Standards for High Performance Culture in Schools

We explore the six key leadership standards that are critical to success. What might be these standards, and how might we enact them?

Standard 1 – School Character Climate, and Culture: the whole work of schools in developing competency in civic, performance, and moral character.

1. Educational Purpose: Do schools aim to equip all students with the knowledge, skills, character, and learning habits they will need for success in their next educational endeavours and beyond?
2. Shared Language: Do members of school communities share vocabularies that strengthen the values, vision, strategy, and desired culture required to enact the educational purpose of their schools? 
3. Community Focus: Is there is a strong sense of belonging and community that enhances the dignity, value, and worth of every student?
4. Character Apprenticeship: Are all students supported by learning relationships that encourage them to set challenging goals and to work well on their pathway to success.

Standard 2 – Leadership of the Educational Program: the progress of schools in constructing, disseminating, and convincing their communities to subscribe to a compelling narrative of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

1. Communication: Do school leaders present a compelling and evidence-based narrative to account for the direction in which the school is headed? 
2. Change Readiness: Do schools have a clear and agreed plan for positive and incremental improvement toward its preferred future?
3. Balance: Do schools strike a positive balance between tradition and innovation in their programs and initiatives?
4. Standards of Excellence: Do school leaders set, communicate, and uphold high standards of excellence for everyone’s contribution to, leadership in, and service for school communities?

Standard 3 – Teacher Effectiveness in Growing the “Whole Person”: the learning journey of schools in building the adaptive expertise and self-expertise of staff in pursuit of high standards in fulfilling their missions and attaining their graduate outcomes.

1. Academic Success: Do teachers inspire, challenge, and support all students to learn, grow in character, and perform at their best in classrooms?
2. Co-curricular Experience: Do teachers inspire, challenge, and support all students to learn, grow in character, and perform at their best through a variety of sporting, cultural and other co-curricular activities? 
3. Pastoral Care: Do teachers inspire, challenge, and support all students to learn, grow in character, and perform at their best through effective advising, coaching, and mentoring? 
4. Student Voice and Agency: Do teachers inspire, challenge, and support all students to find their voice and forge a personal narrative about their learning, growth in character, and performance at their best during their time at school? 

Standard 4 – Student Educational Experience and Outcomes: the propensity of schools to ask good questions to produce good answers to multi-dimensional problems about how best to deliver an education for 21C character and competency.

1. Personalisation: Do schools uses the best content, approaches, and processes to personalise all students’ learning, growth in character, and performance at their best during their time at the school? 
2. Metacognition: At a developmentally appropriate level, are all students able to understand what they do well and what they should be working on to progress their learning, growth in character, and performance at their best during his time at the school? 
3. Student Agency: Do all students partner with their teachers to assess and evaluate their learning, growth in character, and performance at their best during his time at school? 
4. 21C Competencies: At graduation, do all students have the knowledge, skills, character, and learning habits they will need for their next educational endeavour and beyond? 

1. Vision: Are schools aligned to a clear vision for achieving excellence in educating their students? 
2. Outcomes: Do schools have an agreed set of educational outcomes that are designed to provide students with the knowledge, skills, character, and learning habits they will need for their future? 
3. Administration: Do schools use the best possible planning and processes to achieve the agreed educational outcomes for their students? 
4. Review: Do schools use a variety of data and other information to evaluate their effectiveness in achieving the agreed educational outcomes for their students? 

Standard 6 – Teacher Professionalism in a Community of Inquiry and Practice: the knowledge engines of schools that focus on improved student outcomes that are linked directly to graduate outcomes and their related competencies.

1. Professional Growth: Are teachers committed to self-efficacy and adaptive expertise in achieving excellence in their work of educating their students? 
2. Openness: Do teachers demonstrate a disposition towards curiosity, experimentation, and innovation in their work?
3. Collaboration to Warrant Practice: Do teachers work with each other to improve how they inspire, challenge, and support students to achieve the agreed educational outcomes for their learning, growth in character, and performance at their best during their time at school? 
1. Model: Do teachers routinely gather a variety of valuable data and other information on all students’ learning, growth in character, and performance at their best to build an appropriate model for their work? 
2. Inquiry: Do teachers systematically reflect on and evaluate their own practice, other colleagues’ practice, and current educational research (especially the literature on boys’ learning and development) to build a rationale for the model for their work?
3. Rigour: Do teachers regularly engage with each other to monitor how effectively they are implementing the model for their work? 
4. Test: Do teachers continually test the relevance of their model for their work in the light of developments in professional knowledge and evidence from the monitoring of practice, including valuable feedback from all students (and their parents) on their progress towards agreed educational outcomes? 
4. Formal Feedback: Do teachers regularly receive from schools a range of professional feedback about how well they are performing within processes that are designed to help them to grow and improve in their work?

Leading schools towards becoming schools of character must involve aspirational rather than restrictive or compliance-driven standards that meet stakeholder expectations for a whole education.