When the mayor of Vitacura, a leafy suburb of Chile's capital Santiago, gave all schools the choice of becoming self-governing, only one took up the challenge. It meant teachers giving up their job security, protected in employment law, to run the school themselves. At Maria Luisa Bombal, a school with 510 pupils, the teachers voted for change and set up in business as governors and partners in the running of their own school. Their objective is to raise the standard of teaching. 'Our experience has been positive,' said Maria Leticia Obando, head of English. 'There is an internal level of quality control that has led to excellent performance.' The radical experiment has achieved impressive results and earned a host of accolades. Maria Luisa Bombal is the top-scoring school in its commune at fourth and eighth grade. It has received the Academic Excellence Award of the Ministry of Education four times, and was one of the first schools to be awarded a certificate of quality in education management by Fundacion Chile. Brian Caldwell, a global expert on the transformation of schools, has singled it out in his new book Raising the Stakes as an example of how the management of schools can be reorganised to transform achievement. 'Everything is geared to providing the best possible outcomes for all students,' he said. And this offers an example of how many schools could be run in 10 to 20 years' time, if teachers were given the freedom to turn schools into communities of learning for staff and pupils alike. 'The academic results so far have proven that the path we are following to become a high-quality school is the right one,' said the principal, Nilda Sotelo Sorribes, 61, who has 43 years of teaching experience. 'But it is one that requires continuous evaluation and revisions.' Although situated in an expensive, fashionable area, one in two of Maria Luisa Bombal's pupils are eligible for free school meals, a measure of socio-economic disadvantage. When the teachers took over the governing body in 2002, they set out to offer parents a school that was equal to or better than any other in the local authority. This was a challenge, given that all but three of the 21 local schools were privately owned. They started by putting together a community-oriented school plan, central to which was improving teachers' motivation and capability. 'Our teachers body is expected to continuously imagine the changes needed to respond to parents' and students' expectations, and continuously improve,' said Ms Sotelo. 'This has generated a dynamic, ever-better management strategy.' The emphasis in the 14-grade school, which caters for four to 18 year-olds, is on the learning process. Although 70 per cent of time is taken up by the national curriculum, the rest of the day has been revamped to include developing new skills and abilities, and the use of interactive learning methods. For instance it now includes the early teaching of English, art, ICT, maths and skills for language acquisition. 'We have also included more hours for sport and physical expression, including swimming, hockey, tennis, basketball, volleyball and football,' Ms Sotelo said. 'The idea is to offer learning areas that promote the different forms of intelligence found in our students.' The school also has more budgetary freedom than other state schools. This has resulted in important technological investment in projectors, computers, electronic whiteboards, software and the internet, all of which are now used interactively. Every year study plans are evaluated with student, parent and teacher participation to ensure the curriculum meets their needs. A key strategy has been the use of formative assessment and continuous professional development to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning. Ms Sotelo began with a professional diagnosis of each teacher's strengths and weaknesses in relation to the needs of the school's strategic plan, and sent them on professional development courses to address the gaps and to return to train their peers. Students' learning in maths, language, English, science and history is measured each November by an external firm. The results are shared with parents and staff, and are used to design action plans to improve areas where achievement is under 70 per cent. Poor performing students attend remedial workshops. The school hires external specialists to evaluate the skills of early grade pupils in their mother tongue and in maths. It has also borrowed from the work of psychologists such as RobertJ Marzano and Reuven Feuerstein to develop incentives to raise the students' ability to reason. The attempt to involve parents more is a bold step in Chile. 'It's a real problem, especially where children come from less advantaged backgrounds,' said Francoise Delannoy, an international education consultant who frequently visits the school. 'In many schools teachers don't have the right attitude. Parents are called in once a year and teachers talk to them in a superior tone, which can intimidate less educated parents. Here they are bending over backwards to involve the parents, contacting them when there is a problem with the child and listening to them.' Mr Caldwell praises the school for being 'highly strategic' in the way it works, producing its own models for curriculum planning and quality assurance, including performance evaluation of teachers. The teachers' implementation of action and curricular plans is monitored in classroom lessons. Staff are trained in instructional design, such as how to pick a piece of the curriculum, create support material and use the most relevant forms of assessment of teaching and learning. 'That means asking ourselves what am I going to teach? What for? How will I do it, considering my students' stage of psychological development and starting point?' said Ms Sotelo. To make the best use of teachers' time, non-teaching services are farmed out to external specialists, whether it is legal work, accounting, security or cleaning, to allow staff to concentrate on the education of the children. The 32 teachers, all partners in the business, and other staff are given financial bonuses if they achieve results. 'Heads of departments now have to inform the Teachers Council of their plans, projects and results. We have introduced performance evaluations. For every goal met, there is also an economic incentive,' Ms Sotelo said. At the same time, the hierarchy is not rigidly adhered to. If particular teachers' skills are needed for a particular project, they are asked to take up the reins, regardless of their position in the school. A culture of learning and sharing has been created among teachers. School leaders contract professional development services to plug particular gaps in knowledge but teachers can also request development themselves. Staff with exceptional talents can apply for training to further enhance their skills. Every teacher spends two hours a week being trained by a specialist. 'We also organise professional development days outside the school, in other cities, with specialised firms to develop team work, communication, social and people skills and other areas,' said Ms Sotelo. Staff also sit in on each other's classes to learn from their peers. A global report by McKinsey and Company, published in 2007, based on analysis of school performance in 25 countries, including 10 of the top performers, concluded that three things matter most in the effort to improve education: getting the right people to become teachers, developing them into effective instructors, ensuring the system is able to provide the best possible instruction for each child. This Chilean school is systematically addressing the latter two points. Ms Delannoy, who until recently headed iNet Chile, a network of schools seeking to transform themselves, said the intellectual capital of the school was constantly being improved. 'I have seen teachers gaining confidence, feeling more comfortable working together and being observed, and being able to talk about what they see and relate it to broader knowledge about teaching and learning,' she said. 'It's definitely ahead of its time by Chilean standards.' Some of the results have been impressive. For instance the marks of Maria Luisa Bombal 4th grade pupils (10-year-olds) in both maths and general science rose from 11 per cent to 20 per cent above national average in the first four years of teacher management. (Improvement in Spanish was more modest, rising from 19 per cent to 21 per cent above average.) Seventy two per cent of pupils who complete secondary level go on to university. Ms Obando believes a large part of that is down to the stake that staff now have in the success of the school. 'The fundamental difference between ours and a regular public school is the teachers have a personal investment in the school and the success of its students. We feel a greater sense of responsibility for the well-being of the school and the students.' Raising the Stakes: From Improvement to Transformation in the Reform of Schools, by Brian J Caldwell and Jim M Spinks, (2008) Routledge.
