Nearly 20 years ago I chose as the subject of my PGCE dissertation the future of new technology in schools (this was in the days of Netscape Navigator and dial-up modems). I concluded that technology would be a success only if it moved out of the computer room and into every classroom, becoming deeply embedded in every aspect of school life.

This caused my supervisor some difficulty: for him, “computing” would always remain a specialist area. I still maintain I was right. However, my supervisor’s position has proven surprisingly resistant to change.

Schools are, in many ways, still a long way from seeing technology as something that moves, frictionless, between support staff and teaching staff, and between school leaders and middle managers. The average (or worse) schools that I visit are often making the same mistakes in key areas - and one of them, inevitably, is in how they use technology. In many schools, technology remains ghettoised, something that is at best functional and at worst geeky. Both views act as barriers to progress.  

Collaboration at every level

All the outstanding schools I know have deeply embedded cultures of collaboration at every level. Expectations about collaborative development flow outwards from the back office into the furthest corners of every classroom, and back again. Schools such as these are able to develop in this way because the walls between areas of responsibility are often porous or invisible.

Ideally, academic staff will know what the support staff are doing and why (and vice versa); and those responsible for safeguarding will share good practice with staff solely responsible for academic matters. They intermesh, creating safety nets for students and colleagues. The rewards of collaborative planning are many, but cementing a common, shared purpose is perhaps the greatest.

School leaders are crucial in modelling this behaviour. If they don’t do it then technology risks being a very expensive add-on for the few. I have visited schools as an inspector and heard the headteacher extol the virtues of the “knowledge economy” and the “new white heat of the technological revolution”, but still refuse to use cloud-based technology, shared calendars or even fund additional kit in any subjects other than ICT.

If children learn from adults, then - consciously or unconsciously - staff often imitate their line managers’ behaviour. If school leaders begin to show how advantageous technology can be, then schools will quickly become more efficient. Schools today are developing 21st-century learners and workers. Sadly, much of the machinery they run on is 20th century or older.  

Getting to inbox zero

Here is a pair of obvious examples: email and meetings. In the past, school staff would hold meetings on any number of issues and then email each other resources, minutes, policy statements, letters home: you name it, every document would have several meetings behind it. And because schools are such complex places, with thousands of statutory regulations, one document might generate hundreds of emails from stakeholders. More meetings are convened, more time eaten up, more emails sent.

Using something like Microsoft’s SharePoint can change this almost literally overnight. In place of fractious meetings that go on too long, staff can have intelligent, reasoned conversations online, commenting in the margins of documents, with views given equal weighting. Email begins to disappear as documents develop in real time, and inclusively.

Why money matters (to everyone)

Here’s another example: budgeting. For some schools, the dark art of making the books balance is often reserved for the finance office. This is self-defeating and deeply unproductive. I have heard many teachers boast about going deliberately over-budget so that their money isn’t cut the next academic year. It’s an irresponsible attitude but too often goes unchallenged. Collaboration can change such views.

Schools are social spaces, but it sometimes feels as though the different constituencies don’t talk enough. Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to discussing budgets. The level of financial illiteracy in schools is astonishing, and this is often because surprisingly few support and academic staff understand how to use simple programs like Excel. This is where bursars and finance officers can not only lead, but enlighten: they can show staff how schools have to act in a financially responsible way in order for teachers to teach, and students to learn. School finances affect everyone.  

Again, successful schools use a number of different ways of challenging the “them and us” cultures that too easily develop, and one of the most powerful tools in starting this process is technology. Even something as prosaic as spreadsheets can become transformative when they are shared, live documents. Suddenly staff are actively trained by others, in real time, in how to use them. With understanding comes ownership, and with ownership comes responsibility. Technology shines a light on those financial dark arts and suddenly efficiency is more difficult to avoid, even for the latest of adopters.

Shared experience

It was a breakthrough moment for many institutions when Microsoft’s suite of tools - the most common software in schools - moved to cloud-based functionality. Suddenly people could work together using programs with which they were already comfortable, like Word and Excel. The rewards I mentioned earlier were suddenly there, and actually saved staff time.

Of course, you don’t need a laptop to collaborate: I’ve watched projects develop before my eyes with scissors, paper, pens, Post-it notes and a shared intent. But collaborative platforms such as OneNote, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, Evernote and Box ensure that nothing is lost, and different media can also be stored and shared.

For our students, technology is as ever-present as oxygen. But for the adults they work with day in, day out, it remains something not fully understood, a device for email, an end in itself, not a means to something better.

School leaders have to truly lead in this area. If they are unsure about how to do so, they should learn to listen, to discuss, to collaborate and to share. Such words may not always be found in manuals written by chief executives, but schools are different. At their heart is learning, and sometimes that’s the best leadership quality of all.  

Dr David James is deputy head (academic) of Bryanston School in Dorset