Having a Core Purpose

#StartWithWhy #AdvantagingTheDisadvantaged #Strategy #Leadership

Every school has a set of documents that feed into the school's strategic development plan and often go by a different names:

• A mission statement

• A vision statement

• A values statement

A mission statement often describes the impact that the school wishes to have. What they want their students to be able to achieve.

A vision statement looks forward to the future. It projects where the leadership see the school fitting into this and the direction it wants to take the school.

A values statement outlines the principles the school stands for. It describes the types of behaviours you should see in the way it operates.

The thing that pulls all of these together are the CORE PURPOSE of the school. It is one of the reasons why a school's history is important (or why schools look to break with their traditions and modernise).

Simon Sinek's 'Start With Why' is a great reminder of the need to remember the core purpose and how to frame it. The example he provides of how Apple communicate their vision and customers buy in to what the brand represents before the products themselves. As school leaders, we should start with a core purpose; the strategy and provision should follow on from this.

Extract from my Leadership Learning Journal

Articulating your core purpose is no simple task. Yet starting with a simple statement of what your dream is provides a tangible start. Martin Luther King's famous 'I have a dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial is not a short speech but it describes a picture that can be imagined. It has a story and a narrative behind it. This is how I came up with my core purpose of 'Advantaging the Disadvantaged' as I have outlined in my featured blog. It provides a focus and steer in the things that I do. When my school ran an over-subscribed ski trip, the school policy was to draw the names of students out of a hat to allocate places. I asked them to give a guaranteed place to any Pupil Premium students who put their name down to go, the response I had was "But that wouldn't be fair. They'd have an advatantage." My response was a simple "Exactly!" Their families wouldn't be able to afford a ski holiday for the family and a school trip would be the only opportunity for those students to have the experience. To counter this disadvantage, the advantage is necessary. That's the narrative behind the core purpose.

Widening Access is one of our school priorities and 'Advantaging the Disadvantaged' is the benchmark for what we do.