The Power of Local: Lessons from the UK Election

Happy Friday Leaders!

As the winds of change blow through the UK post-election, what can school leaders around the world learn about the power of local versus systemic change?

So, as you may have guessed, I’m currently in the UK. We've had a general election, and the main party has changed. The Labour Party has been elected, with Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.

Change is afoot.

Many educators are definitely on the Labour side of the fence, so there’s a lot of hope and excitement in the air. Not for everyone, but certainly for a lot of people.

It got me thinking about system-level change and how much impact we’re really going to see in schools.

You all know I’ve been working a lot recently with my good friend and colleague, Efraim Lerner. We’ve been working on a book, Change Starts Here, and our not-for-profit, Work Collaborative.

The idea? Bringing collaboration back into schools. Empowering communities to make decisions. Empowering schools to make decisions for themselves.

For a lot of my career, I worked at a system level. Over the last five years, I’ve been working with big groups of schools on system-level change. And I’ve learnt a lot during that time.

Both about the impact you can have from a system. And about the times you just can't have the impact you want because of the system.

Change always happens locally.

In my previous role, I saw some trends. Leadership at the top system level changed a couple of times. I watched the schools as these changes happened. I saw a few things: 

1. Schools with less confidence in themselves struggled the most with top-level changes. Maybe they were newer schools, but these changes really shook their foundations.

2. Schools with a strong internal purpose weathered both good and bad changes effectively. They had resilience. They didn’t seem to change much, regardless of what was happening at the top.

I wonder if we’ll see similarities in the UK education sector. Who will be affected the most by these changes? Who will be affected the least? I reckon it might have something to do with the core purpose of individual schools.

There’s a lot to be said for a school having a strong sense of its own internal purpose and utilising its community. Some schools have excelled during tough times, seemingly in spite of policy.

It’s all about local leadership.

So, here’s my takeaway: while system-level changes are important, the most significant impact happens locally, within the school and with YOU.

So, I’d love to hear from you. How do you feel about change? When you see system-level change, whether it’s elections in the UK or leadership changes elsewhere, does it affect you as a school leader? Do you see big effects when your regional or global school group leadership changes? Or do you weather the storm?

Thanks for reading, and have a fantastic weekend!

Shane

P.S. Here’s a couple of recent conversations on the podcast to take you in to the weekend: