Is change necessary for a school like us?

 

Perceiving that our school has been running quite smoothly and everything is seemingly under control and in good order, I have once asked myself, “It appears that we are quite welcomed by our stakeholders in the catchment areas and most of our students can perform outstandingly as expected. Are we satisfied with our school’s current status quo, right at this point and at this very moment? Do we have any areas that need immediate attention? Are changes or improvement measures necessary for us?”

 

It has always been a unique and valuable experience for me to have worked in a 'sinking' school[1] before and ultimately changed it to a 'moving' one (Stoll & Fink, 1996) with a profound cultural change in a hard time of around 5 years. The practical experience alerts me of the fact that a failing school like the one I have worked before requires a high level of intensive interventions and a radical change premised on building the capacities of all stakeholders concerned is essential in putting forward an authentic school improvement in effect. Contemporarily, creating the conditions for school improvement at all levels supporting the change process is critical to its success (Hopkins, 2001).

 

However, change is rapid and innovation is multidimensional. The theories that were true ten years ago will no longer be adequate today. According to Fullan (2001), there are three aspects of change: (1) the possible use of new or revised materials, (2) the possible use of new teaching approaches, and (3) the possible alternation of beliefs. Together they represent the means of achieving a particular goal or sets of goals. But, to my personal experience, changes in teaching materials, and changes in teaching approaches seem to be more related to technical issues, easier to be tackled but need time to prepare and quality staff development might be necessary. However, changes in beliefs and understanding are extremely hard to occur because they are the foundation of achieving 'deep' reform.

 

Therefore, it is necessary to let all people involved make sense from the change and establish a sense of ownership before achieving a long lasting effect of school improvement. To implement the change, a great deal of school improvement strategies should be employed but they should be reviewed punctually throughout the whole course. Examples include: creating a shared vision within the school,progressive restructuring of the management system, change at leadership level, introduction of external support, whole school review, short-term and long-term plan, setting up a school improvement group, etc.

 

Today schools are being challenged with increase in expectations and bombarded by unrelenting changes. This makes no difference between ‘low-performing’ or ‘High-performing’ schools. Governments elsewhere, and Hong Kong without exception, have been embarking on substantial programmes of reform in an attempt to develop more effective school systems and raise levels of student learning and achievement. This, in turn, has been accompanied by radical changes in the way the schools are managed and governed. As a consequence, no school will dare to keep being ‘static’ in her comfort zone. Otherwise, even the most privileged schools of today will soon be taken over by other competitors and far lagged behind someday!

 

As an implication to our school, we shall always take change as a ‘friend’ and rethink the questions of:

 

“What do we want to be in the eyes of our stakeholders?”

“How well are we doing?”

“Are we good enough currently and why?”

“What areas should we improve?”

“How can we improve?”

 

Question 1 is talking about what our vision is and what are the outcomes we want to achieve; Question 2 needs us to review what our current school status is and what the data tell us; Questions 3 and 4 are about a complete analysis of our school performance and what areas of concern we have found; The last question number 5 is concerned with our way forward and what our school improvement strategies will be.

 

If we really want to be an ever-improving school, from good to great, we must take immediate action to start our school improvement journey of ‘Review, Plan, Act and Review’ cycle right now!

 

Reference:

 

Fullan, M. (2001). The New Meaning of Educational Change. New York: Teachers College Press.

 

Hopkins, D. (2001). School improvement for real. London: Routledge/Falmer.

 

Stoll, L. & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools: Linking school effectiveness and school improvement. Buckingham: Open University Press.

 

[1] e.g. A secondary school in Hung Hom (2007-2012)