Step 1

Step 1.1: Overview

The Quality Standard: heart of LQF

The Learning Quality Framework offers schools a rich view of learning and learners, unlocking the features of a learning school. At its heart is the Quality Standard that captures how key aspects of a school’s culture link and grow together to become a learning organisation. The Learning Quality Standard blends the ideas of a learning organisation with the latest ideas in the ‘how’ of learning to provide a route map for a learning journey

The standard is structured around four dimensions, twelve principles and thirty two indicators.

Dimensions

The Learning Quality Standard has four dimensions which follow the well known quality improvement cycle and each of the Principles fall into one of these dimensions.

Principles

The Learning Quality Standard has twelve Principles of learning that are concerned with different aspects of a school’s culture. These include the school’s vision for education, its beliefs about learning, how leaders lead learning, how classroom practice, assessment and the curriculum are best designed to build people’s learning habits, how staff are best enabled to develop their practice, and how the school itself acts on its own learning.

Statements of practice (indicators)

Each principle is described through Indicators, or statements of practice. These show how the principles are enacted in practice. And since the whole point of the standard is to describe a learning journey, the statements of practice are related to four stages of development; coherent staging points on the journey where you might take time to reflect and prepare for the next stage.

Stages of Development

Starting out on the journey (Bronze) – At this stage the school is actively casting around for and trying out ideas, building a culture of experimentation, self-reliance and learning rather than dependency and performance.

Developing (Silver) – By this stage the school is using its learning from enquiry to create its best-fit learning strategy and is harnessing professional development to ensure outstanding learning through outstanding teaching. It’s bringing its learning philosophy to life.

Establishing (Gold) – Here the learning driven approaches to pedagogy, professional development, student engagement, assessment and curriculum design are deeply embedded in the school’s culture, not reliant on a few leaders or champions, and becoming world class.

Enhancing (Platinum) – The school is operating as a learning organisation where all its people, staff and students alike, expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire and engage with other organisations to create wider cultures of learning.

What the Standard looks like.

One of the four dimensions
One of the twelve principles
An explanation of a string or thread of indicators
One of the thirty-two indicators across bronze, silver and gold levels.
Suggestions for platinum level action for each principle

This economical format gives an at-a-glance view of the Learning Quality Framework.

Weaving the threads of good practice

The framework offers criteria of good practice. Nothing is hidden. It describes best practice throughout the learning journey and thus ensures the school has all the components or threads in place to be able to move forward. Classroom practice won’t develop without appropriate professional development; the school is unlikely to make headway without sympathetic leadership characteristics; advances in classroom practice will stall without accompanying curriculum development; the learning philosophy of the school will face an uphill battle unless parents are brought on board. So the Learning Quality Framework weaves together all the threads a school needs to pay heed to on its journey in becoming a learning school.

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Step 1.3 Indicators

The 32 Indicators of the Learning Quality Standard

The 12 principles of the Standard are brought to life through a set of 32 Indicators, or statements of practice. These show how the principles are enacted in practice. The broad practice indicators sitting beneath each Principle are shown in blue below.

Principle 1 – Vision for Learning has two types of indicator: 1.1 concerns how a school develops a vision for learning that will empower learning, while 1.2 is concerned with how understanding of the vision is spread across the school.

Hence the indicators pick up different aspects of the principles. Some principles require more areas of practice than others.

Principle 4 – Leading innovation in learning has three indicators: 4.1 is about creating dialogue across the school; 4.2 turns its attention to the extent to which leaders enable staff to experiment with new ways of working, while 4.3 is about the extent to which self monitoring of practice is used successfully across the school.

The major principles aligning to learning itself, staff and students, (Principles 5,7 and 8) each have four aspects of practice picked out as indicators. Principle 5 CPD policy and strategy identifies that the development of staff needs to be aligned to the development of the school (5.1) and then identifies two researched CPD practices that are not only effective but in line with the whole spirit of the LQF (Professional Learning Communities 5.2 and Coaching 5.3). Indicator 5.4 suggests a wider role for reviews of learning across the school to ensure staff, pupils and the school learns from the process.

From indicators to threads of practice

Since the whole point of the framework is to describe a learning journey these indicators or statements of practice are elaborated to illuminate four stages of development or threads of practice; coherent staging points on the journey where you might take time to reflect and prepare for the next stage. (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum.) You will find reference to these statements of practice in section 1.4 and more detail in section 2.2.

Meanwhile take a look at the groups of indicators shown here and appreciate how they bring the principles to life and what they might mean for your school.

Dimension – Commitment: The school is committed to using the learning sciences to develop its peoples’ learning dispositions, and equip itself as a learning organisation.

Dimension – Planning: Leadership approaches, plans and strategies are aligned to enhance learning development across the school and its students.

Dimension – Action: Learning opportunities within and beyond the school build, broaden and strengthen people’s effective learning habits for lifelong learning.

Dimension – Evaluation: The school, its people, its students and its community understand the impact on the investment in growing learning habits.

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Step 1.2 Principles

The 12 Principles of the Learning Quality Standard

The Learning Quality Standard is organised under twelve Principles that are concerned with different aspects of a school’s culture, such as its vision for education, its beliefs about learning, how leaders lead learning, how classroom practice, assessment and the curriculum are best designed to build learning habits, how staff are best enabled to develop their practice, and how the school itself acts on its own learning.

Principle 1

Vision for learning

An engaging vision for 21st Century education based on social, economic, moral and personal learning imperatives guides the school and its community.

Explanation

There are many changes, pressures, dissatisfactions and opportunities that are leading thousands of people around the world to ask hard questions about the purpose of education and take a radical re-think of priorities and practice. The learning school will be researching, developing and using a shared vision for education that takes account of cultivating a core set of generic learning skills, attitudes and dispositions, which help people to flourish in a changing world. This vision is gradually translated into action through the school’s strategic plan.

Principle 2

A framework for learning

A coherent approach to building traits that affect how people go about learning, drives learning in the school and its community.

Explanation

The learning school distils its understanding of the learning sciences into a coherent framework for learning, drawing together various principles from the LQF (language for learning, teaching culture, learning culture, learner engagement, parents and communities and assessment for learning) thus defining a comprehensive understanding of learning which drives policy and practice in the school and its community, and is evident in the school’s curriculum intent.

Principle 3

A language for learning

A rich language of learning recognising its emotional, cognitive, social and strategic dimensions, permeates learning across the school and its community.

Explanation

The learning school develops, uses and extends a rich and dynamic language to talk about learning. Effective learning requires emotional engagement, a wide range of cognitive approaches, interpersonal interaction and personal responsibility. The language of learning that embraces all these dimensions is used to shape, and improve learning in the school.

Principle 4

Leading innovation in learning

Leadership for learning throughout the school supports innovation, experimentation and risk taking, building individual independence and responsibility.

Explanation

The learning school aims to develop everyone as leaders of their own learning. School leaders’ leadership approaches will support innovation and risk-taking amongst staff and, through them, to students. Leaders of learning create a dialogue about learning and innovation, keeping the ideas fresh and alive. They make it ‘safe’ for people to experiment with new ideas, establishing a no blame culture. They encourage people to monitor and reflect on their own practice, developing their own ability to be self-guiding and self-correcting in their learning.

Principle 5

CPD policy and strategy

Continuing Professional Development policy and strategy embraces a range of professional learning activities that stimulates and supports communities of enquiry and research in the promotion of effective learning habits for all.

Explanation

The learning school treats staff as learners, growing their learning habits and developing their teaching (work) habits in line with its learning framework. The school encourages and supports a community of enquiry amongst staff, researching the effects of changing practice, coaching each other to develop ideas, and keeping practice under review in order to build future development.

Principle 6

Curriculum Design

The curriculum is effective in cultivating and progressing a set of generic learning habits and attitudes.

Explanation

The learning school considers how its curriculum needs to change in order to best serve the systematic development of learning habits. Considerations include which learning behaviours need to be integrated, how best to do this across subject areas over time, how to accommodate extended learning experiences to deepen the habits, how learning can be connected to the real world, and how best to maximise enrichment activities to cultivate harder to attain learning habits.

Principle 7

Teaching for a learning culture

Teachers surface the learning process, creating a culture in classrooms that systematically cultivates students’ learning habits and attitudes that enable them to face difficulty and uncertainty confidently, and enhances their acquisition of content.

Explanation

The teaching for learning culture concerns how teachers surface ( un-hide, dis-cover ) the learning process, making it a visible and tangible process that students are helped to own. Considerations include how teachers make learning a shared responsibility, how they promote learning behaviours through conversation, how they blend learning behaviours with curriculum content, and how they recognise and celebrate the progression of learning habits.

Principle 8

Learning from a learning culture

The learning culture of classrooms enables students to take a full and active role in learning by taking increasing control in developing effective learning dispositions

Explanation

Combines with Principle 7, The learning school aims to develop students who learn how to assume responsibility for themselves as learners; who become able to talk about how they learn; who develop a wide range of ways of thinking and know how to use them; who learn how to self-manage, monitor and modify their learning. The learning school aims to build up students’ mental, emotional and social resources to enjoy challenge and cope well with uncertainty and complexity

Principle 9

Learner engagement

Young people actively co-participate in the design, management and evaluation of learning and contribute to the powerful learning culture.

Explanation

The learning school considers students as partners in learning (part of the crew rather than passengers) and takes steps to involve them as co-participating in the design, implementation and review of learning. In so doing students gain essential insights into themselves as responsible learners and are motivated to assist in designing relevant learning opportunities.

Principle 10

Parents and Community

The school works in partnership with parents and carers to develop learning dispositions.

Explanation

The learning school recognises that parents are a child’s foremost teachers. Parents are informed of their child’s development as a learner and are offered suggestions and opportunities to learn how they can reinforce these behaviours outside school.

Principle 11

Assessing for learning

Tracking and authenticating the growth of learning dispositions (with regard to when, where and how well they are used) builds learners’ motivation and informs learning design.

Explanation

The learning school takes action to keep track of the development of students’ learning habits. Tracking covers whether the habits are being used more frequently, in more contexts and more skilfully. In other words whether the learning behaviours are becoming dispositions that will be used whenever and wherever they are needed. This tracking helps in the continual design and re-design of learning opportunities across the curriculum. Learners are deeply involved in reflecting on their learning behaviours and come to understand themselves as growing learners.

Principle 12

Evaluating the learning organisation

A monitored set of organisational learning indicators guides continual improvement in provision, practice and the achievement of objectives.

Explanation

The learning school is conscious of its own learning behaviours. It sees itself as a learning system and understands the inter-relationships in the system as opposed to simple cause and effect chains. Thus a learning school will never look solely at any one of the principles or indicators in this framework, but will monitor how these interact and affect each other. The school keeps a close eye on the achievement of its objectives (from its strategic plan) and how the system of the school works to achieve them. This accurate and continual self-reflection gives the school a real picture of itself as a learning system and this information is used to plan further improvement action.

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Step 1.4 Phases

The 3 Phases of Development

Each of the 32 Indicators are described at three phases of development – the phases are:

Starting out on the journey (Bronze) – when a school has realised there is a bigger goal for education, or that they may actually be cultivating an attitude of dependency in students through too much ‘spoon-feeding’, or that they are producing successful students but not necessarily good learners. For these schools the time has come for a radical rethink of their vision for learning. At this stage the school is actively casting around for and trying out ideas, building a culture of experimentation, self-reliance and learning rather than dependency and performance.

Developing (Silver) – when a school is using its research, has tried things out and has found or developed a ‘best-fit’ learning strategy for the school. At this stage the school is developing its preferred approach to learning through classroom practice, CPD, leadership approaches and so on, and gradually bringing its learning philosophy to life.

Establishing (Gold) – when a school’s approach to learning is secured and working well. Here the approaches to pedagogy, CPD, student engagement, assessment and curriculum design are deeply embedded in the school’s culture and not reliant on a few leaders or champions.

So, for example, Principle 1 has two Indicators, 1.1 and 1.2, which are each described at these three levels of development.

Weaving the threads of good practice

The framework offers criteria of good practice. Nothing is hidden. It describes best practice throughout the learning journey and thus ensures the school has all the components or threads in place to be able to move forward. Classroom practice won’t develop without appropriate CPD; the school is unlikely to make headway without certain leadership characteristics; advances in classroom practice will stall without accompanying curriculum development; the learning philosophy of the school will face an uphill battle unless parents are brought on-board. So the LQF weaves together all the threads a school needs to pay heed to on its journey in becoming a learning powered school.

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Step 1.5: Governors’ FAQs

What is the Learning Quality Framework?

The LQF is designed to scaffold a school’s journey to becoming a learning school where the educational goal is to build better learners. It consists of a Learning Quality Standard, online materials and consultancy to assist the journey and rigorous external evaluation processes to assess and report on progress. There are four levels of progress and each can be awarded a Learning Quality Mark.

LQF is built on research into learning organisations and recent research into learning how to learn. It’s for schools that are intent on broadening their educational horizons and want to give young people a better deal by expanding their capacity to learn.

What questions will it help us to answer?

LQF will help us to answer these questions. What does a learning school look like? Are we a learning school? What makes a learning school successful? Do we do that? How does a learning school build better learners? How well do we do that? How can we begin or continue this journey to best effect?

What is in it for the school?

It will guide us to develop a clearly defined strategy for improving and broadening outcomes for learners and for developing the school itself as an organisation that learns, that initiates change and that takes control of its own destiny. The Silver level of the Standard is roughly equivalent to Ofsted ‘outstanding’ in teaching and learning.

How long will it take the school to achieve a Quality Mark?

This is difficult to predict. It will depend on how our current practice matches up to the Standard. It is likely to take about a year to reach Bronze. Other schools have taken about 18 months to reach the next level (Silver) and another 18 to 24 months to make Gold. It is said to be the most exacting Quality Mark a school can undertake but it will be hugely worthwhile.

Does it need someone to manage it?

We will assign one of our senior team to oversee the development. In the spirit of the Standard, we will need to ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to design and develop the improved ways of working.

Will it involve a lot more work for staff?

We think the Standard implies a major culture change for the school, but it’s not about working harder, it’s about working differently. Initially there will be work to be done in improving what we do now and developing new processes.

What role will we play in the LQF?

Your commitment to and understanding of the LQF are essential if the school is to be successful in this endeavour. Without your support we can’t really move forward. We anticipate working towards a Quality Mark for each level which means we are making a public commitment to becoming a learning school. This commitment, while made by current senior leaders and governors, is made for the whole school and lasts indefinitely. Hence we need approval to go ahead. As we move forward, we will keep you informed about the progress of the Action Plan.

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Step 1.5: Staff’s FAQs

What is the Learning Quality Framework?

The LQF is a framework that supports a school to develop itself as a learning organisation whose prime educational goal is to develop better learners. It is for schools that are looking seriously at research into learning and considering how this can, and indeed should, impact on the art of teaching and the design of learning.

What does LQF comprise?

It is made up of a Learning Quality Standard, online materials and consultancy to support the journey and review and verification processes to promote, check and reward progress. The Learning Quality Standard has twelve Principles that support the development of a learning school. The principles are concerned with things such as: the school’s vision for learning; how its leaders lead learning; how classroom practice, assessment and the curriculum build students’ learning habits; how staff learning changes practice; how the school acts on its own learning. Statements of practice are written at four levels of development, each one being deeper and more challenging than the previous one, but each level can be accredited with a Learning Quality Mark.

We’ve already got a lot going in learning – why do we need more?

We have been working seriously on improving learning for some time now. We have introduced [AfL, P4C, BLP etc] and have now got pockets of these approaches going in the school. The Learning Quality Standard shows us the whole picture and gives us routes through it. We can make what we do now count for more. We can grow what we do now to have a greater impact. It’s our route map for a better deal for our students.

What is in it for the school?

LQF will guide us to develop a clearly defined strategy for widening our educational horizons and doing better for our students, and them doing better for themselves. It will improve learner outcomes, and help the school to develop itself as an organisation that learns, that initiates change and that takes control of its own destiny. The Silver level of the Standard is roughly equivalent to Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ in teaching and learning.

What’s in it for staff?

Part of the LQF is a shift of responsibility away from top-down models of school organisation towards a more collegiate, problem solving, can-do culture. The LQF empowers you to take on responsibility for your own development, just as it does the students.

What’s in it for students?

The LQF is rooted in the desire to challenge a student dependency culture that’s evident in so many schools; where teachers work harder than students. The LQF helps schools to empower youngsters to take greater control of and responsibility for their own learning. The LQF helps schools to raise standards (in the traditional sense), but also helps students to develop a set of learning habits that will stand them in good stead in 21st century living.

Will it mean more work for teachers?

It will mean that you may need to work differently, or smarter. But the fundamental shift is towards students working harder at their own learning, supported and guided by teachers who do less, because the students are doing more!

The LQF heralds a shift in philosophy — more leadership opportunities, greater flexibility and independence, more room to experiment, more effective professional development opportunities.

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