inDEPTH
PRIORITIES PUT UNDER PRESSURE
Further education leaders are challenged as never before in dealing with funding pressures and policy changes. Might professional development for teachers and trainers suffer as a result? Peter Rook reports.
ergers, financial constraints, apprenticeship reforms, T Levels – amid this maelstrom of challenges and policy changes it is easy to see how staff development for teachers and trainers might be bumped down the list of priorities, with consequences for the quality of learning. Leaders and senior
managers are forced to spend huge amounts of time monitoring and reviewing the finances of their organisations, often resulting in hard choices about where to spend limited resources. “FE colleges have borne the brunt of the government’s austerity cuts, with many colleges seeing reductions in funding of around 30 per cent over the past 10 years,” says college principal Karen Redhead, someone who is acutely aware of the problems facing FE leaders. In November last year, Redhead discovered major financial difficulties when she took over as principal of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, which recently became a Corporate Partner of the Society for Education and Training (SET). The college is making good progress but Redhead,
a Fellow of SET, says the financial challenges “have dominated the thoughts and actions” of the senior leadership team over the last academic year. “It is very easy to cut support [for staff]. However,
we have tried to make sure that our core business of teaching and learning, and the overall experience of learners, are not adversely impacted.”
12 ISSUE 37 • AUTUMN 2019 inTUITION
Sir Frank McLoughlin CBE, associate director for leadership at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), would applaud such a stance. Sir Frank heads up the ETF’s leadership development work, which includes the Strategic Leadership Programme for Principals and CEOs delivered in partnership with the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. He believes that cutting staff development budgets is a mistake. “I think there can be pressure to find savings wherever you can. Staff development can move to the top of the list because it does not impact on jobs,” he says. “But I would argue that two of the key things to get right in any organisation are recruitment/ marketing and staff development.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
