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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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DETAILS
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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