dramatic

transformation happened in the space of 18 months. The reason I refer to school C

is because school C’s new and powerful deliberate strategies that had been crafted

were made incredibly loud and clear, at Everest heights, to all stakeholders of the

school. At every opportunity, the mission statement, visions and values were aurally

and visually perpetually present, so much so that they became engrained into the

minds of all stakeholders, a new, moving (Stoll and Fink, 1996) culture had been

moulded. School C went from special measures to good in 18 months. In a chasm of

contrast, school A has no patently obvious, to teachers and students, strategies for

becoming an excellent in all aspects school. School A is however very different from

school C in many ways, seeded primarily in that it is a fee-paying organisation that is

by all accounts very good with excellent features. When a leader is appointed to plug

in all of the holes of a very leaky ship and steer it in the opposite direction, their

purpose is crystal clear: repair the ship, set a course and raise the sails, the aim
being to create a “moving” (ibid) school culture. School A’s sails are raised, the ship

is sailing and with no obvious repairs required, however, are the winds determining

the ship’s course or has a course been set, and by who? Perhaps “big moves”

(Bradley et al. 2018) seem like higher risks when a school is already very good? Is

the purpose to maintain high standards, i.e. “cruise” or to turn the sunset cruise-ship

into a soaring aircraft? What is school A’s inherent culture: “moving, struggling,

strolling, cruising or sinking” (Stoll and Fink, 1996)? School A is placed in a highly

competitive area, what are its stand-out benefits, what entrepreneurial strategies are

being employed?

Context

School A is a mixed independent day school in North West London with around 400

pupils on roll that achieves GCSE results that are well above the national average

and has received excellent inspectorate reports. In 2012 school A was acquired by

an international education conglomerate (conglomerate) founded in 2004 that runs

more than 70 schools teaching more than 50,000 pupils across ten countries.

Through natural changes in staff at school A, since 2017 the entire senior leadership

team have been replaced and re-structured. School A’s senior leadership team

consists of a headteacher that heads two campuses, a head of school / deputy head,

an assistant head responsible for operations, an assistant head responsible for

teaching and learning and an assistant head responsible for pastoral care.
The fleet and its Admiral

It is important to discuss and further analyse the conglomerate and its leadership, as

it plays a very significant role in the strategic values and to an extent culture of

school A, stemming primarily from its supreme leader, the CEO. After two years in

the role, the CEO said in an interview something that you would never hear from a

state school leader; “as long as you have high quality and the utilisation rates are

high, you can get a return on your investment (Warrell, 2015).” Although the CEO is

referring to investors, the intentions are positive and the sentiment is gain, and can

apply to all key stakeholders: improved grades for pupils, value for money for

parents, energised leadership (this being applied to all employees) and profit for

investors. Long term profits will only occur if there is a sustained level of high “total

quality management” (Preedy et al., 2003). Since 2015 the CEO has replaced many

headteachers and created a brief document that illustrates the organisation’s values

using six focal points, with Energised Leadership placed at the top: “a drive to

develop all our colleagues, whatever their role, making all parts of our organisation a

great place to work. A community where everyone embraces learning so we can

progress as individuals as well as collectively as an organisation.” This promoted

and advocated view of leadership across the conglomerate, encourages an open

culture (Preedy et al., 2003, p.89)

The CEO has made various entrepreneurial moves, including trying to achieve more

interaction between schools internationally in the hope that “British institutions will

embrace the same entrepreneurial outlook and interest in new technology as their

Asian peers” (Warrell, 2017). Identifying that schools cannot be franchised in the
same fashion as a fast-food chain and realising that schools are complicated and

vary depending on location and demography, the CEO has stated that “an flexible

model is not suitable” (McInerney, 2017), i.e. embracing an emergent strategy on

how to function with schools.

When in 2015 the conglomerate had appointed the new CEO, the appointment had

surprised many in the education sector as the new CEO had no professional

experience in the sector and self-affirmingly agreed stating that he is a “facilitator”

(McInerney, 2017) and explained; “I can’t run a maths lesson, but what I can do is try

and contribute to an environment where people can contribute freely and give their

views and use their experience to get us to a better place.” This attitude implies a

very open approach, an approach that demonstrates a genuine willingness to lead

by example of being collaborative, as well as wanting to be perpetually improving.

Those that hired the CEO clearly prioritised strong leadership skills, and in doing so

have a CEO who likewise places leadership as a strategic priority, especially for

schools and their headteachers, suggesting that “the leader is everything (Warrell,

2017).”

In realising the significance of a school having a strong headteacher, the CEO made

the decision to interview every new headteacher and uses data regarding a head’s

performance to inform their decision when appointing a headteacher. This leadership

focused strategic approach corroborates entirely with Fullan’s view that one should

“invest in frontline leadership” and “use data to confirm success” (2011, p.93).
There is also a framework document that draws out the conglomerate’s purpose,

what they deliver and how they deliver. The framework is built upon Sinek’s Why,

How and What model and offers a clear and concise illustration of the organisation’s

purpose (2010). The framework was developed with hundreds of leaders within the

organisation and represents a collective global purpose and was designed to

embrace the spirit of the organisation’s diversity, and this is evident in its simplicity; a

Venn diagram of three circles with a total of ten very short, memorable statements.

Since its inception, the framework has been presented to staff by several leaders

and in different formats, including videos of leaders providing the framework as a

narrative, which is crucial in gaining followers, as Pietersen states; “people follow

people and ideas, not documents” (Colombia Business School, 2018). Nevertheless,

documents can contain clear schemas that in some regards can simplify and reduce

statements to their most concise version, and as Pietersen also claims, “it is the job

of a leader to simplify” (ibid).

With so much energy gone into formulating a powerful and undoubtedly high “hot-

managerial” quality (Preedy et al., 2003) framework, what is the conglomerate’s

purpose in relation to its schools? The CEO and therefore conglomerate is primarily

concerned with facilitating the schools it owns with strong, entrepreneurial leaders.

Every school in the conglomerate embodies the conglomerate’s strategic framework

and is given a School Improvement and Governance Handbook The handbook is a

57 page document that provides guidelines to every headteacher as to how they

should operate the school. It does not set out the school’s specific values or culture

but does provide a template that prompts frequent self-evaluation and analysis,
including surveys for students, parents and employees. The handbook doesn’t

instruct headteachers on how to analyse but does offer questions that provide insight

into what self-evaluation and analysis should provide, not just data, but as Pietersen

(Colombia Business School, 2018) asserts, brutal truths. Two questions are

instructed to be asked for every set of results from surveys: 1) what does the data

suggest and 2) what will be your actions? There is a microscopic level of attention to

detail regarding strategic learning in the handbook. The handbook provides a

template for headteachers to use for a large part of steering their strategies and

operations year on year.

Values and Culture

So to what extent has the conglomerate’s strategic framework regarding values and

cultural aims influenced that of the school’s strategic framework? A good deal, the

structure of the school’s strategic framework is also built on Sinek’s model of why,

how and what. There are three points from the conglomerate’s ‘what’ part of the

framework, but one does not appear in the school’s.

Table 1.
Conglomerate’s ‘Why’ School’s ‘Why’
An inspiring world of Find your true North (marketing
education strapline)

Table 2.
Placement Conglomerate’s ‘Whats’ School’s ‘Whats’
on
paperwork
First Academic Excellence Knowing The Individual
Second Character Development Academic Excellence
Third Nurture a Global Character Development
 Perspective

The purpose corresponds directly with the school, its location, its customers, and

employees. How have the values and cultures come to be what they are today in

school A? In conversations, staff at school A have always acknowledged that it is a

nurturing environment, owing to its relatively small size which offers a family-feel

approach and intake of pupils who are from a diverse range of backgrounds and

whose parents work in a diverse field of work, in particular the arts, law, medicine,

business and government. This caring and nurturing environment also stems from

well-established protocols and habits that include weekly in-depth pastoral updates,

to the extent that a student’s unnutritious choices at lunchtime may be flagged to all

staff in the weekly staff briefing from the pastoral assistant head. Weekly year group

meetings include heads of years probing form tutors for any pastoral intel. Students

are nominated on a weekly basis for excellent attitudes in and outside of school, this

has included an award for helping an elderly lady carry her shopping. There are

many other similar firmly established, built-in behaviours that teachers carry out,

though very few of these protocols are written down in any school documentation,

they have become engrained in the staff’s collective memory and weekly, monthly,

termly repertoire. This nurturing, “welfarist” (Preedy et al., 2003) culture was

captured on paper, in September 2019 when over the course of 15 months

headteachers, marketing heads and external brand and creative agencies forged a

campaign that encapsulated the values and aims of school A. The reasoning behind

the campaign was developed from parents’ comments that included “this feels so

warm”, “this feels so welcoming”, “this feels so friendly”. The marketing strategists

realised that the parents who were interested in school A were drawn to its “welfarist”

not “hothouse” culture (Preedy et al., 2003). The campaign creators also identified
that the private education sector is very competitive in London and so drew on a

facet of the school that was noticeably different to the other independent schools that

are mostly “hothouses” (ibid). What school A offers is to an extent unique compared

to other providers in the private schools’ market, which Pietersen (Colombia

Business School, 2018) would argue is not the surest way to excel as others may

copy you. This approach of looking outside in, i.e. looking at the school from a

parent’s perspective and enquiring as to what the solution to their need may be does

correlate well with Pietersen’s second key to success for the strategic learner,

“success means putting the customer at the centre of business decisions” (ibid).

Pietersen’s view is somewhat narrow and doesn’t elude to what Bungay asserts; that

competitive advantage is “vastly exaggerated” and that organisations like Amazon

are building lots of “smaller walls and not just one big one” (2019), and to an extent,

school A does this, its “smaller walls” (ibid) are on knowing the individual, academic

success, being co-educational, non-selective /mixed ability and connected to a

global community via the conglomerate.

It is crucial that leaders understand themselves and to know what drives them and if

every individual within an organisation should be a leader, it therefore goes that

every individual within an organisation should realise what their primary motivations

are, their purpose, their aims and visions (Pink, 2009, p.27). The same then must be

said for an organisation as a whole; that an organisation should realise and

understand its purpose. However, individual self-discovery can be challenging

enough, so for an organisation discovering its purpose, can be just as difficult, if not

more (Pink, 2009, p.173).

Once an organisation successfully leaps over the first hurdle of self-discovery, it

must then craft strategies for how to fulfil its purpose and as Bount and Leinwand

state, “many enterprises struggle to define, much less live, their purpose” (2019).

School C’s senior leadership team demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for

understanding the organisation’s cultural environment, demography and resources

that acted as the foundations for shaping the school’s primary strategy which when

implemented went on to live its purpose achieving GCSE results not seen before at

the school.

School A’s values have only recently been explored in depth and documented, for

the first time in its current geographical location and with the current senior

leadership team. Up until now, most of what has now been written in the new

marketing campaign document has been spoken of amongst staff, parents and

pupils.

How is data used and how are trends analysed?

Referring back to Pietersen’s (Colombia Business School, 2018) view that data

should lead to insights, another application could be appended to this, that insights

should then inform strategy designs and this is prompted from the data that is

collected from the various surveys that are carried out. Surveys at school A are

carried out annually, from the results, a series of questions are to then be asked by

SLT, as stipulated by the conglomerate’s handbook, they are:

1) What does your analysis of the data suggest?

2) What pleases and surprises you?

3) What does the year by year breakdown suggest?

4) What are your actions because of your analysis?

5) Have you fed back to pupils and staff?

6) Do you revisit so that they know that actions have been taken?

The style of the above questions are geared more towards operational ends rather

than strategic thinking. One might adapt question 4 from above using Pietersen’s

third question for creating strategy, “what will be the key priorities for achieving our

winning proposition?” (2018), to “what should the key priorities be for improving next

year’s result regarding relationship?”. The answers to these questions are discussed

in SLT meetings and heads of year meetings with minutes taken and shared. The

process is somewhat limited and it is questionable as to how effective this process is

internally. The results from surveys do however prove to be very useful for the

conglomerate in identifying schools that are either scoring particularly well or

otherwise. It could be viewed that the surveys act more as a monitoring system

rather than a method of developing strategies. The questions in themselves are part

of a strategic learning approach by the conglomerate. They facilitate a reflective

learning cycle template for senior leaders to use. The analysis of the survey happens

after the survey and various actions may be put into place depending on priorities

and resources. Generally, the analysis is not looked upon until a year later when the

next survey is carried out. The surveys generate an overall score which is compared

with previous scores as well as with other schools across the UK and Europe. These

comparisons determine various courses of action underpinned by a broader strategic

level, which in school A’s case is to provide a safe, nurturing environment and
academic excellence. The surveys also highlight tactical (USAF, 1997) levels of

strategy and help to identify issues on the ground.

As well as the surveys that are carried out throughout the year, a significant amount

of resource time is put into exams’ analysis. Every year, heads of department must

complete a comprehensive GCSE exams analysis document that draws upon

various aspects of data, including disparities in gender, SEN requirements, ethnicity

and late entry. Also included is a series of thirteen questions that prompt heads of

department to reflect and evaluate their pupils’ GCSE grades, included is “how do

your results compare with national averages/local competitors?”. All departments in

school A achieve above national averages every year, so, to some degree that

measure / comparison is not particularly effective. A focus on what the difference is

compared to local competitors may be more effective in promoting a drive to

improvement. Against local competitors, school A does in some instances achieve

lower GCSE grades. This is normally attributed by leaders within the school to the

other schools being selective of their pupils, whereas school A is not academically

selective; this is a facet of the marketing strategy of school A as most competitors in

the local area are selective. However, this line of thought in leaders at school A could

arguably perceived as a cruising attribute (Stoll and Fink, 1996).

Of the four areas of strategic data collection as illustrated by Davies and Ellison

(Preedy et al., 2003, p.158), school A’s strategic data comes mostly from the

stakeholders’ area (see table 3) via surveys. Aside from GCSE results data, the

environment data is approached using qualitative data, and is taken predominantly

from within the conglomerate. The benefit of being a member of a large

conglomerate of schools around the world is that data, whether qualitative or

quantitative is readily available to leadership teams, all of which is available to the

conglomerate leaders. How they use this data is unclear and could be explored

further via an international PESTLE analysis. Regarding the school’s product and

service, a SWOT analysis as well as an internal evaluation carried out by a brand

agency was carried out in 2019. The school was last inspected in 2015, and an

underlying theme for improvement was feedback and marking across the school. As

result, the most significant course of action that followed was frequent book-looks

and CPD. School A and several other schools from the conglomerate is currently

collaborating with UCL and conducting research on what the most effective feedback

to students is. There isn’t a PESTLE analysis within school A.

Each year the senior leadership team at school A produce a school improvement

plan. At the beginning of the plan there are three focused priorities, that are

noticeably underpinned by the school’s overarching strategic aims, focusing on: 1) all

pupils achieving their academic potential; 2) developing a curriculum designed to

cover global, character and academic excellence, and; 3) sustainable capacity and

capability is in place to support teacher development. These three key priorities in

the school improvement plan embody a strategic approach.

Since 2014, the government introduced the Progress 8 accountability measure,

placing the weight of accountability on value-added scores. As a result, school A

introduced the use of MidYis and Yellis testing for monitoring students’ progress and

setting grade targets. This data is shared with teachers and provides a level of

accountability to teachers.
Table 3 Taxonomy of strategic data collection (Preedy et al., 2003, p.158)
Area for analysis Data needed Available approaches
The environment International trends PESTLE analysis
national trends
Regional/local trends
The school’s customers existing and potential market segmentation
or stakeholders customers or clients their demographic and survey
values, wants and needs data preference surveys
The school’s product and areas of strength and SWOT analysis,
service weakness, growth and GRIDS
contraction
perceptions of the school internal evaluation
external inspection
attitude surveys
The competitors the products and services SWOT analysis,
offered, their strengths customer survey data
and weaknesses
Perceptions of their competitor analysis
provision inspection reports

Decision making processes and implementation of strategies

Bernhardt (2018) depicts two scenarios regarding the ways in which schools view

and respond to data analysis of student grades:

1) Schools that are focused on compliance

2) Schools use data for continuous improvement

Bernhardt states that schools that are focused on compliance hold students to

account, they blame students for poor grades as well as demographic and socio-

economic reasons (2018), therefore being of a closed, fixed mind-set. Schools who
use data for continuous improvement “embrace the students they have and learn

how to meet their needs, and ensure that everyone achieves” (ibid). When analysed,

data should highlight “what is working and what isn’t working” (ibid). Edmondson

makes an incredibly bold claim that if enough data is collected and triangulated

about an individual child, that their absolute success could be supported from cradle

to career (TEDx Talks., 2010).

Bernhardt’s growth mind-set approach and view of how data should be used is

aligned with what Hill et al. refer to as the architect headteacher (2017b), the one

type of headteacher that can turnaround a failing school. What Hill et al. don’t go on

to suggest is that an architect type of headteacher is probably also the one type of

headteacher that can improve an already very good school. Fortunately for school A,

its headteacher demonstrates many of the ‘architect’ features. The headteacher

along with the marketing team have now promoted the route of an all-through

education pathway referred to by Hill et al as “building block 3”, i.e. educating

children aged from 3 to 18 years old (2017a). School A is on several campuses

across North London, but up until now has functioned almost entirely disparately.

School A’s head is also making fundamental changes to the building and learning

environment with long term plans that span over several years. The head is also

making efforts to create a sixth-form at school A’s site.

Using data effectively with the correct attitude stemming from a “moving” (Preedy et

al., 2003) type of school culture is essential in informing decisions. Decision making

processes can be easily swayed by “corporate politics, individual incentives, and

human biases” (Bradley et al., 2018). Leaders must strike a balance between an
organisation’s purpose and the feelings of others, as a bias towards one or the other

may hinder decisions being made (Scouller, 2016, loc. 1203).

Conclusion

A lot of literature regarding strategy is born from the military, as refining the art of

strategy in warfare can mean the difference between life and death. In the military,

strategy is considered something that should be dynamic and able to respond to

variable scenarios with the ability to “exploit to transient opportunities, rather than

adhering to a predetermined course of action” (USAF, 1997). This definition of

strategy is analogous to Mintzberg’s and Porter’s emergent approach to strategy

(Mintzberg, 1994; Porter, 2008). In part, strategy is the process of making informed

decisions based upon data, resources and chronological variables underpinned by

core values. A strategy for dynamic, complex environments should not be a fixed,

deliberate plan, a strategy can be a framework for decision-making, a set of guiding

principles which can be applied as situations evolve.

Table 4. A typology of schools (Stoll and Fink, 1996)

Improving Declining

Effective Moving Cruising

Ineffective Struggling Sinking

Through its entrepreneurial approach to strategic leadership, determined largely by

the conglomerate’s CEO - who has shaped the school’s leadership, school A is by

no means a sinking or struggling school (see table 4). Most of the evidence provided

in this essay would point towards school A being a “moving” school. However, one

facet of the school does exhibit some features of a cruising school; external

perceptions of the school are based primarily on the school’s absolute achievements

and not on value added scores, which if not monitored may lead to contentment and

goal diffusion (Preedy et al., 2003). Overall, school A is effective and improving as a

result of the conglomerate’s top priority of developing strategic, entrepreneurial

leadership throughout its schools which in school A’s case is nurturing it to be a

perpetually improving school.

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