How leaders use communication for effective school improvement

In recent years expectations of schools have risen significantly. The old Ofsted judgement of ‘Satisfactory’ is now not acceptable and many schools have been judged ‘Requires Improvement’ instead, putting enormous... [ view full abstract ]

In recent years expectations of schools have risen significantly. The old Ofsted judgement of ‘Satisfactory’ is now not acceptable and many schools have been judged ‘Requires Improvement’ instead, putting enormous pressures on the leaders and staff in these schools. This research examines how leaders structure and deal with communication across the school, in schools that have significantly improved. The purpose is to understand what and how leaders communicate to their staff in order for schools to make the required improvements.

The research involves 4 case studies with a theoretical framework taken substantially from the work of Leithwood et al on their work on school leadership impacting on student outcomes. A mixed methods approach was taken involving semi-structured interviews of a stratified sample of staff across each school followed by questionnaires that were given to all staff in the school. In total there were 33 interviews and 116 completed questionnaires. A thematic approach for analysis of the interviews was used with follow up statistical analysis on the questionnaire data which allowed statistical comparison of leadership communication just before and after substantial improvement.

The focus of the study was on how the communication was structured, the areas of communication that were considered key to the school improving, the different methods of communication used and staff’s views on how effective these were. Staff report in their interviews on their perceptions of the communication at that time and what they felt had a positive effect on school improvement.

The research showed how the headteachers changed the communication structures in the school after the ‘Requires Improvement’ judgement to make it more amenable to staff. It was reported that communication became more efficient and the focus shifted to certain key areas of school improvement. The enactment of plans enabled and forced more staff to ‘come on board’ focusing on improving academic outcomes for their students in their everyday professional practice. The outcome was higher academic achievement which was one of the areas that Ofsted had judged poorly.