career progression - Balancing Act

In some ways I’m annoyed that my last ever blog post relates to performance management instead of something more positive in terms of teaching and learning BUT as I think about this – it’s positive and has made a difference to the learning experience for Year 11s at our school.

• Talk to her subject leaders (Head of Biology and Physics, Anna acts as Head of Chemistry) and create resources and lesson outlines for active revision for Year 10 and 11. I would organise cover so that the three of them could meet together as a team. This has now been done.
• Write letters home personalised (via mail merge) to every Year 11 parent explaining which modules were yet to be taken (either for the first time or as re-sits) and which websites were useful for revision; the letter would also outline what would be happening in lessons until the exams; this would also be copied to teachers who would then be expected to follow the content in the letter. I would read the drafts of the letters and organise office admin support for the mail merge and posting. I proof read the letters on Friday afternoon and so Anna’s perfecting them in the half-term ready to pass over to the office on Monday.

Here’s another question that’s almost always asked at any leadership interview at subject leader level or above.

“How do you manage somebody who is not performing in their job?”

Any leader or manager needs to have an approach to this situation. Before you get to a leadership position you need to know how to answer the question well at interview!

• Observation
•  Keeping eyes and ears open
•  Line management meetings
•  Parents/student complaints (although ideally I’d know before then)

What do you do when a whole department leaves at once? And if the answer to that is 'weep quietly in a corner' then what do you do when you’ve actually got two departments!

This links into an article about succession planning that our Head copied Nigel, other deputy, and me in to – now that was scary; was he trying to tell us something?

Anyway in the past month, all of a sudden the PE department looks on the edge of devastation.

The Head of PE applied for the internal Assistant Headteacher post; she’s also been for another interview recently – she’s keen and I’m sure it won’t be long before she’s snapped up.

The other main PE teachers are in their second year of teaching; bright, energetic, enthusiastic and an absolute catch. They’ve decided they’re ready to move on.

We have two other teachers in PE who also teach other subjects and who are fine but not really even Head of Department material so there’s no easy replacement at that level. We could be in real trouble.

Core subject
However from the parents point of view this is not a problem – over half of the parents at last week’s Year 7 parents evening didn’t want to see PE teachers. However I’m certain that they all wanted to see the English teachers and that’s the other department that’s about to leave en masse.

Last year four of our five English teachers were Australian. Kylie (honestly) went back home but we replaced her with an “English” English teacher. Now, this half-term Ben’s going home and by the end of July our Head of English will also have returned to Oz (the added complication there is the 'secret' relationship she had with another English teacher - will he be going with her???).

If he does that will leave one teacher in her third year of teaching as the continuity. How will that look when we’re trying to recruit a new team, especially a new subject leader?