DD2234 Getting Ahead London – continuation programme

The Mayor’s vision is that every child in London should have the best possible chance for happiness and success, making the most of the city’s great opportunities. To give all young Londoners the best start in life educational standards need to be raised, inequality addressed and young people’s ambitions and resilience must be nurtured.

The Getting Ahead London programme was developed following in-depth research showing that more needs to be done to secure the leadership pool for future school leaders in the capital. The programme’s vision is to establish a world class system for identifying and nurturing future headteachers to ensure London has a strong supply of outstanding school leaders.

The programme works towards this vision via three clear objectives:

• Identify potential – Profile and encourage those talented people in the London education system who have the potential for school leadership roles. For a variety of reasons, including more retirements of headteachers aged 50 – 59, there is a growing shortage of headteachers in London and more needs to be done to secure the leadership pool for outstanding future school leaders.
• Encourage existing leaders – Better equip and inspire senior leaders to become headteachers in London. Research shows that potential headteachers are not being supported to navigate the training effectively and are ‘hesitant’ or lack confidence despite aspiration and talent. There is also a particular gap in relation to personalised mentoring and coaching which Getting Ahead London seeks to fill. The triad and cross-school phase approach deployed in the pilot year is innovative and proving successful.
• Change the culture – Support a wider culture change of talent management in London and England’s education system. Building the talent pool for headship could be the next, key strategic intervention required to sustain and enhance London education’s improvement journey. This intervention, once led and developed in the capital, could be rolled out to other regions.

The grant funding will be used by Challenge Partners to provide operational delivery of the programme, ensuring that events run smoothly, the coaching programme is delivered successfully, and to conduct evaluation of the programme.

Following an invitation to bid authorised by DD 2106, Challenge Partners applied and were awarded funding to deliver Getting Ahead London in 2017-18. To date, milestones have been met and the programme has been successfully delivered. Challenge Partners are an educational charity delivering a range of programmes focused on school improvement including:

• The Network of Excellence - a collaborative network of over 350 schools nationally, organised into regional hubs, through which bespoke programmes that enable all schools to improve are delivered.
• Challenge the Gap - A school improvement programme that helps achieving better outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, and brings about long-term change in and across schools, by building leadership capacity at all levels and using evidence based approaches.

DD2106 authorised the funding for year 2 of Getting Ahead London, a programme to help deliver the Mayoral priority of ‘Supporting Excellence in Teaching and Leadership’ by supporting teacher recruitment, progression and retention including developing new school leaders. The initial requirement was for a one-year programme, with a view to extend for a further two years subject to the outcome of an external evaluation of the pilot year. The evaluation of the 16-17 pilot year was extremely positive, and a quarter of participants in year one of the scheme have already progressed into headship with others securing promotions into other leadership roles. There is high demand for the programme – in year 2 there were 120 applications for 48 places.

In order to build on this the programmes successes to date, Challenge Partners are looking at other possible funding sources to roll out the programme nationally. To this end, following conversations with the Department for Education (DfE), Challenge Partners submitted a Standard Selection Questionnaire for the DfE’s Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund (TLIF) to scale up the programme to reach 30 existing Headteachers in underperforming and Requires Improvement schools in London, and 30 more heads in each of the following regions: Greater Manchester, West Midlands and South Yorkshire. If successful this DfE funding would act to complement GLA funding for aspirant London Heads, expanding the programme to include current headteachers in London and more widely, and share the learning from years 1 and 2 with colleagues outside London. The outcome of this bid is due to be announced in June 2018, and if successful the TLIF funded programme for 30 existing London Heads would commence in January 2019.

It is requested that funding of £148,000 is approved to enable a grant-funded programme with a cohort of 45 participants to take part from September 2018. An extension of the grant-funded programme to operate the Getting Ahead London programme for 2018-19 must be issued quickly in order to maintain essential momentum and profile within the London school system and to ensure that a new cohort can begin the programme at the beginning of the new academic year in September 2018.

In order to receive the funding, Challenge Partners will be asked to submit a milestone timetable with clear delivery points (including process, numbers, outcomes and evaluation approach) at which funding can be released. Grant payment will only be made if there is clear evidence of the milestones being achieved.

The primary objective of the programme is to build on the personalised and tailored approach to talent management and leadership development used in years 1 and 2 of Getting Ahead London. A secondary objective is to extend the offer further in London and share the learning with colleagues outside London. The delivery to date has been strongly endorsed by an expert advisory group (including DfE, Boroughs, National Governors Association and system leader head teachers) and by 100 school leaders attending the session covering an update on Getting Ahead London at the 2017 Mayor’s Education Conference.

The approach set out in this DD will:

• Profile and encourage those talented people in the London education system who have the potential for school leadership roles.
• Better equip and inspire middle and senior leaders to become headteachers in London.
• Support a wider culture change of talent management in London and England’s education system.
• Develop an approach which defines a clear “offer” whilst maximising use and knowledge of current leadership training programmes and other support to align and not duplicate what’s here already.

Some participants will also decide not to apply for Headship but, instead, use their expanded leadership skill set to positively impact on the education system in other ways. The programme also demonstrates an approach for a systemic and pro-active approach to talent management in London.

In addition, the programme seeks to effect a wider cultural change so that learning and best practice from outside education is secured and embedded. This has for example, take the form of drawing on acknowledged business and other public sector (e.g. NHS, Civil Service) expertise to contribute to the professional networking and event content. This has complemented well the educational expertise of the coaches and brokers from top London schools.

It will be important that the talent pool work continues to address current concerns and aligns with existing national and local initiatives to ensure stronger representation of women and BME teachers and middle leaders within senior school leadership positions.

Securing the continued engagement of high quality school leaders in the programme will continue to ensure that London’s schools remain world class and London pupils continue to achieve excellent outcomes including those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Thorough and ongoing evaluation of the programme will also be required, with mid-term feedback provided and full reports at the end of the year. It is expected that there will be an element of independent evaluation and this will be a key milestone for the release of funding.

Under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority, the Mayor of London must have ‘due regard’ of the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation as well as to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not.

Year 2 of Getting Ahead London continued to specifically look to address both gender and BME differences in potential school leaders. This was scrutinised by the programme’s expert advisory group. This approach will be continued in the next cohort, with ongoing review to ensure participants reflect the wider population and address under representation of women and BAME groups as senior leaders and headteachers in London schools.

There is a significant risk of losing momentum in the delivery of the Getting Ahead London programme. In order to retain the expertise of senior leaders in the coaching roles the follow-on programme needs to be confirmed in April.

In addition, the processes needed to recruit a new cohort require sufficient time to properly evaluate suitability following application. If the programme is to begin in September 2018 work needs to start on advertising / marketing and seeking applications during April and be completed by early May.

Challenge Partners will be required to submit their delivery plan for consideration and milestone payments will be agreed prior to the grant funding agreement being signed.

The proposed grant for up to £148,000 will be funded from the Executive Director of Communities and Intelligence’s Minor Programmes budget for 2018-19. It will be subject to satisfactory due diligence of Challenge Partners, and will be governed by way of a funding agreement, with all payments made on successful completion of agreed milestones.

The preceding sections of this report indicate that:

- The decisions requested of the Director (in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code) fall within the GLA’s statutory powers to do such things considered to further or which are facilitative of, conducive or incidental to the promotion of economic development and wealth creation and social development in Greater London (section 30, GLA Act 1999); and

- In formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the Authority’s related statutory duties to:

• pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people (further details on equalities are set out in section 3 above) and compliance under section 149 of the 2010 Act (see above) ;

• consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom; and

• consult with appropriate bodies.

Under section 31(3) of the GLA Act, the GLA is precluded from providing, by virtue of its general power to further its principal purposes, any education services where the provision in question may be made by any public body. However, this limitation does not apply to sponsoring or facilitating the sponsorship of Academies and, under section 31(6) it is lawful for the GLA to incur expenditure in co-operating with, or facilitating or co-ordinating the activities of, public bodies and their activities. None of the proposed activities for the Getting Ahead London programmes referred to in this document, as described, constitutes the provision of education services. Further, the activities appear to amount to co-operating with, or facilitating or co-ordinating the activities of, public bodies. Accordingly section 31(3) does not prevent support for the proposed Getting Ahead London programme under s 30 of the GLA Act 1999.

The report indicates that the £148,000 will amount to the provision of grant funding and not payment for services. Officers must ensure that the funding is distributed fairly, transparently, in accordance with the GLA’s equalities, State Aid rules and in manner which affords value for money in accordance with the Contracts and Funding Code.

Officers must ensure that an appropriate funding agreement is put in place between and executed by the GLA and the successful recipient before any commitment to fund is made.