We all have a sense of what a great school would look and feel like:
- a school we would want our children to attend to achieve the best possible start in life
- a school we would want to work in where we would be supported to become the best possible version of ourselves as educators
- a school we would want enriching the community that we live in.
Back in 2009, Rachel Macfarlane set up a programme for the London Leadership Strategy programme called Going for Great (G4G). It was for leaders of Ofsted outstanding schools to explore the nature of great schools through networking, school to school visits, research and the stimulus of keynote speakers.
Over six years, she worked with 6 cohorts of secondary school leaders, typically around 40 per year, on the Going For Great (G4G) project. They created a framework to describe and define the features of the Great School called ‘The Nine Pillars’.
In 2016, in response to requests for a similar programme for primaries, the G4G then developed to include primary, secondary, all-through and special school leaders. The Nine Pillars model was tested with this wider audience and found to apply equally to all phases and types of schools and groups of schools (e.g. MATs). When the London Leadership Strategy ended in 2018, Rachel and her co-directors wrote up the Nine Pillars and the work of the well over 100 schools which had been part of the programme in a publication – ‘The Nine Pillars of Great Schools’ (available to buy from online booksellers).
On arriving at HFL in April 2018, Rachel realised that the then Director of Business Services, Carole Bennett (now HFL Education's CEO), and her teams were every bit as passionate about exploring the nature of great schools as she was, but through the business and operational aspects. Where Rachel had been pouring over educational texts, Carole had been studying the literature about really strong schools from the Institute of School Business Leaders and reading literature about what was strong, resilient and sustainable practice in terms of school organisational management.
Together they decided to construct a framework showing all the component parts of a great school – educational and business. The Great School Framework (GSF) has been a collaborative venture, with input from scores of HFL colleagues and benefitting from feedback from many education leaders across Hertfordshire.
Despite having roots going back over decades in schools, the GSF has proved to be timeless. The core features of greatness have not changed over time. The path to greatness may have changed and added new routes to success, but the core principles of what makes a great school are timeless.
The Great School Framework is the intellectual property of HFL Education and copyrighted. It may not be used unacknowledged by others.
