The CLARITY Essentials Suite

The CLARITY Essentials Suite evolved from the CLS development team listening to schools’ and systems’ feedback. People reviewing CLS with the team told us we needed to create a shorter professional suite based on CLS that would provide a ‘must-do’ essential learning resource for successful implementation of the CLARITY work. We know that demands on schools are considerable. The message came through clearly from practitioners that a professional learning resource that could be completed in regular 1-hour teacher and leader meetings would lead to teacher and leader confidence and empowerment in applying the constructs.

The CLARITY Essentials Suite delves into how to create shared language, shared understanding, and shared practices across an entire school by taking a collaborative professional learning stance.

Key considerations

Several of the most powerful elements of the CLARITY Essentials Suite can only be fully implemented by a leadership team working with all staff.

For example:

• Data Walls are meaningful when teachers actively contribute data, analyse patterns, identify student needs, and engage in ongoing collaborative inquiry around learner progress.
• The Third Teacher focuses on how learning environments are co-designed and utilised with students. This requires classroom teachers to make intentional decisions about the physical and pedagogical environment on a daily basis.
• Learning Walks and Talks rely on teachers opening their classrooms, sharing practice, engaging in professional dialogue, and collectively examining the impact of teaching on learning by asking the 5 Questions. Learning together through the CLARITY Essentials provides the culture of learning that makes it easier for teachers to open their classroom doors for these non-evaluative walks and talks.

A leadership team can understand these processes conceptually, yet they cannot realise their benefits without broad teacher engagement. Ongoing reflective practice by leaders and teachers together makes the work come alive. Whole staff involvement – all staff - is necessary for the CLARITY tools to be practical, useful and impactful.

Momentum is easier to build than to transfer

When the whole staff starts together:

• Everyone hears the same messages at the same time.
• Staff can immediately discuss and apply the concepts together.
• Early successes become visible across the school.

It is important that leaders and staff do the CLARITY Essentials Suite together as learning together promotes buy-in, ownership, and deep understanding of the learning processes.

Shared language develops faster

The CLARITY approach relies on staff having a common understanding of what effective improvement looks like.

A whole school approach means:

• Teachers, middle leaders, and senior leaders use the same terminology.
• Professional conversations become more focused and productive.
• Staff can support one another’s learning.

This helps establish coherence across the school and reduces the risk of varied groups interpreting improvement priorities differently.

Collective efficacy is built through shared learning

One of the strongest findings in educational improvement research is the importance of collective efficacy—the shared belief that together the staff can positively impact student outcomes. The CLARITY development team specifically compiled the Essentials Suite as a targeted subset of the full CLS to support targeted impactful practices that result in Collective Efficacy for all.

Collective efficacy develops when staff:

• Learn together.
• Reflect together.
• Solve problems together.
• See evidence of improvement together.

A whole school implementation process creates the conditions for collective efficacy to emerge more quickly and more authentically.

Leadership modelling becomes more authentic

When leaders learn alongside staff:

• Leaders demonstrate openness to learning.
• Improvement becomes a collaborative endeavour.
• Trust and credibility are strengthened.

This reflects several of the 14 Parameters, particularly Parameters 1 and 14 relating to relational trust, collaborative professionalism, and shared responsibility and accountability for improvement.

Faster impact on classroom practice and student outcomes

The benefits of the Suite only reach students when classroom practice changes.

A leadership-first approach can create a lengthy delay:

1. Leadership learns.
2. Leadership plans rollout.
3. Staff are trained.
4. Staff begin implementation.

A whole-school-first approach shortens this timeline because implementation begins immediately across classrooms, teams, and learning spaces.

Importantly, practices such as co-constructing Data Walls, conducting Learning Walks and Talks, and developing Third Teacher learning walls are most effective when they are embedded across the school rather than trialed by a small group. Their value comes from creating consistency, visibility of learning, and collective responsibility for all students across the entire staff.

Reduces implementation drift

The 14 Parameters emphasise coherence and alignment.

When information passes through multiple layers before reaching teachers:

• Messages can become diluted.
• Priorities can be interpreted differently.
• Consistency can suffer.

A whole-school implementation ensures that all staff engage directly with the same concepts, frameworks, and expectations at the same time.

Supports systems thinking rather than hierarchical thinking

The 14 Parameters encourage schools to view improvement as a system-wide endeavour rather than a leadership initiative.

A leadership-first approach can unintentionally reinforce the idea that improvement is something leaders design and teachers implement.

A whole school approach better reflects the reality that:

• Improvement emerges from interactions across the system.
• Every staff member influences outcomes.
• Everyone is a leader.
• Sustainable change requires alignment across all levels of the school.

Builds collective responsibility

School improvement is most sustainable when it belongs to everyone.

A whole school launch communicates that:

• Improvement is not solely a leadership project.
• Every staff member has a role to play and is respected for doing so.
• Professional growth is a shared responsibility.

This aligns strongly with the intent of the 14 Parameters, which emphasise building the capacity of the whole school rather than concentrating expertise within a small leadership group.

Finally

Read the following Case Study to note how The 14 Parameters of System and School Improvement which emphasise that sustainable improvement occurs when the entire school develops shared understanding, shared responsibility, accountability and shared practices transformed one school. You will read that core elements of the Suite— including Data Walls, Case Management Meetings, the Third Teacher, the Assessment Waterfall Chart, and Learning Walks and Talks depend on and really develop from active teacher participation and collaborative implementation across classrooms. For these reasons, schools like Thornton (following) typically achieve greater coherence, stronger collective efficacy, faster implementation, and greater impact on student outcomes when the whole staff engages with the Suite together from the outset.