After fantasising all year about all the things possible on weekday evenings during the summer holidays, I’m now sat here on a Tuesday night scanning the world’s oceans for whales on Google maps. Why?
There are currently more and more young and / or inexperienced educational practitioners taking on levels of responsibility previously only awarded to those with several years’ experience. Especially in city schools where recruitment is difficult, young and flexible applicants (often driven on by a variety of leadership-orientated schemes) are filling the posts – witness the age profile of my school. The advice given to these leadership aspirants is often similar: actively seek out leadership opportunities and maintain a reflective approach, evaluate and improve. My question is: against what criteria should inexperienced leaders evaluate themselves? A conscientious and available mentor could provide these, but such people are understandably hard to come by given the pressures on senior school staff. The other option is to try and compensate for lack of direct experience by building up theoretical knowledge which can be accumulated readily outside of the classroom – in the library or the post-graduate lecture theatre. But is this any good? Does it cut it in a tense budget meeting or classroom confrontation? I think we need some theoretical guidance on making theoretical guidance work in practice. There are currently some incredibly successful, incredibly inexperienced leaders at work in education – we need to look at how they have bridged the experience deficit, whether through solid theory, inspirational mentors or sheer determination, fortitude and resilience. That’ll leave the rest of us to get on with bridging our other deficits…
