This is the second message in a short four-part series on how to fix underperforming schools. In this post, I focus on the root cause of the problem – and how it can be addressed at scale.
Last week, I shared what my team and I have seen in hundreds of schools – bored children full of potential trapped in classrooms where teachers have not prepared lessons effectively and simply go through the motions of teaching.
Often there is little stimulation or interaction between teachers and students. Worse, discussions with teachers reveal no feeling of shame or feeling for the students.
But the root cause is not the teachers. Nor the school leadership teams. In all our interactions with over 5,000 principals we have never met a principal who did not want to transform his currently underperforming school!
The truth is that they don’t know how to or they would have done so years ago.
Ministries of Education are responsible because principals and their management teams have simply never been trained to transform a culture of indifference and emotional disengagement into a high-performance school culture at their school. (Many companies and public service organisations face the same challenge – managers have not been trained to create a high performance culture.)
So how do we fix this – at scale and quickly?
The answer is definitely not more policies, more workshops, or more resources.
It is training school leadership teams to create a high-performance culture at their own schools.
Our BCF programme empowers school leadership teams to kickstart their schools on their respective journeys to become high performing schools. It is delivered through four intensive three-day workshops, spaced about a month apart, allowing school leadership teams time to apply strategies, management systems and leadership practices between sessions.
The programme is system-driven – commissioned by national, provincial, or district education authorities and delivered through existing district structures, with circuit managers training school leadership teams.
This programme is designed for scale. We do not train one school at a time. Not even ten at a time. We partner with ministries of education to train hundreds or even thousands of schools simultaneously.
In 2022 alone, 1,518 schools were trained simultaneously, demonstrating that fast system-wide transformation is not only possible, but operationally practical. Within two years the percentage of students gaining a university or TVET college admission matriculation at high schools increased from 57% to 75%.
This demonstrates how the BCF culture change programme empowers ministries of education to simultaneously kickstart hundreds/thousands of schools on their respective journeys to become centres of excellence.
When principals and their management teams are trained to create a high performance culture at their schools, a few critical shifts transform the culture at each school.
- School leaders develop the practical capability and confidence to manage performance, address underperformance and conflict, dismantle destructive staffroom dynamics, and drive instructional improvement within their schools
- Every teacher knows exactly what excellence looks like and what is expected of them
- Disengaged or unwilling teachers are confronted and supported to improve
- Committed teachers are inspired to join a crusade to build a high-performance culture
When these elements come together, school leaders manage with confidence, teachers begin to care, energy returns to classrooms and most importantly – children begin to learn.
In next week’s newsflash, I will share what principals themselves say after experiencing this training including powerful video reflections from principals working in some of the most challenging environments.
Thank you for continuing to walk this journey with us.
Alan J Whitaker, Founder and CEO