A new theory of scale: Rethinking small and mid-sized school systems

Small- to mid-sized school systems occupy an awkward position in contemporary education. They are too large to rely on the efforts of individual schools to respond to system-wide challenges, yet too small to behave like major jurisdictions with deep central teams, extensive regional infrastructure and broad specialist capability. They face the same pressures as larger systems – rising student complexity, workforce strain, uneven enrolment demand, technological disruption, sharper accountability and growing expectations from families – but with less margin for duplication, fragmentation, or slow adaptation.

The temptation is to respond by choosing a side in an old argument: centralise more or give schools more autonomy. But that binary is increasingly unhelpful. The question for smaller systems is not whether the centre or schools should hold power. It is how a system of limited scale can deliberately organise itself so that every school benefits from collective strength while retaining the local judgement, relationships, and distinctiveness that make schools effective.

The systems that will thrive are those that develop a new theory of scale. They will not try to become miniature versions of large bureaucracies. Nor will they leave schools to solve system-wide problems alone. They will treat scale as a strategic asset to be designed, not an accident of size.

For many years, school improvement has been imagined as a largely school-level endeavour. Find a strong principal, build a good leadership team, support capable teachers and improvement will follow. This logic still matters, but it is no longer sufficient. The problems now facing schools are too complex, too specialised, and too cumulative to be solved one site at a time.

Student needs increasingly span learning, wellbeing, disability support, family engagement, behaviour, attendance and mental health. Workforce pressures affect recruitment, retention, professional learning and leadership pipelines. Digital tools and artificial intelligence require shared expectations, ethical guardrails and practical support. Compliance and child-safety obligations demand consistency and assurance. No individual school can sustainably build every capability it now needs, especially in smaller systems where specialist expertise is scarce and leaders often carry multiple roles.

This is where small and mid-sized systems can either drift or differentiate. If they operate as loose collections of schools, they will reproduce the weaknesses of fragmentation: variable quality, duplicated effort, uneven access to expertise and overburdened principals. If they over-centralise, they risk creating a compliance machine that dulls professional judgement and loses connection with local communities. The opportunity lies between these poles: building a system that is coherent enough to guarantee quality and flexible enough to honour context.

The most productive starting point for centralisation is not authority. It is burden. Small and mid-sized systems should ask a simple question: which tasks, decisions or capabilities are currently sitting with schools but would be done better, faster, more consistently or more fairly if handled collectively?

This reframes centralisation as service. High-burden, repeatable and low-discretion activities – recruitment screening, policy development, compliance reporting, data management, routine communications, specialist service coordination, facilities and procurement – are often poor uses of principal and teacher time. When the system takes responsibility for these functions, it can reduce duplication and improve consistency while freeing school leaders to focus on instruction, culture, wellbeing and community relationships.

But centralisation only builds trust when it is visibly enabling. Central services need clear standards, transparent accountabilities and feedback loops from schools. Otherwise, the centre becomes another source of work. The test is not whether a function is centralised, but whether its centralisation makes school-level work simpler, safer, better or more equitable.

In smaller systems, the middle layer is often under-designed. It may exist informally through networks, clusters, principal groups, improvement partners or regional roles, but without enough clarity about purpose, authority or resourcing. Yet the middle layer is where system intent becomes school practice. It is the connective tissue between strategy and classroom reality.

A well-designed middle layer does three things. First, it translates priorities into practical guidance that makes sense in local contexts. Second, it builds capability by coaching leaders, facilitating professional learning and brokering expertise. Third, it creates disciplined collaboration, ensuring schools learn with and from each other rather than merely meeting together. This creates the conditions for principals to act as system leaders. It ensures that schools are active partners in shaping improvement, rather than passive recipients of system initiatives, and it can bring together those with shared characteristics or priorities to better coordinate resources and respond collectively to local needs.

For small to mid-sized systems, this layer need not be large or bureaucratic. It may be a lean team of improvement partners, a structured network model, a set of school families, or specialist roles that move across schools. The critical issue is intentionality. The system must be explicit about what the middle layer is for: supervision, support, improvement, collaboration, accountability, or some carefully designed mix of these. Ambiguity creates frustration. Clarity creates leverage.

Smaller systems often pride themselves on knowing their schools well. That relational knowledge is a strength, but it must be matched with disciplined, transparent approaches to differentiated support. Equity is not achieved by giving every school the same level of attention or resource. It is achieved by understanding need, context and trajectory, then allocating support proportionately.

This requires a broader view of data. Academic results matter, but they are only part of the picture. Systems also need to understand wellbeing, attendance, engagement, staffing stability, community need, leadership capacity, enrolment patterns and operational risk. Used well, this information helps leaders distinguish between schools that need light-touch support, schools that need capability building, and schools that need direct intervention.

The aim is not surveillance. It is intelligent stewardship. When data is used only for accountability, schools become defensive. When it is used to direct support, surface shared problems and learn from effective practice, it becomes a tool for collective improvement. Small and mid-sized systems have an advantage here: they are large enough to see patterns and small enough to act quickly if they choose to build the right routines.

Discussions about workforce pressures often focus on workload and shortages. While these challenges matter, the broader goal is workforce excellence: attracting, developing and retaining talented staff who can deliver outstanding outcomes for students while experiencing rewarding and sustainable careers. Achieving this is fundamentally a system design challenge.

Small and mid-sized systems should treat workforce excellence as a core design objective. That means creating the conditions for people to do their best work: protecting professional time, sequencing change thoughtfully, aligning professional learning, building shared resources and providing meaningful opportunities for growth and development. It also means using system scale to make roles more sustainable: shared specialists, itinerant expertise, cross-school coaching, leadership pipelines and communities of practice can all help distribute capability rather than concentrate it in a few exceptional individuals.

The underlying principle is simple: if a system depends on extraordinary personal effort to function, it is not well designed. Sustainable systems create the conditions for workforce excellence by reducing unnecessary friction, building capability and allowing professional energy to be directed to the work that matters most: teaching, learning, formation, wellbeing, and relationships.

The best small and mid-sized school systems will not be defined by size. They will be defined by design discipline. They will know what belongs at the centre, what belongs with schools and what needs to sit in between. They will build middle-layer capability deliberately rather than accidentally. They will use data to improve rather than merely judge. They will differentiate support in the name of equity. They will treat workforce excellence as a core operating concern, not an afterthought.

Most importantly, they will move beyond the idea that autonomy and coherence are opposites. Schools need autonomy where context, relationships and professional judgement matter. They need coherence where quality, equity, safety and sustainability require collective action. The work of system leadership is to make these choices visible, intentional and revisable.

For small and mid-sized systems, this is the strategic opportunity. Their scale can be a constraint if it leaves schools isolated. But it can be a strength if it allows leaders to build relationships, see patterns, move quickly and align effort around a shared purpose. The systems that succeed will be those that stop asking whether they should be centralised or decentralised, and start asking a better question: What must we do together so every school can do its best work?

Get in touch to discuss how small and mid-sized school systems can design the structures, capabilities, and routines they need to turn scale into a strategic advantage.

Connect with Tom Levi, Chris Brown, and Steph Ryan on LinkedIn.

The ideas presented in this article are informed by Nous' work with a range of school systems across multiple sectors and jurisdictions. They reflect recurring themes and patterns observed a number of years’ of working with small and mid-sized school systems.