Working with the Innovation Unit, a social enterprise that grows and scales innovations that address persistent inequalities, NSN spoke to founders, school leaders, teachers, and students from nine high impact – but very different – free schools about what underpinned their success.
This revealed 10 shared principles – the components that guide how these schools were designed and how they function.
An incredibly strong sense of mission, vision, and culture, informs everything these schools do. It is driven by moral purpose and forms the central part of the school’s values, which are embedded into every aspect of school life. Staff and pupils are aware of these values and understand they are consistently applied.
Staff and pupils understand how their actions and requirements feed into the overarching culture at the school, and every member of the school community demonstrates their clear ‘buy in’ into the school culture.
These schools commit to employing people who specifically buy into its approach. This can mean that coherence to their values is more important than initial teaching competence or experience, due to an understanding that teaching quality can be improved through coaching and training, while mindset is invaluable.
Internal succession planning is a key component in ensuring the original vision for these schools is maintained, and leaders play a pivotal role in promoting their ethos. These schools display a consistent commitment to developing and progressing their own leaders.
These schools offer professional development opportunities to staff at all levels and encourage all staff to take advantage of these. Strong working practices ensure that all staff learn from one another, as well as other schools and the broader education sector.
These schools show a preoccupation with getting the minutiae consistently aligned; ensure that pupils and staff know there is a clear ‘grammar’ of behaviour and learning. In addition, each child’s journey through their school career is carefully mapped and tracked, meaning that pupils are well known by staff, and are supported to reflect on their own growth and development.
Each school offers a clear and well-articulated model of learning. There is a common focus on mastering key content, concepts, and skills, and on pupils understanding their own learning and how to further progress this. The fundamentals of learning often draw upon international and well evidenced school models and practices.
These schools have also carefully considered how they will ensure lessons continue as initially planned even as the school grows. This might include co-planning, team teaching, drop-in observations, or close monitoring. Feedback between teachers is encouraged as a tool for improvement.
Schools have a clear desire to act as exemplars of innovation for the wider education system. Being mission driven, they are energised by influencing others and value being seen as trailblazers. As a community, they practice, develop, and evaluate their own approach and share their findings publicly.
Scaling the model is a feature for some schools, but the majority have codified key practices and are open to visits and to sharing materials. Some have been the founding schools of larger multi-academy trusts, while others were set up by existing trusts as a means of spreading best practice to a new community.
