Deep Drilling

Check ups are reassuring- but only after you’ve had them. Whether it’s the doctor, dentist or car MOT, it’s fine after the event, as long as you don’t need that operation, filling, or new engine.

So we approach this month’s check up with the usual trepidation. After a three year period it is for the Investor in People Award which we’ve held for twelve years.

It’s a national standard, externally verified, and ensures that everyone who works here is being properly trained and supported. Over 50 members of staff, teaching and support, will be interviewed during a rigorous five day programme. There will be a written report- and it will be open for circulation to everyone. It’s a useful process, keeping us on track and giving us the views of staff about life at South Dartmoor. Do we look after colleagues? Are we a good employer? What do we neglect and how can we improve?

This time around, there are new areas the assessor can look at. We sit in front of the Plan in my Office and our assessor offers to ‘drill deep’-her term- into the leadership of the College. I’m grateful this is not my dentist speaking

A glint appears in the Chair of Governor’s eyes. “What does that mean?” he asks, with a feigned innocence that reminds me he is still an amateur actor. This is deadly serious. “Well, we can explore the deepest levels of successful leadership, penetrating right down to inspiration,” she responds. The glint has become a dazzling light of anticipation, and the Chair looks across for me to comment.

Am I feeling inspired? Well not just at that point. It feels like another bit of accountability to add to the existing burden of OFSTED, Performance Tables, School Improvement Partners, Governors…. The list is endless.

But it’s the role of schools to be open, scrutinised, analysed and compared. We can help solve the problems of society. Education is the great hope and changer of lives- if only we have the chance to provide the best for all.

In the 1980s, schools were secret gardens with no requirement to publish results or evaluate themselves. I can remember a deputy telling me to ignore a request for information from a local employer because what we did was none of their business. She believed it too. Parental choice? Hadn’t been invented yet. Some would say it never was.

As for training, that was something you did to domestic pets or babies. Teachers didn’t have any entitlement to the remarkable levels of professional support that schools now offer. A day on a course was a once in a life time event. My NQT year was a non-event. I blinked and missed it. No wonder staff rooms were often hot beds of cynicism, fed by isolation and lack of recognition.

We have a published set of priorities, a three year Development Plan, Performance Management, Learning Hubs, Learning Observations, mentoring, coaching, NQT programmes, induction for new staff, Training Days, teacher training….and we even find time to teach children in the hours that are left.

So I might as well enjoy it and go for the challenge. “Yes, inspiration would be great,” I hear myself saying, as if choosing an expensive meal from a restaurant menu. But I know who will have to foot the bill.