What Successful Schools Have in Common: The Power of Optionality

As a student of successful schools or rather of what makes schools successful, it took me a while to realize something they all have in common.

It’s not something you hear much about. I haven’t heard it talked about at conferences, I don’t know of any books covering it, and it hasn’t (yet) been discussed on any podcasts. There’s plenty of discussion about pedagogy, coaching, leading, behavior management, and wellbeing. And all of that matters, of course. But I’m not talking about those things. They are the obvious things, the common talking points. Other people can speak to them far better than I can.

What I’m talking about is optionality. Successful schools have options. 

What Options Buy You

Optionality is a potent mix of stability and ambition. It’s a platform from which to try new things. 

It’s having a Board which believes in new things. It’s having teachers who’ll try new things. It’s having the money to support new things. It’s having students and parents who’ll go with those new things. And it’s having the confidence to retreat to old things if the new things don’t pan out, without risking the reputation of the school in the process.

In many ways, optionality is simply freedom. Freedom from desperation. Freedom from having to make decisions because circumstances leave you no alternative. 

Schools with optionality make choices. Schools without it make compromises.

It’s also having the option to do nothing. To sit still. To ignore fads and fashions secure in the knowledge that the thing you are currently doing is the right thing to be doing. It lets you be late to the party, or be the first to leave. It allows you to change your mind. It lets you say yes, or no. It gives you latitude, room to move, space to breathe. 

When enrollments slip, a key leader leaves unexpectedly, or a new competitor enters the market, optionality becomes even more valuable. Schools with options can respond thoughtfully. 

Schools without options are often forced into reactive decisions that create new problems while solving old ones.

Where Optionality Comes From

Optionality is built on the foundations of pedagogy, coaching, leading, behavior management, and wellbeing. The ‘stuff’ of good schools. Optionality is also built on solid, or at least predictable, finances. It’s built on good recruitment and retention. On teacher quality. On student motivation. And on parental engagement. 

It is built slowly and often invisibly. Every strong hire, every retained teacher, every balanced budget, every satisfied family adds a little more flexibility to the system. Optionality is rarely created by a single strategic initiative. More often, it accumulates through hundreds of good decisions made consistently over time.

The Hidden Advantage

Successful schools have optionality. I’m not sure it’s something they pursue deliberately, rather, it comes as a result of success. And success begets more options, which begets more success. 

Options give options.

Perhaps that is why optionality is so easy to overlook. It is not a programme, a framework, or a strategic pillar. It is an outcome. It is the outcome of consistently doing the right things well.

Yet I wonder whether schools should think about it more deliberately. If optionality is as valuable as it appears to be, perhaps creating and protecting it deserves more attention than it currently receives.

There should be books on optionality, conference talks covering it, and podcasts discussing it. And we should be fixating on it in our schools. Because when we admire successful schools, we often focus on the decisions they made. What we should also pay attention to is the range of decisions available to them in the first place.