A primary head teacher's perspective
Hazel Pulley, Headteacher, Caldecote Community Primary School
The school (480 pupils) is situated close to the city of Leicester on the outskirts of a large housing estate which is very deprived. The school is at the forefront of many local and national initiatives which are linked to raising standards, and is part of an Excellence in Cities Project.
Learning about leadership presents challenges! During the last two years whilst working for the NCSL as a consultant headteacher and Co-Facilitator on the New Visions Programme for Early Headship I have felt professionally challenged to review my own leadership practice. Through this stimulating interaction with a focused learning community and benefiting from time to reflect, the shape of leadership has been radically changed in our school. This has meant transforming structures and teams with a strong feature on empowerment, encouraging others to join in leading the school.
Apart from the senior staff I focused heavily on changing the role of the school administrator, widening the management opportunities in order to leave me time to focus on leadership practice. The NCSL 'Certificate of School Business Management' course was pivotal to this change and has helped transform not only the job description and work practice of the school administrator, now school bursar, but also the school office arrangements.
In order to symbolize our new school leadership practice a more substantial bursar office was created and placed in the centre of the school. I do not need this office space to successfully lead the school, but the bursar does to support me through effective business management. Having dispensed with a base altogether, I turned my office into a meeting room with one large oval table. The school bursar was invited on to our regular leadership team meetings held around the table, demonstrating the shared/distributed leadership practice now in place at our school.
Throughout this joint learning experience I have seen the capacity for leadership grow in our school. Roles and responsibilities now reflect broad involvement and collaboration and new processes and principles of leadership have enabled me to reach a situation where others are given and own the authority to lead and manage.
A Primary School model? Changes to our school expenditure and income with added creativity have funded this new position of School Bursar. Already within this financial year, having a more strategic financial element within our leadership practice has created many savings.
For further details please contact: hpulley@caldecote.leicester.sch.uk
