The Shape of Things to Come:personalised learning through collaborationCharles Leadbeater

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Valerie Hannon – Director, DfES Innovation Unit

Foreword

The Shape of Things to Come explicitlylinks two policy agendas which are deeplyinterconnected but have often been treatedas if they are separate: personalisinglearning and school collaboration. Theargument here is that if our aspiration ispersonalisation for all learners, schools willneed to work together to achieve it.

This is the fourth publication in the seriesproduced by the DfES Innovation Unit inpartnership with the National College forSchool Leadership.1 Thematically, it revisitssome of the arguments in the earlierbooklet Learning about Personalisationwhich Charles Leadbeater also authored.Here the argument is fleshed out throughextensive research seeking out ‘nextpractices’ that are already taking place in the system and are likely to herald thefuture of personalised education acrossthe country.

Personalising learning relies on getting young people and their parents to ‘invest’ in their education. The term is usedmetaphorically, pointing to the need forlearners to be much more profoundlyengaged in the process of learning. To achieve this, schools need to useresources flexibly and creatively, especiallyin partnership, and reach beyond the

boundaries of the classroom and theschool. The best way to handle theincreased complexity this entails is throughschool networks and collaboration withother stakeholders.

The importance of context dictates thatthere is no single solution that can be‘delivered’. Accordingly, this pamphletraises challenges as much as it offersactual examples, themselves works inprogress, of innovating towards a systemof personalised learning.

I hope that you will join in the discussionand add your own ideas as a member of the online Innovation Community at:www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/innovation-unit. You will be able to pose challengesand suggest ideas directly to Charles whowill be in the ‘hotseat’.

I hope The Shape of Things to Comeprovides a constructive challenge to policymakers and practitioners alike, helping toframe how we can begin to fulfil all of ouraspirations for a personalised learning offerfor every student.

1 Working Laterally: how innovation networks make an education epidemic by David HargreavesLearning about Personalisation: how can we put the learner at the heart of the education system? by Charles LeadbeaterSystems Thinkers in Action: moving beyond the standards plateau by Michael Fullan.

The biggest gains in terms of learningproductivity will come from mobilising asyet under-utilised resources available tothe education system: children, parents,families, communities. That is the ultimategoal of personalised learning: toencourage children to see themselves asco-investors with the state in their owneducation. This report is about how wecan achieve that transformation.

Investment is a metaphor not a financialpolicy prescription. Encouraging childrento become co-investors in learning doesnot mean shifting towards co-paymentand fees. We mean encouraging morefamilies and children to invest hope, effort,time and imagination into learning. Weneed a different language to describe what families should expect fromeducation but also what they should beencouraged and expected to put into it.The traditional story is that children are

the recipients of an education delivered to them according to centrally devisedstandards. Many children feel education is something done to them, a period they must endure. This leads many to disengage from education or, worse,disrupt it. An alternative is to paint childrenand parents as consumers, picking andchoosing between different options in an education supermarket, much as onemight buy a washing machine. But thisonly engages users in choosing betweendifferent options delivered to them. The point is to engage them far more in designing, producing and creating the learning they seek. The consumer’sperspective on education is as a series of discrete transactions whereas it shouldbe more like a relationship which supportsthe learner to aspire and achieve more.

The approach advocated in this report is that personalised learning is a way

The frontline of learning is not the classroom, butthe bedroom and the livingroom. Our educationsystem’s biggest untappedresource is the childrenthemselves.

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to mobilise children and families as contributors to their own education. The aim is to turn passive recipients into active participants, consumers intocontributors. Children and families shouldbe seen as part of the larger productivesystem that creates learning. Learningdepends on creative interaction. It cannotbe reduced to a series of transactions inwhich knowledge and skills are deliveredto children like parcels from Fed Ex.Personalised learning is designed to buildup children’s appetite and skills for thatkind of responsible interaction. Networksof schools might be at the heart of thatlarger learning system. Teachers may wellbe crucial designers of how it operates.

“Children and familiesshould be seen as partof the larger productivesystem that createslearning.”

But many of the productive resources that will make it work are found in homes,workplaces and cultural spaces, not just in classrooms. The point of personalisedlearning is to mobilise this much wider setof resources around schools by gettingmore children and parents to seethemselves as co-creators of learning.

The ResearchOver the Autumn of 2004 we visited several LAs and within each authority severalschools, as well as school networks and individual schools recommended by theirpeers. The details of which schools and local authorities we visited can be found in the appendix. We set out to explore a number of questions about personalisedlearning hoping that the next practices we uncovered might better inform thedialogue between policy-makers and practitioners.

• What does personalised learning mean to those trying to make it a reality in schools?

• How do schools need to change how they work to make personalised learningpossible?

• What are the implications of personalised learning for collaboration betweenschools and with other partners outside education?

• What kinds of collaboration are most effective in supporting personalised learningand how are they funded and led?

• How do personalised learning and collaboration feed improvements in education acrossthe system as a whole and what is the role of the centre in propagating change?

Personalising learning seeks to addressthree causes of personal under-investmentin education:

• Children and parents who do not thinkeducation and learning are “for them”.Personalised learning should meanreaching out beyond school into familiesand communities to raise aspiration andambition and to equip children from allbackgrounds to want to make the most of their education. Raising investment ineducation from among poorer householdsshould be one of the main goals.

• Children and parents who disengagefrom education at some point duringtheir schooling, perhaps because itseems less relevant or rewarding tothem. Personalised learning plans shouldhelp avoid this by engaging children andfamilies more in setting their own goalsand targets. Smoothing the transitionfrom primary into secondary and ontoGCSEs should also help.

• Children who drop out of the system tooearly. Again this may well be caused byeducation seeming less relevant to them.

Education should encourage children andtheir parents to invest more in learning froman early age and to sustain that investmentover a longer period. The goal ofpersonalised learning is to raise the rate ofpersonal investment in education. The mainmessage of this report is that personalisedlearning – learning tailored to individualneeds – is not utopian. On the contrary, it isa practical approach to motivate children tolearn, which is being applied successfully inleading edge schools. The teachers

pioneering personalised learning, who arethe main protagonists of this report, are notstarry eyed idealists. They are deeplypragmatic: they have adopted personalisedapproaches to learning because they believeit’s the best way to engage children andfamilies who have checked out of learning.Personalised learning motivates childrenthat the current system turns off.

Personalised learning is not just for middleclass families, able to articulate their needs.The biggest benefits of personalisedlearning go to those who find the current,standardised and academic system mostproblematic. All too often children wholearn differently come to be seen asdifficult because they cannot fit into thesystem. Personalised learning offers verypractical routes to higher attainment for all children, but especially those who feelmost de-motivated by the current approach.

“To provide childrenwith the differentsupport they need, aschool has to be able todraw on resources thatlie beyond its walls.”

It’s not just children who need motivating.The teaching profession, now in a muchmore self-confident position than it was adecade ago, also needs an inspirational goalto mobilise it. For the last decade teachershave felt driven, often by central targetsetting, to reach higher standards. Now we

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need to attract and inspire them with anaccount of what education is for whichmotivates them. In so doing, standards are likely to rise even more rapidly.

However, personalised learning is not for thefaint of heart. It requires schools to radicallyrethink how they operate. Many of the basicbuilding blocks of traditional education: the school, the year group, the class, thelesson, the blackboard and the teacherstanding in front of a class of thirty children,have become obstacles to personalisedlearning. Personalised learning meansdifferentiated provision to meet differentiatedneeds. All the resources available forlearning – teachers, parents, assistants,peers, technology, time and buildings –have to be deployed more flexibly.

Personalised learning will only becomereality when schools become much morenetworked, collaborating not only withother schools, but with families, communitygroups and other public agencies, as in theEvery Child Matters paper. It is vitalschools collaborate to provide additionalresources and outlets for learning. Toprovide children with the different supportthey need, a school has to be able to drawon resources that lie beyond its walls. One of the most effective ways to widenthe offer a school can make is to collaboratewith other schools with different expertise.This allows a school to become the gatewayto a larger set of shared resources thatsupport a wider range of choices. Innovatinga personalised learning offer will only bepossible with matching organisationalinnovations in how schools operate.Collaboration is key to that.

“Innovating apersonalised learningoffer will only bepossible with matchingorganisationalinnovations in howschools operate.Collaboration is key to that.”

Our vast secondary schools are amongthe last great Fordist institutions, wherepeople in large numbers go at the sametime, to work in the same place, to acentrally devised schedule announced by the sound of a bell. In most of the rest of the economy people work at differenttimes, in different places, often remotelyand through networked organisations. In the last two decades private sectororganisations have become more porous,management hierarchies have flattened,working practices have become moreflexible, job descriptions more open andrelationships between organisations, as suppliers and partners, more intense. The bounded, stand alone school, as a factory of learning, will become a glaringanomaly in this organisational landscape.

This project has been a search to find nextpractices: where the education system ofthe future is being created. Next practices– emergent innovations that could openup new ways of working – are likely to

come from thoughtful, experienced, self-confident and skilled practitioners trying to find new and more effective solutions to intractable problems. Typically, theydiscern resources which others fail tospot. The main protagonists in this reportare grey-haired-revolutionaries: practitionerswhose experience gives them the self-confidence to lead others to radicalinnovation. They are a vital part of thedistributed leadership of the educationsystem as a whole. It is their work that this report dwells upon.

What is personalisedlearning?Learning should be a deeply personalexperience. Children have a huge appetiteand capacity to learn, yet all do not learnas enthusiastically or effectively at school.That may well be because the educationsystem fails to understand and meet theirparticular needs and aspirations. Childrencome into education from different startingpoints, with different resources andexpectations. They often learn in differentways, at different paces and styles. As they get older they forge differentambitions for the kind of person they wantto be: not just the career they might followbut what interests express their sense ofidentity. A personalised education serviceshould meet the different needs oflearners: differentiated provision fordifferentiated need.

But personalised learning is not just aboutgiving learners more choice. It meansengaging learners in a highly interactive

process of learning. Learning is not justthe successful transfer of knowledge andskills. Learning comes through interactionin which the learner discovers for themselves,reflects on what they have learned andhow. Effective learning has to be co-createdbetween learner and teacher, in whichboth invest effort and imagination. As a result the learner becomes better able to self-manage their own learning andmotivated to invest in it.

Too often in the current system childrenwho learn differently come to be seen as a difficulty. A system that allows children to progress towards common standardsbut through different routes, employingdifferent styles of learning and assessment,should be more inclusive and make moreof the talents of all children.

Personalised learning does not meanindividualised learning. For some people,some of the time, personalised learningcould mean learning on their own – athome or one-to-one with a peer or tutor.But learning stems from creative andsocial interaction.

Personalised learning is not cafeteria stylelearning: picking your own curriculum froma wider self-service menu. Personalisedlearning should equip children to makechoices about which subjects to study,what settings to study in, what styles oflearning to employ. But choice is just ameans to turn children into more engagedand motivated investors in their owneducation. The main goal is to encouragehigher aspirations.

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Personalised learning does not meanletting a thousand flowers bloom.Personalised learning is learner ledlearning, within a framework of standards.The goal is to motivate children andparents to become active investors in their own education.

What are schools like that are developingpersonalised approaches?

“Personalised learningis learner led learning,within a framework ofstandards. The goal isto motivate children and parents to becomeactive investors in theirown education.”

The personalised learning schoolImagine a school in which each child has a daily timetable, made up of differentcombinations of common building blocks.Some are short intense periods of study,others last much longer than the standard50 minute lesson. Much of the learning isdone in small groups, some as a class andother sessions are one-to-one. The way a child’s learning is designed to progresshas been discussed by staff, with the pupil and their parents. The child’spersonal tutor talks to parents, usually

over the phone, at least once every twoweeks. All children take part in sessionsthat build up their learning skills. Theyreflect on what they enjoy about learningand what they find hard. By years sevenand eight they focus on learning-to-learnfor seven hours a week, often working in small, self-managing groups, completinga task together, to a deadline. They learnskills in evaluation, analysis, creativity andreflection, which they can apply to alllessons. By the time they take GCSEs they are practised in a variety oftechniques to accelerate their learning and make it more rewarding.

Teachers design the formal learning thatgoes on in the school but do not deliver all of it. Several grades of teachingassistants deliver different modules fordifferent groups. This allows children whoneed more intensive attention to get it.Morning tutorial groups are not organisedinto year groups but around communitiesof interest such as dance and computergames led by older children. It iscommonplace for older children to teachtheir peers and younger children. Otheradults support children throughout theschool – counsellors, artists, socialentrepreneurs. This support meansteachers are able to spend more timedesigning learning, liaising with parents,advising students one-to-one.

The school’s technicians look afterequipment, like video cameras and taperecorders, prepare materials for lessonsand develop the school’s intranet. Everylesson starts and ends with music

downloaded from the intranet. All lessonplans, complete with homework, are heldon the intranet. The children can followwhat the teacher is doing on their wirelesslaptops which they get when they join the school. Children are encouraged touse different technologies and media topresent their work – audio, powerpoint,video, photographs. Electronic recordsmake it easier for children to keep track of their performance, for the school to work out where it needs to deployresources to address emerging problemsand to share with its many partners.

Learning takes place in many differentspaces across the school, not just inclassrooms. Teachers have rooms toprepare lessons, talk to parents andconduct one-on-one sessions withchildren. Many older children are learningat other partner schools or with nearbyemployers and social enterprises.

The school works intensively withnurseries, community services andfamilies, to prepare children – and parents– for school. The school collaborates withlocal counterparts to share resources andmake better use of specialist knowledge.Teachers often spend part of their weekteaching in another school. When childrenmove to secondary school their primaryteachers will come with them for some ofthe time to ease the transition. As childrenget older the school becomes a gatewayto a variety of courses in other schools,nearby colleges and with employers.

The practices above are not imaginary.They are drawn from several schools in

England – primary, special, middle andsecondary – which are at the forefront of developing personalised learning. The schools that provided thoseingredients – St Anthony’s a special needs school in Chichester, Cramlington a comprehensive near Newcastle, Lipsona comprehensive in Plymouth, Lark Rise a primary in Dunstable – are innovatingpractical approaches to personalisedlearning. What can we learn from them?

LeadershipDerek Wise, head teacher at Cramlingtonschool, summed up the approach of theleaders we encountered: “We are not justinterested in doing a little better with thecurrent system. We are interested intransformation. We want to do somethingradically different because that’s the onlyway to have a big impact.”

Staff in personalised learning schoolsshare a clear vision of learning, which is embedded in practice throughout theschool. They see learning as interactiveand so believe it is vital to win thecommitment of children and parents. They believe in learner led learning as themost sustainable route to high standards.

“We want to dosomething radicallydifferent because that’sthe only way to have a big impact.”

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Leaders sanction a culture of innovation sothat staff – and pupils – can devise betterapproaches to learning. Teachers havepride and confidence in their craft: they are constantly exploring more effectiveapproaches to learning.

In primary schools in Knowsley, this has beensemi-formalised with teachers acting as lead-learners spreading new approaches tolearning-to-learn and assessment-for-learning.

The heads in these schools are not heroicleaders. Their leadership style is oftenunder-stated. They focus on drawing out contributions from others, rather thanthrusting themselves into the limelight.They are the antithesis of the ‘super-head’.They do not compromise on a floor of highstandards but they also believe learningmust be motivated by a compelling goal.

Learners become investors Personalised learning schools equipchildren to become more active, engagedlearners, able to reflect on how they learn,what they find hard or difficult, how theybest express themselves. At Cramlingtonfor example, years 7 and 8 do sevenhours a week of learning to learn throughtheir information technology courses. Each week groups of children undertakedifferent tasks and reflect on different waysin which they learned: through practice,peer-to-peer, from the computer, bydrawing or writing, listening to the teacher.

Derek Wise explained: “Too much learningin school is left to chance: getting the rightteacher for the right subject. Learning tolearn is about improving children’s skills

as learners by giving them a set of qualitiesas learners – responsible, resourceful,resilient, reflective – they can apply to any subject. It also creates a commonlanguage about learning that the childrencan share with teachers. Each lesson theycome to should be organised into a cycleof activities – show the point of the lesson,connect it to things the children havealready learned, introduce new information,allow the children to process that throughan activity and demonstrate they haveingested it, debrief.”

Personalised learning schools also engageparents in learning. Sue Attard, head ofLark Rise primary in Bedfordshire put it this way: “The starting point for learning is whether a child feels safe and happy.Children and their parents must want to learn.”

“Personalised learningschools equip children to become more active,engaged learners, able toreflect on how they learn,what they find hard ordifficult, how they bestexpress themselves.”

PeopleA single teacher in front of a class of thirty children cannot personalise learning.Personalised learning schools mobilisepeople that are often overlooked, anddeploy them flexibly to meet differentneeds. That requires a more strategic and planned approach to learning, so that all the participants – pupils, teacher,assistants, technicians, parents – have a clear idea of the contribution they couldmake. That means teachers need moretime to devise learning programmes thatinvolve others in implementation.

Workforce reform enables personalisedlearning schools to make a more diverseoffer to children. In classrooms at St Anthony’s, a special needs school inChichester, which caters for more than200 children, several adults work withsmall groups of children. This can meanthat there is not a ‘teacher’ and a ‘class’,but rather groups of learners being taught by a range of appropriate adults. St Anthony’s has three grades of teachingassistant who deliver many of the ‘lessons’to groups of pupils with similar learningstyles and needs. The personalisedlearning plans are devised and supervisedby fully qualified teachers, in consultationwith the pupils, other staff and parents.

At Lipson Community College in Plymouth,children are part of the school’s productiveresource. Lipson’s lead-learner programmeturns the recipients of learning into co-producers. Older children frequently helpyounger children and those slightly aheadin a subject often help others in their class.

Novel approaches to student involvement,including peer learning, mentoring anddispute mediation, are also being sponsoredby LAs like Bedfordshire. The mosteffective solutions to bullying, for example,often come from other children.

Personalised learning schools mobiliseresources beyond their borders: parents,local employers, libraries, arts organisationsand voluntary groups. Pensnett School of Technology, has developed ways toengage parents more successfully in theschool. Staff have created a review day foreach year group, during which each pupilspends 15 minutes talking through theirperformance with their personal tutor, whothey have throughout their time at theschool. Then the child and teacher have15 minutes with the parents. Thesesessions are used to jointly set targets forattendance, behaviour, homework and goalsfor each subject. The review day system of self-target setting is linked to much moretransparent “ladders of progress” so thatchildren know where they are. Ten parentshave been recruited as teaching assistants.School leavers are recruited as mentors.They get three days training as a mentorand are paid £5 an hour.

“Personalised learningschools mobilise peoplethat are oftenoverlooked, and deploythem flexibly to meetdifferent needs.”

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PlacesAs we saw in the previous section, it isdifficult to personalise learning in astandard classroom, with a teacherstanding in front of children in ranks ofdesks and chairs. Schools are increasinglydividing up classrooms to provide differentsettings for people to learn and interact in different ways. In Ninestiles school inBirmingham, for example, classrooms canbe joined to create much larger spaces.This can then allow teachers and teachingassistants to spend more time with smallergroups. Primary schools are often adept at adapting corridors, store cupboards,the school hall and playground to promotelearning. If teachers are to spend moretime designing learning then they needspace for preparation, away from thedemands of the class. If parents, teachersand children are to have more conversationsto agree individual learning plans, thenthey need meeting rooms. Secondaryschools are increasingly orchestratinglearning off-site, at home through virtualand distance learning and at workplaces.Vocational education will develop andexpand much more rapidly if secondaryschools can design and supervise learningaway from school.

The physical design of schools reinforcesdeep-seated assumptions about how to deliver education: the classroom, thehall, the staff room. One reason why manychildren enjoy art, sport and drama is that they do not take place in normalclassrooms. The Building Schools for the Future programme could be a hugeopportunity to create environments

designed for personalised learning. Thedanger is that they will be no more thansmarter versions of traditional schools.

TimeThe lesson is the basic unit of educationalproduction. It is impossible to personaliselearning in uniform 50 minute blocks. If somechildren learn more slowly than others thelesson may be too short. For those who are well ahead it may be too long.

Personalised learning schools break awayfrom ‘the lesson’ as the standard unit.Lark Rise, a Bedfordshire primary, doesliteracy and numeracy in the morning,followed by themed work in the afternoon,in which children focus on a single subjectfor an entire week. Children struggling tograsp basic concepts have longer tomaster them. Those that want more of a challenge can be given self-directedprojects. The teacher who specialises inthe themed subject of the week has threeor four weeks to design the programme.This allows teachers more time to thinkcreatively about how to engage children.Teaching staff have every Friday afternoonfree to plan, while teaching assistantsorganise the school in constructive play.Sue Attard, the head, devised thisapproach after spending five days closelyobserving a group of five year olds whohad five different lessons a day: “It wasn’tuntil I saw it from the children’s point ofview that I realised how chaotic their daymust seem to them. This approach ismuch simpler and allows learning toaccumulate more effectively.”

“It wasn’t until I saw it from the children’spoint of view that Irealised how chaotictheir day must seem to them.”

One of the most unsettling aspects ofgoing to secondary school is being givenyour timetable, into which you have to fit. For a child the timetable embodies your lack of control. Some schools areexperimenting with longer days and moreflexible scheduling modelled on airports so not all the children have to be on thepremises all the time. Many organisations– Borders bookstore for example – areopen for work from early till late. Schoolswill not personalise learning within theconfines of the standard, 8-til-5 workingday. Extended hours, combined withteachers and teaching assistants workingshifts, will help create the flexibility topersonalise learning. Other organisations – such as BT – have adopted flexibleextended schedules to suit the needs ofworkers who want to work different hoursand to provide a differentiated service to customers.

The ability to fit into a timetable madesense for a world in which employerswanted workers to fit into a neat divisionof labour. In future, however, even work in larger organisations will require skills of self-organisation and self-scheduling.Schools will not develop these capacities

with a single standardised timetableimposed from above.

TechnologyIn many schools the blackboard, theexercise book and the text-book are still the basic technologies for learning. At home children learn from the television, the computer, their peers and their gamesconsoles. The technology of informallearning is more flexible, adaptive andoften higher quality than the technologychildren use at school.

Personalised learning schools make much more flexible use of technology andtools, which the children regard as theirproperty and so take responsibility for. At Cramlington, Derek Wise put it thisway: “ICT should be a tool for everyone touse in every lesson. We would not dream of having a biro room or children sharingbiros.” Information technology creates a shared platform for learning, linkingschool, home and community, in whichlearners and teachers work together far more collaboratively. That is the wayleading edge businesses already operate.It should become the norm for schools.

In Knowsley’s primary schools children are encouraged to use video, audio tapes,photographs and painting to present their work. Children who find it difficult to express themselves through written work can use a range of tools. Technologyallows children to explore differentapproaches to learning. At LipsonCommunity College peer-to-peer learningis most common in ICT lessons. Businesswill increasingly expect staff to use

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technology to work off-site. The ICT room,stacked with computers, may be exactlythe wrong way to learn to use technology.

One estimate is that 90% of the content of the Sims – the world’s most popularcomputer game – is generated by userswho create their own add-ons to thegame. They devise this content withsoftware tools provided by the game’spublisher, Electronic Arts. The Sims issustained by a massive community ofusers that shares its knowledge. Imaginethat model applied to learning. Theteachers would provide the platform forthe game and the tools users need toimprove it. The children would not just play the game but also build upon it.

Collaboration forpersonalisationPersonalised learning schools have ahighly collaborative ethic. They foster a spirit of mutual self-help and self-evaluation, and engage in many kinds of networks. Some of those networks are vital to personalised learning.

Community linksPersonalised learning is designed toencourage children to see themselves as participants and contributors to their own education, taking responsibility, withteachers and others to design what theylearn and how. Learning depends oncreative interaction. Personalised learning is

Cornwallis schoolAt Cornwallis school in Kent, chemistry teacher Gerry Gray, has pioneered the useof tablet laptop computers for learning and assessment. Initially Gray’s innovationonly allowed existing lessons to be delivered more effectively: lesson plans wereonline, along with notes and homework guides. She found the technology took offonce the children were given scope to use it creatively, to demonstrate their work.In the first lesson that this was allowed the first girl to complete the task displayedthe results of her experiment with an animated cartoon. Soon the entire classwere critiquing the science and asking the girl to show them how to do theanimation: it triggered a process of peer-to-peer learning. Technology putslearning tools in the hands of children and so makes them more able toparticipate as learners. Another teacher at Cornwallis devised a computer game –litnum – to improve literacy and numeracy of children in Year 7. A player can onlycontinue playing by answering academic questions correctly. Year 8s who want tocontinue to play the game have to act as mentors to Year 7s. The game is nowavailable in Cornwallis’ 23 partner primary schools. Use of the game has made a significant contribution to improving test results in maths and English.

more likely to elicit that kind of contribution,especially from children from distressedsocial backgrounds who are less likely to be self-motivated learners, have fewerof their own resources to invest in learningand have less confidence in voicing theiraspirations for learning. A personalisedapproach to learning would not justpersonalise what is done in the classroombut take into account the backgroundschildren come from. That is why the workof integrated children’s services and trusts,that bring together health, early years,nursery provision and social services willbe vital in readying children from allbackgrounds for school. The biggest

challenge is to persuade disaffectedchildren that education is a personalproject, for them, in which they shouldinvest. Enhanced collaboration betweenschools, families and community servicesis critical to make the pathway to schoolmore personalised.

Routes for, and levels of, parentalinvolvement vary widely, from engagingparents as teaching assistants, to familylearning programmes and cafes forparents to drop into at school and talkinformally to teachers. The underlying goal in all of these is to deepen parentalcommitment to their child’s learning.

West SussexIn West Sussex the LA has created 23 networks of primary and secondary schools.Staff working for integrated children’s services – social and health workers, police andhousing – will work as a team within these networks. Robert Back, Director forEducation and Arts for West Sussex, explained: “We have to start seeing welfareand learning as part of the same story. If we create networks of schools to deliverintegrated children’s services then it makes sense to do that for school improvement as well. So in addition to the networks of primary andsecondary schools we are encouraging groups of seven or eight secondary schoolsto get together to make joint offers to groups of children, especially post-16.”

David Sword, the head of school improvement in West Sussex, puts the challengethis way: “We still want schools to focus on their core job – learning – but to takea wider view of how to achieve good results, what resources need to bemobilised to achieve that and which partners need to be engaged. Schools mustbe led by a learning agenda, but they must collaborate with welfare and socialprogrammes to achieve that, especially for the most disadvantaged.” Thechallenge of leading a school will become more complex. A successful schoolneeds a distinctive ethos and identity. Yet it also needs to collaborate with othersto achieve its goals. Managing the relationship between independence,distinctiveness and collaboration will be central to the job of a head teacher.

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School-to-schoolcollaborationThe small scale of most primary schools isoften regarded as a strength: they providea more intimate environment in whichchildren can learn. But they lack access tothe range of specialist expertise that mightbe available in a larger unit. Collaborationoffers a way to overcome these limitations.

One of the most powerful examples ofcollaboration amongst primary schools isin Knowsley where primary schools havebeen grouped into three collaborativeswith about 25 schools in each. Eachcollaborative involves all the head teachersand is led by a facilitator they appoint from within. The LA plays an advisory roleas a ‘co-leader’. The collaboratives, whichgrew out of looser forms of networking,are intended to become the primaryvehicle for school improvement, by utilising peer-to-peer learning andmobilising shared resources. They meetformally once a month, but informaldiscussions and project meetings takeplace daily.

“Each collaborativeinvolves all the headteachers and is led by a facilitator they appointfrom within. The LAplays an advisory roleas a ‘co-leader’.”

Collaboratives such as Knowsley’sgenerate four main benefits forpersonalised learning:

• They reduce duplication of resources,such as IT support and make better useof common resources. Instead of eachschool trying to devise an IT strategy the collaborative as a whole can delegatethat task to its members with thegreatest skills.

• Schools make better use of specialistteachers. Instead of children onlyhaving access to the specialist skillsamong the staff of the school, throughthe collaborative they have access to a wide range of expertise and talent.It is common practice, for example, for a specialist teacher at one school to visit several others to supportteachers in devising learning plans.

• Resources are focused on schools thatneed most support. In one collaborativeeach school had been granted £2,500 fora standards initiative. Rather than spreadthe money thinly over all schools, thecollaborative decided to pool the funds –about £50,000 – and invest £10,000 injust five schools where that investmentwould make a significant difference.

• Collaboration can accelerate the spreadof innovation. In the past if a teacher at a Knowsley school developed a moreeffective teaching practice the ideawould remain trapped within that school.The collaborative provides a mechanismfor emerging practices to be shared,making it easier to spread the benefits to all schools.

Cross phaseOne cause of children disengaging fromtheir education is the disruption of passingfrom a small primary school, which feelslike a close-knit community, to a largesecondary school, that seems harsh,impersonal and faceless. In this hiatusmany children, particularly boys, seem to decide to lessen their engagementbecause education becomes far moresystem-driven, less personal and aspirational.

Education should be a personal journeywhich the learner can shape. All too often

it feels like a series of loosely connectedkey stages, levels of attainment and year groups that the learner only dimlyunderstands. Collaboration at transitionfrom primary to secondary is vital to makethe learner’s journey more joined up and to help schools tackle shared problems.Secondary schools often have to cope with problems – for example with literacyand numeracy – which started in primaryschool. Improved collaboration ontransition helps schools on both sides to improve the experience for the child.

BedfordshireOne of the most ambitious attempts to address these issues through collaborationis being made in Bedfordshire where 224 schools have been grouped into sevenlearning communities. The initiative came from Bob Clayton, head of schoolimprovement. Clayton’s role is to design frameworks for collaboration that driveschool performance.

Frustrated by sluggish improvements in standards Clayton laid out some simplerules. Every school had to join a learning community. Membership of thecommunities was decided centrally. The communities had to work cross phase,because many of the issues secondary schools had to deal with started inprimary school. The communities decided which aspects of performance theywould focus on. The authority challenges the communities to set stretchingtargets. For example one community is focussing on boy’s performance in mathsand English. Information on pupil attainment showed that many of the difficultiesthese boys had at GCSE started in primary school. The secondary school in thecommunity is working with all its feeder primaries to help it reach its target ofmoving from a 49% A*-C pass rate at GCSE to 62%.

Clayton believes it is now becoming clearer when collaboration can delivertangible improvements in performance: “You need strong shared purpose amongthe schools; good data that is shared so everyone can see where the problemsare; an honest dialogue that allows problem solving to be shared and challengefrom the outside to make the network set stretching targets.”

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Secondary collaborativesCollaboration between secondary schoolsis bringing many of the same benefits asprimary schools: less duplication, betteruse of shared resources, more flexibledeployment of resources where they can have greatest impact. Groupings of secondary schools are able to support a wider range of options, for example in niche subjects, which might beuneconomic within a single school.Children can have their horizons expandedby moving between different schools andstyles of learning. It is difficult for childrento become self-aware about how theylearn unless they are exposed to differentapproaches, which allows them to makecomparisons. As the Director of one localeducation authority in the north east put it: “We want to get our children movingaround between schools because one ofour problems is that people will not travela few miles to go to work. We have to getchildren used to moving around.” Work,enabled by smaller, more powerful, lightertechnologies, will increasingly be mobile. It is increasingly rare for large numbers ofpeople to go to work at the same time inthe same place. Schools stand out asbeing amongst the last mass institutions of work and learning where people leavethe gates en-masse, at the same time to the sound of a bell. If schools cannotmatch the organisational innovation andcreativity of the business sector then there is little chance they will match it for customer service.

Effective collaborationPractitioners and policy makers need bettertools to understand when collaborationworks and when and how to invest in it.The case for deeper collaboration andnetworking cannot be solely that it is acorrective to silo-based public services.Collaboration will only deliver if it becomesmore radical and ambitious. It is not anattractive add on, but a different way to do the school’s core job. That meanscollaboration has to be more effective thana stand alone organisation in mobilisingresources and deploying them more flexiblyto meet needs more effectively.

As Diagram One (overleaf) shows, standardprofessional service organisational modelsin the public sector tend to go up the 45 degree line: to get more output andbetter outcomes, you have to invest moremoney to employ more teachers. Standardapproaches to productivity improvement –deploying new technologies, cutting costs,streamlining procedures – might move theline fractionally so that less resource inputis required for the same output. The challenge is to bring about a step change

“Collaboration will onlydeliver if it becomesmore radical andambitious. It is not anattractive add-on, but a different way to dothe school’s core job.”

in impact, to move to the space on theright hand side of the diagram below the line: it is in this space that resources getused far more effectively to generate betteroutcomes, as in Diagram Two. Getting intothat space requires radical organisationalinnovation to mobilise more resources –like the commitment of pupils, parents and partners.

The challenge is to accelerate howcollaboration develops to generate a bigger impact more quickly onperformance, attainment and schoolimprovement. Many of the networks weexamined had taken two or more years to develop, following the path of thedotted line in Diagram Two, mainly throughdiscussions once a month among groupsof heads. If collaboration is to deliversystemic change fast, then ways have tobe found to accelerate this process. Newformations of collaboratives are starting toput this learning into practice.

Effective collaboration requires a mix of top-down and bottom-up. Withoutcommitment from the participants therewill not be the culture of trust needed tomake collaboration work. Without a senseof strategic ambition, to take on biggerchallenges, collaboration will often fallshort of its full potential.

Our research suggests that collaborationdelivers when:

• Participants have a shared sense ofdirection that everyone buys into. InKnowsley, for example, schools havesigned up to common policies onexclusion, admissions and holidays.

• Information about performance, staffingand budgets is shared openly. Only thencan a collaborative have an open debateabout where extra resources should be invested.

• Schools have a distinctive sense ofidentity. Collaboration does not meanamalgamation or merger, although it couldmean several schools sharing a commoninfrastructure, back office facilities andeven having a shared management.

• There is diversity within a network. Schoolsremain distinct whilst drawing on thevariety of strengths; they offer challenge as well as support to each other.

• Facilitators help participants tocollaborate in between formal meetings.That facilitation can come from anoutsider but is much more likely to comefrom a member of the collaborative whois assigned to the task.

• Participants have a sense of ambition.They are not content to restrict themselvesto low-level collaboration. They want totackle larger and larger challenges.

• That ambition comes from leadership.The leadership of an effective collaborativeseems to be shared among a smallgroup of people.

• Collaboration becomes a way toreorganise the use of core resourcesrather than as a way to attract additionalinvestment, targeted particularly atpromoting networks. In Knowsley in 2005the first groups of schools were starting toset joint targets and work out how to usetheir pooled budgets to hit those targets.

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Diagram One

Outcomes

More output less resource

To get more output youneed more resources

Resources

Diagram Two

Outcomes

Too few aim to,and get over here

Too many networks stuck here in low risk equilibrium

Resources

Policies for collaborationPersonalised learning is possible only if we can deploy more resources, moreflexibly to meet the different needs ofdifferent children. Collaboration will be vital in achieving that. A purely laissez-faireapproach which leaves it up to groups of schools to decide whether they willcollaborate, how and what for, willprobably work only in a few places.Effective collaboration requires an upfrontcommitment of resources for leadershipand facilitation. No single school is likely to take the lead on that. However givingtoo much money distorts incentives forcollaboration: people form partnershipssimply to get their hands on the cash. The point of collaboration is not togenerate the need for additional resourcesbut to devise a new way to utilise existingresources more effectively.

Collaboration requires design. When it is well designed with the right kinds ofgovernance arrangements, goals andincentives it works well. Bob Clayton inBedfordshire, is a collaboration designer:he has created a framework in whichschools are expected to collaborate and find it easy to do so. The skills ofcollaboration design need to be morewidely understood and spread.

Collaboration can be held back by regulation,inspection and funding regimes thatencourage schools to think of themselvesas autonomous, stand alone units. Thedevelopment of the New Relationship withSchools offers an opportunity for schools to develop new models of accountability

and school improvement that shouldinclude collaboration. School ImprovementPartners (SIPs) could play an important role in this.

The DfES should provide appropriateincentives for schools to collaborate. One approach is akin to Public ServiceAgreements where groups of schools are invited to sign up to programmes of collaborative improvement which they are resourced to achieve, as in the case of the second cohort of the Leading EdgePartnership programme for secondaryschools. Another option would be to set outcome goals which are difficult toachieve without collaboration, for exampleencouraging early years learning amongchildren from poorer backgrounds.Education Improvement Partnerships (EIPs) could be the vehicle for thesedevelopments. Both schools and LAs need to be encouraged to explorecollaboration and to generate evidence ofthe impact it is having on the core missionof achieving the outcomes for children’swelfare set out in Every Child Matters.

“Collaboration can beheld back by regulation,inspection and fundingregimes that encourageschools to think ofthemselves asautonomous, standalone units.”

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Co-creating education Personalised learning is a different accountof how value is created within education.The traditional account is that value iscreated through send-and-receive, asknowledge and skills are transferred fromteachers to pupils through good teaching.Personalised learning puts the emphasison learning through interaction and co-creation: children learn more effectively by participating more fully in their learning.

Co-created products and services comeabout by users and professionals interactingcreatively. That puts a premium on howthey can communicate, whether theyshare information, how they voice theirviews and how they listen to one another.It’s much more like a process of dialogueor conversation. To create value you need to create more of these conversations,not in formal settings of consultativecommittees and bodies, but withineveryday business processes of design,innovation and delivery. These conversationsneed to embrace not just producer anduser, in a bilateral relationship, but alsousers with one another, peer-to-peer. The aim is not just to serve a passiveconsumer but to equip users with toolsand resources so they can start to self-manage and help themselves. The goal is to turn learners into investors in their own education.

Collaboration will put much moreemphasis on peer-to-peer learning amongteachers. The traditional approach,reinforced by recent reforms, emphasisesthe school as the basic unit of the system.

Collaboratives of schools and children’sservices providers should become thebasic building blocks of the system:employing staff, deploying them, planningprovision, making admissions, offeringchoice, sharing platforms and services.

There should be renewed focus on all theresources a child has available for learning.The approach of the past 15 years hasstressed teaching as the focal point.Personalised learning should give moreweight to the variety of formal and informalresources available for learning at school,at home and in the community.

“Collaboratives ofschools and children’sservices providersshould become thebasic building blocks ofthe system: employingstaff, deploying them,planning provision,making admissions,offering choice, sharing platforms and services.”

Self-evaluation and Assessment forLearning are at the heart of personalisedlearning: learners must become moreengaged in thinking about what they wantto learn and how. Self-evaluation is centralto the school improvement process, with

schools working with inspectors and SIPs to devise improvement strategies.

All this means the school system should beanimated by decentralised initiative within a framework of standards. That does notmean that there will be no top downdirection or challenge. Collaborative self-helponly emerges with careful design. Schoolsneed a framework of central rules andincentives that are designed to encouragebottom up innovation. Personalised learningshould engage students far more in shapingtheir own learning programmes, setting theirown targets and pace. The New Relationshipwith Schools should give schools moreresponsibility for setting their own targets,development plans and budgets. Targets for the national education system shouldemerge from the interplay of central directionand local and personal target setting.

Education policy has to reconcile twodifferent views of the value of learning.One vantage point is macro: theperformance of the system as a wholemeasured in international league tables of attainment, to the society that funds the system through taxes. The other point

“Schools need aframework of centralrules and incentivesthat are designed toencourage bottom upinnovation.”

of view is micro: education is a deeplyintimate experience of anxiety, humiliation,success, triumph and pleasure. For eachof us education – for good or ill – is adeeply personal and foundationalexperience. The challenge for educationpolicy is how the macro and micro feedinto one another.

At the moment we face an unappetisingchoice between two options. The firststarts with the macro and works down.Top down, challenging targets drives up performance of the system as a whole.That delivers better outcomes for morepeople passing through a betterfunctioning educational machine.The downside is that the more the centremandates outputs, processes andmethods, so the scope for decentralisedinitiative and investment becomes morelimited. Test results may improve buteducation is still something done to you – albeit more efficiently – rather than something you do yourself.

The second approach starts with themicro. If children and particularly parentsare given more choice over where theywant to go to school, if not what to study,this should introduce more competition. If money follows those choices then a failing school will be one that fails toattract enough customers. Good schoolsshould expand and bad schools shouldclose. The system as a whole shouldimprove by responding to customerchoice. There are a number of drawbackswith this approach, not least the very longtime it still takes for supply to respond to demand. Choice can amplify existing

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“Personalised learningoffers a differentapproach: seeinglearners as co-investorsin education.”

inequalities if supply does not expand and diversify to meet need and goodschools get oversubscribed.

Personalised learning offers a differentapproach: seeing learners as co-investorsin education. The goal of policy is tomaximise that personal investment tomatch the public investment put into the buildings, teachers and technology. Public investment provides a platform for learning, personal investment – fromchildren and families – largely determineshow well the public investment is used.That would require every child enteringeducation to see it as a deeply personalproject that they can shape to their ends.

Making an offer of that kind to every childentering the education system may seemlike a tall order. For schools conceived and organised as they are now, it wouldbe. The traditional Fordist school, basedon the 50 minute lesson, the teacher, theclass, the classroom, the blackboard andexercise book, would be capable ofcreating personalised learning only at greatcost. We will only innovate a new kind of service to children if we innovate in thekinds of organisations that provide it.EasyJet turned flying to Europe for theweekend into a mass activity with a low-

cost, no frills model established airlinescould not contemplate. In 1995 eBay had122 users. A decade later it had 122m,thanks to a radical innovation no retailercould contemplate: letting users negotiatetheir own prices for goods they put onsale and ship themselves. Napster, Kazaaand other music sharing systems havedisrupted the traditional business modelsof the music business by revolutionisinghow music is distributed. Zara hasrevolutionised high street fashion retailingwith an organisational model that allows it to respond to changes in fashion almostweek-by-week. Mobile phones havebecome a mass consumer product in littlemore than a decade largely on the back of new entrants Vodafone, Orange, Nokiawith new services and business models –such as texting and pay-as-you-go.

Education will only provide a personalisedexperience, which engages individualcommitment, if the places where learningtakes place rethink and remakethemselves.

Some of that innovation may come fromoutside the school system, for examplemedia companies and others

“The goal of policy is to maximise thatpersonal investment to match the publicinvestment put into the buildings, teachers and technology.”

using new technologies for mass, peer-to-peer distance learning and privateeducation providers setting up newschools. Some may come from socialenterprises seeking to innovate newapproaches to community based learning.But much of it must come from stateschools finding new ways to organisethemselves often through collaboration, to allow more networked, flexible andadaptive forms of organisation to emerge.If education follows the path of most otherindustries then giant Fordist factories oflearning – mass secondary schools –should be replaced by networks of muchsmaller institutions, which overcome thelimitations of their small scale by sharingresources. In education, as in so manyother fields, product innovation dependson organisational innovation. We have only just begun.

Join the debateYou can enter the debate and tell us what you think as part of the InnovationCommunity at www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/innovation-unit.

Charles Leadbeater will also be respondingpersonally to comments when he attendsthe ‘hotseat’ online on talk2learn. Checkthe DfES IU website for details.

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DfES Innovation UnitThe DfES Innovation Unit acts as acatalyst for change in the school sector.We enable all stakeholders to worktogether on learning challenges facing thesystem. We draw on expertise within andbeyond the education sector. Our aim is to see a self-improving system, wherestrategic innovation improves teaching,raises standards and makes learningpersonal and powerful for every student.Keep in touch with our work via ourwebsite www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/innovation-unit and join our lively online community. We look forward to welcoming you.

DfES Innovation UnitFloor 4 Department for Education and SkillsSanctuary BuildingsGreat Smith StreetLondon SW1P 3BT020 7925 6165

innovation.unit@dfes.gsi.gov.uk

National College for SchoolLeadership (NCSL)NCSL is the single national focus forschool leadership development. Throughits website, online communities andresearch publications, NCSL acts as a primary resource for school leaders. It also provides support through itsleadership development programmes,ranging from opportunities for bursars to headteachers to leadership teams. In collaboration with Demos, theInnovation Unit, OECD, Hay Group andmany others, it encourages national andinternational debate on leadership issues.Working directly with schools, NCSL isleading on the national primary strategyand increased collaboration and networkingamong schools, and informs governmentpolicy on all issues affecting leadership ofschools. The cumulative goal of all theseactivities is to have every child in a well-ledschool, and every school leader committedto continuous learning.

www.ncsl.org.uk

DemosDemos is the think tank for everydaydemocracy. We believe everyone shouldbe able to make personal choices in theirdaily lives that contribute to the commongood. Our aim is to put this democraticidea into practice by working withorganisations in ways that make themmore effective and legitimate. We focus on six areas: public services; science and technology; cities and public space;people and communities; arts and culture;and global security.

It has a strong research interest in educationand has worked with numerous educationbodies including the DfES; National Collegefor School Leadership; Creative Partnerships;Education and Learning Wales (ELWA); and several education action zones andindividual schools.

Demos works on a wide range of educationprojects – from policy-oriented researchand evaluating practice, to developingorganisation strategies and stimulatingpublic debate.

In bridging the gap between policy-makerand teachers, Demos is defining a newkind of education system whose institutionscan continuously reinvent themselves whilemeeting the individual needs of students.

www.demos.co.uk

AppendixA number of schools and local authoritieswere visited in making this report.

The local authorities were:

• Bedfordshire

• Cornwall

• Knowsley

• Somerset

• West Sussex

The schools were:

• Cramlington Community High School,Northumberland

• Crosshill Special School, Blackburn

• Lark Rise Lower School, Dunstable

• Lipson Community College, Plymouth

• Pensnett School of Technology, Brierley Hill

• St Anthony’s School, Chichester

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AcknowledgementsWe would like to acknowledge theresearch work of Sarah Gillinson and Hannah Green, both Demosresearchers, in producing The Shape of Things to Come.

Notes

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Department forEducation and Skills. We are publishing them in the interests of stimulating educational debate.

The Shape of Things to Come explicitly links two policy agendaswhich are deeply interconnected but have often been treated as if they are separate: personalising learning and schoolcollaboration. The argument here is that if our aspiration ispersonalisation for all learners, schools will need to worktogether to achieve it. Personalising learning relies on gettingyoung people to ‘invest’ in their education. The term is usedmetaphorically, pointing to the need for learners to be muchmore profoundly engaged in the process of learning. To achievethis, schools need to use resources flexibly and creatively,especially in partnership, and reach beyond the boundaries of the classroom and the school. The best way to handle theincreased complexity this entails is through school networks and collaboration with other stakeholders.

Charles Leadbeater is an author, consultant and government advisor. He is a Senior Research Associate with Demos and has written reports and pamphlets on social entrepreneurship, civic entrepreneurship in the public sector, and the rise of the knowledge entrepreneur.

Copies of the publication can be obtained from:

DfES PublicationsPO Box 5050Sherwood ParkAnnesleyNottingham NG15 0DJ

Tel: 0845 6022260Fax: 0845 6033360Textphone: 0845 6055560Email: dfes@prolog.uk.com

Please quote ref: DfES-1574-2005

You can download this publication at www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/innovation-unitor www.teachernet.gov.uk/publications

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