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Dr Elizabeth Sidwell Haberdashers ' Aske ' s Hatcham College England, United Kingdom
To lead a school is to serve a whole family of masters - children, parents, staff, governors, government - for all of whom your best work is invisible. It is expected, as if it were a natural law, like the rising of the sun, that the school will operate, lessons will run on time, examinations will be passed and another generation will be prepared to seek their places in the world.
Like the perfect host, I strive to remain imperturbable, as if the party ' s success were inevitable and effortless. It is a private honour to know the furious activity, the number of balls that need to be kept in the air at any one time, the skill and dedication of an enormous team, that operates unseen, keeping my wonderful diverse community in its dynamic equilibrium.
It would not be fair or honest to a new head, if I spoke only of the value and virtues of leadership, and not of its demands or disillusions. The work is testing, endless and exists in ever more directions. Traditional issues of discipline and lesson quality never go away and are now joined by the continual quest to tap shifting streams of funding, to regenerate the local community, the need to adapt to fresh burdens of social programming from the centre, seeing through the dazzle of an increasingly kaleidoscopic variety of curricular options and embracing the higher educational challenge of staff training and development. I could name more. And yet…although all heads will discover from time to time the truth in the old joke -
' I don ' t want to go to school today. ' ' You have to: you ' re the Head. '
- it is a profession that offers both the privilege of playing a critical role in the lives of thousands, and the opportunity to prove your quality in a great range of situations. If you can take change in your stride and find time for all your constituencies, it is the best job in the world and I love it. It is also not without recognition.
There are national honours for a few that reflect well on the many. For all of us, though, I think it is the small moments of thanks from a parent, a staff member, a child who sees what you have done to support them that pay handsomely for all the rest.
Educational leadership is a responsibility worth choosing. But potential heads need much better support systems to encourage and assist them in their choice of such a large, important and increasingly varied task. I believe that experienced heads need to slide one more job into their bulging portfolio and offer some form of apprenticeship, work-shadowing or leadership training to their successors. It is never acceptable for a leader to observe a problem and do nothing more than sigh. And there is a problem - a shortage of new school leaders. It is our job therefore to roll up our sleeves and set to work. Just as it is essential for good schools to be involved in teacher training, for where else can trainee teachers learn best practice, so it is essential good heads help train new school leaders.
For the last six years, I have been working with a coalition of state and independent schools to provide a new option in school-centred teacher-training. South London Teacher Training is a successful training consortium where all the schools involved learn from each other. We train thirty new teachers each year so that they achieve Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and a Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE). I am now working with the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) scheme to help train the educational leaders of tomorrow. This is a national initiative which now has found its feet after a tortuous beginning. There are three routes to headship qualification, depending on the aspiring heads ' experience. I will help tutor trainee heads and I consider this an important part of my duty to ensure I pass on my experience gained over thirteen years of headship in both the state and independent sectors. There is a little way yet before retirement, perfect time for some succession planning and to pay back in some small way a profession that has been regularly infuriating but always stimulating. My aim would always be to encourage new heads to strive for autonomy in their leadership and to fight against bureaucracy and to collaborate effectively with other heads.
As part of my involvement with the NPQH scheme, I recently addressed a group of 25 trainee heads. They were beginning to grapple with the challenge of conceiving a vision for their schools and making it a practical reality. Officially, I was there to pass on lessons learnt in my years at the ' chalkface ' , but I found their discovery and development of the ideas involved to be fascinating and reinvigorating. Spending time with fresh talent is very much a two-way street.
So what did I tell them it takes to be a head who can see what to do and make it happen? I said what I believe, that you must begin and end by knowing what success looks like. An old boy of mine competed in Athens this year. He came back to give an assembly about his experience, and I asked him what was key in preparing for the Olympics - thinking it would be the disciplined lifestyle or the hours of dedicated training. He said, knowing where you want to get.
If you can hold a clear sense of what your goals, are and know when each has been attained, you have the essential quality to stay in the lead. In my years as a deputy, and as a head of one school within a larger college, I learnt from those above me something of what a difference that clarity - or its absence - could make. But it is a false economy to rely on exposure to one or two heads in the wild to teach a challenger what paths to tread and which to avoid. Anyone willing to take the alpha-role needs to be brought up against best practice, and tasked to evolve it further. We need training schemes in place and much involvement from existing heads. Once retired, I fear our sell-by-date comes very quickly.
I hope that I can help maintain and improve this country ' s tradition of school leadership. To ensure that we continue to have the best possible heads in the future, we need to establish systems to ensure the transmission of hard-won knowledge and allow the freedom for students to develop refinements in technique. NPQH is an important component, and will become more so. Yet I will always hold that an enterprising variety in approach offers most hope. There is considerable room for innovation. The independent schools in the UK have an excellent buddying system for new heads. As a state head I would not rule out collaborations with the private sector as one part of the answer. If advantage moves in both directions, and the private schools can help to justify their charitable status in the process, why not? Through my teacher training initiative, I have already found the benefits in a healthy dialogue between schools in very different funding situations - it is there that we discover the problems and joys we share, and begin to move towards the most creative solutions.
The role of the current cohort of successful and innovative heads-in-training and new heads is of fundamental importance. They have to learn to think out of the box and realise there is much potential to do so for the brave.
Dr Elizabeth Sidwell, FRSA, FRGS, is Principal of Haberdashers ' Aske ' s Hatcham College and Chief Executive of the Haberdashers ' Federation. Elizabeth began her teaching career in the independent sector and held a range of responsibility posts, including Deputy Head. She has now been a Head for thirteen years in the state sector. Haberdashers ' Aske ' s Hatcham College is an independent state comprehensive and Leading Edge School situated on three sites in New Cross, South East London.
Her initiatives include the first independent/state School Centred Initial Teacher Training Consortium, South London Teacher Training, and the annual Aske ' s Education Lecture now in its 10th year. Currently, she is involved in the Government ' s Academy programme and is leading a unique project to implement two academies to open in September 2005 and form a Federation. She is a member of HMC, an Ofsted Inspector, and undertakes Headship appraisals for the Girls ' Day School Trust.
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