Caldicotes Primary School

Our experience of working with the North eladership Centre, by Leslie Howes, Headteacher

During the autumn of 2007 we recognised that our school was at a turning point. Staff moving towards retirement began to consider whether they should stay or go, and other staff that had effectively developed their role in school began to consider taking senior responsibilities in other schools. We needed to hone the skills and knowledge of the whole staff once again so that they could meet our new succession planning demands. We have never thought just in terms of what is good for our school, we have always thought about what is of value to the education community as a whole.

The school contacted the North Leadership Centre and Kevin James, the Director, came to meet us and discuss the content and delivery of a specially tailored programme which would meet the needs of our staff. Together we designed a programme set out over three days in three separate terms.

In the mean time Middlesbrough's 'Primary Schools Strategy for Change' once again raised the issue of school closure and added wings to our need for further skills development.

Over the three days we looked at how we operate in school, how we use the data and information available to track children's progress (working with our own RAISEonline data), the school Self Evaluation Form, improving performance and the School Improvement Plan. We considered the challenges and fulfilment of working in a senior role within school. Kevin introduced staff to the 'GROW' model of coaching, and we used this to bring together and explore concerns relating to whole school development. This led to each person planning a piece of School Based Action Research for the forthcoming year.

Our day on 'Looking Out and Looking Forward' explored the amazing number of differing and different agencies with whom we came into contact. We discussed the effectiveness of the relationships with agencies, how these might be improved, and how we were pre-disposed in our attitudes towards some of them. We were given the opportunity to role play local agency representatives and set the task of looking at the schools role in the community. Once again a very useful challenge had been addressed and the staff moved forward.

In summary the Senior Leadership Course that we undertook with North Leadership Centre, raised our level of thinking, helped us to appreciate and value our colleagues even more, and gave us confidence to face the challenges of the future. We have just achieved our second 'Outstanding' OFSTED and Leadership and Management was recognised as 'Outstanding'.