Conference Agenda

“No school can meet the challenges it faces alone. This means that to improve outcomes for all the young people they serve, schools must work with other schools and with community partners to address issues lying beyond the school gate.” (Ainscow et al, 2023). A growing feature of the annual ICSEI congress is the opportunity for ICSEI networks to organise their own “invited symposia” which provide a dedicated space for focussed thinking and discussion on topical themes which sit at the core of their work. This year, the 3PN symposium will focus on the potential of school partnerships, networks and alliances to not only create school-led improvement systems but also provide the energy and impetus to support the creation of wider wellbeing systems with schools collectively acting as local system shapers. In this regard, the notion of system leadership (Hopkins, 2009) is useful in defining school leaders who can develop and lead partnerships for educational improvement among local communities. “System leadership represents a powerful combination of practices….The collective sharing of skills, expertise and experience creates much richer and more sustainable opportunities for rigorous transformation than can ever be provided by isolated institutions. Realising this landscape is however dependent on giving school leaders more freedom to take the lead – in short to light their own fires. The future is certainly theirs.“ (Hopkins, 2009) The symposium will open with two presentations providing a glimpse of two very different schooling systems. England and Italy will be presented as contrasting examples of national and local school governance. The first, is characterized by a national policy from successive central governments of increased devolution with subsequent growing diversity of local schooling arrangements whereas the second is a more traditional model based on hierarchical/centralized policy oversight and management. Professor Mel Ainscow (University of Manchester, UK) will present key elements emerging from a recently published study “Turning the Tide” which examined eight local school-led education partnerships and provides key insights into the setting conditions which promote effective inter-school collaboration and support. In contrast, Donatella Poliandri (National Institute for the Evaluation of the Educational System, Italy) will present the Italian context, where school networks have been viewed as a means of strengthening school autonomy but have also been used by central government in top-down policies for continuing professional development (CPD). An example of CPD promoted by a national institution, INVALSI, to support small-scale networks on school self-evaluation will be provided. Participants will be then invited to join in discussion groups around three key questions, bringing their experience and expertise in their own contexts to the conversation: • How do we build systems leadership capacity in schools for wider system change? • What are the challenges and opportunities for school-led improvement provided by school networks/partnerships? • What features should CPD programmes have to support the growth of strategic thinking, collaborative practice and policy formulation at school level? The 3P network invites politicians, professionals, policy makers and researchers attending ICSEI ’24 to join us in this conversation, contribute to the discussion, learn from each other, and consider the implications for their own policy, practice and system change.