Sir Michael Barber, an expert on schoolschooling, is one of the speakers at the informal meeting of education ministers in Göteborg. In one study, he noted that three things are of crucial importance to create successful schools: persuading the best students to choose the teaching profession, making teachers more effective in their teaching role and providing students with the right education based on their abilities. In his speech, Sir Michael Barber focused on the responsibility of head teachers in this work.

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What is your most important message to the ministers?

“School leadership is a crucial ingredient of successful school reform. The quality of the school leader makes a significant and measurable difference to student outcomes. Ministers should have a policy for recruiting and developing excellent school leaders. At EU level ministers should learn from each other about how they are approaching this task”, he said.

Michael Barber is a former adviser to the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on issues including education. Now he works as an expert partner in McKinsey’s Global Education Practice and is one of the authors of the study on which the education ministers’ discussions on Thursday were based.He is of the opinion that head teachers often spend too much time on administrative tasks and not enough on developing teachers.

“The most important focus of a school leader should be on the quality of teaching and doing everything he or she can to ensure that every lesson is a good lesson”, he said.

Barber believes that to develop staff, school leaders need to ensure a culture which has high expectations of teachers and students and which values conversation and discussion about how to improve teaching. He also consider it important to build time into the school week for collaborative planning of lessons so that teachers can give feedback on each other’s work and learn from one another. Teachers should also be given the opportunity to regularly see each other teach and to put in place processes that recognise good teaching and address poor teaching.

Speakers at the meeting (change videos using the plus-sign – more information under “i”)