A couple of months ago I joined my colleagues on the Leadership Team of East Lothian Council on a weekend course entitled “The Innerwick Experience”. The Leadership Team is made up of: all Heads of Service, e.g. Head of Education, Head of ICT and Finance, etc; the four Directors - Finance; Planning; Community Services; and Education and Children’s Services [...]
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Posted in Accountability, Culture change, Ideas, Leadership, Leadership Dilemmas, Management, Partnerships, Planning, Policy, Power/influence, Public Services, TESS, professionalism on Jun 8th, 2008 5 Comments »
Every educational leader, regardless of position, has to wrestle with the powerful temptation to intervene or to meddle in the business of those whom they manage. The logic is fairly simple - “I’m being paid to manage and to be accountable for the work of others - so it’s reasonable that I take action in order [...]
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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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I’ve received number of e-mails this week from parents pleading with me not to establish composite classes in their schools. A composite class is one where a primary school class is composed of children from more than one year group, e.g. P3/4 composite class.
The common theme in all the e-mails is that if I care about children then I can’t allow [...]
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It was George H.W. Bush (the father of George W. Bush) who in 1987 responded to the suggestion that he turn his attention from short-term campaign objectives and look to the longer term by saying, “Oh, the vision thing”. I wonder sometimes if many of us in Scottish education suffer from Bush’s same discomfort with [...]
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Posted in Management on Mar 21st, 2008 No Comments »
This week has been one of the most challenging of my career. I can’t go into the actual incidents but there have been two separate and completely unconnected instances of schools in East Lothian having to deal with crisis situations.
The incidents have involved significant liaison with other agencies from local to national level, whilst parents, [...]
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The concordat agreed by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Government sets out how funding and outcome agreements will operate over the next three years.
The document is worth reading on a number of counts but it’s the section relating to efficiency savings that perhaps sets out the greatest challenge for education.
The text reads [...]
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I’ll be submitting this article for publication to TESS later this week. I’m indebted to Mothersoup for contributing her thoughts on this topic. Does it hit the spot?
In a peculiar way there is a possibility that this article may offend, in equal measure, both the teaching profession and the parental body. I make no apologies if this is the case.
I believe [...]
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In was in Elphinstone Primary School this morning and managed to watch all four classes - nursery (3-4 year olds); P1/2 (5-6 year olds); P3-5 (7-9 year olds); and P6/7 (10 -11 year olds) - in that order.
Elphinstone only has 70+ children in the whole school but it enabled me to move up through the [...]
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I visited Sanderson’s Wynd Primary School in Tranent this morning.
In the course of a very enjoyable visit where I observed a number of classes and talked with Headteacher Fiona Waddell and some of her staff about how they create a purposeful learning environment. The school is not without its challenging pupils but what struck me was [...]
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