We know now that individual schools can make a difference to the achievement of thier pupils and are beginning to know how schools which add most value to thier pupils' achievements are able to do so. We know that the way these schools are managed is crucial and we do knopw some of the key features of the management of the most effective schools. Three features of this management which we now recognise as central are:

  • Clarity of purpose - purposes which are continually articulated, redefined, developed, teased out, shared and communicated to all who work in the school and to all who support its progress (pupils, parents, govenors and the local community as well as all who are employed by the school); purposes which are linked to consistently high expectations throughout the school.
  • The selection of a range of data by which progress towards those purposes may be measured, followed by the systematic collection and analysis of that data as one means of answering the persistant question: "How can we do better next time?". Schools, like other organisations anxious to succeed, need to be "data-rich".
  • The recognition that all who work in the school need to be learners - the head, the chair of govenor, the lunchtime supervisors, the most experienced teacher, the newest arrival in whatever role - clearly, if the business of a school is learning, the business of all staff is to keep learning how to be better anablers of learning.

Because such findings are being confirmed and reconfirmed by research undertaken both here and abroad, the government has in recent years taken steps to try to establish some of these features in the management practice of schools; by encouraging, and in some requiring, schools to engage in:

  • School development planning
  • The collection of outcome data (such as SATs and public exam results)
  • A renewed emphasis on the continuous professional development of teachers and of headteachers

At the same time, a significant number of schools has chosen to seek to achieve recognition as Investors in People. The Investors in People standard, which originated in the work of the Employment Department before its merger with the DFEE, was not developed initially for use in schools but is now being taken up with some enthusiasm by those schools which wish to improve their management of staff training and development.

Because the Comino Foundation recognises that Investors in People is in harmony with the Foundation's aims, we have been working now for some time, in partnership with the CBI Education Foundation, to support schools which are seeking to become investors. Incidentally, Investors is also helpful because it provides us with ready access to a range of schols - it is something they have decided they want to do and it is one of the few routes by which schols can sometimes secure additional funding to support professional development.

Like GRASP, Investors places an emphasis on:

  • Clarity of purpose.
  • Establishing clear criteria for success.
  • Careful planning of routes by which success can be achieved.
  • Controlling the process of moving from intention to result.
  • Continuous review of the outcomes and the process by which those outcomes were reached.

Investors in People is proving a most valuable framework for the management of staff training and development in schools. Schools report: "We may have had the bits before, but we weren't doing the jigsaw."

However, that kind of comment gives us a clue to why systems such as school development planning, compulsary data collection and in-service training will not, of themselves, guarantee that schools add most value to the achievement of their pupils.

To do that, they need to become self-improving learning communities, to do the jigsaw, to put the bits together, to develop a working understanding of the processes which support their movement from intention to result. GRASP can help achieve that. So, when we work with heads and senior managers, we encourage them to use the GRASP framework in support of all the thinking and doing which they undertake, in meetings, in communicating with parents, in planning and undertaking staff development. We work with the senior management team so that they can act as role models for the GRASP process until it becomes an integral part of the way the school conducts itself, a tangable feature of the culture of the school.

Eventually, GRASP becomes a common language which can be used to keep all people in the school on track and can trigger their attention at crucial moments of the progress from intention to result. It acts as:

  • A shorthand.
  • An aide-memoire.

In bringing thinking and doing together with a clear and continuing focus on purpose, success criteria, review and control, it helps to bring the pieces together, to sustain momentum and direction, to achieve the results schools are really seeking to achieve.