Leading an amalgamation

Joining two organisations together is a difficult task requiring real leadership. We've been working with a number schools in North East Lincolnshire to help them to make a success of the process of amalgamation. Like many local authorities the drive from North East Lincolnshire council to reorganise is driven by a complex set of factors - changes in funding and shifts in local demographics to name but two - but is underpinned by a philosophical commitment to the primary school ideal. There's also an aspiration to use the process as a catalyst for other improvements in the service offered to young people.

We've worked with the LA and with school leaders to help them to move through the complex and dynamic environment that amalgamation seems to create. We've facilitated a community of practice and brought new process and thinking to bear. We've also learned about the things that seem to make a difference in the early stages of the process. Through engaging with the practice of school leaders in Cleethorpes, Grimsby and Immingham a number of effective practices can be identified. We've given these a working title of 12 smart moves and we'd be keen to see if these moves have currency beyond NE Lincolnshire. It would be great if anyone had stumbled across other practices that seem to help schools going through similiar restructuring.

1. Create opportunities for cross school working and consciously try to get people out of their organisational silos. Curriculum teams that cut across key stages and phases are a useful vehicle for facilitating this.

2. Identify some real work – that is an authentic priority for all – and do it. Work moderation and assessment provide great opportunities for this to happen.

3. Consider how the key and statutory processes of school life might be used to add to building for the future. For example, performance management provides a legally binding mechanism to engage individuals in professional conversation and gain insight into their work.

4. Create opportunities for staff to mingle in professional and social settings and prepare senior staff to broker relationships across the divide of the pre-existing schools while this is happening.

5. Create time for thinking and planning. View this time as sacrosanct and develop systems and processes that are well understood by all colleagues and offer a means for others to deal effectively with most day to day issues that emerge.

6. Find learning opportunities that are novel to colleagues in both key stages to create equity around the development and improvement processes. Where these have greatest leverage the opportunities are well aligned to school priorities. The power of these novel approaches in bridging divisions between groups lies not so much in the practices themselves but in their capacity to change the dynamic of conversations between colleagues.

7. Look for quick wins that demonstrate that change is happening and that it is a force for good in a school. Often the changes are symbolic. Quick wins include improvements to learning environments and paying attention to colleagues working conditions. Other schools have built capital from school wide events that bring people together around a common task or experience.

8. Draw upon external expertise can be a powerful source of support and development. This can manifest itself as external change agents who are able to offer perspectives and ideas to the whole staff in order that necessary developments are not resisted because their source is a person within the school. In other cases colleagues have made good use of external mentors who provide critique and guidance at key moments.

9. Engaging children in the development of the school in a real way can be a route towards addressing the poor behaviour that is often noticed when schools are amalgamated.

10. Visibility and overt modelling of behaviours and attitudes is crucial. When creating a new ethos – as opposed to grafting the ethos of one school onto another – takes time and effort. Leaders have found success in being highly visible and modelling behaviours. Additionally some colleagues note that creating small units of children into houses that cut across key stages and create opportunities for children and staff to work together. This has been particularly important where scale and physical arrangements within school mitigate against the whole school assembling together on a regular basis.

11. Plan the succession of leadership carefully. Where this happens and attention is paid to the relationships between the heads of school being amalgamated this is a powerful means for enabling the process to be effective for children and in maintaining the esteem of the professionals involved.

12. View early arrangements for structure and procedure in school as provisional. Systems and structures are essential but the ones that are designed to survive the hurly burley of a new organisation in turbulent times may not be the ones which will lever longer term success.

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www.enquirelearning.com