Intelligent Accountability

Uncertainty is a fact of life. You can never know enough to make perfect decisions. Understanding this helps us balance an awareness of our tendency towards overconfidence with an acceptance of our own fallibility. The book discusses two opposed models of school improvement: the deficit model (which assumes problems are someone’s fault) and the surplus model (which assumes problems are unintended systemic flaws). By aligning ourselves to a surplus model we can create a system of Intelligent Accountability.The principles that make this possible are trust, accountability and fairness. While we thrive when trusted, unless someone cares about – and is holding us to account – for what we do, we’re unlikely to be our best. Some teachers deserve more trust and require less scrutiny than others, but in order to satisfy the demands of equality we end up treating all teachers as equally untrustworthy. The more we trust teachers, the more autonomy they should be given. To pursue a system of fair inequality we must accept that autonomy must be earned.

“It is often cited that good is the enemy of excellence but what is excellence? Can one person's definition of excellence be another person's satisfactory? David challenges us to think hard, to think deep and to think in an evidence informed manner about how to help teachers to flourish, how to keep the core job of teaching the core job. Didau really challenges the reader to consider carefully how leaders can create a climate and culture that allows teachers to thrive. This is an excellent book. Want to challenge your long held views? Read it!”

-- Samuel Strickland Headeacher
For years education needed someone to explain what accountability actually is and how it can be more than a horrible punishment. This book delivers on that need, and then some.A magisterial sweep of research from psychology, sociology, and economics all with the aim of helping school leaders support genuine improvements in teaching as opposed to simply generating feel-good moments.Not just about accountability, this book looks deeply at what it means to be a moral, good and intelligent leader - an extraordinary read, thoroughly recommended. -- Laura McInerney Education journalist and co-founder of Teacher Tapp
This is a thoughtful book that will help school leaders to run better schools. It goes beyond the hero model of school leadership to get to the substance of school improvement. I recommend it to leaders at all stages in their careers. -- Stuart Lock CEO, Advantage Schools
What should we do if we find there’s evidence that outcomes for pupils are higher, by a margin, if they are in schools where their teachers experience high levels of collegiality? Well we don’t dismiss the evidence: instead, we take a hard look at the constituents that make collegiality a reality. And this is what ‘Intelligent Accountability’ sets out to do. It helps us to move beyond the pious, motherhood and apple statements of some ‘vision’ statements to the gritty detail of getting the work done. Didau gives us a compelling picture of what happens when clumsy accountability measures are exposed for their crude proxies of compliance; and when these are replaced with environments where professionals are likely to thrive. Spoiler alert: they have nothing to do with spreadsheets. The discussions arising from this thought-provoking book will help the sector move from the deficit model of school improvement to a surplus model. Highly recommended. -- Mary Myatt Education writer and adviser
Didau is at it again – with his signature blend of incisive analysis and productive philosophising – this time treating us to a new lens with which to examine and improve leadership in schools. -- Peps Mccrea Dean of Ambition Institute and Author of the High Impact Teaching series

After 15 years teaching in UK state schools, David Didau is now a freelance trainer, education consultant, conference speaker, provocateur and writer.His award-winning blog, The Learning Spy, is one of most influential education blogs in the world and he is also the author of the best-selling books The Secret of Literacy, What If Everything You Knew About Education Was Wrong? and Making Kids Cleverer.He also co-wrote What Every Teacher Needs To Know About Psychology with Nick Rose.His training has been described variously as being “like bottled lightning”, “throwing a grenade into a still pond” and “quite good”.

Uncertainty is a fact of life. You can never know enough to make perfect decisions. Understanding this helps us balance an awareness of our tendency towards overconfidence with an acceptance of our own fallibility. The book discusses two opposed models of school improvement: the deficit model (which assumes problems are someone's fault) and the surplus model (which assumes problems are unintended systemic flaws). By aligning ourselves to a surplus model we can create a system of Intelligent Accountability. The principles that make this possible are trust, accountability and fairness. While we thrive when trusted, unless someone cares about - and is holding us to account - for what we do, we're unlikely to be our best. Some teachers deserve more trust and require less scrutiny than others, but in order to satisfy the demands of equality we end up treating all teachers as equally untrustworthy. The more we trust teachers, the more autonomy they should be given. To pursue a system of fair inequality we must accept that autonomy must be earned.

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