Posted in Parental Involvement on Dec 4th, 2007 No Comments »
Over the last few weeks I’ve written a number of posts about parents as customers.
So it was great to a very extensive response from Mothersoup
All too often in education the dialogue takes place between the professionals and those whom we serve only play a peripheral role in shaping the future.
MS’s post is well worth read but [...]
Posted in CPD, Careers, Learning and teaching, Parental Involvement, Personnel, professionalism on Nov 25th, 2007 No Comments »
One of the issues facing schools these days is the concern expressed by some parents about a probationer teaching their child’s class.
A probationer is a newly qualified teacher (NQT) and in the past they would have just started teaching as a teacher - but without any of the support systems we now have in place.
I [...]
Posted in Communication, Culture change, Ideas, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Personal Lessons, Public Services on Nov 24th, 2007 3 Comments »
You know that niggling feeling that you get when you’ve got an idea bubbling just underneath the surface and can’t quite express it - then again perhaps you don’t but it’s one with which I’m often afflicted. It’s like that for me at the moment with this business of parents and children as customers. I just can’t [...]
Posted in Consultation, Culture change, Ideas, Parental Involvement on Nov 13th, 2007 5 Comments »
Let me put my cards on the table. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of seeing parents as customers. For me it only served to reinforce a subservient model where we - professionals - would be told what to do by parents. The second difficulty was the transactional nature of my understanding of the [...]
Posted in Culture change, Ideas, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Public Services, Research Papers on Nov 11th, 2007 8 Comments »
I’ve been reading the Demos paper “Journey to the Interface” which I referred to in the recent leadership dilemma. It’s a long document but a remarkably easy read and very thought provoking.
The paper’s focus is the development of “customer-centred services”. There a huge range of issues emerging from the paper which would be worthy of further [...]
Posted in Conferences, Consultation, Culture change, Curriculum for Excellence, Elected Members, Head Teachers, Parental Involvement on Oct 3rd, 2007 No Comments »
Our curriculum architecture conference proved to be a great success.
The evaluations from the 100 participants has been exceptional. It validated the approach we selected to involve a wide range of participants - HTs, DHTs, PTs, Primary HTs, elected members, parents, students, business people, community services and members of the department in the development of [...]
Posted in Accountability, Elected Members, Parental Involvement, Personal Lessons, Public Services on Mar 18th, 2007 2 Comments »
I attended my third community evening in Dunbar this week regarding Dunbar Primary School provision.
Due to a rapidly expanding population in Dunbar it has become necessary to enhance the primary school provision in Dunbar earlier than had been previously predicted. There are a number of options - all of which involve the construction of a new building.
As [...]
Posted in CPD, Communication, Head Teachers, Parental Involvement, Positivity, Public Services, Unconditional Positive Regard on Feb 7th, 2007 9 Comments »
Diplomatic - skilled at dealing with sensitive matters or people
I spoke to two head teachers today about how they deal with potentially difficult situations with parents. It was interesting that they both almost used exactly the same words: “If you feel you need to “win” you’ve actually lost” Their point was that we need to [...]
Posted in Parental Involvement, Partnerships on Jan 31st, 2007 3 Comments »
We had a meeting today where we talked about incidents where parents verbally abuse by shouting, swearing and threatening teaching staff - headteachers included. Fortunately such incidents are rare but when it does happen - I’ve had my share in my time - it’s very distressing and threatening (and I’m big and ugly).
I can understand why [...]
Posted in Bullying, Parental Involvement on Jan 19th, 2007 3 Comments »
I’ve received a very heartfelt comment from an East Lothian parent to my recent reply to a “Parent with standards”
An extract reads: “Firstly, your office may well pass down a zero tolerance policy to the schools but it is not what happens on the ground. Bullying is tolerated in the sense of ineffective warnings issued [...]