There is something currently fundamentally wrong with education in the UK at the moment. When did schools change from simply celebrating students successes in August and also start acknowledging themselves as ‘the best results in the county’ or shouting from the rooftops their Ofsted grading? When did this become so important? Why are schools competing against other schools? I mean I know why they do, but why did it become so important? We need an education system where all of the fish are swimming in the same direction and not racing each other.
Game theory has been around for a while, but in recent years Simon Sinek has talked and written about Finite and Infinite games in the business world. According to Simon, Infinite games are those where the objective is to stay in the game. Finite players the aim is to win.
He says the game is balanced if finite player are against finite players. This clip summarises the ideas from his book: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KbYzF6Zy5tY
How this applies to education? Simon states we become more obsessed with the metric (exam results) than we are with the child. It’s an easy trap to fall into. They come in Y7 at a certain summative point from their primary education. This point maybe the true reflection of a well rounded broad start in their schooling, or can be the result of an exam focused Y6. You can tell the same story in the Y11/Y12 transition too.
Where did it go wrong? When did we start putting so much pressure at every transition of key stage to see if that phase was a success? It wasn’t when I was a child. I never was hot housed for an exam, I never knew what my grade was at that point or able to articulate how I could move up to the next grade. I just needed to know my next steps. The scale of my performance until I did my GCSEs didn’t matter and I felt no pressure from it. My two teenage sons felt the pressure of KS2 SATs, not from me, from their school. Extra boosters, ‘breakfast clubs’ in April and May…… In my opinion at the expense of a broader educational experience. 11 years being taught to the test is not a broad education. It’s not inspiring. The late Sir Ken Robinson was right in so many ways. Creativity is not prioritised, but that is a whole different blog and this piece of work is about the purpose of education, not the content.
By its very nature Education is an infinite game. It existed before we were born and will continue after our lives end. When people started to play education as a finite game, imbalance entered. Egos entered. The focus moved off the child and on to the results. This is wrong. This is what accountability has done to us, and I don’t think this was the aim of it. The purpose of watchdogs such as Ofsted is (and I may be being naively idealistic here) to improve education, but it has somehow become twisted into being the goal, the metric by which the success of leadership is measured. This is incorrect.
Who made Education a finite game? The Government? Ofsted? Leaders? This is a nuanced debate but it’s ultimately fairly irrelevant. We are where we are.
Simon states ‘schools have a corporate leadership model…..The headmaster is not responsible for the results, they are responsible for the people who are responsible for the curriculum and the people responsible for the children’. When leaders take care of the staff things change. I’ve heard very effective leaders talk about investing and developing staff. This is where sustainable improvement in schools comes from. The focus shifts to the longer term not shallow instant fixes.
Simon enforces that it cannot be forgotten that exam results still count; ‘There is nothing wrong with teaching children that they have to do well at school. Reality still exists.’ Of course they do, of course they should, for the child. For their life prospects.
Simon discusses the importance of having a worthy cause. With Education, we all fundamentally understand how deeply worthwhile the cause is. Not Ofsted ratings, not summative accountability measures. Your worthy cause should be the development of young people to be their absolute best versions of themselves, and to grow your staff be the same. This should be the aim of our education system across the country. This should be the same across the world.
The vast majority things I do are not for Ofsted, they are for children. Every leader in every school will tell you they aren’t doing things for Ofsted (whilst a large proportion completely doing the majority of things for Ofsted), I however, mean it. Not to say I won’t do some things for Ofsted (such as having a file with some easily interpreted snapshots of data to show the journey we are on) but I will acknowledge them as such. I don’t do what I believe that Ofsted want to see to influence what I do on a day to day basis I do what I think will improve the education of children- and believe me when I say I spend a lot of time thinking, reading and writing about it. This blog is where my writing began: https://mrsmsteachertalk.school.blog/2019/10/20/12/
I recently read that a schools primary function is to improve what happens in the classroom and that if leaders are doing anything that isn’t to this effect, then it is not a good use of their time. I think there is a lot to be said for this, it certainly is a worthy cause. Improving what happens in the class covers a whole lot, but it doesn’t cover everything, and some leaders could be seduced into believing this at the expense of their budgets. Being in the black is really important. How can you build a sustainable workforce and grow your staff if you can’t afford them? My point is that while it is an important focus, school leadership just is not that simple and that as a Senior Leader I do have understanding beyond my idealistic views.
How can we move towards being of an infinite mindset? I work in a certain type of school. It’s a demographic where I know my skill set adds value. My purpose, my infinite game is to improve social mobility for students in schools with high levels of disadvantage by giving them the tools to be successful in education. For me, in the schools I work in this has particularly been to improve literacy. Even more specifically, reading and vocabulary, to give students the skills to access the curriculum and stand the chance of a better life. This exposure to a wider world through reading will open the minds of students and make them see beyond their current life experiences. This works in the type of schools I work in but, as with everything in education, probably wouldn’t work everywhere. If students already read widely, have a broad wider knowledge of life and understanding of the world, then this focus adds very little. I have no experience of how to improve schools in such situations. I worked for 6 months in such a school, realised I could add nothing and so left. You need to decide for your school your ‘why’ and once you have done that, then look at your how.
I really identified with this article. https://www.tes.com/news/key-headship-find-your-happy-place. Throughout my career I see a lot of people (through my jobs, training and through connections on social media) leave working in education who perhaps are just working in the wrong type of setting. If you are struggling with your vision, or your worthy cause, consider whether you are in the right school.
Simply being in the right school does not answer the ‘how do we make education an infinite game?’ Though it would certainly help if our skill set progresses the vision of the school leaders in the places we work. Recruiting is a challenge. Being astute about the roles you apply for and leaders selecting who is right for the school is a bit like getting engaged on the first date. I would like to see school recruitment becoming a longer process. It’s probably not practical but when did practically become a limitation on holistic improvement of education? That was a bit tongue in cheek but change is necessary. The quote ‘if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got’ is fairly accurate. Simon discusses the need for ‘existential flexibility’.
In education perhaps we should increase our capacity for existential flexibility – blow up what you’re doing in order to do what is right? We do see this in some aspects of education, the move from where we were with respect to pedagogy to where we are. Permission to do so because it’s ‘research informed’, even though to the vast majority it is just blatant common sense. Perhaps lessons learned from 2020 will provide us with a capacity for existential flexibility? For us, to close the disadvantage gap the need for existential flex is about closing the reading gap? Other areas of the sector I don’t have enough experience to comment but I know that change requires courage.
Courage is needed because everything right now forces us to fixate on the finite game, this year’s exams, the next Ofsted, to consider the short term over the long term.
When you apply game theory to education, you move away from the idea of winners or losers. You move towards the idea that the playing is more important. It removes the competition for this year’s performance measures, it changes the game to focus on maintaining the play. The net result will likely be your performance measures will improve. Why? Because you focus on what is really important, not what is for Ofsted but what children need to be successful in life, like the ability to be literate and numerate, you be healthy in their minds and bodies and to have values that make them good citizens. If all schools played this game, not just pretend to play this game then progress would be made.
Successful school leaders, I mean really successful, are those who keep the game in play. They are infinite players (but may not necessarily realise this to be the case). They might act as they do because of their values and intent to do ‘the right thing’. My Head is one of those. Willing to grow and develop staff, even at the risk they move on. Holding others to account, with the emphasis about doing what is right for students – this is ethical leadership, this is strengthening education in this country, as a whole, and not an individual part. This is playing an infinite game.
This is a sphere of influence beyond a single organisation. Whether it’s intentional or not, it works. I’ve written about this before. I’m not suggesting that you encourage all of your best staff to leave, but if you train them and take care of their ambitions, then the reality is that they will be more likely to be loyal and stay, but this should not be the reason for doing it. The purpose is to do what is right.
Finite players obsess about results, what they got. Success in schools like this rewards those whose goals are entirely focused on the metric. Careers being over after the 3rd Thursday in August. You’re only as good as your last set of results, irrelevant of the trajectory. This is not where we want education to be. It is my hope that we are moving beyond this.
If the judgment of a successful leader is merely the exam results, or the current Ofsted grading, then it’s no wonder that education hasn’t moved on as much as it could have. Remember performance measures are a zero sum game. You only move up when there are enough people moving down. This is wrong. I don’t have a better solution but at some point will spend time pondering about it.
In a zero sum game you cannot truly measure if education is improving as it solely relies on bell shaped curves and norm referencing. This results focus makes education a finite game. The Ofsted gradings that arise from these metrics make education a finite game and for schools on the downward slide, the results perhaps become more important than the individual children, and this pressure is entirely understandable.
With poor results and a poor grading it can be hard to recruit staff. When it’s hard to recruit enough staff it can be difficult to have specialist teachers in front of students. The spiral descends. The number of students decreases, budgets get squeezed. Schools with high levels of disadvantaged students need teachers who specialise in improving the outcomes for students in these schools. Teachers who focus on the endemic needs of the cohort and not the Y11 push. It has been widely discussed on #edutwitter over the years that working in schools like these can be career suicide, and I guess for some, this is correct. But there are teachers who, like the tes article suggests, are specialists at working in schools like these. The students in these schools deserve superb practitioners. These schools need to in some respects perhaps have to make up for a gap in parenting, that children from more affluent and well educated areas aren’t exposed to, I will discuss this a little more later.
I genuinely think that norm referencing and a system that is held in a zero sum game cannot truly measure progression in education and I feel it encourages playing a finite game. Ultimately assessment needs to be criterion based, but this so much harder to standardise and moderate which is why we don’t do it. In assessments students performance is judged relative to their peers. It has all the hallmarks of being a finite game. In an infinite game using a criterion approach, exceeding a threshold of a grade is only competing against yourself and achieving that score, you results wouldn’t be influenced by the number of people also getting that grade.
Year on year we look at the relative progress that is being made in education. I was trying to think of a good anecdote but the only one I can think of is this one. If several people jump out of an aeroplane they fall towards the ground (make progress towards the goal of landing). One opens their parachute early and their progress rapidly slows. That person is still moving towards the ground but relative to the others who are moving faster you can look like they are going backwards. That is to say in a zero sum game, all may be making progress based on their prior position but if that progress isn’t rapid their progress is reported in negative terms, even though they have done better than they had done so previously. The emphasis here is on rapid improvement and genuine improvement is not rapid. It is slower and sustained but we live in an education system that isn’t patient and measures progress in a way that encourages finite games.
Even over 10 years on, I still fundamentally disagree with the sly privatisation of education through the advent of academies but I am aware of some academy chains with a far more infinite mindset than some of the old LA approaches. I do however disagree with inadvertently forcing the hands of schools to compete for students. Smaller budgets and accountability has made this the situation we are in today.
My values have changed considerably in the last 10 years. The old me was interested in Ofsted gradings and in results being achieved rapidly. Shallow quick wins. I now have the stance that we are better than needing to do this, and if we are not yet there, then we should be aiming to be moving towards this as an ideal.
How does money spent promoting schools and advertising schools improve education? It doesn’t. When I was a child this didn’t happen. Maybe it started with the sports/arts/technology statuses that were used to attract students in the 00’s?? Tax payers money to encourage schools compete against each other under the guise of giving children and parents choices and specialist facilities. School funding is now the issue. The number of students = the revenue stream for the school. Schools need to promote their schools to get students in. Valuable time and money is spent doing this. This does not improve the quality of teaching but is a necessary evil because parents have become accustomed to having the choice of schools in their area. Schools need bums on seats and if you’re over subscribed then that is wonderful for you in lots of respects, but if you’re not then it’s a constant state of flux with making ends meet.
Schools recognise the pressure that filters from leadership down to individual staff. It’s why as a tag on we now try to incorporate ‘well being’. There is so much talk of staff well being – perhaps without any idea of what this is.
Well being isn’t ignoring the fact that some people don’t work the number of hours they are paid to do. Well being is not choosing not to quality assure staff – the most frustrated I have ever been in a post, was one when for several years I didn’t get properly observed, or get any feedback and no one looked at my books – it didn’t remove a source of stress, it made me feel like they didn’t care enough about my work to check it. I want to be better at my job, giving me an evaluation, feedback and training improves my well being.
Well being isn’t giving everyone time off on a specified occasion but not changing the expectations of the bureaucratic nonsense evidencing things you do to prove you are doing it (even worse when doing so for Ofsted). Well being is taking something off the ‘to do list’ when other stuff gets added on. Surely 2 reviews of a faculties data a year is sufficient. One a reflection and target setting at the start of the academic year and one half way through to discuss progress. Middle leaders can drown in this nonsense. SLT should empower them through conversations and standardise discussions on agendas as opposed to generating pointless paper work that goes unchecked. These professional conversations are far more valuable and supportive.
Well being is showing people how they can improve their practice, leading by example. Credibility is lost when people don’t do the things they expect you to do. Well being is recognising and appreciating the work people do. It’s not thanking everyone globally, it’s thanking individuals for specific things they’ve done. Well being is developing people and caring about their own individual ambitions and career hopes.
So back to game theory. Imagine if you have 2 options:
Option 1 – you could take a school with a P8 of -0.5 and top load the best teachers and purchase the best quality interventions for Y11 and after a year get to 0 would you do it? Bear in mind that this situation of needing to perpetually focus on Y11 will remain and may limit results moving up above a certain point because essentially you are only improving one year group at a time.
Option 2 – accept that for several (maybe 3 or 4 years) that you might not get 0 but that after this your P8 is steadily improving and consistently rising after that…. which would you choose? Playing the long game takes a huge amount of belief and patience. It also requires some valid affirmation to show that you are moving in the right direction even if summative outcomes don’t move much in the first instance. Most schools would not pick one option over the other but understandably try to do both.
I was asked in the summer how long until the impact of my work is seen. I answered it that ultimately it maybe years. The reality is that if I fix the problem I came to fix then it will take years, but it’s a permanent change, a permanent improvement and I won’t need to be there forever to keep it having an impact. I can go somewhere else and do the same there and thus the sphere of my influence widens. Schools may struggle to justify the wait. I understand this but we need to move the balance more off short term quick wins to permanent changes in culture.
It is also tempting to be drawn into the practices of schools who show very rapid improvement. Turnaround schools exist. I’ve seen it where schools that were generally coasting, with no great pressure to improve, get put in a category by Ofsted. This triggers a change of leadership, high accountability for staff, top load efforts at KS4, results go up, this perpetuates the need for the focus and pressure to stay at KS4 permanently. The ‘surgical’ senior leaders move on having ‘fixed’ the school. Teaching is weaker lower down so for the next few years results dip because of the top heavy emphasis, school get set in a vicious cycle of having to continue KS4 push.
What I like about the Greenshaw trust is their willingness to reach out and support others, even local ‘competitors’ – this trust is playing an infinite game. The work done by this trust has turned around the hardest school I ever worked in (16 years after I left there). Their generosity with their Covid resources and their sharing of CPD is the approach of an infinite game leadership philosophy (whether they are aware of it or not). I could list many many others from Edutwitter who do the same. There are definitely green shoots of infinite leadership in education, but we also need to recognise our jobs will become more challenging because our intakes are changing.
There is a big problem in society looming, a massive one. The smart phone generation. I’m not sure it relates to either parental income or education. It comes from a change in how children are parented. The result seems to be that children now know less about the world. Their interactions verbally and in writing are shallow and the majority of conversations are instructions – ‘brush your teeth’, ‘find your shoes’. The art of conversations is dying. The gap between students who receive engaged parenting and non engaged parenting (irrespective of social class, disadvantage etc.) is widening. Even if we steer our ‘why’ in Education towards the need to be infinite, we will then need to focus our ‘how’ and ‘what’ towards improving this new problem.
Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the challenges we faced in 2020?? Innovation can come from disruption. 2020 has been nothing but disruptive!! The move to existential flexibility may be possible in the fallout? Hopefully the silver lining of 2020 is that it provides us with the disruption needed to change the landscape of short term wins and focus on the long term improvement? Perhaps with COVID-19 there are useful take aways? The 2020 results did not get used in league tables. It will surely be impossible to use the results for 2021, 2025 and 2026 for the same reason? Maybe this will be the catalyst we need?
Use these breaks in accountability to do the right thing and move towards playing the infinite game. Use this time to evaluate what your students need to succeed? It’s time to focus on the old adage ‘look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves’. If your school does the right thing then, in time, results will follow. It’s not a quick win but it will lead to long term stability and will move education towards.
Be courageous enough to be patient. To change the culture in the school to improve the single biggest individual issues that really do hold back students. Everything else is nothing but ‘band aid leadership’, sticking a plaster over the issue. Be courageous enough to focus on what you need in the long term, and not what you want in the short term. I know my views are idealistic, naive and may lack realism. I know I don’t have all of the answers, but I want to ask questions that make people think. You may well have some of the answers, you might have the capability and capacity to do some of these things, to move away from being finite.
Let’s make the next decade in education about truly becoming an infinite game. How can you be a part of it?
Mrs M’s Teacher Talk 