Loic Menzies, Senior Research Associate, Jesus College Intellectual Forum, Cambridge
The uncomfortable implication of Schwitzer’s warning is that until cracks are tackled, vulnerable children will continue to be failed, often with catastrophic effects. Yet the CST’s work provides an appealing alternative.
In The New Domains of Educational Leadership, CST’s Chief Executive Leora Cruddas argues that "leaders have a duty to engage with each other and other civic actors for the wider good.”
As she goes on to explain:
"As well as leading a group of schools, trust leaders also look out beyond their organisation. They work with each other in a connected system, and they seek to work with other civic actors to ensure coherent public services, and that the collective actions of all civic actors protect high-quality education”
I echo Leora’s contention that trust needs to sit at the heart of that endeavour in Mapping the Way to Educational Equity - a report I recently published with Cambridge University Press and Assessment. Yet that isn’t about blind trust.
Trust has to be built.
In this blog I therefore want to highlight four opportunities to build trust that would help tackle Schwitzer’s challenge.
1. Understanding across divides
Ndidi Okezie, the CEO of UK Youth. She recently started bringing together professionals from across education, youth and children’s social services, as part of a ‘Joined Up Institute’. What she found surprised her:
"I was shocked to hear the depth of disregard that existed between teachers and youth workers. It bordered on a disrespect for the skill set that each brought”
Having been both a teacher and a youth worker myself, Okezie’s comment certainly struck a chord.
Structures like the appropriately named ‘Children’s Trust Boards’ may have brought different professionals and services together, but Okezie’s argument in ‘Mapping the Way’ is that such efforts will fall flat without a shared understanding of the different skills, expertise and knowledge different professionals bring to the table.
She is optimist about the opportunities this might bring:
"If we could get to that mentality - where it’s about ‘what am I uniquely placed to do in a young person's life?’ - and how well do I understand the role others need to play?’ that could be transformative.”
2. Role modelling data management
As a researcher and former CEO, I’ve had a fair bit of training on GDPR, data management and safeguarding. Despite that, I still find decisions about sharing sensitive data in an appropriate, dignified and legal manner onerous. Given that, we can hardly expect everyone to be a confident expert in doing so.
Yet as Jim Lauder - trust assistant principal of Dixons Academy Trust told me, "there is so much inefficiency in the public sector because of a lack of routine information sharing, this is just not tenable”. The Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has therefore argued for a unique identifier for each child.
In the meantime, Mapping the Way suggests government, and organisations with the expertise to understand the regulations - including large trusts, need to lead the way and shape norms by role modelling good practice and sharing policies and processes. Doing so might help others gain the confidence to rethink their risk aversion.
3. Earning pupils’ trust
The conjoint of the above is that regardless of how important data and information sharing is, it should be done in a way worthy of pupils and parents’ trust.
My former colleague Abi Angus is now head of participation at the Centre for Education and Youth, but previously worked in children’s homes. Reflecting back on the young people she worked with, she recalls that:
"These young people’s whole lives were shared with anyone and they weren’t given the dignity or the privacy that other children took for granted. I think it’s the same for disabled children. Their intimate medical histories are sometimes shared with any professional. If we’re thinking about sharing information about young people, we need to be really clear about who we are sharing it with and why.”
In Mapping the Way, I argue that responding to Abi’s concerns might depend on giving young people agency in the process. For example, AllChild (previously known as the West London Zone) asks young people to look at the information that has been collected on them, and to help professionals make sense of it. This builds trust while filling gaps and producing more valid interpretations.
Ultimately, we can’t just expect to be trusted to share information - we have to earn that trust.
4. Investing in relational capital
Finally, one of the report's key insights is that the most powerful information is often embedded in relationships. We can design all the processes and systems in the world to codify and systematise knowledge, but coherence and collaboration depend on leaders knowing each other and their communities.
I call this, ‘relational capital’ because it is often an ‘underpriced asset.’ As I explain in a recent article on teacher recruitment and retention for the London Review of Education, there are strong parallels between studies of ‘continuity of care’ in medicine, and education.
For a trust leader, redressing the balance and valuing relational capital can have practical implications. When ‘buying-in’ support from charities or community providers, how long do you contract for? And how much do you ‘price in’ the value of local knowledge and continuity when you procure services? For example - do you employ a local caretaker or cleaner who knows local families and can provide another trusted adult for pupils, or do you use an agency that sends in different staff every day?
Over the last few years, new models of ‘relational contracting’ have been developed. These may help operationalise the true value of trust and continuity
As Leora points out in her report, as anchor institutions, trusts have the potential to play a "significant role in a locality by making a strategic contribution to the greater social good.”
Rising to that challenge depends on building the trust that a cohesive system depends on.
The CST Blog welcomes perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.
