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Leading change for survival: The rural flexi-school approach
Abstract
This article seeks to present the perspectives of three school leaders in one rural primary school in the English East Midlands, who, when faced with closure due to a falling student numbers, decided to offer and operate a flexi-schooling model of educational provision. We aim to find out, through a theoretical model of systems school leadership, how the school leadership team addressed this issue. Findings suggest that the principles of systems leadership, operating through an open systems model, have facilitated the journey towards flexi-schooling and ensured the survival and growth of the school. The learning community created with parents and the personalisation of the curriculum for learners reflects an innovative curriculum design and in part solves the problems which led to the initial decision taken by parents to home-educate. Focusing on ways to secure healthy student numbers, school leaders developed a partnership with a multi-academy trust, yet they still face challenges in formally recording student numbers when their attendance is only part of the week.
... We use this term because it is the preferred and recognisable term used by practitioners in Australia; however, it is important to acknowledge that in international contexts the term flexi school has different meanings. For example, in England, flexi schooling refers to students who have flexible arrangements with their schooling provider, whereby a student may arrange to attend school on certain days and have alternative learning occur on days when they are not attending school (Poultney & Anderson, 2019). This paper reports on findings from a doctoral study by the first author, where the focus was to centre and privilege the voices and experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples undertaking professional educative roles in alternative or flexi school contexts in Australia. ...
This paper reports on findings from the first author’s doctoral research examining the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in Australian flexi schools. ‘Collaborative yarning methodology’ story boarding was used to hear (and theme) the collective experiences of Indigenous teaching and non-teaching staff in these alternative school settings where both they and Indigenous students make up larger numbers of staff than mainstream schools. Informed by Indigenist and critical race theory, 19 Indigenous staff members contributed to knowledge around three themes: Us Mob; Race and racism, and School Practice which incorporated discussions both of curriculum and of issues related to funding. Many Indigenous staff were working in flexi schools through choice and a sense of commitment to working with Indigenous youth. However other issues, such as experiences of racism, were still present despite the ‘social justice’ nature of flexi schools.
... Flexi-schooling is a formal arrangement between parents and the head teacher concerned, that a child can attend school on certain days and be home educated off site on others (Carnie 2017). Flexi-schooling offers personalised education with shared responsibility for teaching and learning being taken by families and schools (Poultney & Anderson 2019), plus children being in regular sight of educational professionals for safeguarding purposes. ...
This study is currently the largest University affiliated Elective Home Education study conducted in the UK (as of August 2021).
A commonly cited aspect of home education is that children may have less socialisation outside their own families and as such be less visible within society, particularly to professionals, than their counterparts who attend mainstream school. This research sought to establish how socially visible and engaged the home educated (HE) children of parents who use online home education support groups were. This was for the purpose of establishing whether there was any truth in this reported lack of socialisation and societal visibility or whether it was a stereotype. The nature of data sought was be qualitative, interpretative phenomenological analysis, so having considered multiple methods-online surveys were chosen as the most appropriate method. Had it not been conducted during a pandemic then case studies may have been used.
The study found a highly engaged and visible community, with children attending a large variety of groups and venues, many of which would not be available to those outside the community. Participants’ children were also seen by a wide range of professionals and volunteers regularly, including Government employees. Themes emerged as to a lack of trust and regular visibility to Local Authority Elective Home Education teams due to poor communication and legal overreach. There was a reported lack of value exchange between Local Authority EHE staff and home educators.
The overwhelming response to the research indicated that home educating parents were keen to contribute to academic research and to voice their views regarding visibility, socialisation and Local Government engagement. A lack of consistency between communication, expectations and engagement from Local Authorities and the Home Education community emerged.
Early conceptual work on systems leadership in education emphasized social justice concerns, often through reference to the ‘moral purpose’ of those in positional authority. However, over time, we have seen a shift in focus from moral purpose to instrumentalism and a critique of hierarchical power dynamics. By revisiting the centrality of moral purpose in early conceptual work, clarifying its import and tracking its narrative through international education research, this systematic review of systems leadership in education research (2005–2023) identifies three waves of education literature which evolve from conceptual to critical, revealing key constraints and opportunities for applying a social justice lens. Despite obstacles including the co-option of systems leadership by ‘top-down’ managerialist structures, this review also highlights concrete recommendations in the literature on how systems leadership can be reclaimed for the purpose of addressing specific and entrenched social injustices such as systemic racism in schools.
Flexischooling—the sharing of a child's education between home and school through formal agreement—is one of a range of ‘alternative’ education approaches that may adapt education to meet a child's special educational needs. This study considers qualitative data from an online survey conducted during November and December 2023 regarding parents' reasons for undertaking flexischooling with their child, and the activities they describe their children undertaking during school hours. Findings suggest that parents are concerned about the challenges that they feel their child faces in full‐time school, but that they also perceive advantages, both social and academic, to the ‘not‐school’ element of the educational approach they are undertaking. Consideration of the potential for flexischooling to support parents as they learn about their child's ever‐changing needs is discussed.
In the post-pandemic context, questions of well-being in education, amongst pupils and the workforce alike, are increasingly pressing. This presentation outlines a developing EdD project to explore school leaders' well-being. With reference to the relevant policy context and drawing on a range of educational theories from the interpretivist tradition, the presentation sets out the emerging direction of travel for the study.
This presentation represents my first steps on the EdD journey, exploring the possible use of the interpretivist lens and narrative enquiry method.
Narrated slides available on request.
This paper uses qualitative data from a survey of Higher Education students, who are also parents, to reveal changing attitudes towards, and perceptions of, education during the pandemic school closures in England. Thematic analysis reveals the stresses of ‘homeschooling’ and how parents reacted and adapted to these, including adjusting ideas around education. This adaptation mirrors the changing attitudes of parents found in pre-pandemic home education. The paper suggests that post pandemic education could be enriched by taking forward some of these ideas, particularly greater flexibility, personalisation and child autonomy in education.
Homeschooling, a phenomenon that is increasingly widespread in the Western world, raises questions regarding the ability to supply children in this framework with adequate social encounters. Despite evidence regarding the importance of these encounters for children in homeschooling, there is insufficient data concerning the sources of differences between homeschooling families in the scope of these social encounters. The present study examined the relationships between a child’s social encounters and socioeconomic aspects of the family, parental personalities, and the way homeschooling is practiced. One hundred and forty parents who homeschooled their children completed questionnaires about themselves, their families, and their children, as well as the social interactions of their children. The findings indicate that parental personalities and the way homeschooling is practiced correlated significantly with the social encounters of homeschooled children. Parents’ conscientiousness was associated with a greater number of social encounters and more structure in the homeschooling. This article presents possible explanations for these findings, theoretical implications of the findings and possibilities for further research.
Parental choice of school is an under-researched area in the Australian educational literature. Moreover, research in this area tends to focus on school choice with respect to government policy and market influences. This paper presents the findings from doctoral research which explored the ways in which parents living in rural and remote areas selected a secondary boarding school for their child. In particular, the paper shows the complex psychical constructions undertaken by non-Indigenous parents in their defining of 'good' schools, which subsequently underpin their selection of school. The confluences of geography, school culture and race on the parental choice of school process are explored.
‘System leadership’, as applied to the running of schools, refers to a form of leadership that extends beyond a single institution, where headteachers work with establishments other than their own. This approach is predicated on certain beliefs about the role and purpose of collaborative school leadership and management in a marketised system of state schooling and the benefits of a distributed and networked approach to school improvement. But what are the potential benefits and limitations of school system leadership? What normative interpretations of the system are best suited for purpose? This paper explores these issues with reference to the English school system, where system leadership is actively promoted by government through education policy and school reform. In order to do this, use is made of Gunter, H., D. Hall, and J. Bragg (2013. “Distributed Leadership: A Study in Knowledge Production.” Education Management, Administration and Leadership 41 (4): 555–580.) framework of distributed leadership in schools. The framework identifies functionally normative, functionally descriptive, critical and socially critical positions in the school leadership literature. The paper concludes by putting forward potential alternatives to the largely functional policy narratives and solutions of recent decades, which are based on a broader understanding of ‘the system’.
Foucault's work on the prison radically transformed the way social scientists conceive the institutional regulation of life. Drawing on Foucault's thesis about the gradual refinement and expansion of mechanisms of control and discipline in modern society, they quickly began to reveal all the micro-powers and technologies of control at work both inside and outside the criminal justice system. It soon became obvious that every attempt to reform society, to give people more freedom ineluctably becomes its opposite - a technique of domination. No matter where or when, it is the same as it ever was - social control. I challenge this thesis by demonstrating that Foucault's concept of power is not only inscribed in practices of normalization, but, most importantly, in practices of liberation. In light of his work on bio-powers and bio-politics, the constitution of the modern subject through power relations is understood in terms of a 'governmentality' that maximizes life. Hence Foucault's notion of power is better understood as a 'mechanism for life' that includes strategies of self-development that both constrain and enable agency.
The increasing importance of educational collaborations and networks that blur organizational boundaries requires conceptual developments in leadership theory. One approach to both theorizing and promoting such phenomena is through the idea of system leadership. Three different meanings of the term are identified: interschool leadership; a systemic leadership orientation and identity; and leadership of the school system as a whole. Previous descriptions of system leadership, and policy initiatives related to it, have focused on headteachers and senior leaders. However, teacher leaders may also exercise system leadership in relation to all three meanings. Professional development networks and school collaborations provide a range of distinct contexts for interschool leadership by teacher leaders and these are identified. This extends existing theories of teacher and distributed leadership. Further, it is proposed that teacher leaders can, like headteachers, have a systemic leadership practice orientation that is informed by moral purposes. The model of teacher activist professional identity provides a starting point for analysing teacher system leadership identity. Teacher leaders can and do influence system-wide change and, to conceptualize this, the concept of system leadership from below is introduced. In making this argument a number of issues and methodological tools are identified that are important in researching both headteacher and teacher system leadership in relation to the three meanings of system leadership.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore how effective school principals use systems thinking, aiming to present the systems school leadership (SSL) approach – an approach where principals lead schools through the systems thinking concept and procedures.
Design/methodology/approach
– Participants were 28 Israeli school principals, selected as outstanding leaders by recommendations from their superintendents and according to their schools’ achievements. The study employed semi-structured interviews as well as focus groups. Generating themes was an inductive process, grounded in the various perspectives articulated by participants.
Findings
– Data analysis generated four main characteristics of SSL: leading wholes; adopting a multidimensional view; influencing indirectly; and evaluating significance.
Research limitations/implications
– Further research that will explore to what extent and how often principals use systems thinking is required. In addition, replication in various educational contexts is important in order to substantiate the validity of the SSL's characteristics. Beyond principals’ perceptions, more objective measures like direct observations are needed to evaluate actual implementation of SSL in diverse school settings.
Practical implications
– Identifying the SSL characteristics facilitates the development of practical processes for nurturing SSL in various stages of school leaders’ educational career.
Originality/value
– This paper provides a useful conceptual and empirical framework to evaluate SSL as a managerial approach.
We describe a two year empirical investigation of three- and four-year-old children’s uses of technology at home, based on a survey of 346 families and 24 case studies. Using a socio-cultural approach, we discuss the range of technologies children encounter in the home, the different forms their learning takes, the roles of adults and other children and how family practices support this learning. Many parents believed that they did not teach children how to use technology. We discuss parents’ beliefs that their children ‘pick up’ their competencies with technology and identify trial and error, copying and demonstration as typical modes of learning. Parents tend to consider that their children are mainly self- taught and underestimate their own role in supporting learning and the extent to which learning with technology is culturally transmitted within the family.
Home schooling has become increasingly widespread in recent decades. Much research has been conducted regarding different aspects of the practice, including parents’ reasons for choosing home schooling. These are often quantitative studies that directly examine these reasons and frequently cite rational reasons. In contrast, the present research is a qualitative study that examined stories in order to understand the initial reasons underlying the decision of parents to educate their children at home. An analysis of interviews with 25 mothers who home school their children yielded numerous reasons for home schooling, including some that have not been cited in the research literature. Unlike previous studies, the present examination indicated two categories: rational, deliberate change and arbitrary change. The use of open research tools that indirectly inquire about the reasons for choosing home schooling enabled the identification of a second category, arbitrary change. The implications of these results for researchers of home schooling, home-schooling families and policy-makers are discussed.
"A Systems Approach to Leadership" (SAL) is a methodology for creating sustained high performance in conditions of high complexity and uncertainty. SAL places the latest developments in Systems Science into an actionable method for use by everyday leaders. It enables leaders to develop themselves and their organisation (or part of it), quickly and effectively to achieve a competitive advantage in a complex and uncertain world. SAL consists of an integrated framework with an overall strategy of whole system development. Central to the framework is a practical method which can be used by any leader at any organisational level. Supporting the framework are a range of systems approaches and a set of foundational assumptions. SAL has been carefully researched and refined in extensive field tests where it typically delivers outcomes well above expectations.
This small-scale study investigates the perspectives of parents whose children have special educational needs/disabilities and who have elected to withdraw their children from the state-maintained education system in England and educate them at home. The study draws on data gathered from seven parents and their perspectives of home education following a government-commissioned review of home education in 2009, subsequently known as the ‘Badman Report’. The former New Labour government commissioned this review to assess the merits of the system of supporting and monitoring home education in England. Findings identified a number of issues, including the lack of understanding by staff within school settings around the issues of special needs and particularly in the area of autistic spectrum disorders, the failure to engage in partnership with parents and the impact that the school environment had upon the children.
The art of holding complexity is the ability to face conflict and other life challenges through collaboration, self-awareness and flexibility rather than through control and coercion. Holding complexity is a key theme identified in a research project exploring educator identity and development in practice in a system of alternative or ‘flexi schools’ in Queensland, Australia. Flexi schools support young people to create positive education pathways after experiences of failure and/or exclusion from conventional schooling. This paper explores the concept of holding complexity and how educators develop this capacity in their work. Design experiment methodology was used to explore how ways of working and professional learning in flexi schools influenced educator identity and development and how induction needs of new staff could be addressed. Educators enfranchising young people in flexi schools face challenges that require different ways of working that are young person-focused; that shift power dynamics and require adults to adopt a position of co-learner and facilitator. Holding complexity enables educators to support young people who face multiple issues that impinge on their ability to engage in conventional schooling. Induction and professional learning programs emphasising the art of holding complexity assist flexi school educators in their work with young people.
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This paper provides a UK high resolution microeconometric study of parental preferences and the choice process for secondary schools. Given the particular geographical features of the region, first preference almost entirely related to one of two state schools, which is a situation that perhaps better reflects the real nature of the options faced by most parents in the UK. In contrast to earlier work, distance and access considerations were explicitly incorporated in the preference and choice models estimated and found to be a significant influence on parental decisions. Further significant factors were found, dependent upon the parents' actual choice of school.
Flexi-Schooling Summary and FAQ. Available at: educationalfreedom.org.uk/flexi-faq
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Ed yourself: flexi-schooling
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Small rural schools must dare to be different. The Telegraph
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Every School an Academy: the white paper proposals. House of Commons Library briefing paper 07549
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