Each student’s best school

What is it? What do we mean by it? What will we do to get it?

We're going to build each student’s best school. All of Malmö City's Compulsory School should be the best school for each individual student.

In each student’s best school:

• Every student succeeds.
• Each student is learning based on their own abilities
• Each student gains knowledge, values, opportunities, and abilities for an active and independent life
• Each student believes in the future, their ability, and the opportunity to make their own choices
  
  

In each student’s best school, we are working according to the national education mission, as the state has defined it in the Education Act, curricula, and other regulations. Here, the Administration of Compulsory Education Department mission of goal completion and equivalence are met. This is where sustainable development is created. As all of Malmö's schools meet the national education requirements, we aim to provide each student’s best school.

How will we do it?

Creating each student’s best school is an easy thing to aim for, but a lot harder to accomplish. How can you do it? This is the question we have asked ourselves, and thereafter worked towards finding an answer for. We have looked for the answer in research on effective school systems - what do they look like? According to international and national research on effective school systems, there are crucial approaches, basic working methods, and a clear focus which lead to successful education. These need to run through the operation in order for the school to maintain teaching of the highest quality so that they are able to live up to the national goals and the national requirements. These approaches, working methods, and focus are compiled and compressed in the Administration of Compulsory Education Department strategic framework to create each student’s best school.

So, to do this, we need to focus, think, and act in accordance with the strategic framework. If we work based on the framework, we will together be able to create each student's best school.

The fact that the school's work is based on this strategic framework is not the goal in itself – the way we operate is not the goal. The point is that this way of working enables the school to live up to the national goals for education: to create each student's best school. That's where we're going, and the framework will help us get there.

Why each student’s best school?

The requirements in the Education Act are that all students should reach the educational goals and develop as far as possible. The school should provide the support and stimulus that each student needs to achieve these goals. The national education assignment is comprehensive and difficult but clear – it applies to every student.

The most important explanation for how a student is doing in school is the student's socio-economic home conditions and the level of education the student's parents have. Pupils with highly educated parents generally perform significantly better than pupils with parents who haven't gone to, for example, university. The school is supposed to compensate for the students' differing circumstances, but the Swedish schools can't currently do this in an effective way. We intend to change that in Malmö's Compulsory schools.

How did we start?

The pupils in Malmö's Compulsory schools have gradually improved their results in a continuous trend eight years in a row. But there's still a long way to go before every student succeeds. In 2017, Administration of Compulsory Education Department noted that we were once again improving our test results. However, it was also noted that it will still take a long time before we reach our goal if we continue at this pace. This led to a revaluation of our work. We needed a unified approach to Administration of Compulsory Education Departments mission, and the work and development of all schools for each student. The department decided on a holistic approach to how we manage, lead, and develop in all our operations. We are not striving for a successful school, teacher, or class, we are striving for a successful school system – where all schools, teachers, and students succeeds. All leadership is based on the management's view on this subject. Therefore, we started from our unified understanding and decided to develop the school system.

We started by turning to the world to see what international and national research say about successful school systems, how they work, and what they do. Educational research is consistent with a number of fundamental aspects and principles that need to be in place and included in the ordinary work of a successful school system. We drew inspiration from Ontario in Canada, which greatly improved its performance in the 21st century. Ontario has worked very purposefully and based its development work on successful school research. All school leaders in Malmö attended the Ontario-based International School Leadership course and improved their knowledge of effective school systems and trained their leadership skills. At the same time, the management team undertook the same training at the system leader level – International School System Leadership.

In parallel with the training in successful school leadership and system leadership, the department compiled the research's most important lessons and conclusions about how employees, teams, schools, divisions, and the Departments as a whole need to work to achieve the assignment. These conclusions include organisation, working methods, attitudes, focus, practice in teaching, and many other things that take place in school. Administration of Compulsory Education Department has compiled these conclusions into a so-called strategic framework that compresses the most important contribution of educational research to the approach and working methods for a school system to live up to the assignment. The administration’s senior managers all participated in the laying out of this framework, which, in addition to being based on research results, is also based on working methods that are well known and already in place in Malmö's schools. All employees were involved in the development of the parts that directly affect them.

Based on the research on successful school systems, the Strategic Framework summarises WHAT we need to do, HOW we should do it and WHO should do it. Administration of Compulsory Education Department includes the who at three levels: staff at schools, schools in their entirety, and management and staff. The framework is based on the employees' work with the students – primarily teaching – that is where it all begins and ends. Other levels should enable, support, and challenge the work with the students. Each level creates opportunities to follows up the work on the following level. This will give us a functioning structure of leadership which enables learning, and accountability at school.

How do we use the Strategic Framework?

With the framework in place, we began the next phase in improving our operations. We know what we need to do, and now we have to deliver. In order to enable and facilitate our work based on the approaches and working methods identified by the framework, employees in the Departments Staff Division went through all processes, structures, and policy documents. All defined methods were worked through with the framework in mind. On the basis of the review, some parts were slightly adjusted, some were adjusted significantly, and some were completely cancelled. The review of the processes, structures, and policy documents resulted in the Administration of Compulsory Education Department defined working methods being in harmony with the strategic framework. When we work according to our policy documents, we work in accordance with the framework – it should be easy to do.

As part of this work, the administration did a deep dive into the follow-up and planning process/systematic quality work, which is the most important process for managing, leading, and developing the operations. Based on the strategic framework's emphasis on leadership through follow-up, the deep dive focused on the follow-up.

The review resulted in, among other things, that the Department will:

• Use four types of data – result data, demographic data, process data and perceptual data – in their follow-ups
• Primarily follow up on the students' results
• Follow up on all students' results – meaning, all school forms/activities and based on the entire assignment of knowledge and values

This then led to extensive work on developing structures, processes, and tools to enable the identified follow-up work. Several of these structures, processes, and tools are already in place whilst others are being implemented, and some remain to be implemented. When new ways of working and methods are established and decided on, we introduce them in the relevant parts of the organization. The employees have a great understanding of what the purpose of each work method is and what the work will lead to before implementation. The implementation is based on the employees' assignments, the current situation, and the identified needs to improve the operation. Based on this understanding, new working methods are introduced, and new tools are put into operation.

Each employee's understanding of the purpose of every student's best school, what it should lead to, and what it takes to get there, is equally necessary for the job to be successful. To develop these insights and knowledge, each employee – individually and together with colleagues – needs to think about and discuss what the framework's approach and working methods mean for their own work and practice. This formulation and knowledge can only be achieved by each employee, each working group, and each school individually. Based on the understanding comes the next step – how do we make this a reality?

To understand, to be able, and to want – this is what matters. The understanding, knowledge and will of each employee, each team, and each school form the basis of the work to create each student's best school. Every employee matter, both those who work close to students and those who work to create the conditions for the work. It is us – every co-worker, team, school, and department – who will create every student's best school. We do this by learning systematically and together, we base our quality and improvement work on data and evidence, and our leadership leads to results and development for our students and towards our common direction - each student’s best school.

How do we work with scientific competence?

When the Administration of Compulsory Education Department developed the strategic framework for the academic year of 2017-2018, the Department began a long-term collaboration with some of Sweden's leading school researchers. During the development of the framework, the researchers acted as critical friends, pointing out important lessons and highlighting crucial research aspects. When the framework was in place and the Department shifted the focus to introducing and consolidating the working methods and approaches that the framework points out, the research collaboration’s focus also shifted.

Since 2018, there has been a collaboration in which the researchers follow the department’s work to translate the framework's lessons into practical action. Initially, the researchers looked at department management and school management, and the focus gradually shifted more and more to the employee level. The work our employees do with the students on a day-to-day basis is the work that the entire Department and research collaboration supports and develops. Through internal and external researchers observing, discussing, and studying, and then discuss lessons learned and conclusions, the Administration of Compulsory Education Department continuously benefits from the critical view offered by the research.

How do we know if we're becoming each student’s best school?

To know if we are improving our work so that we are becoming each student’s best school, we continuously monitor each student's performance and development. Each student's progression, knowledge, and values, in all school forms and activities, is continuously followed up by the responsible teacher, team, and school. In the following analysis, the teacher, team, and school respond to how their own work needs to be developed to further strengthen the students' progression. The Administration of Compulsory Education Department monitors the performance of all Malmö schools. The management-wide analysis responds to how our united overall work needs to be developed.

When are we done?

Administration of Compulsory Education Department development work is complete when each primary school in Malmö City is each student’s best school, and we live up to the national education assignment for each student. In practice, however, this kind of development work will never finish.

To constantly improve oneself and one's own work, to constantly identify one's strengths, and benefit from them, as well as to identify one's challenges and manage them, is a continuous work that never will finish. It is more about a united fundamental approach to a systematic way of working with continuous improvements whilst continually challenging themselves and their colleagues. Such a fundamental attitude to one's own work, the collegial and collective work, and to the goal of each student is what we have in Malmö city's Compulsory School and that is how we will create each student’s best school.