 
Week 4 - Local School Management
|  | King Edward VII School: A Local, Regional and Global Learning Community |
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Listing of Papers | |
MR KEN WALSH
Melton Mowbray, United Kingdom
IN 1994 Professor David Hargreaves, of Cambridge University, was calling for radical changes in the way the teaching profession viewed itself. For example, in relation to the new technologies he said that teachers, 'should respond to the challenge (of IT) by contracting out pedagogic activities and functions to a whole range of new agencies, some community-based and others based in the world of work'. Like many others, Hargreaves has argued that education is far too important to be the sole responsibility of teachers.
So, when we examine inservice and training, we certainly need to concentrate on the teaching profession but at the same time we need to look more widely at the training and career structures of all the people who are involved with the education of children and young people. The new technologies give us all much more flexibility in terms of resourcing the development of these people. As highly trained professionals, teachers will continue to have a vital role in educating young people, but the involvement of other trained professionals and para-professionals will lead to a change in role of teachers. Ongoing high level training is essential to cope with this changing role. There are crucial questions about who should provide this training, where the training takes place and how it is accredited.
A Research-Based Teaching Profession
Professor Hargreaves is just one educationalist who is calling for a research-based teaching profession. He and others have suggested a restructuring of the school day so as to give teachers more time to plan and prepare, and to free them up for involvement with universities in research and development about teaching and learning. In 1998 Brian Caldwell argued that in order to achieve 'world-class schools' it would be necessary to link the findings of educational research directly to classroom practice, and this would mean a much greater emphasis on the continuous training and re-training of teachers.
Caldwell refers us to Ravitch, who mused: 'In our society, we rightly insist upon valid medical research; after all, lives are at risk. Now that I am on the mend, I wonder: "Why don't we insist with equal vehemence on well-tested, validated education research? Lives are at risk here, too".'
Reforms Towards a Forward-Looking Workforce
The UK Government has recognised the need for a forward-looking and well-trained workforce in schools and has initiated a series of reforms, including most recently those affecting contracts and teachers' pay. The Government's emphasis on the local management and influential role of Specialist Schools will, I think, inevitably lead towards the recognition of individual specialist schools as Training Schools, in the same way that Training Hospitals are recognised as part of the National Health Service. Working with their local 'families' of schools in new networks, these Training Schools will, no doubt in the end, take on some of the functions for professional development that Local Education Authorities have had in the UK.
The new funding formula for UK Specialist Schools insists on them spending one-third of their annual grant on working with the community, including their partnerships with local primary and secondary schools. Caldwell quotes Sergiovanni in proposing pedagogical leadership:' that invests in capacity building by developing social and academic capital for students and intellectual and professional capital for teachers. Support this leadership by making capital available to enhance student learning development, teacher learning and classroom effectiveness'.
The Answer is Direct Funding
I feel certain that the answer to improving the expertise, and raising the aspirations, of the whole educational workforce lies with direct funding to schools and networks of schools. The growth in the number of Specialist Schools, which is envisaged by the UK Government to eventually be one in four of all secondary schools, together with a policy of local consortia providing for Government funded ICT training, will allow for the growth of these new training networks.
The current reforms will hopefully underpin the re-assessment of the professional status of the teaching profession and support the aspirations expressed in David Blunkett's Green Paper of 1999. The inevitable rewriting of teachers' contracts, followed by the necessary national change to the five-term year, are both moves which will help professional delivery of the curriculum, the assessment arrangements for all year groups and the initial and subsequent training provision for teachers and para-professionals. It is unfortunate that, so far, our Government has not included any substantial recognition of the training needs of the growing ranks of para-professionals in its training pronouncements. The needs of school librarians (a dated title!) are recognised in the current arrangements, but what about systems managers and their assistants?
When I attended the Melbourne Education Conference in Australia last May, the Minister announced a significant investment program for the employment and career structures for IT technicians. This is something we in the UK must deal with urgently if we are to succeed in developing our National Grid for Learning. It is possible for us in schools to train and develop these crucial education workers. This can be done, starting with accreditation in post-16 courses, and by working in partnership with local universities through to degree level. At present, in my own school, we have run successful sandwich course bursaries with De Montfort University, Leicester for several years. This has given us extra technical support for our fast-growing network.
Key Teacher Research Sabbaticals
The new emphasis on the ongoing professional development of teachers should lead shortly to national application of the policy for key-teacher research sabbaticals for every secondary school and clusters of primary schools, based upon the Australian sabbatical model. Every school, as part of its training development plan, should have the right to apply for research links with a local university consortium, or international consortia of schools and universities. Over the past two years at my own school, we have been working on a European IT Training Program, with twelve teachers across four EC countries. They have been using the Internet and video-conferencing to upgrade their own IT skills, and from this training they have developed a range of multimedia resources in Science, Maths, and Modern Languages. Their work can be found on their website: www.targeon.org.uk
Training With Colleagues Globally
We have so much to gain by training with colleagues globally. Recently we have had two videoconference training links with schools in Rhode Island, USA. It is good to see that in the fast-changing world of education we are all grappling with similar issues, and finding some very interesting new solutions to new problems. The technology available is going to allow us to share these solutions more easily and more readily.
My vision for the future, of training for all educators, is one which is centrally funded and delivered via schools, regionally and internationally. Networks of primary and secondary schools will be linked together by their local Specialist Training School, which will provide ongoing training for teachers and para-professionals, as well as school-focused research programs. Each Training School will specialise in areas of professional training associated with its status as a specialist school, e.g., in IT, Languages, Arts or Sports.
Besides providing local initial and continued teacher training, the schools will be linked into both National and Global Learning and Training Grids. The Regional Training Schools will need to be staffed, both to provide resources for their regional training Wide Area Networks, and to network and develop training resources for the National and Global Grids.
Up to one-third of the teaching and para-professional staffs of the Training Schools could be awarded 'Advanced Trainer Status' and, year-upon-year, the student-teacher contact timetable could be arranged to allow for those teachers and para-professionals to be engaged in training and research for up to half of the working week. The Training/Staff Development Centre in each Training School would provide for on-site group discussions and team-building whilst, of course, all the training modules would be available online and accessed by all trainees using their own laptops (which must be provided free of charge and updated every three years).
Training opportunities can also be vastly expanded, in terms of professional interchange, by using video-conferencing and all centres must be equipped appropriately for this. Professionals also need to have their training appropriately accredited and this can be achieved through the local university consortia, as well through International Consortia for Educational Training.
On Track at King Edward VII
At King Edward VII we are already on track for such provision. We are a regional Training Centre for ICT teacher training and are providing 'Getting Started in ICT' courses as a Microsoft Education Resource Centre. We have set up a suite of rooms as an ICT Training Centre. This consists of the following: a seminar training room, which will hold up to fifty trainees and which is equipped with an electronic-whiteboard and furnished for flexible groupings; a computer training room with sixteen multimedia PCs linked to our broadband computer network; a video-conference training room with full Vtel group conferencing facility and a smaller meeting room with hospitality facilities.
The Training Centre is run as a self-funding business and managed by our own training officer (a non-teacher). All the trainers are members of our own teaching and support staff. Over the past two years we have developed an ICT team of teachers and para-professionals who are capable of delivering training at several levels. My vice principal i/c Staff Development, Peter Woodhead, has been working with the Leicestershire Universities Consortium and with the Technology College Trust to develop modules for ICT Training. He has one day a week set aside for this, while two other members of the teaching staff have one day a week to develop ICT-based learning materials and to deliver training to our staff and to staff from our 'family' of schools.
Our community outreach work as a Technology College includes the employment of an ICT Outreach Officer, in this case, a non-teacher who is able to help local schools technically (in an area of 186 square miles) and deliver training for them. Other non-teaching staff who are involved as trainers are our General Office Manager, our Systems Manager and our Learning Resources Manager, all of whom deliver training to both teaching and admin. and support staff. This team of people is expanding year-on-year and has resulted not only in a growth in the professional confidence of all our staff but in their confidence in each other and their respect for each other as learners and teachers.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr Ken Walsh is Principal of King Edward VII School, in Melton Mowbray, England. The school is a state comprehensive school and has 1,850 students. It is unusual in that, until last September, it ran as an upper school for 1,550 14-18 students, but since then has taken over an 11-14 high school on the 52 acre site. Now just 100 students a year transfer at 11+, but over 550 at 14+ and there are 500 in post-16 education. The school is a focus school for the large rural catchment area of 186 square miles and takes in students via a primary and high school system. The school benefits from a high degree of self-management within a local education authority system and over the past few years has raised well over £1 million for various community education projects.
In September 1987 King Edward VII was awarded specialist school status by the Government's Department for Education and Employment and since that time has been a Technology College. The school used a capital funding grant and business sponsorship to massively upgrade facilities for information and communication technology (ICT) and is now a leading edge exponent of developing learning through ICT. King Edward VII is also a mentor school in the UK for the Microsoft Anytime Anywhere Learning project. The Minister for School Standards, Estelle Morris, opened a specific ICT Training Centre at the school (via videoconferencing from London) last November and since then the school has been co-ordinating a provision for ICT teacher training in the region.
Ken Walsh can be contacted by email at:
kwalsh@ke7.org.uk
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REFERENCES
Caldwell B.J. and Spinks, J. (1999). Beyond the Self-Managing School
Caldwell B.J. (1999). 'Strategies for Teachers in the Creation of World-Class Schools' & Ravitch, D., 'What if Research Really Mattered?' in Education Week, (16/12/98);
Sergiovanni T.J. (1998). 'Leadership as Pedagogy, Capital Development and School Effectiveness' in International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1:1998.
Hargreaves D. (1994) The Mosaic of Learning.
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