Our CEO Kate Chhatwal shares reflections on the power of working together, in this speech to National Conference 2022
We are so excited to come together and rejoice in the magic and opportunity of the human connections we can never fully replicate on zoom. It is 791 days since we were last together here in February 2020. In those days, weeks and months - to paraphrase Lenin - decades have happened.
In those ‘decades’ there has been progress. When I stood here in February 2020, I was talking about the potential of technology to unlock new ways of learning and assessment, which could benefit some of the students who are marginalised by more traditional book learning and exams written by hand in dusty sports halls. In the last 791 days you have made incredible progress in exploring that potential and finding innovative solutions to the myriad challenges of remote learning, not least unequal access to tech, which always felt like the biggest barrier to realising that potential. As a partnership too, we innovated at speed; finding new, digital ways to connect, learn and share the excellent and novel practice that abounds in our schools. So yes, there has been progress
But sadly there has also been regress. In February 2020, we were already noting how progress in narrowing the disadvantage gap at the heart of our collective mission had stalled. And we know the pandemic - experienced by everyone, but very unequally - has done nothing to improve matters. And that’s even before the biggest cost of living crisis we’ve seen for a generation.
Even before that, the latest Education Policy Institute analysis shows a stubborn gap of around 18 months or 1.2 GCSE grades between poorer students and their more affluent peers, a gap that widens to around 23 months or 1.6 grades for persistently disadvantaged students - a gap that has changed very little since 2017. And over the same period, there has been a rise of more than 4% in the proportion of disadvantaged pupils who are ‘persistently disadvantaged’, that is in long-term poverty. How much worse will that get in the years ahead? Post-16, the gap hasn’t just endured, it’s widened - probably because poorer students are less likely to take A levels, which saw a bigger rise in grades in 2020 than equivalent qualifications.
Yes, there has been both progress and regress since we last met like this. What has remained constant - and intensified, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic - is the belief - and evidence - that it is only by working together that we can harness the progress, and reverse the regress, so that all young people and communities can thrive.
If you want to go far, go together
A few years ago, someone painted the proverb “if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together” on my local railway bridge. I’m not sure whether the idea was to encourage more train travel (because you can get neither far nor fast from my local station) but it struck a chord with me for another reason. And that’s because it encapsulated rather neatly what we’ve been trying to do in CP for the last decade - going far, together. In this regard - by the way - I think we have something of a headstart on the government who proclaimed that the recent White Paper “marks the start of a journey towards an education system in which all children benefit from the high standards of the best schools and families of schools”. Within our Challenge Partnership - as you can see in our Impact Report, published today - we’re already a good way down that road; we are going far - together. And it brings us strength and nourishment.
The pandemic may have taught us a lot about tech, but it also reminded us of the power of connection - how hard we found isolation and social distancing, how strong the desire to reach out, to connect - to hug! - to know we weren’t facing this alone. We saw this in the earliest days - before we’d even got to grips with zoom - when we brought together Senior Partners on conference calls to share what they were making of the latest government guidance, how they were responding in their schools and hubs, and to gather feedback for Department for Education. Senior Partners were desperate to have that connection, that sense of not facing it alone - a natural, primordial response to a novel crisis for a social animal.
The question it leaves me with today - and that I want to challenge all of you with - is how do we sustain that same sense of urgency, that desire to keep coming together to work through a shared challenge, and apply it to the problem of the yawning disadvantage gap, and the opportunity of continuing to push the boundaries of excellence across the education system?
I know it’s not easy, when there is so much that draws us inward - the nightmare of staff absence (which proves covid is far from over), the return of SATs, GCSEs, A levels, inspections. But how do we build on the links we used to survive the early phase of the pandemic to now thrive? How do we sustain the partnerships that we know are good for us, and for the children and communities we serve, when there are so many other demands on us and our time? What could we do to renew commitment to each other - to the pledge of our partnership to work together for the common good, to take responsibility for the outcomes of youngsters we will never meet in other towns and schools, just as we do for those in our own classrooms? To be true system leaders? How do we move along the continuum from competition and coexistence, beyond functional, self-interested cooperation, to deep collaboration and true partnership? How do we go even further, together?
Trust and shared purpose are of course absolutely essential here - and it is no accident that they are two of the four capitals underpinning our approach within Challenge Partners. Because we know that our moral purpose - our shared commitment to system-wide improvement, to excellence that goes hand-in-hand with equity - is the glue that binds us. And we know that building social capital - by forging human connections, which start or are sustained at events like today’s - is really about building the trust needed for genuine collaboration and partnership. We know that these are necessary if we are going to be effective in challenging each other through rigorous evaluation to identify where the excellence - the knowledge capital all can benefit from - is.
And in this brave new world where every school is expected to be part of a strong trust by 2030 - challenge, collaboration and knowledge sharing BETWEEN trusts will be as important as WITHIN trusts if we want to ensure no school, no child is left behind, if we are really going to shift the dial on disadvantage and achieve upwards convergence. This is something we were pleased to see acknowledged in the White Paper after our conversations with Baroness Barran on just this point.
On thriving
So what about thriving? The White Paper of course has a redoubled focus on literacy and numeracy - and we know how important those basic skills are. But we also know that they are only necessary and not sufficient to thrive in school and the world beyond. We have always talked at Challenge Partners - and this came through really strongly in 2018 when we last revisited our mission and values - about how the improvement we are striving for, for ourselves, our schools, our pupils and communities is about so much more than doing better in the basics, than achieving the public accountability benchmarks set by government and Ofsted. What we are endeavouring together to achieve is nothing short of individual and collective human flourishing in all its forms.
And a snapshot of some of the Areas of Excellence accredited through QA Reviews in the spring term shows that focus on human flourishing continues unabated in our partnership. 32 Areas of Excellence have been approved since Christmas, including ‘Citizenship in Action’ at the Winstanley School, where I was delighted to start the academic year all the way back in August, and the Invicta Primary Race Equity Programme, and a programme aimed at empowering autistic children at Peterhouse School. If you want to find out more about those or any of the 50 Areas of Excellence already identified this year, please take a look in the School Support Directory in the members’ area of the website. Do also revel today in the fabulous student artwork displayed on the screens, and the music you’ll hear from some exceptionally talented performers from London and Cornwall - and know that and so much more is what we mean when we think about thriving and striving together to achieve it for all.
Partnerships for our partnership
I am - in a moment - going to end with some questions for you to take with you into the rest of the day about what it is you and we need to do to continue to thrive. But before doing that, I wanted to share how - with our trustees - we have been considering the partnerships we could build not just within Challenge Partners, but also beyond Challenge Partners with other organisations. There are lots of organisations we cooperate and collaborate with, but there are two particularly strong partnerships we hold at organisational level, which have really enriched us in recent years:
The first is with the Social Business Trust, a charity which connects social enterprises and charities like ours with world-leading corporate expertise. That partnership enriches us in many ways, including being an excellent source of business trustees - like our Chair, Chris Davison, who is here today and keen to hear about your experiences. SBT also arrange first-rate business inputs for our networks and programmes, notably our Trust Leaders’ Network, where we have had some incredible seminars - most recently from Schroders on developing effective staff wellbeing programmes. They also provide pro bono access to legal, financial, HR, strategy and systems expertise that enhances our operations and which we could never afford.
The second is our partnership with ImpactEd. Some of you will know ImpactEd, which is a social enterprise seeking to grow schools’ capacity to evaluate what they do. Never has this been more important - because schools simply don’t have the time or money to waste on programmes and initiatives that aren’t working. So ImpactEd helps school find robust and efficient ways to evaluate what they’re doing and decide whether it’s having the desired effect. Challenge Partners is proud to be a founding partner of ImpactEd and some of you were involved at a very early stage in co-designing and piloting ImpactEd tools. And every school in Challenge Partners is entitled to a substantial discount on an ImpactEd subscription. After a successful first three years of partnership, we are building further collaboration with ImpactEd - in particular around a new tool looking at better understanding employee engagement for teachers - helping school leaders to understand the drivers of teacher engagement in their settings, including factors such as workload, wellbeing and retention.
Alongside this we are also kicking off other joint projects which powerfully combine evaluation insights from ImpactEd about what works where, with excellence identified through our QA Reviews, and our expertise in mobilising knowledge to ensure great practice isn’t trapped in individual schools, but shared widely so all children and young people can benefit.
Beyond this, next month we will be kicking off work - with SBT support and input from all of you - to build a strategy for the next phase of Challenge Partners’ development. As well as looking to deepen our existing partnerships, trustees are keen that we explore what collaboration with other organisations might bring to the schools and trusts within CP - and if you have any thoughts on this, please let me know.
Of course, our explorations will always be guided by our mission and values, and the extent to which going together will enable us to go farther than if we go alone.