CPD Team

Despite a wild and windy day in North Ayrshire , Jim Keegans and I enjoyed a very warm sesssion with primary head teacher colleagues  on the 28 October. At the invitation of Gary Johnstone , QIM we shared some thinking and prompted discussion on the appropriateness of a coaching approach to support the PRD process. Colleagues were very participative and the reflections and observations which emanated from the group activities and discussions provided very interesting feedback for the authority and enhanced our own thinking on these topical themes .

Conference was privileged to hear the last public speaking engagement of Matt MacIver as Chief Executive/Registrar of the General Teaching Council Scotland.

Matt talked warmly of his professional contact with Judith McClure over the years, including their respective early roles in developing leadership in Scotland. Among the challenges highlighted by Matt were:

- Succession planning for head teachers and other leaders

- Changing the view held by some that Chartered Teacher is simply a career progression

- If we are going down the route of professional standards, why is there no standard for leadership?

- Revision of the Standard for Headship to meet the new leadership challenges

- Developing effective CPD for heads that encourages development of leadership skills

He spoke warmly of the leaders that influenced him from his early days as a young teacher in Kilmarnock through to his current position. Matt’s penultimate (and passionate) plea was for conference to go out and ‘talk up’ the noble profession of teaching.

Finally, Matt was fulsome in his praise of leaders as represented by SELMAS conference delegates, ““extraordinary people doing an extraordinary job!”

From Graham Thomson’s group

“Head teachers need to look after themselves as well as colleagues!”

Judith McClure, convenor of SELMAS,  spoke last in Session 2 on the subject of succession planning

In her final year of headship, Judith reflected on the current problems of head teacher recruitment to a job that’s so rewarding.  Succession planning is about:

- Developing leadership skills all the time

- Realising that teamwork is so important and needs to be rewarded

She also urged conference to get the message across that it’s a privileged and rewarding job to be a head teacher. To help that process, we need to make sure there is support for head teachers:

- in dealing with press matters

- by making heads feel empowered

- by accepting that pay does matter when you are expected to shoulder such a leadership burden.

From Iain White of Govan High School

“Hire the Crazies! If you hire a dull person, you will get a dull department!”

Iain White of Govan High School challenged us on the context of leadership. His slides speak for themselves.

Gillian Tee,  Director of Children and Families in City of Edinburgh Council on the issues facing a leader having to make a reduction of £16m in the budget.

She started with some guiding principles on what her organisation were about. These included:

• Protect front-line services (inc. schools and direct social services)
• Transparency of discussion of budgetary difficulties
• Engagement of people with the solutions however difficult the task
• No-blame approach

Some lessons Gillian and her team learned from the process

• Focus on improved outcomes for children
• Keep it in perspective
• Break the vicious circle of small number of children taking disproportionate amount of budget
• Keep a sense of humour

Colin Russell kicked off the mini-presentations of session 2 with a discussion on leading change.

He started with the conditions for change.  He noted that we have a unique premise, ie a coherent description of the 4 capacities of an educated Scot. Before that, he argued we had a period of laissez faire with sporadic good practice followed by, in the case of 5-14, widespread, observed non-compliance.

He outlined some of the leadership structures in Dean Park Primary School. These included

• a staff forum allows for democratic leadership
• a global leadership system but with the development of situational leadership in the school.
• Situational leaders are given authority because they have authority

He finished with an exhortation not to flog dead horses.

• a staff forum allows for democratic leadership
• a global leadership system but with the development of situational leadership in the school.
• Situational leaders are given authority because they have authority

He finished with an exhortation not to flog dead horses.
“What works, works! What doesn’t work, doesn’t work!”

From Colin Russell of Dean Park Primary School:

“A policy is a clear and unambiguous statement of what nobody does!”