Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
As a national academy trust, AET’s 57 schools span a large geographical area and a wide range of contexts. That reach makes it more challenging to support one another, but the scale also affords us an opportunity - an opportunity to learn together to achieve and spread excellence further.
18 months ago, many of our subject leaders told us that they didn’t feel like they were part of a community. In fact, they felt lonely - working in isolation on the same kinds of problems but unconnected and unaware of the parallel tracks they were on. At the same time, our outcomes told a story of variation and underachievement.
We launched our subject networks to change that.
Taking inspiration from Tony Bryk's work on networked improvement communities, we launched our own subject networks. We set out to build professional learning groups of leaders in each subject discipline so that they could share, learn and problem-solve together.
These networks weren't simply about creating a sense of belonging, though; they were about fostering genuine collaboration. In an academy trust with significant variation in outcomes, subject networks were established to pool our collective intelligence so that we could accelerate the gains in each area, quickly spreading knowledge and experience across our schools throughout the country.
In July 2022, we began rolling out these subject networks, starting with both secondary and primary phases.
Each group has been led by a subject expert with a proven track record of excellence, and over time, each network has begun to establish its own identity. Groups have been developing subject entitlements - unique curriculum, teaching, and cultural entitlements that every student could and should expect from any AET school. For each group these look and feel very different, as they should do, reflecting the unique nature of each subject.
These networks have also embarked on numerous collaborative projects, ranging from the big things - such as establishing the core content for Years 1, 2, and 7 in English, Maths, and Science - to the more intimate - like translating the beloved story of The Hungry Caterpillar into different languages.
Since launching these network groups a year ago, the feedback we've received has been largely positive, with network members expressing their appreciation for how they have supported resource sharing. Principals have also noted that the momentum within these networks is still building now that colleagues from across the country are getting to know each other better.
But there have also been challenges.
Attendance, which began the year as low as 50% in some networks, has been a consistent issue despite efforts to improve it. Relentless communication and transparent tracking by principals, regional education directors and network leads helped us to increase this to 77% by mid-year, but this is still well below our 90% target.
Network leads have also reported difficulties with inconsistent representation during meetings, with the person attending changing each time from some schools. This has undermined continuity, and the pace of work has been limited because of time spent getting new attendees up to speed.
For primary colleagues, there is a particular challenge in meeting density. Many primary teachers lead on more than one subject, and while the meetings necessarily take place on different days, that creates a really high number of meetings to attend. We have needed to adjust this to reduce the number of meetings per subject, which has seen a boost in attendance, but there is more to do with our scheduling in both phases to make the logistics work.
The quality of collaboration during these network meetings has been another problem area for us. While online meetings have been a necessary medium, they have proven to be less effective for in-depth engagement. Members often find information sharing and professional learning beneficial but struggle with group problem-solving and decision making, revealing that connection does not automatically lead to collaboration.
Real collaboration, as Lorna Davis points out in her TED talk, occurs when a network solves a problem that its individual members cannot solve on their own. We know that we haven't reached this stage yet, despite some of the brilliant things produced in these networks this year.
Part of the reason for this lack of collaborative problem-solving is due to an excessive focus on sharing CPD as a way to build up expertise in the group. But we also know that we have to make a cultural shift to strengthen collaborative mindsets so that they can be network improvement communities in the truest sense.
As we, as a trust and sector, grapple with the challenges of doing more with less, purposeful collaboration becomes even more critical. We are committed to making these groups a priority as we evolve our approach in the coming year.
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Informed by the reflections from this blog, the second instalment of this series outlines our intentions to strengthen subject networks for the upcoming academic year.
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