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The Ealing Professional Learning Community

The Ealing Professional Learning Community is a broad-based community of all secondary schools in Ealing, for more information, click on a section below:

The PLC is a community of teachers from all the secondary schools in Ealing who meet together to spend time debating and deliberating on a collective understanding of good teaching and learning.

Each school is invited to send a ‘vertical team’ a team of teachers (and sometimes an LSA) who represent senior, middle and classroom levels of leadership in their school.

There are three workshops (two-hours long and hosted by different schools) which focus on different elements of teaching and learning. All members are invited to attend these.

Along side the three workshops each school hosts a ‘learning review’ where they open their school to a team of PLC members who peer review an element of teaching and learning chosen by the school.  Learning reviews are undertaken with a appreciative and collegial approach, and they build trust and relationships across schools.

The Professional learning Community is ultimately about three things (Professionalism, Learning and Community, as you might expect):

There are more detailed aims that we have articulated together as a community:

The overarching aim of the PLC is ‘ to share our learning experiences and work together to generate new knowledge to improve learning in our schools’.  

Each year members choose 3 key focuses for the following year, for 2011-12 the PLC will focus on ‘Developing our use of data within learning reviews’, ‘Improving the scope of the impact WITHIN schools’ and ‘To begin to involve other stakeholders; such as governors or schools outside of Ealing’.

We also have a set of core principals, key beliefs that give strength and collegiality to our work.  These core convictions are:

Building professionalism:
Use of enquiry: We believe that we should ground our practices in our own and others’ enquiry-led research; using tools such as learning reviews and reflecting on the findings and the process.

Teachers as leaders: We believe that we are the people closest to the problems we face and are best placed to pioneer our own solutions through reflecting on our practices with (vertical teams of) stakeholders.

Building learning:
Active and applied: We believe that people learn best when they have the opportunity to learn through contextualised experiences; where theory can be applied to a context and where contexts are relevant. This motivates and engages us to develop transferable skills.

Expandable mindsets: We believe that skills and attributes can be learned and developed. We can grow our intelligence, abilities and capacity for learning; these things are expandable.

Building community:
Community responsibility: As a community we are collectively responsible for one another’s learning and for the learning of all our students, not just those attending our individual schools. As a community we should work towards converging on a common understanding of the learning process.

93% of teachers who were members of the PLC from 2010-11 agreed that:
“The PLC has brought me to a better understanding of what good quality teaching and learning looks like”

78% agreed that: 
“The PLC has led to benefits for my students / learners at my school.”

76% agreed that: 
“The PLC has helped me and my colleagues to find new approaches to combat the barriers to success, using an informed, enquiry-led approach and educational research.”

Classroom teachers:
“This has given me vital CPD”
“It is rare in day-to-day teaching to have the opportunity to dicuss and debate teaching and learning – I thoroughly enjoyed these discussions.”
“It (the PLC) has helped me as a teacher immeasurably. I wish it was available to far more teachers – it is the most useful CPD I have ever had.”

Middle Leaders (HoDs, ASTs and HoYs):
 “A fantastic experience – lessons observed gave me great ideas for my own teaching.  I now take more risks in lessons and look forward to experimenting more with challenging lessons.”
 “The PLC has been an excellent source of CPD.”

Senior leaders:
 “I liked looking at the conditions to make change happen; discussions on leadership were interesting too.  I attended a very well organised learning review- the school was very open to feedback/findings – I took a lot away.”
“The learning reviews are a hugely appreciated, and much valued process tool – very worthwhile, giving a local perspective on key issues for our school.”
“The vertical teams are a great way to develop new leaders in our school.”

The Ealing PLC was conceptualised in a meeting in 2008 between the Assistant Director of School Effectiveness at Ealing Local Authority, an Ealing Deputy Head and an AST. The inspiration and the term ‘PLC’ came from the writing of Professor Louise Stoll. Simultaneously in 2008 a grass roots partnership between staff at two schools had begun to form, these two processes joined together to become the first, small scale Ealing PLC.

In the first year 6 schools in total were invited to form the PLC (9 responded and joined in the first year, 2008-9), in the subsequent year all secondary schools and academies were invited and joined (in total: 13 schools in 2009-10) and following this all special schools and the Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) were invited and joined, bringing membership up to 18 schools in 2010-11.

The Ealing PLC has also been influenced by the writing of David Cooperrider on Appeciative Inquiry, by Carol Dweck’s theory of ‘ Learning Mindsets’, and many others.

Recently the book ‘Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning’ by Elizabeth A. City, Richard F. Elmore, Sarah E. Fiarman, and Lee Teitel, has influenced the PLC’s work (following a presentation of the research on 13th June 2011 to the community) particularly in terms of impact measure of the success of the PLC.

Strategic decisions about the running of the PLC are made by the steering group. The steering group is made up of which ever member schools choose to volunteer themselves. Each school that volunteers staff to the steering group is asked to send their senior leader and middle leader to the meetings: which are half termly. Each year so far the steering group has consisted of 6-9 schools out of the 18 member schools.

Operational day-to-day decision and coordination of the PLC is undertaken by the Local Authority. Carrie Sharman is the PLC facilitator at the Local Authority and can be contacted on csharman@ealing.gov.uk, or by phone on (020) 8825 7549/07545 412 386.

Headteachers are sent an invitation for the following year in June/July. A sign-up sheet requests information on which staff have been nominated. This information is normally returned by the second week in September (this year’s deadline is Friday 16 September 2011).

Headteachers are given the following guidance when choosing their teams (this guidance was agreed by the PLC members of the previous year):

The main costs associated with the PLC are the wage of the LA-based facilitator, and the distributed cover costs when teachers attend learning reviews. 

Maintained schools in Ealing have agreed to fund the PLC collectively through pledging back some of their budgets.  This was agreed by schools forum. Maintained schools therefore do not pay a membership fee in addition to this funding.

There is a cost for Ealing academies, who can either choose to pay £3,000 to join the PLC, or sign up to the local authority’s ‘ support package’ in which the PLC is included.

The PLC is extending an invitation for special schools outside of Ealing to attend a learning review at an Ealing special school – this is in order to share our experiences in this specialised area of provision, and there is not cost attached to this for 2011-12.

External schools may wish to get a ‘flavour’ of the PLC by attending a learning review as an observer or coming along to a workshop as a ‘one off’.  There is no cost attached to this for 2011-12.

If schools or academies external to Ealing wish to join the PLC, they should contact the LA facilitator to discuss this.

For all queries please contact the PLC facilitator Carrie Sharman on csharman@ealing.gov.uk, or by phone on (020) 8825 7549/07545 412 386.

A virtual learning environment is used as a point of contact for all PLC members.  The VLE is on www.fronter.com/ealing and all Ealing PLC members will have a log in.

Key events are also communicated by email.  If you are a member please ensure that you contact the facilitator to ensure your correct email address on PLC records.

Anyone who does not have access to the VLE, who has lost their access or who wishes to obtain a specific date for a PLC event should contact the PLC facilitator Carrie Sharman on csharman@ealing.gov.uk, or by phone on (020) 8825 7549/07545 412 386.

For all queries relating to the PLC or for further information please contact the PLC facilitator Carrie Sharman on csharman@ealing.gov.uk, or by phone on (020) 8825 7549/07545 412 386.

The below guidance was developed to support staff who wish to use learning networks to improve outcomes for young people, either within or between schools and other organisations. Written by an LA working party it is largely based on our experiences facilitating the Ealing Professional Learning Community, the Northolt Learning Partnership and working with subject leaders and lead research practitioners.

Framework for setting up a learning network (pdf)

Email Carrie Sharman on csharman@ealing.gov.uk for further information.