Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive, CST
The formation of my professional self is deeply rooted in the country in which I was born – South Africa, under Apartheid. I learned in a visceral and real way that people care so much about the right to an education that they are prepared to die for it. As a young teacher, I taught in a school housed in a community hall in then ‘township’ of Alexandra. Alexandra is a vibrant community which produced brilliant writers like Mark Mathabane and Mongane Wally Serote. It was a formative and foundational experience for me to teach in this community. State education was not then desegregated in South Africa, but I lived to see Nelson Mandela released from prison and subsequently become South Africa’s first democratically elected president – and one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known.
It is somewhat of a cliché now to recall Mandela’s view that education is the greatest weapon that you can use to change the world, but I believe this. I hold on to it. So, my professional self was forged here – in this beautiful country with such a difficult history – and it was here I learned that education can be a force for good, a force for social justice and a way of bringing about human flourishing.
Andy and I reflected that he had arrived at this very resonant view from his deep Christian faith. He has a real passion for bringing that faith alive in a way that is really accessible to others, and in the book talks in depth about the Christian inspiration for thinking about flourishing. This is not just a vision for Church of England schools, but rather a vision for education that the whole sector can be involved in. And I had arrived at it from a deeply (small p) political sense of what education is for. To be clear, this is part of my view that education is (and must be) a good in itself and should not be used in service to utilitarian ends.
Five domains of flourishing
Lynn and Andy’s book explores five domains of flourishing: purpose, relationships, learning, resources and wellbeing. At the core of the book is a question about how pupils, educators and schools flourish together. They talk about an ecology of flourishing, and give particular attention to the need to focus on the flourishing of adults if we are to see true flourishing in our schools – to quote the book, "…where there are few flourishing adults, there will be few flourishing children.” And this, of course, has particular implications for school leaders and their vision for the flourishing of the whole community.
This resonates with the work that CST has been doing in relation to school trusts, both in terms of the question we are posing about strong trusts and the question of 'why a trust-based system?'
Human flourishing is central to our definition of a strong trust. To be clear, our discussion with our members about a shared view of what good looks like, is nothing to do with the size of the trust and nothing to do with authoritarianism. It is important that as we move forward together towards all schools being part of a trust that we build a common language and a common understanding of what good looks like. At the core of this is how we create school environments where children and adults flourish.
In the rest of this article, I want to pay tribute to Lynn and Andy’s book by reflecting on these five domains of flourishing and linking them explicitly to CST’s work.
Purpose
As we say in our paper on ‘Starting with Why,’ this is first and foremost about the power of purpose – the capacity to link people through a shared belief about the identify, meaning and mission of an organisation.
It is our solidarity and our interconnectedness – our shared sense of purpose and our execution of a shared mission – that will make a difference to the children and communities we serve. It is through this that we mobilise education as a force for social justice and wider common good. This is why we are so pleased to build partnerships with other organisations who share this vision for flourishing together – this articulation brings coherence, and releases latent transformational potential in the system. Our shared purpose also helps to sustain our vision in the more challenging seasons that we encounter – for we do not face them alone, but together.
Relationships
Lynn and Andy discuss flourishing relationships in their book. This brings me back to Viviane Robinson’s powerful concept of relational trust. As Viviane says, people don’t want to collaborate with people they don’t trust. People don’t want to work with leaders they don’t trust. But education is fundamentally a collaborative activity. This is why relational trust is so important in education. Children and adults must have a deep sense of belonging if we are to build this relational trust.
In our view, deep and purposeful collaboration is at the heart of the trust structure. And from our point of view at CST, structures are in fact very important because they create the conditions for this intensely focused collaboration, within and between organisations.
Learning
I recently attended a round table with the wonderful Ben Riley, founder of the Deans for Impact in the United States. He gave an outsider’s perspective on our education system in England. It was wonderful to hear. He said England is at the vanguard of evidence-led teaching and leadership.
I absolutely loved hearing this. We all too quickly deride the English education system. So, we should say to our harshest critics – yes, we are an outlier. We are doing some things in England that are at the vanguard of educational practice. We respectfully invite you to take a look. We do so with humility because we know we haven’t got it right – and that there is always more to do, but to quote Lynn and Andy, "we believe that learning is a capacity and endeavour central to the human experience.”
Resources
Lynn and Andy speak both of the scarcity of resources and the stewardship of resources. Both of these concepts are hugely pertinent right now as the cost pressures on our schools and trusts feel almost unbearable. But Lynn and Andy offer a different perspective – the abundance mindset. This is of course not to minimise in any way the case for further investment in education. It is rather to develop what they call "a deep sense of generosity and outward looking vision, and an orientation of service to the community” (page 181).
This resonates with CST’s recent work on the school trust as an anchor institution – anchoring its schools in their communities and seeing communities as an abundant resource. I think this goes to the heart of what Lynn and Andy speak of as reimagining resources.
Wellbeing
Lynn and Andy acknowledge the question of wellbeing in our schools has been particularly challenging in recent years. There is a marked decline in the mental health of our young people and insufficient mental health services to support them. Nevertheless our teachers, leaders and support staff continue to do everything that they can to support our young people.
The Covid-19 pandemic has perhaps reinforced for us that the wellbeing of our children and staff matter - hugely. Lynn and Andy say that "the collective wellbeing of the students and educators in our schools is central to the pursuit of flourishing together" (page 221).
It has never perhaps never been more important to think of education as the building of who we can be. In my speech to CST’s annual conference last year, I reflected on the writing of Professor Hennessey who says that it is a concept of a duty of care that should again define us as we learn how to live in a post-pandemic world with such political, economic, and social uncertainty. I wish for this to be the basis of a new social contract with government and more widely with our parliamentary democracy.
Hennessy says: "The great question of UK politics … is whether we can find the pessimism-breaking policies, the people, the purpose, the language, and the optimism to shift [our current] system and replace it with something much closer to who we are and, above all, who we can be.”
But we do not need to wait for this political settlement – it is within our gift to find the people, the purpose, the language, and the optimism to shift our mental models - to see education as the building together of who we can be.
Concluding thoughts
There are different schema that exist in relation to emerging views of what good looks like. No-one has a complete hold on this. And schema exist for different purposes. But we do believe that mature leadership in a mature system understands the need to build organisational and system strength and resilience through a shared collective purpose and a shared view of what good looks like. It is this that will enable our children and staff to flourish.
It is a great privilege to be working closely with the Church of England and the Catholic Education Service as we continue to build a flourishing system together.
