A point of view from Peter Hicks - Headmaster at BCPS
Saturday, 23 January 2010 21:11 | 
This point of view was published in the Express and Echo on Wednesday 20th January 2010. Mr Hicks will be retiring in August this year after over 20 years as head of Broadclyst Community Primary School. The process to select a new head is well under way, with the successful candidate due to be announced by mid-February. That news will of course be published on Broadclyst.org.
I suspect our classrooms have changed little in the past 50 years yet the world in which we live has changed enormously and at a pace that can only be described as exponential; this pace is unlikely to lessen. Teachers need to develop an education practice that reflects the needs of the learner rather than the input/output standardised model still so often seen. To elevate learning to be truly engaging, truly interactive, truly collaborative, to employ the use of modern gateways to heighten learning, has to be the overriding pursuit of schools and their leaders — a true "community of purpose".
For a few years, we have stood at the threshold of a new world of opportunities not for a privileged group but for everyone. If this is to be realised then schools and local education services must search out their leaders. Without them, these organisations will have no view of a set of possibilities other than those that lie within the myopic horizons of the managers and, these are, by definition, limited to the immediacy and the apprehensions of today.
Preparing students for the future means preparing them for constant change; after all, what is the use of a head crammed full of facts if those facts are to become obsolete in a few short years? Teaching students to adapt will be far more useful than teaching a set of discrete facts: put simply we need to teach them the skills to engage with change, adapting to the possibilities that change brings and resonant with the future that they will create — a principle that is constant within a leader, the one who faces novelty with confidence and without fear.
Schools and local education services are badly in need of leaders; those who inspire trust, who set out futures and possibilities, who are not foreshortened by their own apprehensions and fearfulnesses. It is not that leaders have no fear; it is that they manage it rather more successfully than others and that they do so in ways that are neither oppressive nor repressive.
Yet, I have a sense that schools, education services and teachers in particular, yearn for that individual; that one person whom we all used to know, recognise and believe in, as having a view of inspiring possibilities that were yet to arise from beyond the horizon of current educational thought.
The celebration of leadership skills now appears to rest solely within the mediocrity of management. It is as if a capability within the latter guarantees one of the qualities of the former.
Effective leaders challenge the status quo and question the accepted, the conventional. They take themselves out of the comfort zone and learn by putting themselves in unfamiliar situations that broaden their personal experience and understanding. Managers are about control and rational processes. Leaders inspire trust and deal in emotional horizons.
Effective leaders are those exceptional people who are constantly looking beyond the horizon, confronting uncertainty, focusing upon the needs of tomorrow and linking these to goals and priorities.
Effective leadership is not the same as competent management, which, although important, is essentially about dealing with the challenges of today.
"Bringing life" into human organisations by empowering their communities not only increases their flexibility, creativity and learning potential, but also enhances the dignity and humanity of the organisation's individuals, as they truly connect with those qualities in themselves.
Leaders create opportunities and freedoms for others to use and to develop their own initiative. Leaders understand that if one individual within an organisation grows, then the organisation itself becomes stronger, more resilient and more likely to be part of the continuing development of the future of schools and the education service.
So who are these eccentrics? Where is one likely, hopefully, to find within an individual a degree of eccentricity? Someone who has that gift of the intuitive mind; a person who has the courage to depart from convention? Well these people are called 'leaders'.
Eccentricity — departing from convention — has always abounded when, and where, strength of character has abounded; that so few now dare to be eccentric marks a real and present danger to our times.
In this particular age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to "bend the knee", the promotion and exclamation of independent thought is, itself, a service. In fact it is something to be truly celebrated.
It is in these circumstances that "exceptional" individuals, instead of being deterred, are be encouraged to act differently from the mass.
The counterpoise — and also the corrective to that tendency — needs to be more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on a "higher" ground of thought.
IT seems to me there is now a tendency for the opinions of the masses — of the average man — to be everywhere; they are now becoming the dominant power.
For a few years, we have stood at the threshold of a new world of opportunities not for a privileged group but for everyone. If this is to be realised then schools and local education services must search out their leaders. Without them, these organisations will have no view of a set of possibilities other than those that lie within the myopic horizons of the managers and, these are, by definition, limited to the immediacy and the apprehensions of today.
Preparing students for the future means preparing them for constant change; after all, what is the use of a head crammed full of facts if those facts are to become obsolete in a few short years? Teaching students to adapt will be far more useful than teaching a set of discrete facts: put simply we need to teach them the skills to engage with change, adapting to the possibilities that change brings and resonant with the future that they will create — a principle that is constant within a leader, the one who faces novelty with confidence and without fear.
Schools and local education services are badly in need of leaders; those who inspire trust, who set out futures and possibilities, who are not foreshortened by their own apprehensions and fearfulnesses. It is not that leaders have no fear; it is that they manage it rather more successfully than others and that they do so in ways that are neither oppressive nor repressive.
Yet, I have a sense that schools, education services and teachers in particular, yearn for that individual; that one person whom we all used to know, recognise and believe in, as having a view of inspiring possibilities that were yet to arise from beyond the horizon of current educational thought.
The celebration of leadership skills now appears to rest solely within the mediocrity of management. It is as if a capability within the latter guarantees one of the qualities of the former.
Effective leaders challenge the status quo and question the accepted, the conventional. They take themselves out of the comfort zone and learn by putting themselves in unfamiliar situations that broaden their personal experience and understanding. Managers are about control and rational processes. Leaders inspire trust and deal in emotional horizons.
Effective leaders are those exceptional people who are constantly looking beyond the horizon, confronting uncertainty, focusing upon the needs of tomorrow and linking these to goals and priorities.
Effective leadership is not the same as competent management, which, although important, is essentially about dealing with the challenges of today.
"Bringing life" into human organisations by empowering their communities not only increases their flexibility, creativity and learning potential, but also enhances the dignity and humanity of the organisation's individuals, as they truly connect with those qualities in themselves.
Leaders create opportunities and freedoms for others to use and to develop their own initiative. Leaders understand that if one individual within an organisation grows, then the organisation itself becomes stronger, more resilient and more likely to be part of the continuing development of the future of schools and the education service.
So who are these eccentrics? Where is one likely, hopefully, to find within an individual a degree of eccentricity? Someone who has that gift of the intuitive mind; a person who has the courage to depart from convention? Well these people are called 'leaders'.
Eccentricity — departing from convention — has always abounded when, and where, strength of character has abounded; that so few now dare to be eccentric marks a real and present danger to our times.
In this particular age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to "bend the knee", the promotion and exclamation of independent thought is, itself, a service. In fact it is something to be truly celebrated.
It is in these circumstances that "exceptional" individuals, instead of being deterred, are be encouraged to act differently from the mass.
The counterpoise — and also the corrective to that tendency — needs to be more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on a "higher" ground of thought.
IT seems to me there is now a tendency for the opinions of the masses — of the average man — to be everywhere; they are now becoming the dominant power.
