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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As Head of Education I had a very clear and unambiguous role, i.e. I was responsible for everything which came under the banner of education of children and young people from 3-18 years of age. In my new role as Acting Director of Education and Children’s Services I have a much wider remit which includes the oversight [...]
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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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In the spirit of provoking a dialectic of possible worlds I came across an interesting model of football club ownership this weekend when I read about Ebbsfleet United Football Club:
Fans’ community website MyFootballClub has agreed a deal to take over Blue Square Premier outfit Ebbsfleet United.
The 20,000 MyFootballClub members have each paid £35 to provide a £700,000 takeover pot and [...]
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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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Posted in Children's Services, Conferences, Culture change, Ideas, OUtcome agreements, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Planning, Public Services, Strategic, Uncategorized, Using data, school based management on May 15th, 2008 4 Comments »
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 [...]
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Posted in Children's Services, Communication, Conferences, Corporate, Early Intervention, Early Years, Integrated Children's Services, LAAC, Leadership Dilemmas, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Public Services on May 6th, 2008 1 Comment »
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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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Posted in Blogging, Communication, Community Learning, Consultation, Corporate, Edubuzz, Elected Members, Ideas, Learning Logs, Public Services, Social media on Apr 21st, 2008 No Comments »
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 [...]
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