A Programme for Nobody

Lee Crockett

I was working with two principals when the same literacy initiative arrived in both of their schools.

On paper, it was beautifully coherent: one programme, one sequence, one timeline and one set of evidence requirements. The purpose was difficult to contest. Strengthen foundational reading. Improve consistency. Ensure every learner receives effective instruction.

Then the programme encountered two actual schools.

One served a highly mobile community. Students arrived throughout the year carrying different languages, interrupted learning and uneven attendance. Teachers needed to establish trust quickly, assess what each learner understood and connect foundational instruction with significant language development.

The other served a stable community. Attendance was strong, families were highly engaged and most students arrived with secure language foundations. Staff shared established literacy practices and had reliable evidence that their current improvement work was producing results.

The same initiative arrived. The same responsibility applied. That shared responsibility called for two different responses.

In the first school, leaders had to account for mobility, disrupted attendance, language development, student entry points and the professional learning teachers would require. In the second, leaders had to integrate the initiative while protecting the richer work in fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, interpretation and writing that students were ready to deepen.

This is the seduction of one-size-fits-all reform. From a distance, uniformity can look like fairness. Up close, fairness depends upon judgement.

A programme created for everyone has encountered nobody yet.

It may be thoughtfully designed, grounded in evidence and supported by the best of intentions. Its educational value becomes real when it encounters particular learners, teachers, communities and organisational conditions.

This is where implementation becomes leadership.

When the programme meets the school

System-wide initiatives usually begin with a legitimate purpose. They aim to improve quality, reduce inequity, establish common expectations or ensure essential practice reaches every learner.

Consistency can protect important things. Learners deserve reliable access to curriculum. Families deserve dependable safeguarding standards. Teachers benefit from established knowledge, shared language and coherent guidance. Systems also require credible assurance that schools are fulfilling important responsibilities.

The leadership work begins when those shared expectations enter the life of a school.

Research into policy enactment describes schools as active interpreters of policy. Leaders and teachers translate external expectations through the histories, cultures, resources and communities of their schools. Implementation research reaches a similar conclusion: outcomes depend upon the intervention, the setting, the people involved and the conditions through which the work is enacted (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012; Century & Cassata, 2016).

International school leaders live this translation every day. They may work across host-country regulations, accreditation requirements, curriculum frameworks, governance expectations and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Their schools have different histories, staffing profiles, patterns of student mobility and relationships with families.

The work arrives in general form. The school receives it in particular conditions. Leadership connects the two.

The challenge begins when a common responsibility becomes attached to a single prescribed response. The programme gradually acquires the authority of the purpose it was designed to serve. Fidelity to the programme becomes evidence of seriousness. Adaptation begins to look like reluctance. Completion becomes easier to demonstrate than impact.

A method can then become more protected than the learners it was created to support.

Two kinds of work

Every educational initiative contains elements that benefit from consistency and elements whose quality depends upon responsiveness. I describe these as Protocol Work and Judgement Work.

Protocol Work remains substantially stable across settings. Variation may compromise safety, legality, fairness or reliability. Examination security, financial controls, privacy protections, emergency procedures and mandatory reporting obligations all contain significant Protocol Work. Clear expectations and consistent execution protect the purpose.

Judgement Work changes as it encounters people and circumstances. The professional must interpret what is happening before deciding how to respond. Several actions may be defensible, and adaptation is often how the work becomes effective.

Teaching is Judgement Work. So are instructional leadership, inclusion, student support, professional learning, culture-building and community engagement. Each contains protocols, yet their quality depends upon professionals reading the situation, weighing evidence and responding intelligently. Educational judgement is required because decisions involving purposes, people and circumstances extend beyond the reach of rules and technical competence alone (Biesta, 2015).

Standardise what must remain consistent. Protect judgement where context changes what good looks like.

A literacy initiative may appropriately establish essential content, an evidence-informed progression, common terminology and agreed assessment points. Leaders and teachers still need to determine pace, grouping, intensity, language support, intervention, staff development and the relationship between the initiative and the wider literacy programme.

The shared elements protect the entitlement. Professional judgement makes that entitlement meaningful for the learner.

This is how the two principals approached the literacy initiative. One school needed a common progression, stronger teacher knowledge and reliable processes for identifying learners requiring additional support. The initiative offered coherence the school needed, so the principal adopted it and created the capacity to implement it well.

The second school already had strong provision and secure outcomes for most learners. Its principal used assessment to identify students requiring further foundational support, preserved targeted instruction for them, and integrated the new requirements into a broader literacy programme already producing results.

One school adopted. The other adapted. Both honoured the intent. Both remained accountable for impact.

The gap between judgement and compliance

The Judgement-Compliance Gap opens when the professional judgement required by the work exceeds the discretion available to exercise it.

A system may begin with an important outcome, then prescribe the programme, sequence, timetable, documentation and evidence through which every school must pursue it. Adaptation may require special approval or carry professional risk. Evidence of implementation becomes highly visible. Accountability for the outcome remains with the school.

The leader carries the result while having progressively less influence over the conditions producing it.

This creates a form of pressure that workload measures struggle to capture. Workload pressure comes from volume: meetings, reports, deadlines, initiatives and operational demands. Complexity pressure comes from the interdependence inside each decision. Judgement pressure comes from being answerable for an outcome while having limited space to determine the most responsible pathway towards it.

Workload pressure calls for capacity. Complexity pressure calls for coherence. Judgement pressure calls for professional space.

This is the Sustainability Myth: the belief that leadership can remain sustainable while expectations continue to expand and the professional space required to interpret them continues to contract. Workload support, wellbeing and personal discipline all contribute to sustainability. Professional judgement determines whether leaders still have the capacity to lead.

Experienced leaders often hold the Judgement-Compliance Gap together quietly. They translate external demands, connect competing programmes, protect staff from duplication and adapt requirements to fit their communities. Their competence keeps the school functioning while concealing the amount of interpretation involved.

The organisation may appear to have strong systems when it is relying upon one strong person to absorb contradictions.

When that leader leaves, the school loses more than an individual. It loses the private interpretive system that had been creating coherence. External expectations arrive without translation, decisions begin to stall and people discover that organisational capacity was often personal compensation.

Sustainable leadership requires judgement to become visible, shared and practised across the organisation.

Return to the intent

I often ask leadership teams a question that sounds easier than it is:

What is this initiative trying to achieve?

The first response usually names the programme, framework or implementation requirement. So I ask again: what should become better, safer, stronger or more equitable because this work exists?

That second question changes the conversation.

A programme is a proposed means. The intent defines the responsibility.

Leaders need to identify three things. First, what outcome should improve? A literacy initiative may seek stronger foundational word-reading capability. An attendance strategy may seek more regular participation in learning.

Second, what must be protected or guaranteed? A phonics initiative may protect every learner’s access to systematic, explicit instruction. An attendance process may ensure that absence is noticed and acted upon.

Third, what does the system need to know? Common data, monitoring and documentation provide assurance that provision is occurring and that learners requiring support are being identified.

The outcome clarifies the change. The protection establishes the entitlement. Assurance makes responsibility visible.

Once leaders can name those responsibilities, they can identify which elements genuinely require consistency and where professional judgement must shape the response. Implementation guidance consistently points towards the importance of readiness, context, capacity and sustained support when translating an initiative into practice (Durlak & DuPre, 2008; Education Endowment Foundation, 2024).

Five questions can bring that judgement into the open:

• What should improve because this work exists?
• What must remain consistent, and what does that consistency protect?
• Where does success depend upon professional judgement?
• What existing work will this strengthen, duplicate or displace?
• What evidence will demonstrate impact?

These questions create the foundation for Strategic Compliance.

Strategic Compliance asks a leader to honour the legitimate responsibility, interpret what it requires in context, make the reasoning visible and remain accountable for the result.

It sounds like this:

We understand the intent. We accept the responsibility. Here is what honouring it requires in this school, and here is how we will demonstrate its impact.

That position demands significant professional responsibility. The leader must understand the evidence, know the school, anticipate consequences and remain open to changing course as the results emerge.

Systems have an equally important role. They can establish shared outcomes, evidence-informed expectations and meaningful guardrails. They can provide resources, implementation support and credible pathways. Schools can use their knowledge of learners, staff and community to determine how the intent will be realised, explain their reasoning and remain accountable for impact.

This is intelligent accountability: clear about the destination, disciplined about what must remain consistent, responsive about the route and rigorous about results.

It also gives systems better information. A leader who speaks candidly about fit, capacity and consequence provides greater insight than one who has learned to make every implementation plan appear effortless. Honest interpretation reveals where an initiative needs support, where existing practice is already strong and where a common approach may produce an unintended result.

When professional judgement is welcomed into the conversation, accountability becomes a source of learning.

Leadership worth choosing

Sustainability is the preservation of the human and professional capacity required to lead.

Leaders need space to interpret evidence, establish priorities, sequence change, adapt implementation and make responsible trade-offs. Emerging leaders need opportunities to see that judgement practised openly and to carry some of it with support.

When responsibility and discretion are aligned, leadership remains demanding and meaningful. Leaders can bring their knowledge of learners, staff and community into the decisions for which they will be held accountable. Systems gain a more truthful account of how policy becomes practice. Schools develop the collective capacity to make strong decisions beyond the tenure of any one exceptional person.

Every initiative teaches people something about leadership. It reveals whether expertise is trusted, whether evidence can alter direction, whether context is treated as meaningful information and whether accountability includes the authority required to act responsibly.

The people watching will draw their conclusions about whether leadership is a role worth inheriting.

We owe them a version grounded in purpose, professional responsibility and intelligent judgement: a version of leadership that asks a great deal, trusts people to think and remains worth choosing.

Bibliography

Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203153185

Biesta, G. J. J. (2015). How does a competent teacher become a good teacher? On judgement, wisdom and virtuosity in teaching and teacher education. In R. Heilbronn & L. Foreman-Peck (Eds.), Philosophical perspectives on teacher education (pp. 1-22). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118977859.ch1

Century, J., & Cassata, A. (2016). Implementation research: Finding common ground on what, how, why, where, and who. Review of Research in Education, 40(1), 169-215. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X16665332

Durlak, J. A., & DuPre, E. P. (2008). Implementation matters: A review of research on the influence of implementation on programme outcomes and the factors affecting implementation. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(3-4), 327-350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-008-9165-0

Education Endowment Foundation. (2024). A school’s guide to implementation (3rd ed.). https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/implementation

Biography

Lee Crockett works with schools, leadership teams and education systems around the world to strengthen Human Leadership Capacity and build cultures of sustainable excellence. His work begins with the lived experience of educators and develops into practical approaches for leading with clarity, professional judgement and purpose. He is the author of 11 books on learning, leadership and organisational culture. His latest work, The Sustainability Myth, explores how leaders protect attention, judgement and purpose when every demand appears to be a priority.