Posted in Accountability, Culture change, Finance, Ideas, Management, Planning, Public Services, Strategic, Unions, honesty on May 28th, 2008 4 Comments »
The challenge of providing a high quality education service at a time when expenditure is growing faster than the available budget means that change, in some form, must take place.
There is a tendency in education to always reflect upon such an issue from the moral high-ground and simply state that more money must be forthcoming! As the person who [...]
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Someone said to me today that some people found me scary.
I laughed it off but it’s set me to wondering.
I really don’t like the idea that anyone would be put off coming to speak to me because they were scared.
As ever Gill put it into context - “it depends what people mean by scary?”
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I spent today at the AHDS (Assocation of Headteachers and Deputes Scotland) Conference where I led a couple of workshops about the Seven Sides of Educational Leadership.
I’ll posts a series of short posts about elements of the conference and I’ll kick off with something which Jim Reid (one of the founders of Wolfson Electronics) said about [...]
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It’s accepted practice to give anyone who works for local authorities abuse and criticism.
The picture of petty bureaucrats and people who are not good enough to get jobs in the “real world” is rarely challenged.
When I met recently with David Spilsbury, our Head of Corporate Finance, to discuss issues relating to the education budget I asked [...]
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I had a fascinating discussion with some headteachers recently about the time they spend on their jobs, the difficulty of their jobs and challenge that such time pressures and other demands present.
I know I’m presenting a significant challenge by asking headteachers to spend up to two days a week focusing upon the teaching process by observing [...]
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Following one of my recent posts about political scrutiny I was thinking about whether or not we could expose ourselves to further scrutiny.
I was further provoked in this area when listening to Professor Michael Fullan during yesterday’s Scottish Learning Festival where he was talking about one of his Six Secrets of Change. Michael Fullan has had a significant [...]
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We had our second Policy, Performance and Review Panel (PPRP) Meeting of the session this afternoon.
The panel is made up of elected members who are not part of the political administration. It’s their job to publically scrutinise the work of the department.
I was delighted that they have agreed to focus upon our Standards and Quality Report. [...]
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Professor Lindsay Paterson recently contributed an article to the Times Education Supplement Scotland (TESS) entitled “Potholes on the Road to Excellence”
“After decades of controversial reform, the warmth with which A Curriculum for Excellence has been received is remarkable. The reasons are readily apparent - romantic child-centredness, glances towards recent research on the brain, respect for teacher autonomy. But [...]
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Thanks for the helpful comments to the previous post in this series - they have helped me to explore the tension between the desire to “always tell the truth” and being an “effective leader”
Regardless of my desire to promote a non-hierarchical culture there is a reality that I am in a position of ‘power’ within education in East Lothian. There are [...]
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Following yesterday’s post I’ve been doing a little more reading about honesty and leadership.
Honesty is seen by many as a key factor in effective leadership 1,2, 3, 4
However, the recurring definition of honesty in most texts relates to trustworthiness of the leader.
I’m convinced that trustworthiness is a key factor in effective leadership but “truth” is [...]
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