Sunday 8th March 2015
The Spring term primary headteacher meetings took place at the end of February/beginning of March.
The EPHA Spring term newsletter was provided at the meeting, and include the dates for the summer term meetings. Headteachers were reminded that the annual headteachers' conference is being held on Friday 13 March, at Stock Brook Country Club. The two key note presenters are Dame Alison Peacock and Sir Clive Woodward, so places are going fast. Please contact Pam Langmead immediately, at langmead@tesco.net to book your place at the conference.
The meetings included case studies about how individual schools improve their writing and the various presentations can be found on the website.
Chris Kiernan, Interim Director for Commissioning: Education and Life-Long Learning, gave heads an update on a number of topical issues, including attendance, primary data and Ofsted outcomes, and developing a schools-led improvement system in Essex. He also referred to the likely implications for schools' budgets following recent announcements from the Prime Minister that school budgets will be protected, but remain flat, and from Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, who suggested the likely inflation figures for the next parliament. In reality, this will mean that school budgets will reduce in real terms, and Chris has created a spreadsheet which schools can use to calculate their likely future income; he urged headteachers, and their governors, to start to scenario plan for the next five years.
Other items on the agenda included the launch of the Virtual Leadership Academy, and discussions about the draft Excellence in Essex document, which sets out the RAG rating system for all Essex schools and the support that is offered by the Standards and Excellence team.
In addition, headteachers were referred to the Local Authority's termly briefing paper, which covered a wide range of issues.
During the afternoon at the South and North East meetings, headteachers enjoyed a training workshop delivered by Caroline Bentley-Davies, on "Developing your middle leadership". Information and materials can be found at:
The West and Mid heads were treated to a presentation from Shay McConnon, magician, psychologist and ex-teacher in Special Schools. Shay is the creator of An Even Better Place to Work (BP2W), the culmination of his 20+ years working in organisations on leadership and culture issues, including within the educational world.
His presentation explored how to prevent those frequent people problems including low morale, high staff turnover and disengagement, and gave practical ways to create happy, engaged, productive staff. Following the session he shared two papers: a "People Instruction Manual" and "The Leader as Worth Creator".
An Even Better Place to Work is an on-line, self-managed tool that enables staff to take ownership for their issues. The question constantly asked is "What am I going to do?" not "What is management going to do?" - and people love it!
More information at www.mcconnonint.com
The minutes of the meetings can be found on the Area Meetings page http://new.essexprimaryheads.co.uk/meetings/termly-area
Pam Langmead
EPHA Manager
01621 78635907791 143277
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Pam Langmead