It is the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who is credited with saying that “change is the only constant in life”.
Whether in response to national policy development or internal data analysis, senior leadership teams will always be in the business of managing change.
As Professor Becky Francis put it in the updated implementation guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation (2024), “...ultimately, it’s not just what you implement, but how you do it too”.
Here are five tactics to consider when implementing change in your setting.
1, Hang the frame: Starting with ‘why’
It may seem obvious, but all too often the importance of this first step is forgotten in the busy creation of timelines, staging posts, KPIs and everything else that goes with the implementation of change.
If the overarching objective – the “why” – isn’t absolutely crystal clear to staff, then best laid plans are doomed to fail. This “why” is unlikely to be purely data-driven, evidence-informed or researched-based. An element of poetry and broader narrative is just as important in sustaining change, maybe more so, than the mechanisms of change.
In schools, this poetry always comes back to the children. If a particular initiative is anchored in the impact on children or a particular child, there are very few teachers who won’t go the extra mile to make it happen.
In politics, this would be called a “framing strategy”, and no policy change or election tactic would be considered without one. For example, if you are implementing a suite of initiatives to revamp your SEND provision, can you frame this around the benefits to a particular child or family known to all staff? This would make the case for change so much more powerful than a bar chart. Think: What is the most compelling frame in which to hang this initiative?
As I have written previously in SecEd, the power of story-telling is often underused in school leadership. While a new initiative may be discussed and monitored regularly at senior leadership team level, it will drift far from the consciousness of busy teachers without regular reiterations of “the why”.
As one headteacher I once worked under would say of messaging to staff: “Repeat, repeat, repeat, then repeat again.”
With this first step in place, we have some chance in achieving one of the EEF’s pillars for successful implementation: “Unite people around what is being implemented, how it will be implemented, and why it matters.”
2, Share and co-create the rationale
Let’s presume that step one is underway – we have set the frame for the proposed change, and staff are on board and chomping at the bit. The next challenge is to pinpoint the precise actions and mechanisms that will have the greatest chance of solving the problem and making the change we need.
This is the time to think about “plausibility” – that is, how robust is the causal link between an action and its desired outcome? Fundamentally, can you point to evidence that a particular intervention will have the desired outcome?
Alongside the poetry and emotion, there is a time to say: “This is how we are going to solve the problem, and this is how we know it is likely to work.”
In hectic schools, with many worthy areas for resource, time and attention, the rationale for focusing on any particular initiative (rather than all of the others on the list) must be well understood and, ideally, co-created and explored with groups of staff.
There needs to be clear data behind the problem we’re trying to solve and a clear understanding of why the status quo isn’t quite cutting it and how we think this could change.
Without clarity and buy-in around the mechanism for change, we won’t be able to bring the wider staff along for the journey, and there will be mutterings of “change for change’s sake”.
This is where resources such as the EEF’s research reviews are so valuable. During my 20 years in the profession, the growth in the evidence base for educational interventions has been exponential. One of the most powerful statements we can make as leaders is to say: “Here are several possible ways of tackling this problem, all of which have trade-offs and varying probabilities of success, and this is why we’ve chosen this particular strategy as a group.”
The next step is to formulate the timeline, staging posts, and success criteria.
3, KPIs: How will we know the change has happened?
Once the case for intervention is clear (“why”) and we have decided on a particular approach (“how”), it is key to bake-in key performance indicators (KPIs).
We should think of this as the monitoring strand, which should always be woven into the implementation plan. Be open and clear from the outset about when you will monitor against specific KPIs and at what point you would be willing to change direction if the evidence (quantitative or qualitative) is showing no progress.
In many educational interventions, we will be looking at long-term change – rarely do we pull a lever and see change overnight, so a timeline measured in years rather than months may well be appropriate. Nevertheless, there should also be mechanisms for spotting any short-term “green shoots” of progress. These may be anecdotal to begin with but can be like gold dust for retaining momentum and for reporting back on an interim basis to stakeholders such as the governing body.
4, The power of a soft-launch
As the author Samuel Beckett wrote: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
In organisational and business psychology, the mantra of “fail fast; fail often” is oft-repeated and accepted as a foundational concept. In forward-thinking, agile businesses, a culture is built such that products or services are developed quickly into prototype form, sometimes called MVP (minimum viable product), then tested in the market or in focus groups with a clear understanding that learning is key.
As school leaders, we can learn a lot from this iterative process. Have you considered rolling out an initiative in a year group, key stage, or single class before implementing it across the whole school?
In my own setting, we used a soft launch with a new rewards and sanctions system. Making use of existing data systems, we set a defined timeframe of one term to trial a new system. Staff were on-board and willing to give it a go, especially as the authentic message was: “If it doesn’t work, we’ll change direction.”
In this case, the modifications and recommendations for improvements from staff were invaluable during the trial phase, resulting in a much more coherent and robust system when rolled out to the whole school.
5, Be realistic about resources: Is the plan feasible?
When we reach the stage of finalising our change management strategy, with all of the points above addressed and a shiny timeline and KPI tracker in place, it is time to do a final sanity check.
This is where a good governor committee can prove invaluable. A degree of external scrutiny can cast a cold eye on the plans, especially where a flow of money or resource is involved.
Even the worthiest of causes and plans will need a cost-benefit analysis. In my experience, the biggest obstacle to new initiatives is almost always time (and time means money). Think: “What are we going to do less of in order to do more of this? If nothing, then we need new resource.
Justifying new streams of work to busy staff is difficult, but less so if governors have taken a critical overview of resource and prioritisation in line with the school improvement plan. They should ask: What is the resource we have available, and is it feasible to meet the size of the problem?
Final thoughts
If we plan for implementation as well as delivery, then we have a much higher chance of success. As the EEF’s implementation guidance states: “Adopt a practical and tailored set of implementation strategies, organised into manageable phases: Explore, prepare, deliver, and sustain. Treat implementation as a process of on-going learning and improvement.”
- John Smith is director of partnerships at Royal Grammar School in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He is a board director of the ONE Trust in Outer-West Newcastle and a member of the Strategic Board of the National Maths and Physics SCITT. Find his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/john-smith
Further information & resources
- EEF: A school’s guide to implementation, 2024: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/implementation
- Sinek: Start With Why, TED Talk, 2016: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ss78LfY3nE
- Smith: The power of story-telling in school leadership, SecEd, 2024: www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/best-practice/the-power-of-story-telling-in-school-leadership