April has left the building

20/12/2008 by April First.

The Diary of April First, school administrator, has now ended with the last entry being published on 19 December 2008.

You can read the Diary from the start by clicking here and then by following each entry from the calendar that appears on the left of the screen.

If you would like to read the last entry, to find out what happened to April in the end, look at the Latest Postings section on the left and click on 19/12/08 or alternatively click here

I do hope you enjoyed the Diary of a School Administrator - which was produced by the School of Educational Administration.   You can read more about the SEA and its work at www.admin.org.uk 

We are hopeful that the Diary will be published in book form including some additional material not printed here, in 2009.  Meanwhile if you have any comments about the diary please do write to Tony at schools.co.uk

Tony Attwood

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Into the darkness

19/12/2008 by April First.

In the morning I loaded up my car with the presents and umpteen changes of clothes to last a Christmas with mum and dad on the south coast, near Poole. My brother and sister would be coming over for a day each as usual – but being “unattached” I was the only one who would “stay on” for a (suitably vague period of ) “a few days”.

Janice was doing much the same, only she was heading to the Lakes for her family “do”. At 4pm we said our goodbyes, Janice anxious to get into the traffic, while I hung back. Havoc Blythe was in the office, shimmering into existence as always, without ever giving a warning.

“You really are going to leave us?” I asked.

He said he was.

“It won’t be the same without you. In fact I am not sure we can do it.”

“Well….” He started, but having got into my stride I wasn’t going to stop.

“It’s that way you have of floating in, of just being there, never flustered, never bothered, always knowing what to do. I didn’t realize it before, but these last two terms… How are we supposed to sort out neo-Nazis Academies, parasites and Ofsted without you here?”

“I think the chance of there being another outbreak of either parasites of Academies next term is quite remote,” he said. “Besides, I was rather hoping you might join me, in the new work.”

“What?”

There was silence for a moment.

“I’m being given a new assignment and I need an anarchist administrator to get things changed from the inside. You might think that I just make change happen, but I can tell you April, from where I stand you are the one that actually creates the evolution of each crisis. You have a genius for structured chaos, and that is what every situation needs if it is to be unraveled.”

“Is this a compliment?”

“It is,” he confirmed.

“Structured chaos? Anarchist?”

“You push organizations to their limit – you turn anything that can be turned upside down inside out, and life takes on a new direction with you involved. And the best thing is you are unpredictable. I don’t know what you will come up with next and I doubt that you do either. That is what we need.”

“So where are you going – what is the new job?”

“April, under military intelligence rules I just can’t tell you. It is in education, and if you want it, it will be working again with me – – and it pays MI rates. And you’ll get your back-pay from MI for this year’s work. You won’t have to move house – any time away from home will have the cost of hotels paid for from government funds.”

There was a pause.

“Is it Ofsted?” I said with a rush of enthusiasm. “Tell me we are going to smash the Ofsted Conspiracy.”

“Will you do it?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” I said simply.

There was another silence.

“Can I ask you two questions?”

“You can,” he said, “but as always I don’t guarantee to answer.

“First: what is your first name?”

“And the second?”

“Do you have a partner?”

He smiled at me, in that annoying way he has. “I will phone you after Christmas,” he said, “and we’ll talk more then. But please keep this quiet, until we talk again. You really can’t tell anyone.”

I walked back to the office. Everyone has gone and there would be no chance to tell them I would not be coming back next term. I gathered up my things, and turned out the lights.

It seemed symbolic that mine was the only car left in the car park. I drove out, then on an impulse stopped at the gate, and looked back at the school where my world had changed. The buildings were all in darkness, and I felt something that I could never capture again was being left behind.

Out there, in the wider world, everything was going to be utterly different.

My heart seemed to be beating at double speed and just for a moment I found it really hard to catch my breath.

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The bombshell

18/12/2008 by April First.

Havoc Blythe gave us the bombshell.   He is leaving for a new job that “his masters” have invited him to take on.  “A little problem that needs resolving.”

 

“Who is it with?” I asked.

 

“MI9” he said.  

 

We looked blank.

 

“Clandestine operations, escape and evasion,” he explained.

 

“Oh Ofsted,” we all said, and there was a jolly chuckle around the office, but we agreed it could also be QCA or the Dept of Cushions.

 

“What’s the highest number there can be in military intelligence?” asked Binky.

 

“MI18,” said HB.  “Spies on the prime minister and the cabinet.”

 

“So that’s it, is it?” I asked, trying not to show any emotion.  “Our team breaks up here and now.”

 

“No,” said Havoc Blythe.  “I would like the outstanding work tidied up into files so that we know what is left at the end of this term.   Unconfirmed incidents within the school, Unconfirmed incidents within the school carpark. Allegations of complacency among the teaching staff…”

 

“Big file!” said Janice.

 

“Add in unconfirmed incidents with ex-headteachers at the Toppled Bollard,” said Bodger.  We laughed and thought back to the incidents with the drunken Berlusconi at the pub, and his protestations of love for me mixed with threats of the fax.  I wondered where he was now.

 

“I would also like to have in place a log of all teachers seen talking unintelligently during break,” added Havoc Blythe.  

 

“It will be another big file,” I said.

 

It was funny, but it didn’t hide the sadness that our team would be no more.

 

A little later I added, “Why don’t you leave the school on purple alert, one step up from lilac?” 

 

Everyone looked at me, and I could see there were as sad as I was.

 

I don’t know what I thought the future might hold, but it had not bee this.

 

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Normal people should not apply

17/12/2008 by April First.

Today we moved on to adverts to replace those members of the non-teaching staff who had moved on. I wrote the brief for a new member of the office team.

The requisite person should have an ability to deduce the true meaning of a project while having no idea what the project is or when it will be started (or ended) and should at all time conduct all business without any thought of thanks or overtime pay.

There is also a need to respond to the desire of the senior management team for an ability to turn meaningful educational reforms into mindless rhetoric which will ensure nothing will happen.

It is important to note, I added, that many of one’s workers in the teaching industry speak the language known as educational twaddle. After years of attending one day inservice training programmes, they will have done little to change the school, and yet they will continue to have one day in service training programmes.

“That’s a bit harsh,” said Havoc Blythe on reading through my draft.

“Perhaps I should add a bit about the need to focus on diversifying the image of the school,” I replied.

“A masterful turn of phrase,” said HB. “It almost makes me think you are a natural manager – the way you can speak a version of English that is devoid of any significant content or meaning.”

“Could we have a bit about needing a solution-oriented approach to teaching and learning,” said Janice.

“Or maybe it is that solutions are not mission critical,” I chipped in.

“I think at some stage you need to touch base, offer compensation, think inside the outside of the box, diversify the facts, and reiterate the core values of the school on a bi-weekly rotational basis,” said Binky, who seemed chirpier than I had seen her in a while. I guessed things were going well with Bodger.

“Normal people should not apply?” asked Havoc Blythe.

We agreed.

“And there should be some benchmarking,” he added.

“That too,” I said.

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How to advertise for a new headteacher

16/12/2008 by April First.

We agreed that school had settled down enough for us to place adverts for new staff to replace all those who had failed to return following the various outbreaks of parasites that we had had.  None of us expected there to be significant number of replies for next term, because of the bizarre “resign before half term” rule.

“But no one has to obey such a rule,” said Binky.  She had obviously been reading up on employment law.  “What would the school do to a teacher who just said, “I’m not coming back next term?”

“They’d not employ you again,” said Bodger who despite being a scientific genius is a bit slow on these more down to earth matters.

“But I wouldn’t want to be employed again – I am going somewhere else,” said Binky.

“Then they could stop paying you,” he said. 

“Not if I don’t resign until the last day on which I am paid.”

“But if everyone went around resigning on the day they leave, there would be chaos.”

“A simple balancing of the equilibrium balancing the rights of the worker and the rights of the employer,” said Binky, who was becoming something of a radical recently.

So, on the basis that some people might be willing to walk out of their current job and straight over to our school we decided to go ahead with the advert.  Given that the last advert we had put in the TES had resulted in our request for a music teacher appearing in the miscellaneous and personal columns, the advert for a head of French had gone into the dating column, and our offer of a physics job had resulted in a statement that we wanted to recruit a psychic, we agreed to stay with the on-line advertising.   (We had incidentally employed one of the psychics who had proved useful in telling us what insanity Ofsted, QCA and the DCSF were going to unleash on us next week).

For the headteacher we decided that we needed someone who worked consistently in the Zone of the Last Minute, believing fully that he/she thrives on the pressure that leaving everything until the last actually improves rather than reduces efficiency.  Must have a willingness to take on extra projects, even when they are wholly inappropriate to the role of headteacher.  There should also be a constant desire to lead the latest initiatives in education, even if the previous eight initiatives that were taken on all failed to be completed because of interruptions from other initiatives.

The head should have a solid relationship with the administrators in the school, all of whom deserve a pay rise, and all of whom need to be treated with overwhelming respect.    Ignoring these factors he/she will also dump all sorts of items on the administrators’ desks without explanation, and expect an instant rearrangement of work to meet his or her specific needs.

He/she should not be particularly interested in co-workers, parents or pupils, and should have a highly developed sense of irony.

That, we felt, gave an honest (if slightly confused) assessment of what we wanted and what we expected to get.

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QCA in chaos; top man resigns

15/12/2008 by April First.

I finished off my Christmas shopping over the weekend, and met the gang in the Theory Café at the Toppled Bollard for lunch on Sunday.

As usual (or at least it has become usual as a result of the activities of the last few months) we looked at each, to see who was going to be the one that would announce what on earth would happen next.

It was Havoc Blythe, as has become usual of late, who took the lead.  “For several months we’ve watched Ofsted unravel – not doing much about it because we have been containing the problems in our own school.”

We all nodded.  Wise and profound words, and the red wine HB had chosen was particularly fine.  It was a cold day but the sun was shining.  We didn’t need a deep analysis to appreciate good drink and good company.

“It has not been an edifying sight as everyone holds on to their jobs and everyone blames everyone else,” he continued.  “But in watching Ofsted, we’ve taken our eyes off another adventure – and I suspect we should be looking at that too: the QCA.”

“QCA is a disaster area,” said Janice, who had had the job of working on the SATS disaster through the summer, and had taken quite a bit of abuse from parents, “but I don’t really see what we can do from within the school.  They are a monopoly supplier – just like Ofsted – and all monopolies are disasters, some more than others.  QCA more than most.”

We all nodded our agreement as Billy the Dog’s wife Jasmine gave our table the usual special attention reserved for the regular clientele in the Bollard.   We mopped up after her.

Binky, who had obviously been out partying over Saturday night and hadn’t seen the papers, asked what the latest was.

“The head of QCA has clearly got a whiff of what the independent report into SATS will say, and has decided to chuck it in,” said HB.

I whistled, which was not that clever a thing to do since I had just taken a mouthful of lamb, but the rest of the ensemble were used to my occasional messy eating habits.

“Why now?” asked Bodger.  “I mean, why didn’t he go seven months ago when the SATS chaos hit the schools?” 

“He said,” said the doctor, “that he needed seven months to contemplate the utter disaster of the SATS results, during which time he has continued to take a £328,000 salary.”

“So was he trying to see if he could wriggle out of this one, perhaps in the hope that the report into his cock-up would say it wasn’t really him that was to blame and £328,000 is the going rate for idiots?”  Bodger really didn’t like QCA.  I think he went out with one of the senior officials once and they had a difficult parting of the ways.  Knowing Bodger he might well be bugging her house.

“He said,” said Havoc Blythe, consulting his notes, “‘I have reflected since the summer on the delivery failure and on the difficulties associated with key stage testing’.” 

“Actually I could quite happily reflect throughout the summer on the sort of money he gets,” I said.     “The company that did the marking of the SATS went last August and had to hand back about £20 million.  Will the boss of QCA have to hand back his salary?  It seems unlikely.”

“So where does this take us,” asked Janice, speaking for all the table.

“It shows just what a mess this is.  We’ve seen it in our own school when a rogue Academy takes over and steals the cash and uses the school for illegal activities, we’ve seen the chaos at Ofsted, and now we are reminded of the chaos at QCA.  There are people on high who are saying education in England is not fit for purpose.”

“You mean they might shut down the Department of Cushions and Soft Furnishings?” asked Binky.

There was surprise at the table.  If true, this would be a major step.

“And if they do, what are we supposed to do about it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Havoc Blythe, “but I suspect it will be something odd and unusual.”

The conversation moved on from that point, and gradually the party broke up as the meal was concluded, until HB and I were the only ones left.

“You are a most annoying man,” I said.  “You know what’s going on, but you eek out the information to us mere mortals step by step.”

“I promise you, I tell you as I find it and give you my suppositions.”

There was a silence for a while.  HB indicated to Mrs Billy that he wanted the bill.

“Would you come for a stroll around the lake with me?” he asked.  “To walk off the lunch?”

That was a first, and I said yes without hesitation.  We chatted about this and that, avoiding school and education as best we could, covering such vital topics as what makes for a funny joke in a Christmas cracker and why the outer galaxies of the universe are moving away from us as fast as they are.

We got back to our cars as the sun sank further behind the trees.  He said, “April, you are a remarkable young lady.”

“And you, Doctor Havoc Blythe, are a truly frustrating man.”

He kissed me on the cheek, and we gave each other fond farewell smiles, before driving our separate ways home.

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