A School's Heirarchy of Needs

'A School's Hierarchy of Needs': A model for identifying school improvement priorities

David Bailey FCCT, 19 Feb 2025

During the development of the project that is now known as EnlightenEd Leadership, there was often a complex school improvement situation to resolve. Like most complex problems, there are multiple ways to approach the problem, however some approaches tend to work more often than others.

At the time, the approach I took was inspired by the research by Hill et al. (2016) (1). They had researched different approaches to leadership and how some had been more successful than others when turning around failing schools. At around the same time, I read an interview piece from the lead researcher by Schools Week (2), reminding me about the ethical consideration of excluding pupils. Although it is possible to improve a school more rapidly through higher levels of exclusion, it has adverse consequences. Not only is it more likely to damage the lives of the pupils who are excluded, it also doesn't resolve the problem in the long term.

Piecing this together with other research around culture, such as that by Robinson, Hohepa & Lloyd (2009) (3) and Fullan & Boyle (2010) (4), it was clear that school leaders should have a small number of priorities and that these priorities should also be to tackle the issues in the best order.

This resulted in a 'School's Hierarchy of Needs'. This model is inspired by the approach taken by Maslow (5) and his hierarchy of needs for individuals. The 'needs' must be met from the bottom upwards for it be possible to tackle those in layers above sustainably. For example, tackling teaching and learning will only be effective if the children are in the classroom to learn (attendance) and are behaving in a way that engages with the learning (behaviour).

The model is a deliberate over-simplification to give a 'rule of thumb'. It is unlikely that any one problem will be tackled in isolation in this way, for example, improving the teaching and learning, might in the long term improve pupil motivation to attend school and therefore their attendance might rise. However, it is important to consider the attendance issue first and plan a strategy to improve rather than simply ploughing ahead and trying to improve the classroom practice in isolation. The latter approach is likely to lead to a failure to implement successfully as the underlying issues have not been fully resolved. Failed implementation is a significant cause of additional, unnecessary workload in schools. As discussed at the recent Schools North East Curriculum Conference, this is something to consider in light of the current curriculum and assessment review

This approach is embedded into the EnlightenEd Leadership model and helps guide leaders to choose their priorities carefully.

References:

Hill et al (2016) How to turn around a failing School. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2016/08/how-to-turn-around-a-failing-school
Phillips, N (2016) The 6 secrets of school turnarounds as revealed by study of 160 academies. Schools Week. Available at: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/the-6-secrets-of-school-turnarounds-as-revealed-by-study-of-160-academies/
Robinson, V. Hohepa, M. & Lloyd, C. (2009) School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying What Works and Why Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration - Executive Summary. New Zealand Ministry of Education. Available at: https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/60181/1-Forewords-updated-2015.pdf
Fullan, M & Boyle, A (2010) Reflections on the Change Leadership Landscape. The National College. Available at: https://michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Untitled_Document_9.pdf
Maslow, Abraham H. (1943). "A theory of human motivation". Psychological Review. 50 (4): 370–396. Available at: https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm

This article was originally published on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/schools-hierarchy-needs-model-identifying-school-bailey-npqel-fcct-cci0e