When I moved into education leadership after starting my career in IT, I was keen to learn everything I could - but also hoped to bring some of what I knew from past experience to the profession, too.
As it turned out, this is exactly what happened - while I leaned heavily on experienced colleagues as I navigated the realities of school and trust leadership, I also saw that elements of how I had worked in the technology sector could benefit schools, too.
The most notable was around agile working, known as “sprints”, where you work in short cycles, test ideas quickly and adapt based on what you learn.
That mindset shaped much of my thinking long before I became a headteacher, and it is now central to how we approach school improvement across INOVA Multi-Academy Trust.
What sprint working can bring to schools
When I joined the trust in June 2024, I was keen to rethink the traditional 12-month improvement plan seen in many schools and trusts, which feels too slow and too brittle for the challenges we face.
By October, so much has already changed that large parts of the plan are out of date. Leaders are left juggling outdated targets while responding to the real issues of the moment.
I had seen a different way of working in IT and in my early education roles, where teams used sprint cycles to focus on short, achievable goals and review them regularly.
This felt like the missing link in our approach and a more sustainable way for schools to move forward.
What it looks like on the ground
Starting in the 2024-25 academic year, we adopted a sprint model. It works in six-week cycles aligned with the half-term: one week for planning, four for delivery and one for review.
Each sprint has a clear objective linked to trust priorities, but the work is broken down into manageable steps that people can achieve alongside the everyday reality of running a school.
Every half-term, around 50 colleagues from across the trust meet at our “Vanguard” session to assess progress and agree the focus for the next sprint.
The model is collaborative by design. Sprint groups bring together people from different schools and roles.
A headteacher might work with a finance manager or an operations assistant. This variety is intentional. In my industry roles, the best solutions often came from those closest to the day-to-day work rather than the most senior. The same is true in schools.
Working this way gives us a more efficient method for tackling complex issues.
Instead of spreading improvement across a full year, we concentrate effort in short bursts with clear goals and deadlines. It supports rapid testing, quicker feedback and timely adjustments without losing sight of long-term priorities.
Delivering real change
One example of this in practice is our sprint on temporary staffing and supply costs.
When we examined spending, we realised we were paying around £1.8 million a year for temporary staff. Decisions were being made at school level, meaning that the trust was missing opportunities to negotiate better rates or recruit more efficiently.
We brought colleagues from finance, HR, school leadership and cover management into a sprint group and gave them a clear objective.
They analysed spending patterns, reviewed contracts and explored how a coordinated approach could work.
By the end of the sprint, the group had identified almost the equivalent in financial savings through better negotiation and more consistent procurement. This outcome would not have been achieved through a traditional improvement plan.
The sprint model allowed us to bring the right people together, focus on a single goal and deliver change at pace. The work is now fully operational and forms part of a wider shift towards more standardised and efficient systems across the trust.
Agility beyond improvement planning
We are now extending the same agile principles into performance management.
The former annual appraisal model no longer reflected the pace of our improvement work, so we are moving towards half-termly coaching conversations that sit alongside sprint cycles.
This gives staff regular feedback, a clearer sense of their impact and a direct link between their development and the trust’s priorities.
Agile working is not about being fast for the sake of it. It is about creating a rhythm that helps people focus on what matters, involving the right voices and making steady progress without burning out.
For us, this approach has created stronger collaboration, clearer accountability and a more responsive way of leading improvement.
For trusts of any size, I believe it offers a practical and realistic blueprint for delivering meaningful change in a demanding educational landscape.
Lee Barber is CEO of INOVA Multi-Academy Trust
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