10. Leadership and Literacy: Pillars of Transformative Education with Lekha Sharma

We are joined by Lekha Sharma, School Improvement Lead for Curriculum and Assessment at the Avanti Schools Trust. Lekha navigates the complexities of weaving together curriculum and assessment across the trust, while maintaining and cherishing the unique identity of each individual school. Lekha shares her wisdom on crafting a high-quality, equitable education system that resonates with the individual character of diverse learning environments. Through her experiences and published work, we uncover the art of collaborative curriculum development and the nurturing of a culture that supports educators in their pivotal roles.

With Bedrock as our exemplar, we dissect the profound impact of fully comprehending the intent behind educational tools, transcending mere procedural checklists. We discuss how literacy serves as a linchpin in educational outcomes and how a robust grasp of purpose can crystallise educational goals, refine teaching strategies, and utilize data to steer classroom practices. The episode paints a vivid picture of our duty as educators to meticulously curate content that propels student advancement and bridges the cultural capital divide.

Finally, we turn the spotlight on the pivotal role of psychological safety within the academic realm, emphasising its significance in the empowerment of teachers and the autonomy that comes with curriculum ownership. Stories from the trenches illustrate literature's power in social mobility and the profound influence of a supportive environment where staff can thrive. We also take a look into the dynamic world of leadership, shedding light on initiatives to enhance middle leadership programs and underscore the cultural and relational dimensions of leadership. Join us as we impart actionable insights for leaders looking to foster a flourishing school culture that benefits all.

For more insights from Lekha:

• Read her books:
  • Curriculum to Classroom: A Handbook to Prompt Thinking Around Primary Curriculum Design and Delivery
  • Building Culture: A handbook to harnessing human nature to create strong school teams
• Visit her website, teacherfeature2.com
• Follow her on X

Transcript

Andy: 0:19

Hi everyone and welcome to again another episode of Literacy Works with Bedrock Learning, where we are bringing you the most interesting and insightful voices across the world of education. Today we're really fortunate to have Reif Shama, who runs a curriculum assessment for a Fanty Schools Trust, and, yeah, thank you for joining us today. I've come across both of your books on X as we should now call it really interesting. I think they're fantastic, so I thought you'd be a great person to have on, so thank you for agreeing to come on today. It's fantastic being here.

Lekha: 0:51

Hi, andy, thanks for having me.

Andy: 0:55

Let's start off. I'd like to hear a little bit about you and your role in your schools and your vision for sort of uniting curriculum assessment across history. That's no small task, that's no small task, so I'd love to hear about that.

Lekha: 1:07

Yeah, of course.

Lekha: 1:08

So I'm the school improvement lead for curriculum and assessment at the Avanti Schools Trust and what that looks like is essentially thinking about those kind of golden threads of curriculum and assessment that we want to align across our schools.

Lekha: 1:23

For us, alignment is about really thinking about the ways in which we can collaborate most meaningfully and also bringing expertise together from across the trust to have a think about curriculum development and strengthening individual schools curriculum provision while still maintaining what's quite unique about each school and each setting, which is great. And yeah, I've been doing it for over a year now and yeah, it's a pretty big role, but I really enjoy the focus around curriculum assessment, but also working really closely with the other school improvement leaders who lead on the CPD teaching and learning and inclusion, so working kind of as a collective to try and think about how best we can support our schools. And yeah, we hope to come are really exciting. Really enjoyed writing both of them they're very small handbooks one around curriculum principals, curriculum primary curriculum development and then one more recent round, building the right culture within our schools and how leaders can create the right conditions for their teams to really thrive and flourish.

Andy: 2:35

When it comes to curriculum and assessment and, obviously, cpd and things linked to that. What are your values? What do you think? What do you put as first and foremost in your mind when you get up in the morning and you go to work? What are the things that you really pride yourself on?

Lekha: 2:49

I think one of the things is really thinking about strength and quality of provision and making sure that it's really equitable.

Lekha: 2:58

So pupils are getting a really really good deal when it comes to the curriculum within a school and I think that's really important and that we're considering how, through our curriculum development, we can really strengthen that vision for and some of the pupils that we've done.

Lekha: 3:16

I think that context is really important in that. So every school has a very unique context, you know, different challenges, different opportunities within their localities, and so the work of curriculum for me should be fairly very bespoke to an individual school and I guess it's not only that balance between having that alignment across schools with interests and also having that individual bespoke in development for a school based on their unique kind of demographic and what up their story. So I think this is quite important to me and I think the opportunity for collaboration is really important in school at school level. What across schools are trust level. I think that's crucial in our sense making what can be very complicated challenges, but it comes to curriculum and assessment, I feel like this kind of top-down approach of this is how we're going to do. It just doesn't really work and so we have to kind of build those solutions to one of those really meaty problems of curriculum and assessment.

Andy: 4:23

I mean the obvious. I'll follow up to the people. How do those values feed into those books and the why behind those books? I just think they are an absolute triumph. For those of you who are looking for your next edgidruck read, I think, pick one of these through up and we'll link to them in the description below on the podcast. I think they're fantastic. So if you could maybe just talk us through the books and kind of how your value just seems through those books, that would be fantastic.

Lekha: 4:56

Yeah, of course I mean that piece around collaboration I think is a core one and I felt like when I was writing both of the books that I wanted it to be a contribution to a wider conversation around curriculum and culture and so really it's my kind of very small contribution to a much wider course course around both of these things and so that very much comes through in the book. So the first book around curriculum and curriculum to classroom is essentially just a case of how myself and Collie developed the curriculum from scratch in a primary school in South London and it just talks about the very real challenges we had, you know the good, the bad, the ugly, and being quite candid about those and actually thinking about what were the lessons learnt from that that other colleagues have maybe incorporated into their curriculum development work too. So there was a real sense of me wanting to share a kind of worked example of what that journey looks like and some of the things that could potentially support curriculum development for all subject leaders and coordinators. So you know there's a big, heavy focus in the book on curriculum principles and how you can develop those so that you've got a really coherent curriculum provision of across all subjects in primary as just an example. And then building culture was the follow-on book, and I think that came about through my experiences as leader in the sector and actually without being those conditions and culture.

Lekha: 6:28

At the moment, curriculum whether it's assessment you're developing, inclusion, you're looking at culture and getting those things right is really central and a real prerequisite, a really great implementation of anything. And so I think it came about at a time where I probably realised this has to come first. This has to be really central to our thinking as leaders, because if we don't get those conditions right, we just have these kind of volatile, unstable environments teachers coming and going and there's lots of mobility in staff and people are just very unhappy and not finding the joy in their work, and so actually they're the focus, they're shifted more to building culture and thinking about what leaders can do practically in their day-to-day school improvements to strategic thinking that might support getting those conditions right, which I think is also kind of really timely in the retention challenges we're seeing in the moment. So yeah, kind of the story of how the books have evolved.

Andy: 7:35

I've heard them recently really interesting and they brought up Maslow's hierarchy. I was thinking I've seen that one about basics being covered before the other stuff. But people often say now that Maslow's honour is not only bestowed, the idea that the tip of the ice bird triangle, so to speak, isn't so much about getting the basics right, it's more self-actualising. What he was talking about was more about self-actualisation and about what kind of where that really enriching stuff happens. And what would your best example be where culture has permeated the curriculum and where things have really started to tip? Have you got any particular examples or places where that's happened?

Lekha: 8:17

Sure, I mean there's certainly been schools I've worked in as a leader where before our leadership team arrived there was maybe five heads in five years quite low stuff, morale, quite weak school culture there and how we have tried during our time in the school to try and fold some of that culture stuff into the school improvement work that we're doing. And it's not just the schools that I've worked in. I've seen other leaders do this really skillfully where they focused first on getting the culture and the conditions right. So they focused first on how the bird languids around, why we're here, why we're doing and having an understanding around, developing trust and having those conversations.

Lekha: 9:05

Where teachers feel like they are co-constructing that curriculum, it's not being done to them, it's not much of a part of that process, and where there's been a heavy kind of front loading of that side of things before or during the implementation of I don't know a new curriculum or an assessment model and where actually staff have felt like they've really been seen and heard and been part of the change and they thought it's been a stronger change that's lost.

Lekha: 9:31

So yeah, there's been examples where I've experienced that under other leadership. There's been schools that I've worked with where I've seen principals do this really really well. You know, as schools are I'm working with at the moment comes to mind where they're doing exactly the same thing focusing on getting these conditions right for teachers and then getting them really involved in the purpose of the school and having that really shared and very clear and crisp understanding of you know what they're trying to achieve and how they're doing along that journey. So yeah, there's been a few examples. I feel very unusual to work with some really excellent leaders over during my career.

Andy: 10:14

Interesting. One of our core roles in my teaching learning team here at Fedrock is we work with schools all day, every day, about their implementation. As a core part of what we do is talk about implementation, and a big thing that I always talk to frame my meetings with is not well, this is how you do this, check this, doing this, and then the pupils do this, and then this happens. At the end I always frame my discussions with well, why have you brought Bedrock into your setting? What, what, what with you? What problem is it addressing? And I think even just getting leaders and middle leaders and colleagues to articulate why they have, why they are partnering with Bedrock, for example, and the hearts and minds thing, because actually, with the best school in the world it can turn into, have you done your Bedrock? Have you got this off your, off your top?

Andy: 10:59

And actually it's so much more than that kind of reductionist transaction. It's about democratization of knowledge. It's about, you know, plugging gaps in in cultural capital. It's, you know, the sequencing of personalized fixing and nonfiction that makes the. You know, the one we always quote is if you were in a block three, which is a cake, we couldn't in year three, people with Bedrock, they read about Galileo, and there's further down the line as Paseas and all these kind of incredible things, and I think, once colleagues understand the why and I know that that you know, the Cinec video and all that stuff has been often quoted almost to the point where it's a cliche now, but I think it's so important that people understand the why. Yeah, and that's really what you're talking about there, isn't it? It's about laying the platform for people to come with you on that journey.

Lekha: 11:51

Most definitely. That's a really good point, actually, and I think particularly I remember my days as an English leader and very early on I would spend very little time talking about the why. It was always about what we were going to do, to do the reading convention.

Lekha: 12:04

We need to raise attainment here and actually the more I kind of learned from other leaders and developed as a leader myself, talking about the why of literacy through looking at reports, like you know the literacy and life expectancy for the national literacy it's actually quite sobering reading some of that research to realise the role that literacy plays across the curriculum and across the expectancy. It's just, it's crazy to read about it and when you read some research like that, it crystallises your why in a very, very different way and I think it's exceptional as it teaches in a way that wow, actually you know this is something we really need to listen to this and they get this understanding of why it matters and the depth of why it matters, and I think that can make all the difference to implementation, because we know what we're doing, we know why we're doing it very clearly and we know that it's going to have a very meaningful impact on our pupils and that kind of sequence is just really, really powerful for implementation.

Andy: 13:01

Yeah also, and we have a particular. I mean we have two aspects to our platform, for example, but one which is very much who wanted a better term plug and play. You know, the people do it. It's personalized and all that stuff. It's great.

Andy: 13:14

But there's the side to that that we're I'm often trying to develop with colleagues is the insights that we've got to bring back into the classroom and the why about going into the platform and bringing those insights back. So if Adam Smith in year seven is putting capital letters at the start of sentences or full stops at the end, it's not necessarily laziness. They genuinely don't have that knowledge. On the other side we've got mapper, which is kind of these enormous repository of 38,000 word plus curriculum align, for example. The staff can actually select the most important pieces of knowledge that the poly and then having their classes as well, and then they can check at scale which words are causing which concepts.

Andy: 13:57

Words are causing the problem, which arm and that type of thing. And the reason I'm sort of going to tell and explain in that is because I think beyond it just being about fashion and about all the let's have a nice curriculum intent document. This is about the integrity of staff and colleagues and what you've said before collaboration, sitting down and saying well, in what we're teaching, a Christmas Carol, we're teaching with back. We're teaching whatever it is on top, you know, urbanization, geography or whatever and we never mind 100 words. These are the 10 core concepts. We're going to pin everything on and we're going to make that choice for the pupils.

Andy: 14:33

We're going to have the integrity and the bravery to say yeah, we're going to, we're going to pin it on that and then we're going to expand out from there, and I think that's something that really challenged what you were saying earlier about collaboration and underpinning things and making those decisions to support progress, right.

Lekha: 14:50

Most definitely, and I think you were in a real position of privilege as educators. I think you know to make those decisions about what we do and what we don't, each and making those really deliberate choices, and I think there's a real opportunity cost when it comes to curriculum, and so we need to think really carefully about why we're selecting what we're selecting and have robust answers to the question well, why are we doing this? That's a really great question that can sometimes feel like someone's nagging. It's a really good question to ask and we need a really good answer for it.

Andy: 15:23

I had a really interesting conversation all the day with, with highly views, who has picked our work, picked 11 words for how to teach Inspector Paul's. I must admit, when she gave her words I thought when she started learning I thought, oh girl, what have you picked that one for? But then when she actually got into the conversation, I thought, oh my God, this is underpinned with real rich, intricate understanding of the text and I'm going to go and teach Inspector Paul's now because I know, you know I've got it in the morning and, I think, because it's a real representation of you and I think that's, I think, curriculum and choice and taking responsibility. I think that speaks right to the heart of what education should be about and I there's a wide discourse going in this country. I mean we need to reclaim out the question, think teachers need to be put right front and center of social mobility and in being empowered to make those choices.

Andy: 16:13

And what's lovely you know sincerity about what you're saying and how you go about your job is that you are all about the power of teachers, aren't you? That's really what you stand for and which kind of leads me onto my kind of next thing I want to ask you about, which is about creating that sense of psychological safety in your schools, and that I mean what a massive question. You know. There's this about staff well being, about quality assurance. For what, the better terms? What does that look like for you and what in terms of when you're leading a school, creating that sense of psychological safety?

Lekha: 16:50

Yeah, I mean psychological safety is, you know, that idea that people feel that they can speak up and there's no fear of kind of real cash general and no fear of them being branded as kind of like the problem. And I think there's no simple solution to this. I feel like it's something that comes about over a long period of time through small, very consistent actions, and I feel like staff voice plays a huge role in this. So, having an ongoing conversation about whatever it is we're talking about, what you know, what is the thing that we are focusing on, and having an ongoing dialogue around that is crucial to safety, because there first needs to be a space for that conversation to be had. And then I think psychological safety is also about this kind of flattening of the hierarchy, in the sense that, you know, the leader is not always the person who will have that the answer, and so actually it's that kind of distributed leadership where we're able to share and problem solve and sense make together and actually when the leader gets it wrong or it has not made the right choice or hasn't made the right call, is able to kind of just put their hands up and say, actually that wasn't the right call. I'm going to step back from that. We're going to course correct and I think you know I've been in that position myself in the in my role, where something has been happening that we've implemented as a team, we decided that hasn't quite worked out and we've been very open and said, well, we haven't hasn't worked out, you fed back to us.

Lekha: 18:16

Actually, we're going to move in this direction and I find that colleagues will respond to that really well, because it's, it's human, it's it's real, it's it's not hiding behind this facade of being this kind of all knowing or all seeing leader. And I think, generally speaking, psychological safety comes around from real connections with people like real listening, deep listening and and people feeling heard and seen. I think there's a lot of psychological safety that can be derived from just those conversations. You know there's hallway conversations, the quick pickup of the phone, quick teams call. So yeah, I feel like it's lots of little things over time rather than one sweeping big thing. But yeah, I feel like there are mechanisms that can really support with creating that kind of shared voice where people feel like they can speak up, and I think staff voice is really critical for that.

Andy: 19:13

I was getting into the same thing over email, saying, right, I want this. And here we're going back saying I want that, and I was saying I want this, and eventually you know, I remember it to this day he sought me out and he said, right, let's not continue this over email, let's have a conversation about it. And I'm my attitude towards the conversation and the issue went from being up here to down and I thought you know what that's right, go and have a conversation. And good to probably get my previous story, which said that's, that's a conversation, that's not an email, and I think modeling that's really important. I mean, even at home, my seven year old, I'm never scared to say to him I've got that wrong, mate, I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have shouted that.

Andy: 19:55

I was, I was crossing that cross there, and I think you can beat yourself up about shouting and I really, you know, try and you know minimal kind of I'd like to think single digits over the course of his whole life. But I think, even if you do and it's OK to admit that you've got cross and I have, though, and I think human relationships are articulated, should be articulated by honesty. Shouldn't that open this? But what does that look like for you? I mean, I love what you've said there. What does that look like for you when it comes to, for example, curriculum? The vastness of your job is just huge, but how do you almost encode that across different school, different subjects? What does that look like? How do you go about doing that? Because there'll be a lot of people listening to you that will want to hear how you go about doing this.

Lekha: 20:45

Yeah, sure, I mean I definitely don't claim to be the expert of this, but what I have tried to fold into my kind of day to day practices is this is this the notion and mindset that actually curriculum is never done? And I think what that really helps, kind of enforce, is this idea that actually we are going to get it wrong. That's part of the process to getting to the best position and actually, because it's never done, we are going to try new things and innovate and make mistakes, and that's OK and we can learn from those mistakes and move forward. And I think that kind of culture of continuous improvement is really really important to me. So, you know, it's something that I try to model through my own working practices by being really clear where I've potentially thought something and I think, and then that thinking has evolved.

Lekha: 21:35

So thinking and discussing and explicitly talking about the power of rethinking and there's an organizational psychologist called Adam Grant. He talks about this. You know the idea of you don't know what you don't know, and that's true for everyone, whether you're an executive leader or whatever your role might be, it's true for everyone. So I think, in terms of curriculum specifically, it's about keeping that mindset of this is continually evolving. It's a continual conversation and therefore we need to be trying new things, being creative, innovating, getting it wrong, failing. All of that then becomes OK and that kind of opens the door to psychological safety, opens the door for people to say, actually that's not working. I'm going to move in this direction and try this and for me to say, ok, great, go for it. Rather than this kind of notion of one person holding the kind of the kind of the knowledge and dispersing outwards. It's kind of co-constructed, which I think for me feels like the right way to do things, because you know, everyone has their expertise. We want to draw that together, we want to bring people together and essentially, I think the main thing as well that's quite important for leaders, I think is to maintain this idea of having their leader hat on and their teacher hat on.

Lekha: 22:53

And sometimes, when you're in a role of mine, you are a little bit more removed from the classroom and therefore you have to have that time where I will just go and plan a unit of geography and just do it for myself and go through that process and remind myself of what the very real challenges are when we're looking at curriculum. You know time constraints, trying to get through the curriculum, how do we navigate that? What do we do when the learning is not secured and we need to reteach that? Where do we do that?

Lekha: 23:22

Really, you know interesting and naughty challenges, but by keeping my kind of teacher hat on as well as my leader hat on, I'm able to kind of focus on the things that are going to make the biggest difference in the classroom. So hopefully I'd like to think some of those practices are helping to create psychological safety. And I think the other thing is I'm constantly on the look out for feedback for my own leadership. You know I did the leadership matters 366, whatever and that was really useful because I just got tons of feedback from lots of people massively.

Lekha: 24:04

And you know I was dreading opening the results because I just thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to read this stuff about me, but it was the most powerful thing for my own development and I think if both leaders and teachers can instill that more reflective. You know chups, you go out the window. Fine, we've all got strengths, we've all got weaknesses. I want to know what mine are. I don't want them to remain in this blind spot behind me. I can't see them and they're impacting my work and my relationships, and you know my colleagues. So, yeah, it was probably the best thing I've done in terms of my own professional development to just keep focusing on continuous improvement for all.

Andy: 24:42

You find that you know this idea of you not being the expert and being taught that the schools embrace that, or do some schools, do some colleagues like to be told you know this is what we're doing here in here. How does that work? In lots of different contexts.

Lekha: 24:58

I think it depends on the nature of what you're leading on. So I think there are certain you know assessment guidance or assessment how you're delivering assessments in schools. That's something that's a fairly straightforward. People prefer to be guidance on what needs to be done.

Lekha: 25:13

Yeah they do. That's a tricky one to you know. That's something as a trust I feel like can be provided to schools and be a helpful addition when it's something like the structure of the curriculum. I feel like co-construction is quite valuable and important. So I think it needs to be very dependent on the context of the situation and what it is you're leading on and what it is you're working on. But yeah, I feel like clear guidance is sometimes very, very helpful and in other situations, the poking of the idea of model is really important.

Andy: 25:46

I think the thing is, I often found I think my biggest challenge when I was leading on English across across the school was this idea that you know and it got better over the course of time that I was in the role but you have all these kind of high, wonderful ideas about the curriculum and then it's making assessment meet it. And I just wonder how do you do that? For you know you talk about collaborating on the curriculum structure and things like that, but then how do you? What does a common assessment framework look like? Is curriculum are very different across different departments or different schools? What does a common assessment framework look like in terms of how often you assess what you assess? What does that look like? That must be quite tough to marry those two together.

Lekha: 26:32

Yeah, and we tend to think about it as frameworks, not policies. So thinking about the kind of core headline things that we all can agree on that are our common ground you know golden like principles, golden threads, whatever you might want to call them for assessment and then thinking about how they're personalised within schools, which are based on, you know, a very specific context and how schools might want to kind of play that out within their schools. So our focus is more on coming together with leaders and, again, conversation around what is it that we can all agree on about assessment how many times do we want to assess those top headline things which then allows the space for schools to go back and lead that in the ways that they choose and see fit for their, for their context, and yeah, I think that's it. That's, for example, a way of that kind of co-constructed model and I guess my role in that was providing colleagues with the information they might. That might inform their thinking around those decisions and sharing things like evidence, informed practices and best practice models, so that you know senior leaders can make some really informed decisions about things and then think about okay, well, what does this look like within my school and how they want to do that within their within their context, but also in light of their. You know their cultural readiness as a school and where their staff are at and you know what's been happening in their school, because that in itself is like a little. You've got these kind of mini cultures almost that are operating and actually schools need to need to be thinking about those as well.

Lekha: 28:08

So it is a tricky battle.

Andy: 28:09

No, um, well, I spoke to the other one, to Peter Dining, and wrote the book from EdTech to PebTech.

Andy: 28:16

It's a really interesting book and he said he's a fascinating guy and he said that you can talk about things like implementation of of an EdTech solution that you bring into your school, but where?

Andy: 28:28

And you've got one EdTech solution, whether it's a quizzing platform or whatever it is. But what you are missing, if you are implementing top down, is that, as what you just hit on there like, it's the side idea that every teacher brings their own set of political, philosophical ideas about how teaching is done, what education is, is it co-constructed, is it didactic? And you can have the simplest thing, which is almost like a very simple A or B quizzing platform, but the way that a teacher, the way that a school, the way that you know whoever is implementing that will be very different. And I think what I like about what you just said there is that you are respecting the values and the experiences that every teacher is bringing to what, to the, you know, to the golden threads or whatever it is that you're you're presenting and then you're providing with them, and that sounds like a really encouraging, sounds like a great place to work. Sounds like a great organization to be part of absolutely.

Andy: 29:29

I definitely agree yeah, and so, in terms of looking to the future, then, what are your, what are your goals in terms of you know, in your current role, what would? What are you working on at the moment, and actually have you thought of any further publications on the spot as well? Is there anything in the pipeline you can tell us about?

Lekha: 29:46

yeah, so in terms of what I'm working on at the moment, we have an Avanti Middle Leaders program that we're developing at the moment which is kind of designed to supplement the, the mpq, and focus more on the cultural and relational side of of leadership development, which is something we're really excited about.

Lekha: 30:07

Continuing to support subject leaders in in their development and them really owning their subjects and being able to drive their subjects forward through that body of work as well, which is really exciting. And we're doing some subject development work as well, looking at designing some kind of Avanti specific subjects within our schools as well. So our PRE, which is philosophy, religion and ethics curriculum. So all very exciting bits of work. And in terms of publications, I've had a few kind of ideas and I'm proud to build on the work on building culture and I guess just been thinking about how I might make that a bit more actionable for leaders. You know the building culture. There's a lot of theory in it, but I can probably take that and make it something that leaders can kind of work with every single day to lead their teams. So, yeah, hopefully, yeah, watch this face, who knows?

Andy: 30:59

yeah, I thought the idea that I might go and do that. Um, that sounds, that sounds great. I think that would be really popular. I think that would be great and I'm sure people would love to read it. But, um, thank you so much for your time it's been. You know you're very generous to give it up and with everything you're doing, so it means a lot and I know people will be really grateful for your voice in this space. It's been wonderful, um, and hopefully we'll speak to you again. Thank you, thanks for having me, andy thank you bye.