“What pizza?”
That was, and remains, the big question never put to Michael Gove. Why journalists, union leaders, supporters, friends and challengers alike shied away from this topic with the Great Disrupter is a mystery to me.
“Where do you stand on pizza, Mr Gove?”
“Do you have a favourite?”
“Takeaway or restaurant? Short crust, deep crust, thin crust? Gluten free? Donation to Venice?”
This line of questioning, in the early days, would have helped to prevent the fracturing of the state education system. The question, however, was ducked - or perhaps not even formulated - and Mr Gove moved on to greater tasks (and think of the impact on the history of Brexit, had the education world been brave enough to query Mr Gove as education secretary of state: “Pizza, Mr Gove? Where do you stand? Speak to us of pizza, Mr Gove.”)
At the risk of being obvious, perhaps I should explain why.
A recipe for success in schools
Pizza is a world-beater, a global success story - it is a champion foodstuff wherever you go. One of the often unnoticed features of this dominance is coherence. But it also has diversity. Coherence and diversity, all in one.
Pizzas have coherence from the start, maintain their integrity through the whole baking process and come out of the oven as an enhanced, coherent, superior food product. And yet they provide a foundation for all sorts of (excellent) diversity of ingredients and structural construction; and maintain that coherence throughout the process.
If pizza was a school system, it would be high-achieving, it would close gaps and it would increase public confidence in the public school system. Throw in ingredient number 4, pupil wellbeing, and we have a public education pizza we can all get excited about. The four ingredients are taken from Fullan and Quinn’s Coherence, in which they describe the key targets for the high-performing Ontario school system.
Cynics might point out that Ontario has a system; the English scene is a fractured mess. Nonetheless, if there is one book for school and system leaders to read and inwardly digest, I nominate Coherence.
Not only does it identify the “wrong drivers” for improving the system (where many of the decisions of the past five years from the Department for Education reside); it also identifies the “right drivers” for change.
Cultivate collaborative cultures, focus direction, secure accountability and deepen the learning. The framework is set out in under 150 pages and I’m still grappling with it and how to put it into practice. Get it for half term, or for summer hols - there is a way forward for leaders in the fragmented system, not “mere coherence of existing elements, but a radical transformation into deep learning with all its associated parts. This is the coherence challenge!” (Fullan/Quinn, p136)
Sounds like an admirable stone-baked thin-crust creation to me.
Fullan and Quin’s vision is a little gem of hope in a fractured world. And there are handy (pizza-shaped) infographics throughout.
Rick Stuart-Sheppard is head of of Brundall Primary School in Norfolk
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