Outstanding School Governance: The Stradbroke Story

Stradbroke Primary School Governors

I was recently asked to give a presentation on what "outstanding" school governance is. This gave the opportunity to tell the story of how Stradbroke Primary School in Suffolk moved from "satisfactory" to "outstanding" Ofsted categories in less than three years and the role that the Governing Body played to enable this.

Clearly the credit for such an achievement need to be give to the Head and the staff of the school.  Governors don't teach outstanding lessons but they do play a key role in setting the context and in giving the needed support and challenge to the Head.

This is a story not a blueprint and some of the presentation is clearly my own personal view as Chair of Governors throughout this time but I have shared it in the hope it might be useful to other governors and schools. The presentation also covers the current and planned Ofsted criteria for outstanding governance as well as some thoughts on academy status.

Outstanding School Governance

View more presentations from James Hargrave

Yesterday the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) published a booklet called Leading Governors: the role of the Chair of Governors in Schools and Academies which is well worth downloading. The National College has recently been given a remit to support Chairs of Governors which is in my view a positive move and a recognition that Governing Bodies are playing more important roles in all schools.

The NCSL now have a webpage for Chairs of Governors and announced two interesting initiatives, firstly a training programme for leadership development for chairs from April 2012 and secondly the appointment of "national leaders of governance" to complement the national and local leaders of education scheme that exists for Heads.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011 RIP

Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple, 1955 - 2011

Earlier this week a new iPhone was launched but something was missing. Steve Jobs. Apples's charismatic co-founder, erstwhile CEO and current Chairman was too ill to attend and died last night after a long battle with cancer at the age of 56.

Steve Jobs a man who was cool and had presence in an industry full of somewhat more dull people leaves a lasting legacy both with his Apple tech company that is very much made in his image and the impact of his view of technology on the world. Above all as President Obama has said "the world has lost a visionary".

The success of Apple when Steve returned to take it over for its re-birth with the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad was its focus on usability, design and sheer desirability. To the annoyance of many purists in the IT world that would tell you that this or that Dell or HP was "better" or "cheaper" the world voted continued to buy Apple products that were on the face of it poor value.

But they were cool and easy to use. In fact a pleasure to use and how much people valued these virtues was shown when despite a world recession Apple products continued to sell, sell and sell more.

Steve Jobs leaves a lasting legacy that technology is about what you can do with it rather than about technology. Steve knew that people buy technology and people value what they can do with things , they value the look, feel and sheer beauty of things over a shopping list of functions and even the price tag.

RIP Steve Jobs.

If you read one thing today, the text of Steve's Stanford Commencement Address from 2005 is a great choice

Simply called "Thanks, Steve" this is the work of a 19 year old designer

Tories continue running Waveney Council on the vote of a "politically cynical" criminal

Cllr Andrew Draper who refuses to resign

I wrote on this blog before about the outrageous case of then Tory Waveney District councillor Andrew Draper who not only drove his car three times over the legal limit but then assaulted a police officer when caught even screaming at the Police "don't you know I'm a councillor". He received what appears to be an extremely lenient sentence of a £850 fine and driving ban.

Initially he did nothing other than resign his Cabinet post on the council but after an outcry he resigned as a member of the Tory party and now allegedly sits as an independent or a "condependant" as they are known in Suffolk!

Of course what is important in this case is that the political control of Waveney is in the balance after the Tories lost control at the May 2011 elections but have managed to cling to power on the casting vote of Chairman as my post on Ashes Democracy explains.

The Evening Start tonight reports that the Council's Standards Committee have decided that it is powerless to act despite finding that his behaviour was "entirely inappropriate". The issue appears to be that he was not oficially "on duty" at the time. However the Standards Committee were clearly unimpressed by Andrew Draper's failure to do the decent thing and resign finding that: 

The assessment sub-committee is clear however that in their opinion Councillor Draper has not yet taken appropriate action.

Further, his resignation from the Conservative Party is irrelevant. His switch to become an Independent Councillor is politically cynical and it fails to show proper respect to his electorate.

In the opinion of the assessment sub-committee the only proper course of action would be for Councillor Draper to now resign fully as a Councillor and put the matter back before the Worlingham electorate.

Until he does resign the fact is that Waveney District Council's Tory administration is now propped up not only by the Chairman's casting vote but the vote of a "politically cynical" so-called independent councillor who is a convicted criminal. This is a shameful situation and Waveney Tories and Andrew Draper need to do the decent thing as the current situation is showing a complete lack of respect for the electorate.