2008-09 PROGRAMMES

Performance Management & Performance Pay
Don’t Get Caught Out By Planned Changes to the Threshold Application Process
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Staffing Structure Review
All Safeguarding Ends on 31 December 2008.
What Do You Want Your Next Leadership Structure to Look Like?
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Senior Leader Shortages
Are Your Governors Aware of the Scale of the Problem?
Are They Asking What It Would Take to Persuade You to Stay?
Are They Aware of All the Pay & Conditions Flexibilities Available to Them?
Are They Actively Encouraging Phased Retirement and Succession Planning?
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Planning Your Senior Leadership Exit Strategy
More pension flexibility than ever; which deal is right for you?
Want to maximise the chances of a successful application to move to part-time headship?
What consultancy opportunities are out there?
What tax advantages are there in setting up a business?
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Performance Management & Performance Pay
The critical thing to understand here is that the government has produced new professional standards which define levels of classroom skill in a progressive way. Urged on by the STRB, it now wants to encourage schools to pay teachers according to the excellence or otherwise of their classroom practice rather than their length of service. If schools are to do this successfully, they must first be providing teachers with an accurate assessment of their performance against the national standards. Enter the new threshold arrangements. It is proposed that, from September 2009, there will be no threshold application process. Heads will simply rely on a teacher’s last two performance reviews. The catch here is the model RIG Performance Management policy which most schools have adopted. “At the review stage it will be assumed that those aspects of a teacher’s roles/responsibilities not covered by the objectives or any amendment to the statement which may have been necessary in accordance with the provisions of the regulations have been carried out satisfactorily.” This means that, unless schools are identifying areas in which practice falls short of national standards and developing performance objectives which specifically address these deficiencies, heads will effectively lose the capacity to decline threshold progression. The same is true with UPS progression.

Our half day course alerts heads to the issues and provides them with all the letters and paperwork they will need to ensure that professional development objectives aligned to feedback on performance can be set in 2008-09; this is especially critical for teachers moving to M5 this year, who are likely to be the first whose threshold application will be dealt with solely through performance review.

Our full day course also deals with the threshold issue but widens the perspective to show how schools can handle the pay and professional development of the entire workforce in a similar way using the appropriate national standards. For teachers, this involves advice on how to agree clear (and more demanding) UPS 2 and 3 criteria and to encapsulate these in performance management and pay policies; for senior staff, similar principles need to guide progression up the leadership scale. For support staff, we provide advice on how to use the same basic procedures while being sensitive to the fact that their engagement with performance management is not a statutory requirement.

Both courses provide attendees with hard copies of the basic paperwork needed to do the job. Schools that wish to do so can also purchase our complete range of letters, papers and exemplar objectives for the entire workforce in electronic format. A one off payment of £195 plus VAT provides the AESOPP (Audit to Establish Skills-Based Objectives for Performance Progression) CD and pack, together with free updates on request as new national standards emerge and our materials develop. Over 2000 schools nationally are already using it.

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Staffing Structure Review
The government made a dreadful mess of the first staffing structure review in 2005. Many headteachers welcomed in principle the opportunity to have a “remodelling” look at their leadership structures – but in the end were forced by the impossibly tight timescales to “go for assimilation.”

All salary safeguarding from the first review ends on December 31st 2008, and many heads are uncertain about what to do next. Our course therefore aims to do four things

  • To run over the current situation and enable heads to ask questions – our consultants have been amazed by the complexity of the issues that have been raised in these sessions
  • To provide an authoritative briefing on what needs to happen next – all those attending receive a detailed procedural guide
  • To look at a range of alternative scenarios for the next review – from gentle tinkering to total change; from reviews conducted in one school to reviews conducted across a school network
  • To explore some radically different approaches to pay and leadership structures

Based on follow-up work in schools and school networks resulting from the TLR debacle, when we briefed over 4000 heads and governors, we have gained a unique understanding of the different types of staffing and leadership structures that are emerging nationally. The STRB and Pricewaterhouse Coopers have both recently urged the government to encourage and speed up the pace of change in this area. Our briefing will therefore give details of the following key trends….

  • the development of TLR posts that change annually in line with school improvement priorities rather than being attached to a particular curriculum area
  • fewer (better paid) leadership posts with accountability for outcomes, with the holders of those remaining supported by holders of flexible TLR posts as described above
  • a move away from paying for subject leadership when not accompanied by accountability for outcomes (we provide a clear briefing paper on what can be expected in terms of subject coordination without the award of a TLR)
  • compensating for the lack of leadership posts by providing accelerated pay progression for teachers who meet national standards (eg threshold, UPS 3) early
  • giving teachers a choice between “leadership” and “excellent teacher” career routes, both with the potential to lead to headship
  • paying for quality of work rather than length of service
  • using part-time working for heads and other senior leaders to provide “on the job” career development opportunities for others
  • the development of shared operational posts across networks of (especially) primary schools to free senior leaders up to focus on teaching and learning
  • the development of staffing structures which contain fewer (better paid) teachers and more (better paid) support staff
  • the expansion of senior leadership teams to include senior support staff


Depending on the depth of discussion required, this can either be a full day course or a half day course combined with the short version of either our Performance Management and Pay or Senior Leadership Shortages programme.

 

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Senior Leader Shortages
Over 40% of primary schools now fail to appoint a headteacher on first advertisement, and an increasing amount of our work is with governors who have spent an enormous amount of money on recruitment without finding a suitable candidate. Our advice to governors is now as follows

  • assume you will not be able to recruit a new senior leader when one leaves – and try to ensure that you will be in a position to promote internally
  • ask existing senior leaders what you will need to do to persuade them to stay longer
  • ask staff without leadership responsibility what you will need to do to persuade them to go for it in future


Our programme – which can be adapted for senior leaders, governors or a mixture of both – essentially explores this advice from every angle. It explores the developments that would be attractive both to existing and potential senior leaders In our experience, these are….

  • The ability to move to part-time working (we provide a briefing paper setting out all of the options and showing how to overcome the opposition of sceptical governors and LA’s – an area in which we can provide specialist individual consultancy if required)
  • The ability to focus full-time on teaching and learning (this leads us into sharing our experience of working with networks of schools to fund joint senior operational posts)
  • Better pay and conditions (we provide an authoritative briefing on the flexibilities available to governors – including moving senior leaders two whole school groups higher and offering a range of additional benefits; we also show how these additional payments can be funded through work with other schools)
  • Better career development pathways both for newly qualified teachers and for experienced members of the senior team (we explore some of the alternative methods we are beginning to see developing nationally)


Depending on the depth of discussion required, this can either be a full day course in its own right or a half day course combined with either our Performance Management & Performance Pay or Staffing Structure Review Programmes.

For headteachers considering their long-term plans, we run a 24 hour intensive course – Headship, Consultancy and Phased Retirement – in a luxurious Derbyshire country house hotel. You can view details and apply online here

 

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