Five Things Every School Can Do to Improve: Reflections from the Frontline

Each August, as another exam season comes to an end, I look to celebrate the wins and study the losses. I try to resist the temptation to sit back in the comfort of the staffroom armchair and pass judgement. It is always easier to critique in the abstract, rehearsing what others ought to have done differently and with the benefit of hindsight, than it is to offer practical, workable alternatives. The harder, and more honourable, task is to ask instead: what am I prepared to change, to invest in, and to live by? I find that integrity in school leadership is measured not by cataloguing the failings of others but by modelling the commitment we ask of them. 

With that in mind, I offer five areas where schools might focus their energy to help build lasting improvement:

1. Towards Healthy Leadership

If toxic leadership corrodes trust and stunts growth, what might its opposite be? Perhaps healthy leadership captures it best: a form of stewardship that nourishes rather than exhausts. Healthy leadership is then characterised by integrity in relationships, clarity of purpose, and systems that create steady progress.

Too often, schools fall prey to low-latency calls for silver bullets, be they pet initiatives, cosmetic changes, or the latest edtech trend. But real improvement isn’t sudden. Like compounding interest, progress accrues through small, coherent steps taken over time.

The leader’s role is not to appear heroic but to cultivate conditions where colleagues can thrive. That means dealing with difficulty with dignity, through honest conversations, transparent processes, and support that prioritises improvement over blame. This doesn’t mean giving poor performance a pass, but rather addressing it with humanity and decency. As ever, systems matter: appraisal, curriculum review, professional development, and safeguarding processes are not bureaucratic obstacles but the very scaffolding that allows professionalism to flourish.

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2. Teaching and Learning at the Core

Schools succeed when they hold fast to the truth that academic learning is their core business. Co-curricular programmes enrich lives, but they must not compensate or create the conditions for weak classroom practice.

At the heart of strong teaching and learning lie clarity of instruction, regular feedback, high expectations, and a culture where behaviour supports rather than undermines learning. Effective behaviour management is not about rigidity but about creating the calm, orderly environment in which curiosity and scholarship can thrive. Research consistently shows these elements to be among the most reliable levers for student progress.

Leaders, particularly in the independent sector, where marketing departments often clamour for glossy initiatives, must resist the urge to overextend. A school that secures academic excellence through strong teaching, effective behaviour systems, and pastoral care will, quite simply, sell itself. That’s the only USP worth chasing.

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3. Rethinking CPD: Coaching and Evidence

If professional development is to have impact, it must live up to the “C” in CPD. Too often, INSET days are treated as isolated events that might inspire in the moment but fade once the term gets underway and priorities shift in the churn of school busyness. Instead, they should serve as launchpads for a continuing process, seeding ideas that are then cultivated through regular opportunities for colleagues to examine, trial, and reflect on their own practice.

Leaders should hold ourselves accountable with three simple questions: How will we sustain it? How will we see it? How will we use it? If these cannot be answered, even the most polished CPD programme will struggle to shift practice in the long term.

Dylan Wiliam’s reminder to “love the ones you’re with” reinforces the point: professional development is not about searching for better staff elsewhere, but about creating the conditions for colleagues to thrive where they are.

Instructional coaching is particularly powerful in this regard. It provides regular, focused opportunities for teachers to reflect on their practice, test new approaches, and receive feedback in a supportive, dialogic way. Unlike the one-off INSET that fades with time, coaching embeds learning into the everyday life of the school: a ten-minute observation followed by a short coaching conversation can often shift practice more than a whole day’s worth of training.

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4. Cultivating Critical Thinkers

If the purpose of schools is to educate children, then cultivating critical thought is indispensable. In a world saturated with information, the ability to discern what is reliable, relevant, and reasonable becomes as important as the content itself. Pupils should learn to recognise common fallacies, to understand the pull of cognitive biases, and to evaluate arguments with care. These skills are not an optional enrichment; they are the foundation of informed citizenship and independent learning.

Developing such habits need not mean adding a new subject to an already crowded timetable. Progress can be made incrementally: a maths teacher highlighting the difference between correlation and causation, a history teacher inviting pupils to question the reliability of a source, or a science teacher encouraging scrutiny of experimental design. A carefully designed programme of structured debates, dilemmas, and case studies of flawed reasoning can complement this across the curriculum.

The advantage of embedding critical thinking is twofold. First, it strengthens academic outcomes by encouraging deeper engagement with content and sharper reasoning. Second, it equips young people with resilience against misinformation, superficial persuasion, and the polarisation that characterises much of public discourse nowadays. In this sense, critical thinking prepares pupils to navigate the complexities of childhood and adult life with increasing discernment and confidence.

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5. A Coherent Digital Strategy

Technology is not a panacea, but neither should it be treated with unreasonable suspicion. What matters is not so much the tool but the purpose it serves. Schools need digital strategies that are coherent rather than dislocated, rooted in educational priorities rather than marketing appeal or the shallow appreciation of potential advantages or disadvantages.

A purposeful digital strategy begins with the “why.” The question is not whether a school has iPads, Chromebooks, Teams, or an AI strategy, but how these tools advance teaching and learning in meaningful ways. When well-chosen, technology can streamline assessment and feedback, reduce administrative burden, enable collaboration, and give pupils multiple pathways to demonstrate their learning. Poorly chosen, it fragments practice and breeds cynicism.

This is why digital strategy must be planned with the same seriousness as curriculum or behaviour policy. It requires leaders to consult widely, evaluate impact, and resist the allure of quick wins. Pilots, reviews, and alignment with evidence-informed pedagogy are essential. The aim is not to appear innovative for its own sake, but to harness technology to make learning more effective, efficient, and inclusive. In the end, purposeful adoption ensures that devices and platforms serve teaching, rather than dictate what form it takes, and that digital strategy supports the long arc of school improvement.

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Improvement in schools is not about chasing novelty or trading in slogans. It is about choosing health over toxicity, systems over silver bullets, and depth over dazzle. Improvement is about aligning teaching with what we know works, embedding professional growth into daily practice, cultivating the habits of critical thought, and adopting technology with purpose rather than fashion. Most of all, it is about being willing, as leaders, to step out from the sidelines and commit ourselves to the hard, slow, hopeful work of building institutions where both pupils and staff can flourish. The measure of our integrity will be found not in grand declarations or glossy websites, but in the steady, everyday choices that shape schools into places of lasting growth.

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“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.“

— Abraham Lincoln

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