Closing the gap
Closing the gap is all about ensuring that the way we work as an organisation enables us to get better faster – better at learning, better at building a strong and equitable culture, better at working together. Closing the gap asks us to look at ourselves with an open mind and ensure that all of our practice – our behaviours and our systems – support the greatest outcomes for the most sensible and proportionate amount of effort.
Our mission statement is clear that we want to leave no-one behind including the hardest to reach. Gaps that leave people behind are always are highest priority. However, we know that gaps in our processes can also be problematic and we don’t want to ignore these either.
Our Trust strategic plan lists our key priorities at any point in time and for a specific period of time., with details of our goals and priorities for gaps that we perceive during that period.
We live in an age where equity is constantly spoken about. Constantly spoken about yet still not achieved.
Of course, there are multiple complex reasons why equity is such a long way off still for us both nationally and globally.
Here at Aldridge Education, we believe in working at a granular level and we believe that the way to get closer to equity in the way we work and the outcomes we get is one small step at a time.
Much has been made over the years of ‘marginal gains’ – the concept that whilst a 1% gain may indeed be marginal on day 1, if we continue with small improvements, we will find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don’t. The notion is that small fixes don’t make much difference at the time, but they add up over the long-term. The aggregation of marginal gains brings a big reward.
Whether the marginal gains theory really won the British cycling team all their gold medal success back in 2008 and beyond or not, closing small gaps is always going to bring aggregated improvement over time. Improvement for students, in learning, for our people, in our procedures.
Closing gaps helps us to be organisationally and individually smarter; it brings stronger outcomes and it therefore helps us to achieve our mission. Gaps at individual level, at team level, at organisational level. Gaps found not in a spirit of blame, but of making ourselves collectively smarter in the way we work.
