Vote for Penny Field and make a difference

Today is the day that your vote can make a real difference to the lives of some of the most disabled and challenged children in Leeds. Our People's Millions bid will feature on Calendar at 6pm today and we need YOUR vote to help us win a much-neded £50,000.

You can vote up to ten times from any one number (BT landlines cost 10p per call, other providers may charge more) and the number you can ring - NOW - is:

08716 268171

Lines are open from 0900 - 2400, please help those who cannot help themselves

Followers

I am interested in who (if anyone - surely I am not doing it for nothing!) is reading this blog regularly, so I have added a Follower gadget at the top left. You can follow either anonymously or publicly - you choose and please do sign up.

Do we need Special Schools?

A recent article by Rahila Gupta in The Guardian referred to the strengthening of pupils' rights to an 'Inclusive Education'. Now here may not be the place for a discussion of the definition of 'inclusive', so let's just address her statement that more students are now entering Special Schools

On education, the convention seeks to "ensure an inclusive education system at all levels" for people with disabilities. In the UK, there is provision for both inclusive education and special schools. The campaign for inclusive education has been a long and bitter struggle. In 2001, the right of disabled children to opt for mainstream education was significantly strengthened. However, this right was not bolstered by enough support, training and other resources for mainstream schools to make inclusion a success. This has led paradoxically to an increase in the number of students entering special schools although more and more parents aspire to the inclusive ideal.

My experience suggests that the majority of parents who press for Special Schools are doing it because placing their child in a mainstream has failed them. As the article states:

"However, this right (to integration) was not bolstered by enough support, training and other resources for mainstream schools to make inclusion a success."

'Inclusion' is surely about socialisation as well as education and full socialisation is unlikely in a Special School setting. Yes, there is an argument that the most needy/disabled/difficult (choose your own adjective in such a way as to avoid the PC Police) pupils may always need a specialist setting. However who is to say that such a setting cannot be at least co-located with a mainstream? We do not segregate races any more, why would we want to segregate pupils will less ability than the norm? The challenge for mainstreams is not to get SEN pupils "out of their way" but to hold them to account for the success of all pupils in their care, not least those for whom they get additional funding.

You can help us raise £50k to help kids with (very) special needs in Leeds

Penny Field Specialist Inclusive Learning Centre, a Special School catering for pupils with some of the most extreme/difficult/challenging (choose your adjective) needs in Leeds, will compete in ITV’s Big Lottery Fund, People’s Millions 2008 on Monday 24th November. 

To win £50,000 of Big Lottery money, they need your vote...  

The Penny Field Centre provides education for children and young people aged 2 to 19 with a range of special needs. A multi-sensory environment is the ultimate teaching tool to support and reach children, young people and adults with profound and multiple learning difficulties, emotional and behavioural difficulties, communication difficulties and physical and sensory impairment. Penny Field has made it through to the final eight groups in the Yorkshire & Humber region to compete for the fund and are the only Leeds based finalists. They will go head to head with one of the other finalists to compete for one of four £50,000 funds – so they have a 50% chance of winning. If they win, they will use the money to install a new state of the art multi-sensory studio at the centre. 

This new equipment will be used by children and young people who regularly visit the centre, as well as groups from the wider community and will massively improve the children's and young people’s quality of life".  

On Monday 24th November, ITV will publish the telephone number you need to vote for Penny Field - it will also be posted here. Penny Field will feature on Calendar Evening News at 6.00pm that evening, but you can vote from 9.00am and any telephone can be used up to 10 times to vote.  

Please make sure you help to make this difference by voting on Monday 24th November it costs you little and will make such a huge difference for others.

Change in the public sector

Change is endemic throughout life - and especially in the public sector at the moment.

Coming from a large corporate that has undergone very significant change over the 26 years I worked there - and went from pariah to paragon of excellence - I believe that the predominant public sector change model is fundamentally flawed and inevitably leads to dissatisfaction and mediocrity. 

As a change leadership professional I am often appalled at the slow pace of change in the public sector. Some of it is understandable in that the stakeholder model inevitably requires more consultation etc. However, too many consultees do not seem to understand the difference between consultation and democracy - "I can and will consult you, your views may or may not influence the decision" is very different to "Vote for A or B, I will accept the result of the ballot". Moreover, I often see a lack of understanding of the need for real involvement, that goes beyond simply holding consultation workshops; it is by really involving people that the deep issues are exposed and addressed and long-term committment to the solution achieved.

Then the decision processes are far too drawn out and I often wonder if the purpose of the processes, typically involving layers of committees, is to avoid being able to hold anyone to account.

What business has to contribute is the urgency and recognition that change can and should happen faster - if I had a philosophy in this arena (and this is a deliberate caricature) it is "make the change and sort any mess out later" (there will always be mess!), whereas the public sector seems to be "try everything we can to avoid any mess" - a forlorn hope. How much more effective could we be if we applied the Pareto Principle rather than trying to get everything 110% right before moving. By the time the public sector has consulted, considered, decided, planned, consulted about the implementation plan, etc, the goalposts have changed!

As Governors we can force the pace - don't let 'the system' slow you down. Set challenging timescales and hold people to them; the first death-knell of rapid change sounds as an unmet deadline goes rushing by. Don't let it happen to you!

Wordle

Well I just discovered a cute little toy for finding out and displaying the content of some text in graphical format (bigger words occur more frequently).

So I had a play and chose a chapter of the Governors' Guide to the Law to experiment with - Ch11 relating to the relationship between governors and the school.

Here are the results.

Interesting that the most frequent words are Evaluation, Improvement, Performance, Inspection. This seems to be what GttL expects us to be doing - do you?

Governance or Management again!

I find myself once again being the butt of criticism (both overt and covert) by a couple of other governors for what I am doing for the school and this is annoying and frustrating me to the point that  it is distracting my attention.

From my viewpoint, the issue is that I have a bunch of professional skills that are very helpful to the HT and senior members of staff - as such I both volunteer and get asked to use these skills (for example in developing strategy and facilitating meetings and focus groups). My co-governors do not have these skills but seem to have plenty of skill in raising money for the school.

So, I get criticised when I volunteer my skills for the benefit of the school but it is OK for them to use their different skills - the difference seeming to be that I get involved with school managers quite a lot (although I am always very careful to avoid actually managing - the critics cannot seem to understand the difference between facilitation and management) and they don't.

The boundary between Governance and Management is a simple one in theory (not!) and a much more complex one in practice!

Aaaaaaarrrrggghhh....!

A new year starts...

Well, here we go again with another year to look forward to, wondering what challenges and delights it will bring.

Do you sometimes find yourself lost in the challenges and overlooking the delights? That's an easy situation to get into, especially as a governor where we so often find ourselves on the receiving end of complaints from staff, students, parents, councillors etc..

One thing we started last year and I will be emphasising this year is to focus much more purposefully on the good news - and there will be plenty. Let's go overboard in recognising the achievements of everyone associated with our school, it's rare that someone blows a trumpet for us so we will make sure we blow our own. This might seem a bit 'unBritish' or even arrogant at first but what's wrong with celebrating achievement?

So., here's my first success. Yesterday we ran a session for all staff at one of our sites during which one exercise was for everyone to list their skills/strengths/positives/etc and then talk to others in the room about how great they really are; 1 minute then move on and tell someone else; then again; then again; and so on... It was great, once people got over the initial embarrassment of talking so positively about themselves the enregy level really kicked up and peole had a great time. It struck me as a great energiser the day before term starts. Let's hope (expect?) that the same energy levels can keep with everyone through the term - I will be doing what I can to help.