As a single decision made in a leadership capacity can have such long lasting and profound impact on so many working structures it would be great to find out what other educators believe theirs are, and why!
So, please post the top 3 leadership decisions (not management decisions) you have made in any leadership capacity and why they have reached your top 3. E.g. as a subject coordinator, deputy head, head, year group leader, consultant to a cluster of schools etc
Here are mine as an ICT Coordinator in a Primary School:
1. The creation of a vision for ICT that is shared between staff, parents, pupils, governors. Reason: These few sentences have given a sharp focus on where ICT should be taken within the school. It gives direction and (hopefully!) motivates.
2. Moving the ICT Curriculum away from QCA units to a skills based, integrated ICT curriculum. Reason: Whilst this leads to significant management issues (e.g. progression, teaching subject knowledge etc) over time, transferable ICT skills, motivation and ICT use throughout the curriculum have been significantly raised.
3. ‘The one that got away’ – Changing the role of the ICT Coordinator into a Curriculum Development Group. Now this as not been a success as yet but I still think this would be a great move, enhancing collaboration, teachers taking more ownership of ICT etc. I just couldn’t sustain it at the time I introduced the structure change a few years ago. Now that we have an established learning platform, I am hoping that a second attempt, with interaction through the LP will support its development.
Image courtesy of Ed Gaillard.
1. Developing a vision which involved all of the Foundation Stage without being tokenistic. I had seen too many nurseries with the best telly and worst IT equipment. This included FS pupils submitting films to the school film competition (the only problem was they couldn’t get onto the stage at the local theatre to receive their prize.)
2. Identifying teachers as barometer teachers (not necessarily for identification to others) – these were the ICT naysayers or ICT phobic. As they made more use of ICT and as the quality of the children’s access and use improved we could measure that the whole school was moving forward.
3. Number 2 was achieved through a great deal of coaching and mentoring by both teachers, TAs and most importantly ICT mentors (children from noth KS1 and 2). The coaching meant that they weren’t dependent on the technician or me for learning how to do something for the third time. The mentors were children confident in the use of one application and could be called upon (within reason) during lesson time to support a child, group or the teacher.
1. Making a very brave decision to let the pupils chose their own curriculum. I had a lot of staff to convince-Teachers-they would have to plan everything from scratch every half-term,Management-needed to know that it would positively affect standards and Governors-who thought I was mad!
Pupils now vote on what topic area they will study-all non-core subjects, ICT and Literacy is taught within the ‘topic’. After the vote-the pupils are asked what they would like to learn about the topic and teachers then get together to agree what they’d like to learn too. All the questions are then put together in a half-term project, where the class work on answering the questions, produce and work towards a concrete end product.
It’s transformed the school-pupils have ownership of the curriculum, parents love it-often asking the teachers what the next project will be, standards in literacy have risen by 20% and the school just had their highest CVA of 101.8! (The school is in the top 2% deprived areas in Europe)
Just in case you’re wondering I had a little try-out before rolling it out to the entire school (A term with the Y3/4 classes). The trial was such a sucess that the whole school was doing it a term before I’d expected.
I chose this because in leadership,you have to be brave when you believe in something. Don’t just sit on a good idea-do something about it. You never know where it will lead.
2. We’d done 3 years with Creative Partnerships and I wanted to make our final project with them something that would have a national impact. We’d already produced a community book with Matt Black a renowned poet and worked with a V & A artist-so it had to be a biggie to top those.
I got some inspiration from a concept called ‘Third Space’ where the working space is not at work or home but a third space (like a Starbucks) where you can still work.
I decided to use it as a staff CPD tool and devised a project that would take whole year group teams out of school to a place that they never visited, once there they would meet a practioner to get some inspiration from and take part in an unusual activity. They used this to formulate a lesson, which had to be taught to staff and then the whole school did it.
It was the decision to involve new tech that was the best one. Staff were complete novices at basic tech stuff and I decided that the only way to educate them was to force their involvement.
So the projects were documented using a website(www.inathirdspace.com)-feedback was posted on twitter (@inathirdspace)and sent by text message -pictures were sent via the phones and Flickr.
Staff were very sceptical at 1st but once they got the hang of it they were using twitter in the classroom, uploading photos in their own time and using their mobile phones in very different ways. At the end of the project the staff all said how much they enjoyed using the new tech stuff and would be using it again in future teaching.
I have produced a book that documents the project and has a DIY section for those that are equally inspired-coming out soon.
I included this because when making a leadership decision you can’t wait for staff to come around to your way of thinking-you have to use stealth to influence them.
3. Last May I was seconded to a school in trouble. The head and the deputy had both been suspended-later to resign. The school had no direction, vision or discipline. The teachers and staff were impotent-they had no control-of their own learning and that of the pupils. I walked into an assembly the first morning I got their and a fight broke out between to Y6′s. The whole teaching staff were there and TA’s, nobody moved a muscle or raised a voice, the whole thing was surreal.
To cut a long story short,I introduced a behaviour policy that had worked at a different school. The policy applied to all staff,immediately empowering them and giving a clear message to the pupils-Cross the line and these are the consequences-stay within the boundaries and these are the rewards.
The repercussions were sensational-the school has recently had a LA review by a lead OFSTED inspector-it went from a rating of ‘poor’ to ‘Outstanding’ in 6 months. Kids were holding doors and saying please and thankyou!
It may seem an obvious leadership decision-but I’m including it for two reasons. Sometimes in leadership you have to make decisions quickly and go with what you know.
It may seem obvious but there are too many schools where behaviour and attendance are not given the priority they should be.
Ultimately you concentrated on conditions for learning and you let the kids know where the line was.
Exactly-behaviour was also used as an excuse by poor teachers-once we’d sorted it out-we could concentrate on our core business,Teaching and Learning.
Best leadership decision was to form an ICT development team, allowing different people to lead at different times has worked wonders – this was made up of like minded, enthusiastic and innovative people who had a different range of experiences in using ICT – from very basic to whizzy whizzy as I like to call them.
The team consists of our School Business Manager, two teaching assistants, the Deputy head, our ICT lead (although he is just recent), a couple of governors, parents and two pupil reps. All we have in common is that we are committed to enhancing learning and teaching through the effective use of ICT. The results have been tremendous -our two teaching assistants now have very different roles, one leads cpd in the use of Apple apps – garage band, comic life imovie etc and runs the school blog, the other manages all the technical aspects of ICT.
The school business manager has developed the MLE, SIMS in the classroom as a communication tool between school and home. Our vision has been developed and the children’s input has really helped staff take that huge leap of faith in developing their confidence and ability to try new technologies to teach – ipod touch/DS and Wii are now all being integrated into day to day teaching.
Second best leadership decision to put most of our ICT budget into training and not into purchase of hardware – we have given staff lots of high quality CPD over thelast year and boy has iut paid dividends. To the extent that it has changed their outlook on their way they teach and use ICT. Can’t recommend the importance of long term, sustained CPD!!