The benefits of using systemic approaches in organisations have been widely accepted over the last few years. Less well documented and discussed are the applications of these approaches in schools and in education. In this workshop we will share stories and insights from our experience of working with schools in the UK through the nowhere-ecl initiative. Over a period of ten years, we have worked with leaders of a number of schools supporting them to gain a deeper understanding of the hidden dynamics of the systems they lead and to bring greater flow. In particular, we have worked with a large comprehensive secondary school in England supporting the Governing Body, the leadership team, teachers, support staff and parents in matters of governance, curriculum development and relationships within the school and with the wider community. We will explore how consideration of the notion of ‘belonging’ is at the heart of a school’s concern. We will show how it is necessary to attend to matters of exchange, place, events in the past and plans for the future in order to create conditions in which children and young people flow effortlessly between home, the classroom and the outside world.  Schools are the where all these complex systems come together. Leaders and teachers must do their best to ensure that students are served well and they are not unwittingly excluded or their enthusiasm for learning dampened.

Our stories will include:

• how support and development of the leaders of the school enables them to hold a fundamental shift in the entire system
• how a sensitive systemic approach aids the transition of students from their primary schools into the first year of the secondary school
• how the history of the school and its former leaders are honoured and included
• how students undertake peer mentoring enabling them to support each other’s well being and learning
• how parents and other members of the school community have been able to find a better place to relate to and support teaching and learning processes.

This workshop will be practical and will include opportunities for all participants to engage with the challenge of working in the complex context of secondary education. In addition, we will share our learning from experience – some of it powerful, some of it painful. We would want others to benefit from some of the mistakes we have made as well as be inspired by our successes.

Since 2002, a small group of dedicated educationists based in England have been working with systemic and creative approaches to bring insight and support to teachers, leaders and parents through an initiative called ecl.  Judith has been involved from the beginning and Jane from soon after that. Together they are in a unique position to tell the powerful stories of this work, starting with the concerns of headteachers of small primary schools in a rural county of England and now including wide-ranging projects in South Africa, Namibia and Holland.

Judith and Jane will present a number of models for working systemically in schools and to support children and young people 

This workshop will be practical and interactive with illustrations through extracts of film of the work and some of the structure and forms that have been developed collaboratively with teachers over the years. There will be an opportunity for participants to take part in process to support children and young people called ‘Dissolving Barriers to Learning’ that Judith Hemming has pioneered within ecl. This process unites teachers and parents in what is often life-changing painful deep work. The workshop will show how a Peer Mentoring scheme codifies systemic wisdom so that students can use the tools and techniques quickly after just a little input. In addition, staff in schools or other educational settings can be taught the skills of systemic mediation, an approach that draws on non-violent communication and cuts across traditional forms of sanction for difficult behaviour.