Developing lean coaches to improve student outcomes

INTERVIEW - The Christleton Learning Trust, in the United Kingdom, is running several lean experiments in its three schools. We spoke with the CEO, who told us how coaching is supporting the transformation.

Roberto Priolo: Can you give us a brief summary of the lean journey at the Christleton Learning Trust, please?

Tony Lamberton: The Trust includes three schools: Christleton High School (which was featured in a previous Planet Lean article), Christleton Internation Studio, and Queen’s Park High School. Our journey began in September 2013, when we took part in a training course at Toyota to understand the lean process. The first time we applied the lessons learned was at Christleton High School, where we tried to increase our impact on the development of children with learning difficulties. We also applied lean techniques - with varying degrees of success, but always with a lot of learning - to improve the way we teach science and run our sports activities.

At the beginning of last month, we opened a new school - which we consider "the UK's first lean school." It is a unique environment: we removed all the hierarchy, paperwork, and back-office functions, designing curricula and activities with the students' needs always in mind (we see them as customers, not as products). Christleton International Studio offers an International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme and a Diploma Programme, the first school in the world to receive simultaneous approval to teach both programs.

Lean is also helping with the Trust's third school, which was going through a difficult time. We have already been working hard to improve it for a year, but it is really in the next 12 months that we will take the school to the level of achievement and performance it is capable of, as we pursue a rather difficult lean transformation.

So what began as an experiment at Christleton High School four years ago has now turned into a complete turnaround.

RP: You have a very effective coaching system at the Trust. How does it sustain the lean transformation?

TL: Coaching has worked on many levels for us. Our journey has aimed to move from instruction to coaching, which, in our minds, means empowering learners to carry knowledge forward (whether they are staff members who want to improve the way they communicate or the students themselves). This creates the circumstances for the individual to engage in deep learning.

At the new school, for example, each student has a personal coach, whom they meet once a week. Anyone can be a coach: we already have a trained core team, of course, but it will be great to see this team grow as we find more potential coaches, especially among the students, whom we can develop. IT is an excellent example: students are often much more fluent than teachers, so it is important for teachers to be open and humble enough to receive this training from their students. It is important that we create an environment where we learn together, which in turn leads to mutual respect.

RP: How do you identify potential coaches?

TL: This is where lean helps a lot, making coaching systematic and helping us focus on the problem to be solved. We have been very clear about the results we want, and we look for the technical talent fit that will allow us to get there, rather than relying on a traditional system for ranking coaches. Starting with the 17 staff members we have already trained, we look for people with the skills and knowledge we need to improve the area of the school we are focusing on at any given time. It all starts with knowing the problem we are trying to solve.

RP: What are the most significant results you have achieved using this coaching approach?

TL: We use three years of indicators showing academic improvements and changes in grades (compared to national trends) in the areas where we have adopted coaching. We have seen an improvement in students' attitudes toward learning and a significant reduction in the number of cases in which they fail, as well as improvements in exam grades.

RP: What is the biggest mistake you have made on your lean journey?

TL: Being impatient and not fully involving people in the process from the start. To win people's trust, I now realize we should have done more work at the beginning. We are still struggling with embedded cultural perceptions that people always tend to fall back on.

RP: In a recent column for PL, James Womack talked about a disconnect in the lean community between the early practitioners, who saw lean as a way to transform organizations, and a younger generation, who think all lean has to offer is the coaching of managers for localized improvements. Do you see this disconnect?

TL: I do. I have read a lot about Lean Startup, for example, and I think much of it is quite disconnected from the traditional idea of a lean transformation. Coaching is often used as a tool for quick fixes, whereas, in fact, we should strive to make it part of our culture. I see it as something that supports the lean transformation and the improvement process, not as an entity of its own.

RP: One last question, Tony. In your mind, what would a lean education system look like?

TL: It would be a system that truly understands and focuses on its main purpose of developing global citizens fully equipped to begin their working lives. That is why we have worked hard over the last three years to lay the strongest possible foundations for the new school: we hope to have a greater impact on young people by involving them in the process from the start. In the UK, we have a 500-year-old system that is totally unfit for purpose: there are many old entities whose purposes remain unknown to most of us. There is great work happening across the sector, but unfortunately we are still swimming against the tide.