OUR CURRENT COURSE PROGRAMME

We advise senior teams, governors and local authorities wishing to be well-prepared for the future to address the following key issues in the 2007-08 school year. Although we still run a few courses in conference centres, most of our support programmes now take place at venues provided by school networks and LA’s; this enables them to be specifically tailored to local needs.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT 2007 – Get Your Objectives Written In A Day – senior team and reviewer briefing; production of personalised professional feedback and objective planning packs for each teacher using our specially prepared templates; packs distributed at a jointly run staff meeting; reviewers meet teachers to agree and action plan objectives with tutorial support available; see a more detailed sample programme.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT 2008 – Develop Clear Criteria For Threshold, UPS 2 and UPS3 In Your School; Establish Agreed Criteria For Giving Feedback on Middle and Senior Leadership Performance; Use This To Inform The Setting of Leadership & Management Objectives; see a more detailed sample programme.

DEVELOP A SENIOR LEADERSHIP RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION POLICY
FOCUS ON SUCCESSION PLANNING
UNDERSTAND THE PAY & CONDITIONS FLEXIBILITIES ALREADY AVAILABLE TO GOVERNORS
Few governing bodies recognise just how difficult it I likely to be to recruit high quality senior leaders when existing staff retire or move on. 60% of headteachers and over 40% of deputies and assistant heads are now aged over 50 and can take an actuarially-reduced pension within the next five years. 34% could retire tomorrow if they chose – and the 2007 changes to the pension regulations, when fully understood, will lead to a rapid acceleration in requests to governors for phased retirement and co-headship arrangements. Even on the most optimistic assumptions, there will need to be a 29% increase in the number of senior leaders recruited between 2007 and 2009 – but 43% of deputies and 70% of middle leaders currently do not aspire to headship.

Tackling this challenge requires a co-ordinated and broad-based strategy operating at LA, school networks and individual school level. Head Support has unrivalled practical experience. At LA level, we have already run strategy development conferences in several authorities and you can view a sample full day programme. For schools and school networks, we offer a succession planning course which sets out the issues, illustrates the pension changes and provides an opportunity to consider successful strategies already adopted around the country. Our Prepare For Your 2008 Staffing Structure Review Course enables us to answer heads' questions about the legality or otherwise of the structures they'd really like. Getting the pay and conditions of senior leaders right is an important part of the overall package; many governing bodies are unaware of the considerable pay flexibilities they already have and, in line with the recommendations both of the STRB and The Price Waterhouse Coopers Report on School Leadership, we have developed a course for governors on pay and conditions flexibilities.

For senior leaders planning to prolong their involvement with school by reducing their working week, our Phased Retirement course sets out the much wider range of pensions options available and explains how it is possible to become involved in the wide variety of other work that is available on “days off” from school. This course can be brought to school networks as a one day event, but it also runs twice a year as a 24 hour residential course at the magnificent Hassop Hall Country House Hotel near Bakewell in Derbyshire.

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