Dazzie D

Scotland has had Devolved School Management (DSM) since 1996.  The scheme had four principles:

In my first post on School Based Management I began to explore a more radical version of the DSM scheme, which has been in operation in Scotland for the last 12 years, yet has not necessarily satisfied the principles set out above.

The intention of school-based management is to construct a system which would allow schools to take real and substantive control over the education process, with the authority commissioning the service, establishing outcomes and monitoring progress.

Over the coming few posts I’m going to try to make some sense of this issue with a view to exploring some of the possibilities and also highlighting some of the associated pros and cons.

Perhaps it might help here of I were to adopt the position of headteacher and look at the possibilities from that perspective.

Imagine the local authority have contacted me and the parent council and offered to allow us to establish a school-based management system? The most obvious response is what does it mean?

As set out in School Based Management 1 it would involve all associated funding required to deliver education in our school being rolled together and placed in our budget.  The staff would be employed by the school and all management responsibilities would rest with the school - although we would have the option of buying support from a variety of sources.

The authority would set out a list of outcomes which we would have to acheive but how we did it would be up to us. We would not have to adhere to local authority policies - although we would have to adhere to all statutory responsibilities.

The additional aspect on offer would be the possibility of the headteacher (me) receiving a bonus of between 10-20% on an annual basis.  Now I immediately hear others crying foul and seeing this as just another way of managers to get rich but there is a down side! The headteacher would be placed on a five year fixed-term contract.  At the end of the contract - depending on whether or not outcomes had been achieved - the authority could decide to commission another headteacher to deliver education in that school (I could be removed sooner of short-term outcomes are not addressed).  At that point the parent council would be involved in the selection of the new headteacher.  If the outcomes had been achieved the contract might be renewed.

In such a scheme teachers would always remain employees of the school and would be subject to normal employment law. The headteacher and parent council may decide to offer some form or bonus scheme to staff depending on the school budget.

The budget settlement to the school would be set out on a three year basis allowing the headteacher to plan the school’s budget.

Children with additional needs would carry a higher Education Value Credit and it would be up to the parents to negotiate how that credit was spent on their child.

So would I have been interested in such an offer? I think the answer would have to have been yes.  Of course there are so  many questions I would need to ask and resolve but in principle I would have been very interested.

Over the next few posts I’ll begin to take an in-depth look at specific issues arising from school based management, such as:

1. What happens if school looks like it’s going to go bust?
2. What happens if the school roll drops and we have a surplus of staff?
3. What happens in the case of an emergency?
4. What would trade unions have to say about this scheme?
5. How do we deliver such things as musical instruction, outdoor education?
6. What would happen to local authority departments who currently service schools?
7. What sort of outcomes would a school have to achieve?
8. Could a school renegotiate everything, e.g. transport, maintenance, school meals?
9. What if a school is dominated by a particular group of parents who take it down an unsatisfactory route?
10. Would all schools move to such a scheme at the same time?
11. Could schools pay more than the going rate for teachers?
12. What sort of training/support would there be for headteachers who take up this offer?
13. How would the headteachers of small schools manage to take on such responsibilities?
14. How do we (should we) ensure equality of opportunity?
15. What about the management of ICT?
16. Would there be a way back to authority control once SBM was implemented?
17. How would schools work together?
18. How do you ensure that schools in areas of social deprivation are properly supported?
19. How would you prevent schools from competing with each other?
20. Would this scheme improve education?

I’d welcome other questions and suggestions. 

I’m attending the Association of Directors of Social Work conference in Crieff.

One the key themes emerging is that of personalisation of services to users. The social work field is light years ahead of education in terms of using a mixed economy system for delivering services, by commissioning others from the private and voluntary sector to provide a wide range of short and laong term requirements.

As I was listening to the presentations my mind turned to how education might develop such a model.  It’s been something I’ve been considering for a while but the cogs seemed to click together this morning.

The starting point for this is how do we really devolve services to our communities?

What follows is definitely “blue sky” and might be disconcerting for some but I’ve found that sometimes we need to start from the extreme perspective if we are to shift our ground.

My first proposal would be to break the contract between staff and the local authority - teachers and support staff would be employed by the school. ( I’ll come to how that might be administered later).

The local authority would set the local outcomes which schools would have to work towards.

Each child would carry an educational value credit which directly related to money which would go to the school. All other current budgets would be rolled together and added to the educational value credit.

If a child left the school the money would follow them - even part way through a year.

The school would deliver - though a contract - the educational service for the local authority in that community.  If the outcomes were not achieved in a given period of time then another service deliverer would have to be employed.

The school would purchase services from the local authority - or other providers e.g. finance support, personnel, staff development and even quality improvement and assurance.

The authority would maintain responsibility for strategic estate planning, such a new school buildings but all other items would be devolved.

Schools in a community could combine their resources to purchase a service from elsewhere.

The pupil support function could also be delivered by a independent unit commissioned by the authority and underpinned by a contract arrangement.

Parents would have a significant role in the strategic direction and monitoring of the school and would be involved in the review of outcomes at the end of a contract period. 

I know one of the major concerns would be the fragmentation of the current system which is building very vibrant learning communities where schools work together. However, if we believe that partnership working improves outcomes - and outcomes will be used to judge the effectiveness of a school - then the leverage for it to happen will be even greater than it currently is. In a similar way the need to engage with other agencies would be built into the outcome agreement.

 “THEM” Vs “US”

I reckon one of the greatest challenges facing Scottish education is the way in which people use the third person plural in a negative sense.

Listen to any conversation about education and very soon “they” will emerge as the problem. So teachers will talk about “them” (management), management will talk about “them” (teachers and the local authority) and those in the local authority will talk about “them” (schools and the government).

Of course there are many others groups who can be characterised as “them” - children, parents, IT managers, unions, finance departments, politicians, social workers, doctors, the media - “if only “they” could do their jobs properly then all would be well”.

By externalising the problem we strengthen our allegiance to our own group - “we need to work together or “they” will ……….” Yet what is fascinating is how it’s possible to move (i.e. through promotion) from being one of “us” to one of “them” and also start to think about those whom were recently your colleagues as “them”. I’m not suggesting here that such language is always used in an adversarial sense but that it demarcates and emphasises that the difference between groups.

In many ways it’s natural to refer to any group beyond our own as “them”. So much of our own self-esteem is wrapped up in our social identity where we categorise others and ourselves - often comparing ourselves favourably towards other groups.

Yet are the various groups motivated by such unique and self-contained  drivers? Surely there are more points of overlap in our interests than there are differences?

That’s why I’m going to:

• a) stop using any negative reference to “they” or “them” in any conversation
• b) challenge people to clarify what they mean whenever they use the second person plural in a negative sense.

I tried b) for the first time today and just by challenging a stereotypical view of another group seemed to help produce a more positive discussion rather than just simply nodding when an entire group of people were swept up in the accusatory “them”.

I know this sounds a bit optimistic but I’d like to replace “they” and “them”, wherever possible, with “us” and “we”.

Last point - we in Scotland have another form of colloquial second person plural, namely “yous” - but that’s for another day!

We held a very successful “Corporate Parenting” Conference today at the Marine Hotel, North Berwick. .

Adam Ingram MSP , Minister for Children and Early Years gave a  well informed and committed keynote address and emphasised the need for us to collectively address the needs of Looked After and Accommodated Children and to focus upon the improving outcomes for such children, namely:

• Raising Attainment
• Improved Leaver Destinations
• Reducing offending
• Improved Health

In the follow up questions Adam was asked a question about the need to reconfigure services and his vision for the future.  He alluded to an extensive vision but focused upon Early Years support and intervention encouraging us to reprioritise around this point if we are to make a difference to chidren’s lives.

In recent discussions with colleagues from many different fields I’ve found a similar willingness to engage with this agenda - although it remains to be seen if we can begin to reprioritise budgets to this area. Having said that we had a very useful example last week when we were able to redirect some work towards early years.  In a meeting with Diane Littlejohn we were discussing our parenting strategy and Diane was telling us about the transition work she is doing in one of our clusters to help all parents make the transition from being the parents of a child to the parent of a teenager (which any of us who have been parents will tell you is quite an adjustment). Nevertheless, we were able to connect the conversation to a recent meeting we had about a desperate need to support parents of very vulnerable young children to help the child adjust from home to nursery and nursery to primary school.

The emerging proposal was that we would be better directing Diane’s expertise to this age group with a view to making a long term impact - as opposed to trying to intervene in a situation which might be beyond help.  Now I know the danger here is that we have a “lost generation” but if we are serious about making a difference we need to move from “trying to fix” to “trying to prevent”.  As I’m finding out the consequences of reprioritising funding from previous areas of emphasis to other areas can cause significant distress and concern amongst those who perceive themselves to be losing out in this adjustment.

I reckon the solution/challenge here is to engage with all interest groups to describe what want to do, why we are doing it and involve them in the solution - without this dialogue the system can begin to break down with single issue groups only focusing upon their own needs and challenging the wider agenda which is to advocate for the needs of all children.

It’s this agenda which I’m finding professionally challenging but the potential rewards for taking this approach seems to me to be too good to miss.

Does a teacher need to like all children in order to be an effective teacher? 

The dictionary definition of the verb to “like”  is essentially  to display a favourable opinion or disposition towards a thing – in this case children.  Yet in conversations with teachers throughout my career I’ve met with resistance to the notion of having to “like” in order to be able to teach. In fact one of the most memorable quotes was when a teacher exclaimed “I’m not paid to like kids – I’m paid to teach them!”.

Which leads me back to the original question – is it possible to teach without displaying a favourable disposition towards all children? If you break teaching down into its most simplistic form, i.e. the effective transmission of information from the teacher to pupil, then one can see how the disposition of the teacher is of no consequence. Yet for those of us who have been pupils we know that the disposition of the teacher towards us as learners has a major impact on our willingness to engage and learn. Even the “traditional” no-nonsense, subject-oriented, results focussed teacher can show through their actions that they care about every child in their class – and the learners respond accordingly. 

The reality of human nature is that we tend to “like” people whom we find pleasant or value. In that sense our tendency to “like” is conditional upon the appearance or behaviour of the person. In the classroom this can take the form of a teacher changing their disposition towards a child in direct response to the child’s behaviour.  But what if the child does not respond to the teacher with equitable response? What if the child’s behaviour is inappropriate? Surely the teacher is entitled to change their disposition towards the child to one where they can legitimately change their disposition towards the child both an implicit and explicit manner, e.g. “I don’t like that kid”

The logic that unpins this assertion supposes that it’s human nature not to like everyone and that we are entitled to make judgements about those whom we will treat with positive regard. So if in our classroom there is a child who does not conform to our expectations or standards of behaviour then we can legitimately express our disfavour either through our choice of language, tone of voice, or actions. The problem in such instances is that that most children can cope with being told off or punished as long as it’s fair. However, all too often the teacher will give an additional “punishment” through a noticeable shift in their disposition towards that child on a permanent basis, such a shift is picked up by the child – and just as importantly by their peers in the class.

The Scottish education system is founded upon the concept of “in loco parentis” – in place of parents – which is intended to guide the practice of the teaching profession. Almost all parents treat their own children with positive regard – in fact regardless of whatever their child might do they will continue to treat them with enduring warmth and not be deflected by the human frailties of their child. Such an approach can be referred to as unconditional positive regard.  The true teacher adopts the perspective of the parent and is able to step beyond the reflexive response to dislike the child for their actions and separate the behaviour from the person. Such a stance does not mean that the teacher ignores or condones poor behaviour – in fact quite the opposite - but it does mean that even in the midst of dealing with an incident they make it clear through their own behaviour that they still value the child as a person.

I believe that a person’s capacity to treat children with unconditional positive regard lies at the very heart of what it is to be a professional teacher. Although, at first glance, the term smacks of psychobabble it is actually possible to tease out it’s meaning in a way that translates very well in to the Scottish classroom.

If I am to be allowed one dream it would be that every teacher, leader and professional person connected with Scottish education set out firstly to treat every child with unconditional positive regard, and secondly, to treat their colleagues in a similar manner. What a place we would have created!  

It’s that time of year when the consequences of trying to deliver our service within the available budget require difficult decisions to be made.

Maybe I’m just kidding myself but I still believe passionately in the value of education, that teaching and learning is at the core of what we do, and that caring for kids comes first, last and always.  Yet the responsibilities of the job mean that people see me as the person who applies formulae and budget limits without reference to the needs of their particular school. “Surely he can’t care about kids if he’s not going to give us x”.

I received a letter from a teacher this week which kind of encapsulated this when the teacher described how they were going to withdraw from all authority work because of the efficiency savings we are implementing. The argument basically ran along the lines that my integrity must be called into question if I was prepared to implement the required savings. This is a great shame because this particular teacher has a huge amount to offer their colleagues throughout the authority. 

Criticism like this hurts.  We all like to be popular.  Nobody likes to be charicatured as the unbending bureaucrat who will implement policy without reference to people’s feelings or needs.

I try - not always successfully - to rationalise this by telling myself that my key role in such circumstances is to treat people and schools with equity and respect.  We have a duty to the public to deliver a high quality service within the resources available. No one in East Lothian would pat me on the back a year from now if we had an overspend of £3 million. I’ve seen the consequences of such overspends at first hand and believe me - I’d rather suffer the slings and arrows over the managed savings we are implementing this year, than see all the gains we have made in East Lothian education over the last decade decimated by a budget crisis a year from now.

Leadership Dilemma: You are the head teacher of a school. A child swears at a teacher in front of other children.  What do you do?

Does such an occurence automatically mean that the child should be excluded from school?

It’s certainly one of the most common reasons for exclusion.

My own point of view has always been to treat every situation as a discrete incident - and make a judgment accordingly. Yet there exists an expectation that where a child swears “directly” at a teacher that classroom order and the digniity of the teacher can only be maintained if the child is punished by a period of exclusion.

What do you reckon?

I came across the concept of a social return on investment last summer when Jim Honan explained the Program Logic Model.

The model seeks to find a way in which public services can actually have a greater impact by focusing upon the things that will actually lead to a return on social investment.  The tendency in education has often been to focus on outputs or activity and to only try to work out the outcome - or success criteria - at the end of the planning process, i.e. there are a legion of initievies and activities which have been implemented in Scottish education which have not had any discernible positive impact.

The model flips this on its head by forcing the service to consider the impact that we wish to have as the starting point for action. I’ve explored this in a number of previous posts but this week we sent out our Service Improvement Framework which schools will use to guide their activity for the coming year.

The Framework tries to make a link with the Council’s corporate plan and priorities but the pages which schools will undoubtedly focus upon are pages 8 and 9 - which set out the outcomes which we will use to judge the level of return we are getting from the investment in education in East Lothian, i.e. £75 million.

Borrowing from the Scottish Government’s concordat with Local Authorities we intend to give much greater flexibility to schools and clusters as to how they will go about achieving these outcomes - what works in one school or community won’t necessarily work in another school or community.

I know how positively I would have responded to such an approach, or as  one head teacher said to me this week - “trust us and we’ll do the business”.

What is edubuzz.org?

Edubuzz.org is the blogging platform set up by East Lothian Council to open a window on our practice and create a networked learning community which extends beyond East Lothian.

Over the last two years Edubuzz has expanded and expanded, with over 250,000 visits in March - up 100% since the March 2007!

Much of this growth is due to the tirless work of David Gilmour - our Edubuzz co-ordinator.

I’ve copied David’s post about the establishment of the 1000th Edubuzz blog.  

Last week blog number 1000 was created for a P7 student at the small rural Innerwick Primary School.

It was part of a set of 7 for the P7 members of Lindy Lynn’s composite P4/5/6/7 class, reflecting the increasing use of blogs to provide web publishing tools to individual students. The blogs will be used by the P7s for a project to reflect on their time at Innerwick, and the group are full of ideas!

Staff are also talking about the possibility offered to get some collaborative work going with other feeder primaries in the Dunbar Grammar School cluster, with the aim of helping the children to get to know some other students who’ll be joining them at the much larger secondary after the summer.

In another sign of the times, due to staff pressures, the P7 group were trained in a 3-hour session, without their class teacher, in how to use the blogs, and - not surprisingly - picked it up very quickly. They’ll now be training their teacher, and supporting one another, to get started in the classroom.

We held a meeting last week where we explored the potential of weblogs to assist the community planning process - based on the edubuzz model -although not necessarily using the same platform.

Community Planning is a process which helps public agencies to work together with the community to plan and deliver better services which make a real difference to people’s lives.

The aims of Community Planning in Scotland are:

1. making sure people and communities are genuinely engaged in the decisions made on public services which affect them; allied to

2. a commitment from organisations to work together, not apart, in providing better public services.

There are two further key principles in addition to the two main aims outlined above:

3. Community Planning as the key over-arching partnership framework helping to co-ordinate other initiatives and partnerships and where necessary acting to rationalise and simplify a cluttered landscape;

4. the ability of Community Planning to improve the connection between national priorities and those at regional, local and neighbourhood levels.

As we discussed the potential of weblogs it became apparent that this might just be a vehicle which could be of some real use.  If we could encourage key figures and other members of a local community to keep a weblog where they would reflect upon local issues and stimulate a dialogue within a community, the likelihood of planners and public services to take account of these opinions would be greatly enhanced. The old ways of questionnaires, focus groups, community conferences, canvassing do not enable a substantive, two way, on-going dialogue to take place where ideas can be shaped and developed over a period of time.

I know how I am being influenced by being able to read the weblogs of teachers, parents and children - surely this has some possibility for community engagement?

So how might such a scheme work? Let’s take a community like Tranent.  If we established an area where the weblogs of of the community could be accessed and new members could participate we would begin to build up a very rich picture of the strengths, opportunities and needs within the community.  Officers and elected members could engage with this dialogue and perhaps even have their own weblogs to make the decision making process even more transparent and interactive. 

I know some people might feel very threatened by such a suggestion, as it appears to almost encourage anarchy by handing over the “airwaves” to the public - yet surely that is what community planning is about? - a transparent enagagement with the local community to the point where people eventually (it would take some time) begin to believe that they do have a voice and that it is listened to. Even more importantly those who do make the decisions can explain the thought process and reasoning behind decisions - even those decisions which are unpopular (see example).

Last observations:

• A councillor recently described how no one had attended any of their surgeries in the last four weeks. 
• Another councillor described how few people had attended their surgeries over a three year period. 
• East Lothian Council have started to hold some council meetings in the evening to be more available to the public - very few (less than 10 have attended in any one evening) .

Perhaps it really is time to explore alternative vehicles for community interaction?