The blog discusses the collaborative efforts of the Red Kite Alliance and Red Kite Connect in building a more interconnected and equitable educational system.
Prototypes for a more connected system already exist and we should be curious about these.
The Red Kite Alliance is a partnership of over 50 schools across Leeds, West and North Yorkshire who work together for children guided by a set of shared values. The partnership includes several academy trusts, local authority schools, independent specialist provision, primary, secondary and all-through settings. The Red Kite Alliance works positively with the local authorities that play a crucial role in supporting young people and families.
Together the partnership facilitates networking, supports subject and phase communities of practice, provides leadership development and CPD for staff in a range of roles. It also supports Red Kite Teacher Training to recruit and train 180 new teachers every year.
This is a non-partisan professional community led by an elected steering group that responds to the needs of schools. It is supported by a small secretariat, a huge amount of professional generosity and hard-won trust.
The robust and insightful ‘Peer Review’ programme that all schools take part in ensures that talent is identified and that the best ideas are shared and transmitted across the partnership.
Following changes in national policy, the Red Kite Teaching School Hub was formed and currently works with around 300 schools. Four other school alliances have supported the hub work, and as a strategic partnership, recognised how the connections between these networks could only further strengthen our collective efforts in supporting the region’s schools.
In order to deliberately foster this wider collaborative work, a separate, facilitating organisation, Red Kite Connect was created. Red Kite Connect seeks to bring together partners like alliances, and other system actors, such as universities and other educational organisations to work more powerfully for children across our region.
Red Kite Connect aims to build and nurture strategic partnerships to enhance the educational system by identifying and bridging gaps and sharing expertise beyond our own separate networks. Our partnerships focus on leveraging collective strengths to innovate, avoid duplication, and create impactful professional development opportunities tailored to the needs of diverse educational contexts.
In only a few months since its inception, collaborative work has taken place with and between regional school partnerships, trusts in the region, North Yorkshire Council and a partner in the East of England, HfL Education. The aim is to widen the reach of individual partners, and to offer events, courses and networking opportunities to any school who could benefit, regardless of whether they belong to a particular trust or group.
The ‘Sixth Form Advantage Programme’ delivered in partnership with HfL, exemplifies how knowledge within the system can be shared more widely through these kinds of connections. A group of sixth form practitioners from north and west Yorkshire have benefited from the expertise of HfL colleagues in areas such as funding, curriculum, leadership and inclusion, whilst providing valuable networking opportunities for colleagues who are often the only person in their setting in their particular role.
Collaborative working within a system known for its complexity can be challenging. Although in its early stages, the work of Red Kite Connect suggests that by being outward-looking, seeking out like-minded people and organisations, and being deliberate in leveraging strong strategic partnerships we can be more responsive to the ever-shifting sands of the education sector and reap the reciprocal benefits of connections which only serve to strengthen our collective efforts.
Red Kite Connect is perhaps unique in not trying to replicate or add to the ‘nodes’ in the network, but instead creating these connections between them; acting as a catalyst for activity, or fulcrum which supports it.
Some questions we are considering:
Does this approach provide a model for a more collaborative, fairer system?
How can such inter-connected partnerships work to support and enable the harder edged school improvement work that trust boards, Dioceses and LAs have the mandate to deploy?
Leading in a complex network requires different skills and behaviours to those of the ‘age of empires’ we are leaving behind. Enacting a shared vision and values and striving towards shared aims, whilst leading ‘laterally’, rather than within a traditional ‘hierarchical’ structure is challenging. It calls for diplomacy, highly skilled communication and strong moral purpose.
We need system leaders who are strong enough to be humble and appreciate that they are an actor within a wider system. What made leaders great in the past will not allow a new, connected system to flourish in the future.
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.
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