As we reach our anniversary, we reflect on progress made and the current state of affairs in our community. 

It is now four years since we first published in our journal and this is our first article for another school year.  Therefore, a stock take of the changes to our collaborative learning community was called for. 

Quebec

We have already reported that Mike Dubeau has retired as Director General of the Western Quebec Schools Board. He has now been joined by Deputy Director General, Ruth Ahern. Both have made a seminal contribution to the development of our approach to school improvement. 

From the outset, their willingness to engage holistically with our emerging effective knowledge management approach gave us the invaluable opportunity to test our concepts and models in a totally different culture than the one that has prevailed in England over the past 25 years. In particular, it allowed us to hone in on generic rather than specific solutions. This forced us to place at the heart of our work a solution that could be adapted and adopted. In order to do that we became abundantly aware that it had to account for time, place and disposition.  

Over the 25 years I worked for the board, I have had the privilege of working for the four Director Generals; initially as project manager introducing the work at Pontiac High School and then across the Board. More recently, I have acted as coach to members of the senior team. 

George Singfield has now been appointed to replace Mike. George has had a distinguished career at the Board as teacher, principal and Director. He was involved from the outset in our work, making one of the earliest visits to England with Mike Dubeau and Terry Kharyati. We wish him all the best in his new role. 

Sweden

Our collaboration with Sweden over the same period has been different. Initially, we worked with Lula University on initial teacher development, exchanging graduate students for a week. These students then presented their observations on the contrasting approaches they observed. One disingenuous member of our team summarised that the Swedish teachers liked to see students in uniforms and formed up in straight lines and the English the potted plants and curtains in windows, along with the more relaxed approach. 

We observed, however, that all involved realised that there was more than one way to achieve excellence and that culture, context and politics played a critical role in this. Our collaboration lasted for a number of years but finished when the key active drivers in both communities – the catalysts – retired. 

Professor Louise Stoll then invited us to present our work to a party of Swedish teachers and principals organised by Peter Becker and his team. In Sweden, Peter ran an organisation which championed the use of information technology in schools. This was later expanded to include school improvement.  

Their key activities consisted of organising visits for teachers to the UK around the time of Bett (, recognising and rewarding best practice in the use of information technology in Swedish schools and convening national conferences to encourage and promote school improvement. During their visit to England, we were grateful to Mulberry School, and Lilian Baylis. 

From this collaboration, our relationship with Mats Rosenkvist emerged. We have continued to work with Mats, supporting him in his battle to engage Swedish school leaders and teachers in improving the quality of teaching and learning. He initially undertook this with his lesson recording programme – Bravolessons. 

More recently, Mats and his colleagues have introduced an evidence-based set of domains and levels and a process for using the results in a collaborative way to improve teacher performance. This work is ongoing.

England

As well as our long association with Olevi, we will continue to work with David Cotton and members of his leadership team at Diverse Academies. We will be covering the work of the Trust in other articles during the year. 

In addition, we will report on the work of School North East, the Education Endowment Fund, Reconnect London, the IOE, UCL and Challenge Partners as well as covering the general education trends we consider to bring to our readers’ attention. 

UAE

Finally, our colleagues Louise and Christian Ford and our grandson Clark in Dubai have decided to move to Katy near Houston, Texas, in the United States of America. Their insights over the past eleven years from the few charity-run schools amongst a sea of private ones and in an at times highly regulated system has been highly informative. 

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The journal will this year go through a period of transition. Since October 2019 we have managed to record most of our work and published 170 articles, which is around 40 articles per year. The expectation is that this year the volume will likely halve.  

As a result, we feel it is now time for those continuing to work collaboratively to improve the education they provide for their students to take this opportunity to provide articles for our readers. We will continue to provide the regular global updates from our collaborative learning communities and articles which build upon our existing published material. 

We will remain a free at source journal and we are grateful to all our contributors and to our readers across the globe.

Take care and stay safe

George

Professor Sir George Berwick