Do Silver Bullets Exist? | A Conversation with Paul Ainsworth

If I told you I had a silver bullet that could solve all your challenges at school this year, would you believe me? I thought not. In that case, you are going to find today's conversation fascinating. Hey, everyone. I'm Shane Leaning.

Welcome to Global Ed Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for international schools. I'm an organizational coach, and in this show, I get to know the teachers, leaders, and innovators, making a difference in education around the world. Before we jump into the conversation today, I'm really delighted that today's episode is supported by the International curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more.

Now, my guest today is Paul Engsworth. Now, Paul is a UK education leader with experience as a director and trustee across six multi-academy trusts. They're big groups of schools in the UK. With 12 years in senior leadership and great experience of turning around struggling schools, Paul has offered several books on school improvement, including his latest work, No Silver Bullets 2.0.

And so where else to start other than asking him where this notion of silver bullets in education came from? Let's get to it. So silver bullets, the idea came from I was working in a big multi-academy trust, and we were just trying to throw everything at these schools, you know, schools that were struggling, just constantly throwing things at them. And everybody was looking for the magic answer.

And somebody in a school would say, oh, I've got this, this works. And somebody else would say in another school, I've got this and this works. And we were putting them together as though that had to be the recipe, that you had to use those skills, those techniques, those systems. And it did it. It created massive change and some real positives and some real improvement.

But I was just struck, but, well, if we'd done something different, would we have got the same success? Actually, was it the tool or was it the way that people utilised them? And then I look back in my own educational career as, you know, when I'd been a school leader and I was thinking, well, what was I wedded to? What did I think was really important?

What did I think the magic answers were? And you look at those 10, 15 years on and you think, were they? Were they? Was that the solution?

And then I can always remember somebody telling me the story, a piece of research, but done by some management accountants back in the 90s. And they were looking at the first set of outstanding schools. So, gradings had come in, offstead, you know, the British system of judging schools, whether they're outstanding, good, etc. There were multiple scales. Now it's just four for our international listeners.

British schools are just graded as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate, which is quite a blunt tool and many in Britain don't like it at all. So this piece of research was done in the 90s about high-performing outstanding schools. And they went into them and said, what have they got in common? What's the thing that they've all got?

And at the end of the research of all these schools, the thing that they had in common was they all had hot plants in reception. So you can imagine, can't you, schools going out, buying a load of pot plants from the local garden centre, and that was the trick to making schools outstanding. Now, you've laughed automatically, Shane. We all laugh because it's just ridiculous, isn't it?

It's just ridiculous. But that's an example of a silver bullet. That's an example of somebody copying something and just thinking that will make the difference. So that was where the No Silver Bullets title came from.

What I'm trying to say, and in that first book, Day in, Day Out, School Improvement, what we're saying was, there aren't magic answers, there aren't big things that will make a difference to your school, but actually there's maybe loads of little things that you can do, loads of little things day in, day out, and that's what I created. I created a list of all the little things that I'd done that had worked over time. I wasn't saying you had to do all of them. I wasn't saying they wouldn't have said the right things.

I was saying that they'd worked for me and they'd worked in schools that I'd worked in. So it started off as a list of 60 things that I was talking about when I went into schools. And in the spirit of openness, I just thought I'd share them. Here they are. This is what I'm suggesting.

I have the luxury of going into 35 schools and then I went into another 16 schools and then I went into another 25 schools. I had this luxury of going into all these schools. And let's be honest, what we do is education lists, we steal the best things that we see, don't we? That's what we always do.

And I just wanted to share the fab things that I was seeing. So that was where no silver bullets came from and that was the way that I began to approach it, Shane. Thank you so much, Paul. And I really like how you frame this because it really strikes me this whole, this is what works for me.

You've said, so you're sharing things here in your book. This is what worked for me. But what you're not saying is this is the silver bullet. That's going to work with you exactly as it is.

And I think that's, there's something that I felt very strongly throughout my career as well is that sometimes I can get hooked onto something that has worked really well for me in the past and quickly jump to assuming this will work well for you. And I think interestingly, like how I learned it, Paul, in my previous role, I was head of teaching development across a group of schools as well. With that comes a sense of responsibility to make these positive changes. But it also comes with that sometimes I think when you're a leader, you can feel that there's an expectation to use what's worked well for you before because that might have been why you got the job in the first place.

You've had success elsewhere. So in a way, the system encourages us to go and recycle those old things. And I remember a big bit of learning that I had was when I was working with schools and we were looking at English Curriculum Review at the time and I was designing that was my background in English and I felt very confident. I worked really well in English language acquisition before and I felt like I knew how to do this.

I've done it before. So I know how to do this. Follow my step. And I put together a big guidance, a hundred pages of guidance I remember, like, you know, really detailed.

This is how you do it step by step. And for a couple of schools, they were really on board and worked and I thought, this is great. And I remember one school saying, Shane, our teachers come from slightly different demographic. Most of them are newly qualified teachers in our school.

I don't think they've got the mental models to be able to just do what you're asking. And I remember at first I felt quite, but this is the way. This is how you've got to do it because it's the way I know. And it actually took a lot of collaboration with the school and a bit of humility to take a step back and realize we needed a different approach for that school and they could get there in a different route.

And it ended up becoming one of our most successful schools in the group, doing something that I didn't design. But it really strikes me to that idea of silver bullets. I think, although the example you give about the plants is almost like laughable and quite funny, and I would never do that. As a leader, it's so easy to fall into the idea of giving these silver bullets to school, don't you think?

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that what works worked in an environment and worked because of the history of the environment. And I see this a lot with new leaders. They've brought about change and it's been really successful.

But that's because they built those relationships with those colleagues, and those colleagues trusted them. They'd seen them be great teachers or great deputy heads or great head teachers. And people thought, yeah, I understand this. I know this person gets success.

They then take that into a different organization. And they haven't got all that, I suppose, almost cultural capital, isn't it? It's not been built up. People are wary and are distrustful and have heard things about them, both good and bad.

And they try and do what they did in the last organization. And because they hadn't built those relationships, they didn't understand the context properly. You'd lose people along the way, wouldn't you? So the methods might have been right.

They just needed to be delivering in a different time scale and spend that time building the relationships with people to start off with. I'm sure that must have been something that was really important to you when you were not just moving across one town to the next, but country to country and moving to those schools. People have heard of, well, this is Shane. Shane is great at this.

There's pressure, there's responsibility. And you're in a rush, aren't you? There's this thing that sits there, children only have one chance. Children only have one chance.

I've got to get it right. I've got to move it forwards. But actually, it's that danger, isn't it? We rush and it ends up taking us longer because we have to retreat.

We have to go backwards. We have to start again. And it's the tortoise and the hare, isn't it? Take your time. Bring people with you.

It might feel slow to start off with, but you go further. What's that famous phrase, isn't it? If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I've probably got the word slightly wrong, but that idea, isn't it? Take your time, work together, and we'll get further. I like that. I'm wondering, though, like, why that can sometimes not be so palatable.

I'm thinking, for me, it's coming up to a month. This is probably one of my busiest months of the year, going to schools, doing a lot of inductions. I've been booked in. Shane, come in and work with our leaders on this.

Do this program. Do this. It's the start of the year. Let's get going.

And a lot of the pre-conversations I'm having to have is a lot of schools have been asking me for a pre-packaged thing. A pre-packaged, just deliver your middle leadership program, or deliver your language development. I want it as it is, because that's worked for you. And I've had to, with all the schools, go back and go, yeah, but I need to know about your context.

And actually, this is just going to be a start of a conversation. And how are you going to develop it after we've talked? But I do get a sense that sometimes it's not just the person implementing the silver bullet, that's the issue. Sometimes people are wanting silver bullets from the other side.

There's like a craving for this in education. Oh, 100%. There is, isn't there? And we see that at all levels.

I mean, the second book came about following that train of thought in some ways. I was working with a school that had real challenging behaviors. It was in a tough urban area. The real challenge had been struggling.

And schools that struggle over time, the behavior gets worse and worse. And we've all seen it, haven't we? Yes. New head teacher in post.

And a very well-meaning individual said, right, we've got to improve behavior. And she's like, I just don't know where to start. I feel as I've done everything, it's not worked. And the well-meaning individual gave them my first book and said, 25 ideas for behavior there. Do them all.

No. Just no, no. And it was really well-meaning. And the heart was in the right place.

But everybody wants something quickly. It's the culture we live in at the moment. It's the quick fix. We all want to go to the gym, don't we?

And after half an hour, look like Summer Donnis. And, you know, we all want to pick up a running book. And suddenly I couldn't run the marathon in under four hours. That's what we're all looking for, aren't we?

And we're not prepared to necessarily put in the time and put in the foundations and think things through beforehand. And I think that that's almost one of the most important things that we can do in the work that you're doing, Shane, because you're working with different schools. You're not employed there on a day-by-day basis. And with your confidence of seeing so many schools, it's okay to take your time.

I do that a lot with the school leaders I work with. They might need to make deep-seated changes by trying to give them license to take your time. As long as they're making steps and it's well planned out, you know, and they've done what I call planning with empathy, it's okay to take your time. And there was one school leader that I was working with from Christmas.

It's a really tiny school, but tiny schools are great because you can improve them really quickly, but also they can deteriorate really quickly because a few people going off alignment just means you get far apart. And it would have been really easy with that head teacher in January to just write them a big list of everything that I thought they needed to do. And it would have been over-faced. And they were really keen and enthusiastic and they would have tried to do everything and burnt themselves out in January.

So instead, I did a little bit of the, well, we need to improve these big areas. Do you mind if I just tell you the first three or four things that I think you should do and have a discussion with me about those? Do you agree? Yes, but I'd quite like to change that one.

Right, that's fine. Take those three or four things, go away and work on them, and I'll come back in two weeks' time and we'll see how we're getting on. And then once we've done those, can we now do some more little things? And I gave feedback to the staff as well.

I would say to the staff, brilliant, that's great. Love the way you've done that. I've given your head teacher a couple more things to work on. So over the course of six months, they did loads, but they did them in a really nice, measured way that worked for them.

So they never felt over-faced. They never felt as though I can't do this. I mean, I suppose in some ways it was a little bit of spoon-feeding, but it worked and everything was conversed and discussed and, you know, it wasn't me telling, it was, we could do this. Do you agree? Are you happy with that?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I understand. Okay, brilliant. And I think that taking the time meant that the change in that school felt really embedded six months later. It felt as though it was going to be sustainable.

It didn't feel as though it was a set of changes that would disappear as quickly as we put them in. We built that brick wall. We put the foundations in. We interlocked what we were doing, so they all held each other up.

So yes, giving people license, don't rush. Take your time. We can always get there. Let's make this improvement sustainable.

What I'm really hearing is, for sustainable change, it's about small steps, don't consistently, you know, bit by bit, not overwhelming. But also what I was really hearing, and what you were saying, is that when you worked with the school, you were offering rather than telling as well. There was an offer of what could be done, and there was agency on their part to decide on what they're going to take forward. Almost a coaching style approach, I guess, if you like.

It's that kind of approach. I'm wondering though, is there ever a scenario where there are certain silver bullets or maybe they're not silver, but there are certain absolute go-tos that could be lifted and shifted, or however you might see it described. You know, are you saying there's no scenario for that, or is there sometimes where it's still useful? I think sometimes it can be around timing.

If the colleagues in the school know something needs to be done quickly and everyone's signed up to that speed, sometimes it can be a lack of capacity. You know, writing curriculums takes time, doesn't it? And actually sometimes it can be an understanding that we haven't got the time to write something from first principles. We haven't got the capacity.

Okay, well, what's really good that's out there? We'll have to adapt it. We'll have to make it fit our environment. And I think that that is needed sometimes.

We've all done that. Certainly, you know, kind of in Britain, there's lots of math schemes out there. Lots of brilliant math schemes, whether it's in primary or secondary. And actually, most of them are of a high standard.

They do slightly different things, but it almost would be obtuse to try and write your own maths curriculum from scratch. That would take ages. So I don't believe any of them's a silver bullet, but I believe that buying one that you feel confident in, because you like it, you like it style, your staff like it style, buy that and spend time implementing it really carefully. I think that is the approach to go.

I've just been starting work for a tiny school. You're not going to believe how big this is, Shane. It's got two classes. It's a two class primary school.

So in one class, there are three year groups, so five to seven year olds. And in the other class, there are eight to 11 year olds, four year groups. Now, it shrunk in size. The curriculum's not very good.

There's two teachers. To ask them to write a whole curriculum would be really tough. So I found another school in the locality that's got the same structure. And I've said to their head teacher, can we borrow your curriculum?

And I've said to teachers, are you happy with us borrowing this curriculum? Just that work for you, but it's going to save you loads of time. And you can share ideas with the other two teachers delivering it. So they're working together using that curriculum.

But I've not enforced it. I've said, this is an option. Are you happy with this? Yes, that's great.

That will save us time. There'll be other solutions out there that would work just as well. That's just the one that's closest to hand. And we can get people talking to each other.

So that's a bit of a silver bullet. But it's around we need to do it quickly. We haven't got the capacity to try and do that on our own. Let's get those teachers focusing on how they work with those individual children delivering that curriculum that that other school's written.

This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. The ICA have been around for about 30 years now championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools. And what I really love is that right at their core is the model for improving learning. This is a model focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours.

If you're interested, head over to internationalcurriculum.com. It's almost like there's a bit of a pendulum that you can see in education that sometimes we go from full autonomy in terms of starting from scratch. And actually, you know, even just 10 years ago when I was teaching, working in a primary school, there was a relentless thing of starting everything from scratch.

And it almost felt like we were re-planning every year. And that was seen as the right thing to do because it would be personalised, it would be right for the students. You know, it was almost like burn the textbook kind of phase that we went through in education. And of course, the pendulum swings again.

And of course, before we maybe had textbooks where teachers, certainly when I first started teaching, I remember I'm a maths teacher who would just page by page go through the year with the textbook. But Offstead weren't too happy with that when they came around. But there's pendulum swings. And I feel like at the minute we might be swinging again back to kind of standardisation a little bit in some ways.

Like you hear about schools, for example, interpreting cognitive science practice like, you know, you must start every lesson with a retrieval quiz and this kind of thing. So it's almost like the pendulum. But what I like about how you're saying is, and I think we're just not very comfortable settling in that middle point, right? Where we should absolutely be drawing on the wealth of stuff that's available.

It's daft to start from scratch. But you have to do something with that. You have to interrogate it, ask really good questions of the materials that you're using, and then contextualise it and constantly update it, I guess, is where we should be at. For some reason, though, I guess the other two sides of the pendulum seem a lot more attractive.

And one of the things that I really like a lot in individual schools is trying to find some level of consistency. So you don't have to be consistent with another school, but within your own school, you've got your way of working, you've agreed that, and everyone understands it, and it's built up over time. You know, I love the book called Legacy about the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, where they've built up their way of doing things, and everyone knows these are our rules. The one that I remember is sweep the sheds.

You know, at the end of practice, the players have to sweep out the changing rooms, even though they're kind of world-class rugby players. But that's their way forward. That's what they've agreed to do. That's their level of consistency.

You wouldn't just take that into another team and expect everybody to do it. They've built that up themselves. And I think that that's what we should be doing in schools. We should be finding our consistency in our school so that we've agreed it. It's built up over time.

It's come from the history, it's come from the culture, and everyone can get behind that. And I think that, in my view, I think children feel happier with that as well. Children don't like the grey areas. They don't like going from one classroom to the next and being pinballed around.

They might not say it, but lots of our children, they're anxious, they're wary. They like to know what they're going to get. I go into this classroom, this is what happens. I feel confident. I can be myself.

They don't want to walk into a classroom and think, oh, this is completely different to the geography classroom I was in last. This teacher's got completely different rules. And even worse is the teacher that behaviour changes on a day-by-day basis. And we find that with leaders, don't we?

Those leaders who, one day, they're giving you a hug, and the next day, they'll barely talk to you. It makes our jobs impossible. And it's the same for the children with their teachers, isn't it? Let's try and build that consistency in our organisation.

I think that is really powerful. I agree. And I really like your example with Rugby, which is one that you brought to life in your book as well. At the beginning of your book, you kind of frame that as a context for diving into your framework, if you like.

I wonder if we might touch on this framework. So the book Heart and Soul of School Improvement, you've got your own cycle where you talk about evaluating with honesty, planning with empathy, execute with confidence, and reviewing with humility. This is kind of how you've broken up your book. So could you talk a little bit about where a school leader might start with this kind of no silver bullets approach?

Yeah, so I was trying to make the reference that I think school improvement is heart as well as head, and head's heart of soul. We put so much emotion into our schools, and we need to rely on that. So the idea being that the first thing we need to do when we go into any school is evaluate, but evaluate with honesty. We have preconceived ideas.

We have thoughts about the school. And within that evaluative honesty, it doesn't matter how challenging the school is. There's always good within it. And I think that's something that some leaders get wrong.

It's no, it's all bad. We need to change everything. So in that evaluative honesty, the honest thing is there is some great practice there. What we've got to do as leaders is unearth it and polish it and shine it.

So that was my starting point, that evaluative honesty. And then it's all about a plan, isn't it? What is the plan? What's the time?

What's within the plan? But also, and this is back to the silver bullets idea, you have to plan with empathy. You have to understand the context of the school. You have to understand where they are, the challenges, and the plan you use in one school might change in another school because of all that context.

And we have both seen people walk into a school, open up a laptop, pull out the school improvement plan that they used in the school last week and just basically replace the names. That's not right, is it? That's not being empathetic. That's not understanding the speed of the journey.

It's not understanding the staff. So there's no beautiful template. There's no a plan must have to have this. It's what works for you and what works with your context.

And I think if you really work empathetically with your staff and talk to them about timing and talk to them about the changes that we need, then what we're looking for is teachers being confident when they're teaching. And that's that execute with confidence. We want everybody to be confident. We want people to walk into their classrooms thinking, I can do this.

I am going to teach a great lesson. We want pastoral leaders walking into assemblies thinking, this assembly is going to be great. This is going to make a difference to the children. I don't think we do enough of that in our schools.

I don't think we do enough of building people's confidence. I would love to see more people walking out of that staff room with a smile on their face thinking, I'm lucky. I'm privileged to spend the next hour with these 30 children. And I think as leaders, we've got to talk about it in that way.

This is a privilege. I think you're great. Go on, be confident, teach that great lesson that I know you can deliver. And then it's that reviewing with humility.

And I think, again, it's easy to review with criticism, but I think as leaders, we have to review with humility and accept that if it's not gone right, then part of that is us. We've got to be humble about that. And I think due to the high stakes world we live in, people are almost worried about being humble. They're worried about showing their humility.

They're worried about, you know, in the Brené Brown world of, you know, putting the shield down, you know, taking the armour off. And I think that we've got to do that because that's the way we'll build the leaders of tomorrow. That's the way we'll build the right leaders of tomorrow. And being honest and saying, you know, I'm in my 50s.

I've been in education a long time. I don't get it right. I don't always get it right. I sat with a head teacher on Friday who's just got to the end of their first year of headship.

He'd been an acting head with me in another school, done his first year of headship, and we just sat down and chatted. And I'll say, oh, I'm doing this at the moment, but I don't think it's right. I need to alter this or I've done this, and I think maybe I should have done this differently. It's that being humble.

And I'm hoping that by sharing where I don't always get it right, that will give him confidence to think, hmm, I don't have to be perfect. I just try and I try and do what I do and in the right way. So that's that review with humility. And then just start in a cycle around again and just keep going around.

And you might use that cycle over a term. It might be over a year. Some people do improvement plans over three or four years. Some people are working in a very small school.

Some people are working in an organization of 20, 30 schools. But I think if we build in the emotion, build that in, it's a people job, isn't it? That's what it is. It's not purely transactional.

It's not a science. We have to use our emotional intelligence. We have to bring people with us. And I think if we talk in that way, we've got more chance of bringing those people with us and making that sustainable change that we all crave.

It's a people job. This is kind of what I really hear looking at your cycle. You know, Paul, I'm currently working in the area of organizational development coaching. And, you know, we look at change models as well.

We've been looking at a lot. The construct of it that we can get obsessed with is that evaluate, plan, execute, review. What I love about yours is you've put the people into the model, which is if we go all the way back to where we started this conversation, you said it's about relationships. And these things are kind of our groundwork.

So it's not just evaluating where you're at, but it's evaluating with honesty, which is linking to that humility at the end. And I love planning with empathy. Empathy is to what the current reality is. Empathy is to what the team are currently feeling they can do and in what time scale.

And what resonates with me the most is especially at that execution stage, the word confidence really, really stood out to me because I think it's something that a lot of teachers, a lot of leaders, even a lot of parents of just wider school community can be lacking a lot at the minute is confidence. Like, what should I be doing? Am I doing this right? And there are a lot of ways you can look at yourself and think you are doing it wrong at the minute.

Gosh, if I just analyzed myself under a lot of metrics, I could feel pretty terrible about my practice at the minute, and there will be a million ways for me to learn how wrong I am. Yet we're in a social science. We're in this beautifully complex world of educating young people and working with adults. So we should be able to have a bit of confidence in ourselves and we should, when we're executing, not just be following steps, but actually delivering with some confidence.

I really love the human at the heart of your model, Paul, and I'm so thankful that you put this together. Thank you. And great to have the opportunity to share and say there is a way of doing things. You know, let's do things in the right way, do the right things in the right way, and let's build people up, not knock them down.

And that's how we can create great schools and produce a brilliant education for the amazing young people that we all work with because that's what it's about, isn't it? It's about those young people and then progressing, making the best of themselves and going out into the great big world and doing fantastic things. Absolutely. Paul, I'm going to throw in a challenge question now because you just said it's about doing the right things in the right way.

That just got me thinking. Is it possible sometimes, you know, in the way you've talked about before, is that we might be doing some of the right things like good things, but in the wrong way, and therefore our implementation doesn't work. I wonder if sometimes we can do the not so right things. I'm not going to say wrong things, but doing them in the right way by being communicative, by being empathetic.

I wonder if even not so great practices could actually work in that scenario. One hundred percent. I've got this great belief that teachers are amazing at making bad ideas work. And the amount of bad ideas that we've been given by government in the last 25, 30 years, and teachers have made them work.

And that's sometimes one of the things that, you know, I'm always really conscious of that. I suggest something. I suggest a process or, you know, and I build it in and teachers, you know, it works, but then I'm conscious of what have teachers made it work. It's almost like they've taken a car that's half built, put a load of sellotape on, and it manages to go forwards.

It's not a very good car. If you took the sellotape off, it would fall apart. So we do have to be really wary of that, especially as our leadership gets further away from the classroom. You know, I'm really conscious of that.

I can suggest something. But how long has it taken that teacher to implement it? How long has it taken them? How much time are they spending in the evenings?

Those teachers who remember British education back around 2010, there was something called APP, which was around assessing pupil performance at a very tiny level. It took staff ages. They were obsessing on APP grids rather than lessons. It was a good idea in some ways, but the way it was put together was poor.

Teachers made it work for a period of time, but it was unsustainable over time. And you say that to some teachers in Britain, and you'll see a bit of a sweat on their forehead, won't they? Don't bring those back. Please, please.

So, yeah, teachers can make bad ideas work. We have to be wary about that as leaders. And it speaks to that great adaptive expertise that our workforce of teachers have and are able to do. We can think of countless things that we know are maybe wrong at the time or whatever, you know, learning styles or these kind of different things that we had to do.

And many teachers made it work so well, and students still did really well under them. Yeah, I asked you that question because I think I agree with you. I think 100%, like, sometimes you get the culture right and you make a teacher feel really confident, and any structure, good structure you put in place is just in addition to them being amazing. Like, that's the foundation, right?

Definitely, definitely. Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you today. Thank you so much. Where can people find your book or your general thoughts on mine?

Yeah, so the two books are on the Big South American River. They're on Amazon, so No Silver Bullets, a day-in, day-out school improvement, is the list of ideas. I think for our international listeners, No Silver Bullets 2.0, Heart and Soul of School Improvement, which kind of talks through the process, talks through the process of school improvement that we were talking about in that previous answer.

I think that could be really interesting. The website is paulkanesworth.wordpress. I'm sure you'll put in the show notes.

Yes. And that's where I kind of blog occasionally, and then obviously the Twitter, at pkanesworth, so at pkanesworth is where people can find me. And, yeah, I'm always interested in hearing what other people are doing, you know, both in Britain and all over the world, and that's why it's a real delight to talk to you, Shane, that, you know, you're in China this morning, but we've got a link to North Linkingshire, so great to chat, me and Linkingshire, and you in kind of Shanghai on the second day of the school holidays in Britain. What a privilege it was chatting with Paul today.

I really took that Silver Bullets are not the solution, we all think, for school improvement. It's about the way people approach and utilize different strategies. And school improvement requires evaluating with honesty, planning with empathy, executing with confidence, and reviewing with humility. I love that framework.

I particularly love how Paul stressed the importance of building relationships and of developing confidence in teachers. This is absolutely crucial for sustainable change. And, of course, consistency within schools will create a sense of stability and confidence for both your teachers and your students. Global Ed Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning.

Thanks to my show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillaume Silver. Thank you so, so much for tuning in today, and if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week. If you want to improve learning in your school, don't forget to check out the ICA at internationalcurriculum.com.