Our ex-colleague,Richard Stiff has been appointed as chief executive of angus council in Scotland and will take over when current chief executive, David Sawers, retires in February after five years in post...
Richard is currently deputy chief executive at North Lincolnshire Council and joins the authority as it enters the most challenging period in its short history, with Angus facing a quest for £9 million of budget savings in the coming year and the prospect of a 500-strong workforce reduction by 2014. It's great to see individuals who were part of theEducation Leeds story moving on to bigger and better things. Richard joins a huge number of ex-colleagues who have taken the Education Leeds culture,values and will now be releasing the magic in Scotland.
Chris
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Friday, 28 January 2011
RSA Academy
The RSA Academy in Tipton opened in September 2008 and is the first school to be designed entirely around the principles of Opening Minds. They moved into their new £35 million building in September 2010...
The RSA Academy aims to play a major role in the economic and social regeneration of the local area by providing young people with opportunities for educational achievement and the acquisition of real world skills. The Academy Trust and governing body are chaired by Sir Mike Tomlinson, ex OFSTED Chief Inspector of Schools. The Academy has three schools which focus on languages and communication, the arts, humanities and sport and science, maths and technology. It has a specialism in Citizenship and Health, runs extended opening hours and works with the local community in order to provide a suitable range of additional facilities for use by them in the evenings and at weekends.
Chris
Opening Minds!
The RSA sponsors the RSA Academy which is a hugely impressive place which uses a curriculum based on Opening Minds...
RSA Opening Minds initiative promotes innovative and integrated ways of thinking about education and the curriculum. Teachers design and develop a curriculum for their own schools based round the development of five key competences:
1. Citizenship
2. Learning
3. Managing information
4. Relating to people
5. Managing situations
A competence based approach enables students not just to acquire subject knowledge but to understand, use and apply it within the context of their wider learning and life. It also offers students a more holistic and coherent way of learning which allows them to make connections and apply knowledge across different subject areas.
Opening Minds was developed by and is supported by the RSA and is now being used in over 200 schools across the country. You can find out more by visiting their website at www.rsaopeningminds.org.uk/.
Chris
RSA Opening Minds initiative promotes innovative and integrated ways of thinking about education and the curriculum. Teachers design and develop a curriculum for their own schools based round the development of five key competences:
1. Citizenship
2. Learning
3. Managing information
4. Relating to people
5. Managing situations
A competence based approach enables students not just to acquire subject knowledge but to understand, use and apply it within the context of their wider learning and life. It also offers students a more holistic and coherent way of learning which allows them to make connections and apply knowledge across different subject areas.
Opening Minds was developed by and is supported by the RSA and is now being used in over 200 schools across the country. You can find out more by visiting their website at www.rsaopeningminds.org.uk/.
Chris
Seeking Excellence!
I was at the RSA Academy in Tipton in the West Midlands today...
I was attending The Pacific Institute's "Seeking Excellence"; Organisational Culture Securing Success conference. The conference was aimed at principals and headteachers at Academies and Training Schools across the country. It was based at the RSA Academy because they are using Investment in Excellence, The Pacific Institute's flagship programme, to embed cultural change with every member of the staff team going through the four day programme. The day had inputs from Michael Gernon, Neil Straker, Martin Vaughan and I.
Michael Gernon is the inspirational principal of the RSA Academy who talked about how he has secured success at the academy through a constructive culture and through working with The Pacific Institute. Neil Straker, who leads The Pacific Institute in the UK, talked about The Pacific Institute's programmes and the importance of the work on leadership, culture and performance. Martin Vaughan talked about the five businesses he has led where he has used The Pacific Institute's programmes to drive cultural change and improved performance. I talked about the story of and the successes of Education Leeds and the brilliant work colleagues have done with parents using the STEPS programme.
It was certainly an interesting day and the RSA Academy is a simply outstanding learning place and worth another visit when the students are on site.
Chris
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Practice makes perfect!
I am in the West Midlands tomorrow at a conference at the RSA Academy...
I am doing a session in the afternoon at the conference; '"Seeking Excellence" Organisational Culture Securing Success' which is for principals and headteachers from academies and training schools across the country. It's going to be a brilliant day and I'll let you know how it goes and what the RSA Academy is like tomorrow evening.
Chris
I am doing a session in the afternoon at the conference; '"Seeking Excellence" Organisational Culture Securing Success' which is for principals and headteachers from academies and training schools across the country. It's going to be a brilliant day and I'll let you know how it goes and what the RSA Academy is like tomorrow evening.
Chris
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Catching Up!
I stayed in Leeds after the STEPS session to meet a few colleagues and catch up...
It was great to see my colleagues Rachel, Wendy, Richard and Jackie at Costa Coffee in the Merrion Centre. These four colleagues capture between them all the things that made Education Leeds such a successful organisation and such a great place to work. Rachel, Wendy, Richard and Jackie sum up the values, attitudes and beliefs that made me love being in Leeds and it was a privilege working with them. They are passionate, intelligent, creative, articulate, action focused and powerfully connected to young people. Talking to them I understood once again why The Sunday Times decided that Education Leeds had become one of the best places to work in the public sector in 2010 having been simply one to watch in 2009!
Chris
It was great to see my colleagues Rachel, Wendy, Richard and Jackie at Costa Coffee in the Merrion Centre. These four colleagues capture between them all the things that made Education Leeds such a successful organisation and such a great place to work. Rachel, Wendy, Richard and Jackie sum up the values, attitudes and beliefs that made me love being in Leeds and it was a privilege working with them. They are passionate, intelligent, creative, articulate, action focused and powerfully connected to young people. Talking to them I understood once again why The Sunday Times decided that Education Leeds had become one of the best places to work in the public sector in 2010 having been simply one to watch in 2009!
Chris
STEPS!
This morning, I attended a STEPS taster session at The Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Community Centre on Stonegate Road...
The STEPS programme must be the largest parenting and effectiveness initiative in the city and the team has now trained around 400 facilitators and reached around 4000 parents and carers. We know that STEPS changes lives, saves lives and makes an incredible difference because we have all seen the results and Shelly and Sarah showed us how effective the talented facilitators we have here in Leeds are. They are part of the foundations on which we can build to ensure that the programme continues to reach the parts other interventions simply don't touch. If you want to find out more about STEPS please let me know.
Chris
"The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything;
they just make the most of everything that comes their way."
they just make the most of everything that comes their way."
The session was facilitated by my talented colleagues Shelly Savino and Sarah Wilcock who work for the Leeds Jewish Welfare Board which is based at the Community Centre.
Shelly and Sarah led a wonderful three hour taster session which included watching the new STEPS DVD which is a fantastic advert for the programme. My colleagues Chris Bennett and Val Cain, who lead the STEPS programme for Education Leeds, were also there and it was great to catch up and talk about how we can secure these vitally important programmes for the future
The STEPS programme must be the largest parenting and effectiveness initiative in the city and the team has now trained around 400 facilitators and reached around 4000 parents and carers. We know that STEPS changes lives, saves lives and makes an incredible difference because we have all seen the results and Shelly and Sarah showed us how effective the talented facilitators we have here in Leeds are. They are part of the foundations on which we can build to ensure that the programme continues to reach the parts other interventions simply don't touch. If you want to find out more about STEPS please let me know.
Chris
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
I am in Leeds again!
I have been asked by my colleagues in The Pacific Institute to visit a STEPS event tomorrow in North Leeds...
I'll tell you about it tomorrow but being in Leeds will give me the opportunity to see friends and colleagues during the afternoon at Costa Coffee. I should be there from 2.00 until 4.00. Hope to see some of you during the afternoon. I am over again next Wednesday 2nd February and again the following Monday 7th February and 8th February for anyone who can't make it tomorrow.
Chris
I'll tell you about it tomorrow but being in Leeds will give me the opportunity to see friends and colleagues during the afternoon at Costa Coffee. I should be there from 2.00 until 4.00. Hope to see some of you during the afternoon. I am over again next Wednesday 2nd February and again the following Monday 7th February and 8th February for anyone who can't make it tomorrow.
Chris
Physics is simply magic!
I started my teaching career as a physics teacher and I am still passionate about the subject and how it is taught...
Physics is the branch of science concerned with the properties of matter and energy and the relationships between them. It is based on mathematics and traditionally includes mechanics, optics, electricity and magnetism, acoustics, and heat. Modern physics, based on quantum theory, includes atomic, nuclear, particle, and solid-state studies. It can also embrace applications such as geophysics and meteorology. Physics is no harder than any other subject on the curriculum but we have been persuaded that subjects like mathematics and physics are harder to learn about, harder to teach and harder when it came to tests and examinations. It's all nonsense of course and in the hands of a great teacher like Richard Feynman physics is simply magic. Our job as educators is to make the subject come alive and to inspire young people to love the subject and want to become physicists, mathematicians and engineers.
Chris
What can we learn from the Manchester Challenge?
'Schools learning together' was the name of a project that started in York and the ideas have been further developed in Manchester and Leeds...
"The knowledge and skills were here in local schools in abundance," says Professor Mel Ainscow "But they weren't sufficiently moving around. The challenge was especially with 'hard-to-reach' urban pupils. That's where the difference had to be made."
This month's publication of the 2010 GCSE's shows an increase of 6% on average scores in 2009, and 11% since the Manchester City Challenge began in 2007. In Leeds the figures are even more impressive! Mel Ainscow's diagnosis is that we must encourage schools by "moving knowledge around" – creating "families of schools"; not families in the traditional, feeder/pyramid sense but schools from Oldham to Wigan grouped together in comparable groups. Mel Ainscow says: "We were looking at schools whose intake, size and other features had much in common, and seeing how one was doing well and another not. We were looking for the good things, naturally, and through this system, they were clear. It was a game-changer." The next step was what Ainscow calls "carefully brokered" school partnerships; collaborative, co-operative partnerships where schools share their best practice and strengths. Nothing new in the world!
Chris
"The knowledge and skills were here in local schools in abundance," says Professor Mel Ainscow "But they weren't sufficiently moving around. The challenge was especially with 'hard-to-reach' urban pupils. That's where the difference had to be made."
This month's publication of the 2010 GCSE's shows an increase of 6% on average scores in 2009, and 11% since the Manchester City Challenge began in 2007. In Leeds the figures are even more impressive! Mel Ainscow's diagnosis is that we must encourage schools by "moving knowledge around" – creating "families of schools"; not families in the traditional, feeder/pyramid sense but schools from Oldham to Wigan grouped together in comparable groups. Mel Ainscow says: "We were looking at schools whose intake, size and other features had much in common, and seeing how one was doing well and another not. We were looking for the good things, naturally, and through this system, they were clear. It was a game-changer." The next step was what Ainscow calls "carefully brokered" school partnerships; collaborative, co-operative partnerships where schools share their best practice and strengths. Nothing new in the world!
Chris
The School I'd Like!
It doesn't seem ten years since the Guardian produced that wonderful publication...
Ten years ago the Guardian ran a called 'the school I'd like'. Primary children and secondary students were asked to design the school of their dreams. They got over 15000 responses which makes it one of the largest informal surveys of children's attitudes towards schooling ever conducted in this country. The result was The Children's Manifesto of 2001 which was a wonderful collection of dreams and a challenge to all of us to build brilliant!
Now the Guardian is doing it again and want to ask young people some questions...
The Guardian will publish some of the comments and use all of them to inform and guide the new manifesto. Some young people who send in the most imaginative and exciting ideas will be asked to join the Guardian's special Children's Manifesto panel, helping to sift through the submissions to turn them into the new manifesto.
Chris
Ten years ago the Guardian ran a called 'the school I'd like'. Primary children and secondary students were asked to design the school of their dreams. They got over 15000 responses which makes it one of the largest informal surveys of children's attitudes towards schooling ever conducted in this country. The result was The Children's Manifesto of 2001 which was a wonderful collection of dreams and a challenge to all of us to build brilliant!
Now the Guardian is doing it again and want to ask young people some questions...
- Is your school just as you'd like it to be?
- Or are there things you would change?
- Is the building right?
- Should you sit exams?
- Are you allowed to express yourself?
- Are your lessons interesting?
The Guardian will publish some of the comments and use all of them to inform and guide the new manifesto. Some young people who send in the most imaginative and exciting ideas will be asked to join the Guardian's special Children's Manifesto panel, helping to sift through the submissions to turn them into the new manifesto.
Chris
Happiness!
The BBC are doing some interesting things about happiness reflecting on the fact that we are less happy now than we were and getting even more unhappy...
Psychologists have apparently now come up with a formula for happiness:
Happiness appears to be connected to relationships, contentment, security and money, health, transcendence and fulfilment. One key ingredient to happiness is social relationships, and another key ingredient appears to be having important goals that derive from things like children and family that are important to us, and to make progress toward those goals. Perhaps that why colleagues working in the Education Leeds team were so happy and engaged especially as is important to feel a sense of belonging to something larger than oneself. Three exercises have been proved to produce lasting reductions in depression and lasting increases in happiness. You can try the three that work which were "three blessings" - writing down three things that went well today and why; "the gratitude visit" - writing a gratitude testimonial and delivering it personally; and "using your signature strength in a new way" - taking the signature strength test and using your highest strength in a new way.
I have always been interested in happiness and I am more and more convinced that the seven things we all need to do to be happy are:
Chris
"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."
Albert Schweitzer
'Pleasure + engagement + meaning = happiness'.
Happiness appears to be connected to relationships, contentment, security and money, health, transcendence and fulfilment. One key ingredient to happiness is social relationships, and another key ingredient appears to be having important goals that derive from things like children and family that are important to us, and to make progress toward those goals. Perhaps that why colleagues working in the Education Leeds team were so happy and engaged especially as is important to feel a sense of belonging to something larger than oneself. Three exercises have been proved to produce lasting reductions in depression and lasting increases in happiness. You can try the three that work which were "three blessings" - writing down three things that went well today and why; "the gratitude visit" - writing a gratitude testimonial and delivering it personally; and "using your signature strength in a new way" - taking the signature strength test and using your highest strength in a new way.
Despite everything research suggests that we are no happier now than we were 50 years ago. In his book 'Authentic Happiness' Martin Seligman argues that happiness is not the result of good genes or good luck and that we can teach people to be happy by cultivating and using many of the strengths and traits colleagues possess including kindness, originality, humour, optimism and generosity. By identifying the very best in ourselves Seligman argues that we can improve the world around us and achieve new and sustainable levels of commitment, contentment and meaning.
Lord Richard Layard, Director of the Well-being Programme in the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, argues that the key to success is to give higher priority to promoting better human relationships. He believes that the revolution to build character should be a major aim in every school with expert teachers of PSHE for whom that is their full-time mission and passion. Richard argues that PSHE is an extraordinarily difficult subject to teach but that we increasingly know what works and what does not. PSHE teaching must be based increasingly on evidence based research about what changes children and young people and what does not!
I have always been interested in happiness and I am more and more convinced that the seven things we all need to do to be happy are:
- exercise regularly;
- get mental stimulation;
- get artistic stimulation;
- do a good turn every day;
- do something with a friend;
- give yourself a treat;
- celebrate and congratulate yourself.
Chris
Can I help?
I have some spare time at the moment and as you know I like to be busy...
I am going to be very busy after Easter but does any one want me to run a session for them, their staff or cluster or group over the next few weeks. I'd be happy to discuss how I might help especially if you are a follower of the blog!
Chris
I am going to be very busy after Easter but does any one want me to run a session for them, their staff or cluster or group over the next few weeks. I'd be happy to discuss how I might help especially if you are a follower of the blog!
Chris
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)