VIEWS


From the pen of… NEIL JURD Leading from the front


In our regular series highlighting authors in UK education, we hear this month from NEIL JURD OBE, author of ‘The Leadership Book’.


What a year it has been for teachers and students.


The Covid-19 pandemic has been recognised as causing the longest period of disruption to the education system since the end of the Second World War.


And while a return to pre-Covid


life still seems some distance away, it is now more important than ever that leaders in education offer clear, inspirational, decisive and compassionate direction to their teams.


Working with headteachers and deputy headteachers across the


country during this crisis I have found that the need for leaders to provide a supportive mix of direction and protection from staff and pupils has increased dramatically as the pressure and expectation placed upon them continues to grow.


A theme that emerged in training and coaching sessions is that a high


proportion of senior teachers have had little or no leadership development to prepare them for the extremely testing environment they are now in.


I spent 25 years in the army, and as an officer, I served in Bosnia,


Sierra Leone, and Yemen as well as leading a Gurkha squadron in Iraq in 2007 before being injured by enemy fire. During that time, I witnessed that a large proportion of leadership in the army is about prioritising trust in your team - and that is no different in schools today.


I wrote my new book because I wanted to help people in leadership


positions to make the greatest possible positive difference. Leadership is a simple, yet powerful, concept which anyone with an


open mind can apply. Anyone can be a good leader and a team is only a team if it has a purpose. To avoid internal friction and to drive activity, leaders need to work hard to define a ‘clear and compelling’ purpose of their team or organisation.


Many people can only take matters one day at a time, but a good


leader seeks inspiration beyond the present and drives his or her team to do the same. As teachers and senior staff continue to work towards a new normal for their pupils, mistakes will happen. This is inevitable in the world we live in today. So rather than either punish people for their mistakes or bury those flaws, teams should use mistakes as a basis for learning and development, don’t treat them as a permanent failure to your leadership. We are all readjusting to this new climate. I would also encourage you to keep plans as simple as possible. The more complex a plan, the more likely it is to go wrong.


As a final point, this country is full of schools and colleges, doing a


perfectly good job but managing a process rather than leading brilliance. I don’t think we serve our young people well by just managing the process. With effective leadership and strong teams in education, inspired by a vision, there is potential to significantly improve the prospects of young people.


The Leadership Book, A Step By Step Guide To Excellent Leadership by Neil Jurd OBE is now available to buy on Amazon UK at £15.99


March 2021


BRITISH EDUCATIONAL SUPPLIERS ASSOCIATION (BESA) I’ve seen the future, and it’s artificial


In her regular column for Education Today this month, JULIA GARVEY, Deputy Director General at school suppliers’ association BESA, looks at the use of AI in education.


If I said Artificial Intelligence to you, what does it call to mind? Robots running amok; human-shaped super computers; machines taking over the world Terminator style? As far as science fiction is concerned, AI rarely bodes well for us humans.


As a nation I think it’s true to say


we Brits are nervous of AI. But this month I've discovered other nations are not as hesitant to incorporate elements of AI into their educational software, to the benefit of their pupils. Could this be the next education technology trend to reach our classrooms?


At BESA one part of our remit is to help develop international ties


between educational suppliers in the UK and their counterparts overseas. We are currently working on projects with EdTech companies in both Japan and China, exploring the new products and services being applauded by their teachers.


Through these conversations I’ve learned that (unsurprisingly perhaps)


AI is far more mainstream in the East than it is in Britain. I’ve been introduced to an Alexa-style microphone that listens to group discussions amongst pupils and scores their comprehension and skills against a predetermined set criteria. Souped up algorithms that track student interactions with online learning software to determine the level of security of knowledge of each individual student and report back to the teacher . And even an AI teaching assistant which enables schools to increase online class sizes (thus enabling them to reach more students in more remote areas of the country) by checking pupil understanding and flagging to the teacher those individuals who are not engaged during the lesson, or those who are in need of additional support.


China and Japan have always had a reputation for being at the cutting


edge of technological development but how long before we are likely to see these innovations in the UK classroom? If you had asked me that 12 months ago, I'm sure I would have given a very different answer to the one I will give you today. The adoption of new technologies over this last year has taken such a giant leap forward, and with such a pace of change, that developments which would previously have seemed impossible now feel far more plausible.


Whilst it's not inevitable that the UK will follow China and Japan in


integrating AI into classroom teaching and learning materials it's certainly a trend worth watching. I should also say that I know of several BESA member companies who already use AI to a greater or lesser extent in their products, but as a concept we haven’t yet reached the tipping point whereby it’s gone mainstream. We have a culture that demands reliable pedagogy and a high degree of efficacy of the products we use in our schools, not just a reliance on the tech itself. It remains to be seen whether these new products have the proven track record to make them appealing to UK teachers yet, but I for one am excited to see what the future will bring.


Julia Garvey Deputy Director General, BESA Besa.org.uk


www.education-today.co.uk 13


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