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GOVERNORS' NEWS
NASG members receive the in-house journal, "Governors' News", five times a year. As well as the latest news and reviews on the latest developments across the profession, every issue contains special features designed to help support you in your professional capacity

GOVERNORS' NEWS - February 2004

CONTENTS PAGE

A VIEW FROM THE CHAIR
A DIVIDED SOCIETY?

My return from six months in another world has thrown into sharp relief the widening cracks in our own - and the cracks I see are causing me deep unease. It was not the hot summer which caused these fissures in our education system but sheer ineptitude - or worse - by those in high places who should know better. To add insult to injury we are expected to paper over those cracks - and we do so because we have regard for the wellbeing of our pupils and we know that there is no alternative. That doesn't make the bitter pills on offer any easier to swallow!

The deepest fissures have been caused by school funding, or more accurately, the lack of it. Mr Micawber was right - it is our ability to live within our means which decides whether we experience happiness or misery. We have seen a great deal of misery in many of our schools as we have tried to do the impossible and balance the books. The usual arguments about the extra money in the system will not wash. In some schools the suffering is acute and will continue unabated as there is no prospect of respite in the near future.

It beggars belief that, in 21st century Britain, the question is being asked in our schools, 'Can we afford pencils?' This question we might expect in Third World countries - but not in affluent Britain!

This was told to me by a governor who, as part of her personnel role, conducts exit interviews with staff. It is just one aspect of the sorry tale of a teacher who loves the job but doesn't know if she can stay in teaching. After teaching for nine years, she has left her job without applying for another. The last straw for her was the sheer farce of having to discuss the affordability of pencils!

It is not financial inefficiency at school level which has brought this school and many others to this level of penny-pinching. The fault lies elsewhere. But it makes a mockery of the Workload Agreement, the workforce remodelling agenda and potential improvements in the work/life balance of school staff. Can governors square this circle? Of course they can't!

Another widening chasm is the one between the largest teacher union and the government. The NUT did not sign the Workload Agreement, nor was it involved in the round table discussions in December about the Upper Pay Scale. It balloted its members about a boycott of KS1 and KS2 SATs. Others will apportion blame - whose fault was it that jaw, jaw, jaw turned to war, war, war? For my part, I am merely saddened that this rift has occurred and concerned that it will be governors and heads who will be expected to pick up the pieces.

Apart from the obvious problems caused to us all by the worsening relations between these two giants, I suspect that there is another problem brewing, and here the governor organisations are also involved. The signing of the Workload Agreement has produced an 'in-group' of those involved. This exclusive club has been perpetuated in the group that was invited to discuss criteria for UPS3. Those who are excluded from this 'inner circle' are the two governor organisations (NAGM and NGC) along with the NUT. These three now form an 'out-group' who are not consulted in the same way. I cannot decide whether this 'divide and rule' strategy was accidental or intentional, but whatever its provenance, the effect is the same. It produces first and second class citizens. Governors have been placed firmly within the second class. We are the 'also-rans'. With the responsibilities we have, I for one do not find this position comfortable or appropriate. It angers me that governors are again being taken for granted but not taken seriously.

What can we do?

About funding - at present, nothing. For those of us in the worst affected LEAs, all we can do is to help ourselves by improving our use of scarce resources. Depressing, isn't it?

On our exclusion from decision-making, one suggestion was put to me (and it was only half in jest) that the governor organisations should form an alliance with the NUT to become a united 'out-crowd'. But this would serve only to reinforce the status quo and would do nothing to bridge the divide. The solution lies with those who decide on the composition of consultative groups. The question for them is, 'Are you prepared to be inclusive - or will you perpetuate the inequality your actions have produced?' We have asked DfES officers for clear advice and guidelines for governors in order that we might try to fulfil our responsibilities in relation to UPS3. We have written to David Miliband about our exclusion and will continue to do so. You might care to do the same.

Jane Phillips, NAGM Chair.

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THE WISDOM OF CREATIVITY

By Anna Craft of the Open Creativity Centre

Governor perspectives on creativity

I recently ended a spell as a primary school governor. Although the school was in many ways a thriving one, our concerns were, during my brief period of office, focused around retention of children and staff, maintaining high achievement, ensuring teachers and children were adequately resourced. If we discussed creativity it was in the context of the creative and performing arts. And yet, I wonder now if we could have reframed our priorities to reflect both the curriculum context and the external environment in which we were providing an education for young children. It is all about creativity, possibility and wisdom.

Creativity, possibility and wisdom

Although creativity is often associated exclusively with the creative and performing arts, it is vital across the curriculum. The twenty-first century demands increasing flexibility and imagination from our young people, in all domains. In all parts of their lives, children need to be operating with 'possibility thinking' - posing questions along the lines of 'what if..?' and 'perhaps if..?' and 'why?' and 'why not?' And they need opportunities to develop wisdom in applying and evaluating their ideas and those of others.

Creativity in schools

How is creativity framed in the curriculum? During 1999, The National Advisory Committee Report on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) was published. It offered a definition for creativity as a starting point for any part of the curriculum:

Creativity: imaginative activity fashioned so as to yield an outcome that is of value as well as original.

NACCCE suggested that creativity could be developed to some degree in all pupils - the 'democratic' approach to creativity. According to NACCCE, creative activity involves some sort of outcome which can be shared - this may be an idea or an artefact, or 'work in progress'. The creative classroom enables children to produce outcomes of all sorts.

It involves the judgement that the outcome is of value. Although some of that judgement may come from others (including teachers), it will also include the opinions of the child. Children need to be helped by their teachers to develop reasons why they think their creative outcomes may be of value.

Finally, creative work must be original. We are not necessarily talking of originality in global terms. A piece of artwork, a number combination, or a piece of creative writing, may each be original within the framework of a childÕs current knowledge. Children need to understand what the conventions are in any form which they are exploring, in order intentionally to depart from these.

But creativity is more than 'a good idea', named by what was essentially an advisory committee. It is also part of the statutory curriculum for the Foundation Stage, and Key Stages 1 to 4. The National Curriculum names Creative Thinking as a core skill, and the Foundation Stage Curriculum names 'Creative Development' as one of its areas of learning.

In the last few months, OFSTED has begun to publicly recognise creativity. In August 2003 it published two reports on creativity in schools, one focusing on the arts and the other on creativity across the curriculum. The latter was entitled Expecting the Unexpected - the way that one teacher inspected by OFSTED described the challenge of fostering creativity. So....what does teaching for creativity involve?

Teaching for creativity

Teaching for creativity, in other words encouraging children to be creative, is distinct from creative teaching (where a teacher's own creativity is what is under focus). In teaching for creativity, there are no panaceas, and individual children and unique situations need different combinations of pedagogical strategies. Research suggests that a teacher who is successful in stimulating children's creativity, does some or all of the following:

• develops children's motivation to be creative;
• encourages the development of purposeful outcomes across the curriculum;
• fosters the study of any discipline in depth, developing children's knowledge of it, to enable them to go beyond their own immediate experiences and observations;
• uses language to both stimulate and assess imaginativeness;
• offers a clear curriculum and time structure to children but involves them in the creation of new routines when appropriate, reflecting on genuine alternatives;
• provides an environment where children can go beyond the expected and are rewarded for doing so;
• helps children to find personal relevance in learning activities;
• models the existence of alternatives in the way information is imparted, whilst also helping children to learn about and understand existing conventions;
• encourages children to explore alternative ways of being and doing, celebrating where appropriate their courage to be different;
• gives children enough time to incubate their ideas.

Creativity needs to be nurtured across the curriculum. This is recognised by NACCCE and also in the National Curriculum. Numerous government-funded projects have been established to encourage this, perhaps the largest being Creative Partnerships. And a body of data is gradually amassing which suggests that the more engaged children's creativity, the better their behaviour and the higher their achievement.

OFSTED note that in the schools whose inspections informed Expecting the Unexpected:

• head-teachers placed the development of creativity high on their list of priorities;
• schools successful at promoting creatively effectively were outward looking, welcoming and open to ideas from external agencies;
• children's creativity is associated not with radical new teaching methods but with the willingness of teachers to observe, listen and work closely with children to help them develop their ideas in a purposeful way.

Creativity as wisdom

Perhaps the most significant aspect of learning in schools that we can resource is more opportunity to develop an approach to life and learning which hinges around possibility thinking held and evaluated in a framework of wisdom. School governors can facilitate this by encouraging staff to 'expect the unexpected', alongside activities which promote engagement and thoughtfulness.

This means raising our aims for pupil learning, engaging pupils to elicit high achievement and independence of thought. And it means governors and senior staff recognising that the school curriculum names creativity within it; and that the future of our pupils, and that of our globe, ultimately rests on the wisdom of decisions they will make. Resourcing creativity should form a priority for all schools.

Further information:

The Open Creativity Centre http://open creativity.open.ac.uk

The reports Expecting the Unexpected: developing creativity in primary and secondary schools and Improving city schools: how the arts can help can be found at www.ofsted/gov/uk/publications

Anna Craft
Anna Craft co-ordinates The Open Creativity Centre at the Open University and is Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, USA. She writes about and researches creativity in education, her most recent book being Creativity and Early Years Education: A Lifewide Foundation (Continuum, 2002). In the UK, she advises the QCA and other government agencies, LEAs, schools and related projects. Her next book, Creativity in School:Tensions and dilemmas will be published in late 2004 by Routledge.

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DISPUTE RESOLUTION SERVICES:
Can they help my school?

Governing body linked governors for SEN meet regularly with the school's SEN coordinator (SENCO) to ensure things are going well. But occasionally a dispute will arise between one of the partners - school, parents and LEA - who are working to provide the best education possible for a child with SEN. This is where a dispute resolution service (DRS) can be brought into use.

The 2001 Code of Practice for SEN teaching in England requires an LEA to ensure that parents have access to an independent disagreement resolution service. This would be available to parents, schools and LEAs to provide an informal approach to resolving SEN issues, avoiding the formality and expense of a SEN tribunal.

As a result of this the DfES in 2002 provided English SEN Regional Partnerships with the funding to establish a national service. The contractual process led to regions having a range of partners providing the service for two years from 2002 to 2004. In April 2004 funding responsibility will be transferred to the LEA. Will there be a commitment to ensuring parents have access to a quality service?

The North West and Merseyside regions decided to use the services of the Boys' and Girls' Welfare Society (BGWS), a large, regional children's charity with experience in special education and mediation, to provide the DRS.

What does the BGWS DRS do?

The basic idea of the service is that an informal, relaxed meeting with the assistance of a trained mediator can defuse tensions and enable people in dispute to resolve their differences. Evidence in other disputes, from neighbours at war with each other to offenders saying sorry to their victims, shows that the process can achieve success. There are substantial assumptions required to ensure maximum chance of success; but the process can help to resolve differences.

The DRS is triggered by a referral from any one of the three participants in a dispute about the provision to be made for a child with SEN: the parents, school or LEA. Most referrals are made by the LEA, some by parents and a few by schools. BGWS sets up a meeting with the key participants. We provide a trained mediator. Their role is to help the parties to communicate effectively. The skills that the mediator brings to the meeting are the straightforward ones of active listening, empathy with the partners, and conflict resolution. By reducing the emotion in the meeting the service enables a concentration upon the needs of the child. The service is involved in helping the parties to focus on the ways in which the dispute can be resolved. An Outcome Statement from the meeting is provided by the service and reflects all that is agreed.

Is there a need for the service?

The most effective judges of the work of the DRS are the people who receive the service. A wide range of partners say yes, they value the service. Feedback sheets from meetings are monitored as part of quality assurance; they show the almost embarrassing statistic that 99% of respondents valued the service.

Some LEAs feel that funding for DRS would be better spent by providing schools with the cash to provide extra SEN services. This is a reasonable viewpoint. However, there is a statutory requirement for a LEA to provide a DRS, and the amount of cash which could be transferred to schools would be very small.

Why does the service work?

The assumptions that underpin mediation are that:

• the parties want to achieve the best result for the child;
• the parties are willing to consider options for best achieving this;
• the people at the meeting are able to make the decisions.

Not all of these assumptions are valid at every meeting. In general the meetings which lead to an agreed outcome are those in which all three are in place. The ideal outcome is an agreement which all the parties can take forward but even a meeting without this agreement often has value.

The most obvious value is that the parties see each other face to face and discuss the issues in a calm, non-confrontational way. This helps all the parties to see that they have a common goal, the best interests of the child, which can sometimes be forgotten in a dispute.

The opportunity for further consideration of the issues after the meeting can also be valuable. Mediators can talk further to all parties to explore ways in which disputes can be resolved.

What next for the BGWS service?

The service is valued by both the participants in meetings and LEAs which are using the service. One LEA, facing a period of substantial change in its SEN provision, sees the service as an essential part of its strategy for managing change. We are able to deliver training for schools who wish to develop their own skills in mediation. Parents are increasingly aware of the DRS and respond well to the opportunity to be heard.

Several LEAs provide evidence of a substantial take up of the service. They see and value the work carried out prior to a formal DRS meeting; issues are clarified for all parties and successful outcomes identified for meeting the child's needs. They could point to the 50% of cases which are resolved either wholly or partially.

National funding from the DfES finishes in April 2004. From this date LEAs will be expected to fund a DRS from their core income. Should they fund provision of a quality assured, active mediation service? If so, BGWS can provide such a service. The views of governors are important in shaping this discussion.

Steve Griffiths
Boys' and Girls' Welfare Society

You can find out more about BGWS at their website www.BGWS.org.uk

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