Innovation in education

To study the manner and extent of the envisaged (perceived and actual) innovations in free schools, it is useful first to consider the concept in general and how it can be conceived and applied within education. Innovation can be defined simply as a new idea, product or service, or as an application of better solutions that meet new requirements or existing market or societal needs (Christensen et al., Reference Christensen, Horn and Johnson2008). The core issue is whether the innovative idea has the potential to lead to new products and services. In the organisational context, innovation is closely linked to positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality and competitiveness. Scholars studying innovation (Christensen et al., Reference Christensen, Horn and Johnson2008; Edquist, Reference Edquist1999; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Edquist and Lundvall2004; Salge and Vera, Reference Salge and Vera2012) emphasise that innovation does not occur in isolation. Innovation emerges through the learning processes and interaction with a network of relevant institutions. It is a collective outcome, combining the elements of the system and the relations between them. Therefore, a perception of a system of innovation must be more than simply an enumeration of its elements; it is important to study the associations between them when assessing if innovation is occurring and can be sustained (Edquist, Reference Edquist1999; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Edquist and Lundvall2004).

Using this general approach to innovation and applying it to education, the OECD (2005) suggests two categories of innovation in schools. One category concerns management innovations in areas such as governance, work organisation, employment relations and contracting. It also includes marketing innovations, particularly those that affect the position of a school within an education market through new advertising strategies or admission policies (Lubienski, Reference Lubienski2009: 20). The other category involves both product innovations and process innovations. Defining product in this context may be complicated by disagreement over the objectives of education and the balance between social, physical and intellectual development and achievement of qualifications. In general, product innovations include a new or substantially different service offered to students, such as a curriculum package. Process innovations involve production and delivery of techniques, e.g. e-learning or improved pedagogical approaches, which can produce gains in efficiency. For this paper, while drawing on this OECD typology of innovation in schools, we note that in addition it is also relevant to study the interactions between schools in a school district and sponsors as well as government bodies, all of which help to determine the extent of innovation. In practice, SATS, OFSTED inspections and examination systems impose severe constraints on innovation in education, notably at the secondary level. Empirical research needs to take account of this context. Existing high-performing networks, for instance, can offer incubation space for free schools that are starting up, benefitting from their innovations while providing a venue for rapid prototyping and improvement.

The policy-makers who brought in the new system expected that competition with other schools, together with free school head teachers' liberty to follow their own leads without having to consult local authority officers, would incentivise and unleash more of both management and product/process innovations. However, innovatory outcomes may be limited because of systemic constraints. Free schools in aggregate now constitute a recognised area of institutional life, where the key institutional actors, with varying degrees of power, include the Department for Education, the New Schools Network, local authorities, OFSTED, teacher unions, and parents. Being dependent on the activities of these actors and the relations between them, schools may evolve strong self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating characteristics, which can persist and from which it is hard to be diverted. As in other systems, these actors or coalitions of them can function both as enablers as well as inhibitors to innovation (DiMaggio and Powel, Reference DiMaggio, Powel, Powel and Dimaggio1991; Meyer and Rowan, Reference Meyer, Rowan, Meyer and Scott1992; Immergut, Reference Immergut, Moran, Rein and Goodin2005; Mahoney, Reference Mahoney2000). Unlike schools that convert to become academies, where historical precedent might inhibit change, free schools are start-up schools; nevertheless, the very newness also brings challenges and high set-up costs which might also limit the space for experimentation with innovative teaching strategies. Where schools are part of a sponsoring academy chain the degree of innovation is likely to be determined by the policies of the chain's senior management which, in turn, are embedded in an institutional and competitive environment. Where schools are converted private schools, the original objectives of those schools and their governors need to be taken into account.

The outcomes for innovations in both categories is therefore an open question that requires an empirical answer. The evidence from other countries suggests that the constraints on innovation are very relevant. Research on the effects of comparable reforms in other countries, such as the Free Schools (fritstående skolor) in Sweden and Charter schools in the USA, indicates that choice and competition can lead to innovations in organisational practices (mainly by adopting more business-like methods), whereas classroom practices are relatively familiar and often revert to traditionalist modes of curriculum and instruction (Miron and Nelson Reference Miron and Nelson2002). In competing for students, schools in these countries tend to copy established practices of schooling rather than use their autonomy to try substantively different approaches. In the case of Sweden, Vhlachos (Reference Vhlachos and Hartman2011) has shown how parents constituted a factor in Free Schools reverting to standardised practices. Parents were concerned about grades, exams and access to higher education, which in turn made free schools adopt established instruction methods. Lubienski (Reference Lubienski2009), who has investigated the Charter schools, concludes that although some schools could be seen as engaging in different or new practices, innovation in general was absent. Charters do not appear to be engaging in practices that are new or even different from practices already evident in district governed sectors of the nation's publically funded school system. This has even been the case in Arizona, which has been the leading state in the charter movements in terms of numbers of schools and their institutional autonomy. In their study of 75 Arizona charter schools, Maranto et al. (Reference Maranto, Milliman and Gresham1999) demonstrated that they are not achieving expected classroom innovations. Likewise, in Michigan, a state where inter-district choices have substantially empowered parents as consumers, Horn and Miron (Reference Horn and Miron2000: 26) concluded in a study that ‘overall, innovations are not occurring in Michigan charter schools.’

To what extent have previous studies of English free schools, in the first five years of their existence, generated useful evidence about the degree to which innovation has emerged and spread? While extant research has touched on this issue indirectly through considering critically the democratic credentials of free school governance, in particular the way that powerful groups can mould state education in their own interests (Hatcher, Reference Hatcher2011; Higham, Reference Higham2014b), only one study has hitherto examined what free schools actually do in respect of innovation. In 2014, the government's Department for Education (DfE) published its own assessment (Cirin, Reference Cirin2014), which presented a very positive picture, endorsed by the Education Minister, of how different and innovative the first set of free schools was, i.e. those that had opened by the 2013/14 academic year. In its survey of 74 schools it reported that ‘a large proportion of free schools are developing innovative approaches’ (ibid. 7). It found, for example, that 57 per cent of free schools operated an extended school day. Other ‘innovations’ emerging quite widely included: different term dates, use of unqualified teachers, setting own conditions of service (including some performance-related pay), departures from the national curriculum, ‘our particular style/ethos’, offering extra-curricular/enrichment activities (such as sports, performing arts etc), and seeking parental feedback. Several further differences were also reported under the heading of innovation, each in a small minority of schools. Finally, the report also finds that a majority of free schools were ‘supporting’ other schools, collaborating with them or planning to do so.

Leaving aside its somewhat uneasy status as a study evaluating the Department's own policy, this study can be criticised in that it made no attempt to conceptualise innovation within schools. The study does not discuss which practices genuinely set free schools apart from activity elsewhere; it relies uncritically on head teachers’ assertions about what makes their free schools special. This is a problem: many practices, including some noted above, would appear to be commonplace in local authority state schools. No analysis is offered as to whether innovative practices differ according to whether schools are part of larger academy chains – presumably an important constraining influence on head teachers.

Management

Consistent with Cirin (Reference Cirin2014) free schools, being start-up schools, have been introducing new management practices and some of these contrast with those commonly found in local authority schools. As expected, due to their formal freedoms compared with local authority schools, head teachers tend to have more control over their budgets and direct resources in response to local needs and conditions. A number of the free schools in our sample were experimenting with a range of approaches to governance and financial practices. However, we found both from our interviews and from the survey that the main perceived form of management innovation is in relation to employment practices.

One notable reason as to why this may be the case is the fact that free schools can circumvent teacher unions (Wiborg, Reference Wiborg, Moe and Wiborg2017; Moe and Wiborg, Reference Moe and Wiborg2017). The move toward schools becoming single-employer institutions alters the ways in which pay and working conditions are determined. As a result the schools are able to implement their own teacher contracts for pay and working conditions and need not deal with trade unions. As one head teacher stated: ‘I think probably actually one of the biggest things is we don't negotiate with unions . . . over pay and conditions . . . I have worked in schools where unions can be major blockers and so we don't negotiate with unions at all here’. The perceived advantage lies not only in terms of pay setting but also in terms of improved efficiency through greater freedom to manage. Another head teacher noted: ‘That's part of the appeal, that you're not dealing with a structure that's been in place for a long time, you are not dealing with unions or someone “we don't want that here”, it's actually about creating a learning environment’. Another respondent planned to relate annual reviews of teachers to performance pay, with contracts involving such procedures for ‘every member of staff [. . .] a probationary period, its performance related progression in terms of pay reviews at the end of the year.’ This finding is again consistent with Cirin (Reference Cirin2014) which found that three-quarters of free schools report linking pay explicitly to performance.

One innovation that is simultaneously a change in both employment practice and in students' experience of schooling is the extension of the school day, relative to that in typical local authority schools. In our sample, 22 out of 39 schools had extended the teaching day, a proportion similar to that reported in Cirin (Reference Cirin2014). In nine cases this extension was by two hours or more.

While the consequence of these changed employment practices in terms of efficient management cannot be assessed here, we can assess the consequences for teachers' rewards. According to our survey data pay was inferior, relative to the national Pay and Conditions, in 13 schools out of 38 (34 per cent). This was brought about, in the main, through extending working hours without pay compensation, rather than through a pay cut. The hours extension itself was commonly driven by extending the teaching day: in half of the schools where this happened teachers' hours were increased. The lowering of hourly pay was, we found, more common in the stand-alone free schools, in comparison with free schools that are part of bigger chains of Academy Trusts. We found that 11 out of 23 stand-alone free schools offered poorer pay while only 2 out of 15 chain-attached free schools did so.

After employment practices, marketing emerged from our qualitative interviews as another significant area of differentiation from the preoccupations of local authority school leaders. While all schools, whether local authority controlled or otherwise, have to market themselves and attract pupils, our free school head teachers reported a strong desire to differentiate their schools significantly from neighbouring schools. Thus all the heads we spoke to put significant emphasis on promoting their school brand – as one stated ‘Basically marketing the school was a huge thing’. Websites and symbols such as uniforms and school emblems formed a core part of this. As another head teacher stated: ‘The uniform is smart and we place a lot of emphasis on it’. This emphasis could be in part due to the application process which requires free schools to establish that there is a ‘need’ in their local area. Need can be defined either by lack of places in general, or by a lack of a specific educational approach or form of provision such as faith based schooling. Free schools also have to demonstrate that there is local support – i.e. parents who will commit to sending their child/ren to the school. Our interviews revealed how crucial a school's reputation is for attracting parents, particularly for new schools that do not have the historical record of exam results and test scores. Smart uniforms and a clear school identity help to demonstrate this to parents.

Curriculum and instructional methods

Changed management practices may offer the prospect of more efficient running of a school, and decreased costs. An extended working day might also be beneficial for pupils, depending on how the extra time is spent. However, it is through innovatory practices in the classroom that direct effects on pupil performance might be expected, according to market theory, to ‘raise standards’ as envisaged in the 2010 White Paper. Free schools, exempted from following the National Curriculum, are expected to innovate with teaching methods and offer new curriculum packages.

Our survey shows that while relatively few (12 out of 39) reported curriculum differences, just over half (21) reported that they were ‘using teaching and learning practices not found in local authority controlled schools’. Again, in our survey, we found a striking difference between chain-attached free schools and stand-alone free schools. The chains show significantly fewer deviations from the national curriculum and fewer departures in classroom methods than the stand-alone schools.

This apparent prevalence of classroom differences and departures is broadly consistent with the picture of widespread ‘innovation’ described in Cirin (Reference Cirin2014), which reports many ways in which schools perceive that they are delivering their curriculum in new ways and in new subjects. However, the inference of ‘innovation’ from ‘difference’ is problematic in these surveys. On the one hand, the differences when teased out are often small, not warranting the term ‘innovation’; on the other hand, there is some question about the extent to which the perceptions of head teachers are accurate, when comparing with local authority schools. Much of what passes for innovation is arguably not at all different from practices permitted and practised in local authority schools. In our survey, the free schools that reported a high level of innovation, listed the following practices as examples: ‘preparation periods for independent study’, ‘small teaching groups’, ‘emphasis on employment skills’, ‘effective assessment and feedback’, ‘homework done at school’, ‘character building’, ‘key focus on systematic routines’, ‘all English and maths lessons mixed ability and are supported by a second qualified teacher’, ‘project-based learning’, and ‘action research approaches to find out what works, e.g. assessing skill development’. Furthermore, free schools have reported that they innovate by offering ‘bilingual’ teaching, emphasising ‘discipline codes’, ‘citizenship training’, and ‘soliciting parental involvement’. Few of these examples could be claimed to be entirely new, or even substantially different from practices found in local authority schools where resources allow. On closer inspection, therefore, our survey suggests, if anything, that substantive innovations in curriculum and teaching methods are relatively rare.

This finding was confirmed in our qualitative interviews, where we learned that free schools were not always keen to innovate substantially with teaching methods, nor even that much with new subjects, instead conforming to standard practices. As one free school head teacher told us: ‘Oh well, we're not really doing anything that's that much different’; while another head teacher said that, ‘We don't have any desire to be particularly different, it's just about the offer’.

Overall we have been unable to identify new innovations, as expected by the reformers, in the reported pedagogical practices of the free schools. Notwithstanding the market theory critique of local authority governance and the innovation expectations, there are few teaching and learning practices developed in free schools that were not already available outside the free school sector. The New Schools Network – a charity which supports setting up free schools – articulated a similar conclusion when our respondent reported to us that: ‘I don't know if they [free schools] would want to admit this, but they are not unlike other schools really [. . .]. The comments that most of them made were that actually they could have always done these things, or most of these things, in other schools they have worked at’.

Only in the minority of schools following particular educational philosophies, such as Steiner or Montessori (which while not novel were previously only available in the fee-paying private sector), could one expect to see something quite different in a free school. Elsewhere what might be seen as novel is that the free schools offer something slightly different by replicating and mixing education practices from other schools, offering them for the first time in a new local context. According to our interviews, some free school head teachers were engaged in adopting practices from elsewhere, perhaps more extensively than in the maintained sector, given that they are start-up schools. The countries they gleaned ideas from include the Nordic states (especially Sweden and Finland), Canada, and the USA. And while English private education was seen by one informant as a role model, others were also looking at practices in state-funded schools. The comment from one head teacher perhaps exemplifies this broad approach: ‘We try to replicate. . . a lot of practices from other schools – including charter schools in the US as well as from the state sector, the independent sector, even from business. . . I don't proclaim that anything I've done here is my own idea, I've just tried to take the best ideas and try to package it in a way and try to implement it well’.

In sum, we can observe that in our samples a higher level of substantive innovation is taking place with regard to management practices rather than in respect of curriculum and pedagogical practices. Creating a free school offer that seems to differ from other schools appears to be done through marketing and branding rather than innovation. It transpired from our interviews that free schools put much stronger emphasis on marketing their ‘offer’ and differentiation than on the desire to innovate. It was evident that heads used marketing as a way of distinguishing their services through symbols rather than through substantive innovations in core practices. Consequently, free schools shape their intake through image presentation rather than allocating recourses to innovation in the production process itself. Adopting well-known practices based on ‘profiles’ or ‘images’ may be a more effective and less risky option for free schools than experimenting with new approaches. The process of diversification may be enhanced by free schools targeting particular education markets – for example by offering options such as ‘core subjects and discipline’, ‘child-centred learning and mixed ability classes’, or ‘faith-based learning’. Such promotions would result in diversification based on social characteristics of student intake, not on innovation. Meanwhile, free school leaderships are also using their freedoms, not only in procurement markets but also in their employment relations practices to begin to restructure traditional relationships with teachers.