The idea of impact is often discussed in leadership team meetings. Some even present “impact” reports to governors and others. We long to get beneath the skin of a concept like this because we want to align our desire to make a difference with effective strategy, actions, and decisions. Time is too scarce a commodity in the life of a busy school to waste a moment doing something that won’t improve outcomes for the young people we serve.
And so impact, properly understood, is very important to school leaders and teachers. However, I have often wondered what it actually means to have “impact” as a school leader and how well we can truly measure the difference we are making. Given the level of complexity of a school, can we ever truly measure the impact we are having accurately?
You might respond that of course there is a way to understand impact – pupil voice, lesson observations, surveys, and student data. We have been measuring impact for generations have we not?
But as a leader it is not activities measuring impact that I am most interested in, since these can be manipulated or warped to suit my own positive story of my work – and can lead me to ignore the other side of my leadership. Eventually, this can cause problems in the way I explain my work and also in the way a school is run.
That’s why Nick Hart’s book Impact (2022) is such a helpful tool. In an attempt to overcome the complexity and messiness of the measurement of the impact of our leadership of schools, he offers a five-part model.
He argues that all five parts seen collectively constitute the types of “impact” a leader can have on staff and student work and learning. At any one time, we are having an impact on all of them either explicitly or implicitly. Each part can work in tandem and in seamless harmony or they may also work in conflict.
There may be occasions where leadership decisions have a big impact on climate, such as heavy workload at key points in the year, but actually ensure strong outcomes for students. At other moments, colleagues’ knowledge may improve, but their behaviours do not change and as a result student outcomes do not improve.
So his model is not a step-by-step process – it is better to view it as a cohesive whole with five parts that, when harnessed correctly by leaders to frame their thinking, can be a clear way of understanding our impact.
1, Climate
A positive climate is one that is motivating, psychologically safe and connected. Hart breaks this down further, but for our purposes it is these three elements that are worth exploring. Key ingredients worth reflecting on include autonomy, trust, mastery, and flow.
Autonomy refers to the extent to which staff have control over their work. Leaders need to strike a balance between consistency of approach at a whole school level with enabling staff to come to work knowing that they can include their creative flair, enthusiasm and passion in their own way.
This can be a tricky thing to achieve and something that is never “done” – it takes real wisdom. One area where this is particularly challenging is in performance management or professional development goals.
The perception of autonomy is achieved by allowing colleagues to choose their own targets or areas of focus, but this might not support the improvement of the whole school. It can also be challenging for leaders of teaching or CPD to construct whole-staff development sessions if they know that colleagues have a varying range of needs.
In my experience, it is the balancing of both that is key to ensuring the right level of autonomy for teachers. More than this, it is important to articulate this balance with staff, helping them to see how we need to work together for the sake of our students and that at times this might mean less autonomy.
Another element of a strong school climate is building trust while not undermining productivity. Hart quotes Professor Viviane Robinson (2017) who says that leadership is not just about building trust, nor is it only about getting the work done – it is about doing both of those things simultaneously.
Leaders destroy climate when they micromanage staff’s working lives. But at the same time there are always those who meet every deadline for their data, reports, marking or larger curriculum projects and there are those who need a nudge year after year. Leaders need to be able to balance the nudges with space for staff to complete tasks in the way best suited to them. This is challenging but it is the skill of great leaders: they create, deepen, and enable trusting relationships while still holding staff to account for their work.
Something that has struck me about building trust is how staff expect their leaders to hold them to account even if they do not necessarily respond positively to it.
Trust in leadership is built through clear communication and following through on your word; having integrity. Staff don’t trust leaders who say one thing and do another as over time this erodes the trust they have in you, even if you are nice, polite and courteous in all your interactions.
To not hold staff to account for their work is to undermine the role that you have as a leader and what staff expect of you. It ultimately ends in a complete lack of trust. For this reason, leaders must walk this tightrope spinning the two plates of “building trust” and “holding to account”.
2, Systems and processes
The next aspect of the model is the systems and processes that leaders set up. Imagine a large machine with many cogs. When they are well oiled and looked after the machine runs smoothly. The cogs then cease to be the focus and other things can be carefully considered, such as the output, speed and precision of the work going on.
Imagine that a machine’s cogs and parts are not well looked after. Then it is very difficult to focus on the outputs, results, or the speed above the noise of the cogs crushing against each other.
This is what systems and processes in schools are like. When they are there and they run smoothly, school life runs seamlessly and the systems are, in a strange way, forgotten about. When systems are not run effectively, issues emerge.
In my experience, a lot of deep thought into developing our systems and processes is really important. And the simpler they are the better. When these systems are agreed, the next step is to make sure they are simply communicated and reinforced at every opportunity.
When these systems go wrong or need adjustment, leaders and staff need to have the courage to tweak them accordingly or even scrap them altogether. There is simply not enough time in schools for us to put up with poor quality systems and processes.
Leaders can have a huge impact in this area and should rise to the task of making sure their schools are “well oiled machines”. Some may criticse this line of argument because they believe that schools should not be robotic or overly regimented – children are children and they should be free to be themselves. All I would say is that the aim is the right one – to enable students to develop into all that they are capable of being – but the method is wrong since the development of good habits through good systems supports students to focus on the right things at the right times and in the right ways.
The students who suffer most when systems and processes do not work well are the most vulnerable. When leaders take ownership of these systems and pursue excellence in them, they ensure that all teachers can work within a clear framework so that all can thrive.
3, Colleagues’ knowledge
Colleagues’ knowledge can be greatly impacted by school leaders, as although the conscientious few proactively pursue their own professional development, the majority expect leaders to support them.
The knowledge that teachers have can be broken down – pedagogical content knowledge, subject knowledge, curriculum knowledge and so on. But whatever the “type” of knowledge under discussion, within the framework of impact it is important to acknowledge that leaders can promote, discourage, enthuse, and fundamentally alter teacher understanding through the knowledge activities they provide for their colleagues.
It is worth noting that any professional development curriculum worth its weight will include a variety of different learning opportunities for colleagues to engage in. This is because it is important that colleagues develop their knowledge over a range of domains.
For example, if staff only develop knowledge of curriculum and don’t develop knowledge of pedagogy, they may not be equipped to develop holistically over time across all of the areas of their professional practice.
If they only gain knowledge of safeguarding, or a particular area of SEND, then colleagues may not be equipped for something like manual handling if that is ever needed. When colleagues only develop their pedagogical knowledge, there might be a chance that they don’t develop the subject knowledge they need.
In short, leaders need to carefully consider and anticipate the knowledge their staff will need and make sure that they provide them with a broad and balanced diet of learning across an academic year.
In my own experience, this is exceptionally challenging. There is minimal time for CPD across an academic year and it is important that it is used wisely, is balanced effectively, and is value for money. An approach that builds knowledge slowly over time across several years will enable this to be achieved.
Building a teacher development curriculum is paramount to ensuring that this is done well and should be a collaborative effort for all senior leaders to maximise the impact that they have on this area of the framework (see Mccrea, 2023).
4, Colleagues’ behaviour
Hopefully, if done well, the knowledge development that teachers undergo through the high-quality training that they are provided with should change staff behaviour.
It is no good for staff to sit through training on a particular area of SEND, for example, and it have no impact on the way that they teach. Sadly, this is often the case but it shouldn’t have to be.
It is my view that this is the hardest but most rewarding area of “impact” that leaders can have on their colleagues’ practice. Changing the way people do things is really hard.
This is where the strength of Nick Hart’s model comes into play: when we want to change colleague behaviour, there is a strong chance that it will negatively impact climate, another domain in this model.
Balancing warmth, encouragement and genuine desire for growth with accountability, direction and challenge, although well-intentioned, doesn’t always create a positive climate for staff. So, leaders need to carefully consider the right timing for behaviour change and how it will be communicated.
The first step then is to consider as a leader: is this a behaviour that needs to be changed? Does it undermine positive student outcomes? Or is this something that is just part of the way this person is?
5, Outcomes for children
It is well-documented in the research literature that school leaders have a significant but always indirect impact on student outcomes (Leithwood et al, 2017). If anything, as Hart argues, it is as leaders get the other parts of the “impact” model right, they should see outcomes for students improve.
So, as we began, school leaders long to make a difference. For that reason, it is important that they do not simply find ways to validate the work they are doing to show that it is having impact. It should be the other way round: we should begin with a robust and coherent model for understanding impact and the interplay between the various components that make the concept work. By doing this, with leadership teams and even teachers in tow, greater clarity can be gained and richer conversations can be had. I have certainly felt it in my own experiences so far.
Robbie Burns is vice-principal for teaching and learning at Bede Academy in Northumberland. Read his blog via
www.howthenshouldweteach.wordpress.com and follow him on X (Twitter) @MrRRBurns. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/robbie-burns/
Headteacher Update Autumn Term Edition 2023
- This article first appeared in Headteacher Update's Autumn Term Edition 2023. This edition was sent free of charge to every primary school in the country in September. A digital edition is also available via www.headteacher-update.com/content/downloads
Further information & resources
- Hart: Impact: A five-part framework for making a difference in schools, Bloomsbury, 2022.
- Leithwood, Sun & Pollock (eds): How School Leaders Contribute to Student Success: The Four Paths Framework, Springer, 2017.
- Mccrea: Developing Expert Teaching, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2023.
- Robinson: Capabilities required for leading improvement: Challenges for researchers and developers, ACER conference, 2017.