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Learn How to FUND and IMPLEMENT:
The 12 POINT SCHOOL UPGRADE PLAN
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SERVICE - QUALITY - ENVIRONMENT
With these 3 words Stuart Rose has regenerated M & S - a national institution. It's time our schools were given the same
upgrade and it's time that our governors used their new powers to make it happen
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The new Education Act, which became law 8th November 2006,
gives governors new and virtually unfettered powers over their school's management, its assets and its extra-curricula revenue
generation potential
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Leadership is THE issue in 2007 - identified in speeches made
in January 2007 by school's minister Lord Adonis, BECTA CEO, Stephen Crowe, and PFS (Partnership for Schools)
Strategic Director, Steve Boss - as being the key impediment to school improvement
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But as anyone who has been a school governor will know, governors simply don't have the time and are
not paid to assume the personal risk of overseeing the scale of the transformation that is required - and is now possible
- in our schools
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But the government has now given them new powers to partner with the private sector and appoint private sector
governors who will have the time and incentive to effect this transformation.
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Unless governors can demonstrate how they themselves are going to implement, lead and
oversee the sort of profound school transformation which is now possible, and also
show how they can do so in a sustainable manner, they should
now use their new powers to partner with the private
sector as set out in The Education Act 2006.
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School Governors run British schools and collectively,
eventhough they are of course very hard working, intelligent and well meaning, it is ultimately
they who are responsible for the unacceptably poor average standards in education reported recently by both OFSTED and Gordon
Brown's education think tank headed by Lord Leitch.
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This
might have been acceptable in past ages, but today IT IS POSSIBLE to transform
the educational aspirations of a whole generation through optimal use of new technologies, deployment of new working practices
and a new building design which the school shares. By working in partnership with an enlightended private sector partner mandated
to create a vibrant local knowledge-based facility for the whole community, schools can truly reinvent themselves and the
quality of their services for every child.
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The
Education Act now gives governors all the powers they need to reverse Britain's school's relative international decline
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New
learning technologies, optimally implemented, provide governors with an unprecedented opportunity to transform the education workplace,
doing for it what Henry Ford did for the car industry: so that everyone can live the dream.
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There
is only one way to describe the reforming power that is released when the twin forces of deregulation
and technology are unleashed in any industry: BIG
BANG
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Design
your school refit, your new Academy, your BSF bid from this vision and perspective and you will future proof all your
efforts. Design from a perspective which is narrower in any way whatsoever and all your mistakes will soon be as
obvious to the world as a white elephant in Westminster - and much, much faster than you may think because this is a
race that the whole world is competing in - the race to implement Education's Big Bang and bring on the 21st century
knowledge economy
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Our 12 POINT UPGRADE PLAN summarised below and to be presented in detail at the Big Bang Conferences,
describes the key changes that all governors need to start thinking about now
- Your
school will almost certainly need a business partner to help you to draw-up and fund your redevelopment plan.
A new class of business manager is required to oversee and operate this transformation. This will allow heads and teachers
to focus on their core education skills
- To
help schools to understand these issues in greater depth we have organised a series of REGIONAL CONFERENCES where top speakers will illuminate the key issues. Networking opportunities with potential business partners
are a key feature of the conferences. Seats are limited in each region, so we recommend early reservation by clicking on the
seminar tab above or completing our ONLINE BOOKING FORM
- And now we have raised £130m to finance the
first 5 Educentres, so there is even more reason to attend a conference and see if your school is chosen to be one of these
first five
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THE 12 POINT SCHOOL UPGRADE PLAN...
Upgrading your school and implementing the holistic upgrade plan below will do
for education in your area what Henry Ford, with his Model T, did for the car industry – so that everyone
can live the dream; but this time round, the dream is NOT a standardised product but a wholly personalised educational experience
made possible by the correct alignment of technology, labour specialisation and industrial design.
This is a PRACTICAL plan which can be financed within the EXISTING state school
budget. Governors need to acknowledge in their future planning that no political party is offering increased public expenditure
in the next decade: the era of expansion is over. The political future is about welcoming deregulation,
encouraging competition and harnessing new technologies so that the deployment of a school's assets can be transformed
to make it a GREAT SCHOOL for EVERYONE in their local community.
Some schools will transform and become GREAT. Others
will stay still and eventually wither away. Here's how to become GREAT:
1)
THE CORE VISION
The core vision of a great school is that every student should
become an independent learner following their own Personalised Learning Path. An assumption of success in this regard underpins
the new operating design of the school.
The nine gateways to personalising
learning are: assessment for learning; learning to learn; new technologies; curriculum; advice and guidance; mentoring and
coaching; workforce reform; design and organisation; and student voice. These are combined into four 'deeps', as follows:
Deep Learning (assessment for learning, student voice, learning to learn); Deep Experience (new technologies, curriculum);
Deep Support (mentoring and coaching, advice and guidance); Deep Leadership (design and organisation, workforce reform).
In
practical terms this means that the school workplace is wholly re-engineered so that a truly profound level of support
can be targeted to the initial and continued development of a student's emotional IQ as the precursor to their graduation
to independent learner status.
Our
new operating design is holistic, with each of the 12 upgrade points providing an essential pillar in the foundations
of a completely new type of school for the 21st century, based upon the core operating principal that everyone is treated
as an adult: no patronising assumptions are made about what is best for an individual; everyone has the right to determine
their own destiny; and everyone has a responsibility to respect those rights in others.
2)
LABOUR SPECIALISATION
Technology is the missing ingredient which turns these
heretofore illusory aspirations from theoretical dreams into a practical reality because technology enables the school to
disaggregate and differentiate its teaching resources and refine how, where and when they are allocated: the teaching needs
of emotionally mature students who are independent learners are different to emotionally confused students who need the long-term
support of a stable group of mentors. A great school will recognise these different teacher roles in new, flexible employment
contracts designed to attract top graduates into the profession and which offer a bonus system which matches the long term
requirements of students for stability and quality in the managerial team that oversees their emotional and academic development.
3)
STUDENT MANAGEMENT TEAM
In a great school every student should have a 5 person
management team which remains constant throughout their school career. The team is tasked first to look after the development
of the emotional IQ of the student and second to look after the academic and extra-curricula development of the student. Each
student is different: some commence academic studies immediately, others follow a different path, at least initially, where
a variety of psychotherapeutic techniques can be used to develop the student's awareness of their own emotional IQ. The object
is that all students become self-aware, 'Independent Learners' before embarking on a full range of academic subjects. It is
unlikely that any student will study 8 or more subjects simultaneously. The average student is likely to follow a 3 + 5 path,
aiming to develop cross-curricula references and take external GCSE examinations first in up to 3 lead subjects and following
that in a further 5 GCSE subjects with advanced studies in each of their core subjects. The operating assumption is that,
by using this approach, all year 12 and 13 students are likely to be motivated independent learners but if this is not the
case, the student's management team will continue to work with the student on the development if their emotional IQ.
4) COMPREHENSIVE LEARNING PLATFORM
A great school understands the true meaning
of the words 'service and quality'. It knows that in the modern era, where technology removes the scarcity of educational
resources, schools may soon be vulnerable to class actions from disgruntled parents if they negligently fail to provide
chlidren in their care with Personalised Learning Programes. And it knows too that it is impossible to deliver such exacting
service and quality systemically and over the long term without fully harnessing the power of new technologies to automate
repetitive tasks, disseminate high quality and differentiated learning materials and quality control every aspect of the school's
service to its learning community. A great school therefore will have a central digital nervous system – a learning
platform - at its heart which records all activity in the centre and manages the learning programmes of all students. This
means that all student assessment data and all the requisite differentiated learning resources are integrated into a single
student access point so that all stakeholders in a student's learning journey have instant and transparent access to everything
that they need. The learning platform is the sine qua non modus operandi
of the school enabling the physical spaces of the school to be redesigned so that an effective Emotional IQ
and Independent Learning Model can be deployed..
5) SUPERSTAR LECTURERS
Great schools will employ specialist inspirational
lecturers who can make each topic of their particular subject truly come alive. SuperStar lecturers will present theatrical
productions on their subject topics to groups of varying sizes of up to 1200 students, assisted by subject assistants and
student mentors. Everything they present, and the student activities they devise, will be filmed and recorded in the lecture
theatre and made available on the learning platform in a variety of ways, including a video podcast. In this way great schools
will be creating a new market for inspirational lecturers who will be hired by several schools rather than being the preserve
of one.
6) MULTI-USE, RAKED AUDITORIUM and THEMED LEARNING CAFES
The great school of the future will not even look
like a school. Themed learning cafés of varying sizes will be arranged around a multi-use, 1200 + raked auditorium capable
of converting in an instant into lecture theatres of smaller sizes comprising 30,60,90,120 and so forth. This efficient and
exciting use of space harnesses the power of the learning platform to drive a new financial model which concentrates resources
on new specialist teachers to nearly double their total remuneration over a five year period, so that the highest quality
graduates are attracted into the industry.
7) LUNCHTIME
LECTURES and TANGENTIAL RETAIL BUSINESSES
Imagine a consumer orientated knowledge and retail facility capable
of attracting 4000 school, adult and corporate students daily into a dynamic, purpose built, personalised learning and leisure
environment, because – just like the local shopping centre – it's a place where they actually want to go,
be seen and socialise. The governors of such a great school in the future will have recognised early on that the Education
Act of 2006 was the beginning of the end of the cosy days when the size of a school's student roll was driven by the lack
of an effective local choice. They will have seen the writing on the wall and acted to redevelop their school assets so that
they can pull the whole community** into it every day because there is something LIVE going on there that they want to experience.
Just as the internet has fed the thirst for knowledge and steady year on year growth in book sales, so will that quest
for knowledge lead to a rebirth in the value that consumers place on LIVE local performances. Great schools in the future
will run editorial teams producing a stream of daily live performances which attract the whole community into the centre,
creating a buzz about the place which feeds a virtuous circle underpinning the emotional and academic development of everyone
attending the school. A new market will be created for SuperStar lecturers and celebrities to educate and entertain local
audiences during the leisure hours at lunchtime and in the evenings.
** n.b our operating design addresses and manages
all security issues
8) QUADRUPLE ACTIVITY DAY
Every day at an educentre for every student will include:
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am or pm SuperStar lecture in the lecture theatres;
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am or pm group or individual work groups in one of the Learning Cafes assisted by learning assistants and mentors at
a ratio of 1:20 students
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lunchtime and or pm physical activity/sport, run by the Sport Franchisee
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am, pm Art, Drama or Music sessions run by the Art, Drama, or and Music franchisees
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DAILY mentoring as required by the student's management team, plus 24/7 virtual mentoring
9)
NO SELECTION
A no selection policy must be a fundamental ethical and commercial tenet of a knowledge multiplex
(an 'educentre') which will operate on
a first come first served basis and will not select students in any way whatsoever. The fundamental ethos of an educentre is
that by genuinely organising the operation of the school so that it is focused first on emotional IQ and thereafter on academic
and extra-curricula achievement, it stands a much better chance of succeeding. Recent research confirming the improved performance
of schools which adopt the Montessori method of prioritising the children's emotions first, confirms the importance of implementing
this ethos systemically. Offering every student a Personalised Learning Programme once they are enrolled at an educentre is
the ultimate streaming process which the school can support because of its holistic approach in terms of re-aligning school
design with technological advances and the staged progress through the curriculum once an appropriate level of emotional IQ
has been attained. Combining this ethos with the fact that educentres will be genuinely all-community, exciting places to
be, means that the school will be optimising its chance of being successful, whatever the demographics of its student intake.
10) BUSINESS and ACADEMIC MANAGEMENT TEAMS
Governors of great schools in the future will have taken the lead currently being given by Oxford University by
adding a new class of professional business manager to the management of the school. The Education Act 2006 enables businesses
to hold a majority on the governing board of schools and it is unlikely that the transformation necessary to become
a great school of the future will be possible without today's governors identifying a business partner that has the funding
and expertese to develop a holistic educentre multiplex local franchise. Schools that do not make this transformation will find
it increasingly difficult to live up to the superior value-added performance and personalised educational experience
made possible by the correct alignment of technology, labour specialisation and industrial design.
11) SCHOOL - LEGAL GUARDIAN CONTRACTS
The governors
of great schools in the future will build all the new rights and obligations created in the new Education Act 2006 into
a School/Home contract which will enable this exciting new type of educentre multiplex to be created without a debilitating
fear of litigation. All parents and students will have to sign the contract but the student's management team will visit the
student's home once they have been accpeted to build a relationship with parents and, hopefully, encourage them to join and
use the educentre's educational, leisure and retail facilities. The contract will be enforced by an in built operating
ethos, data collection philosophy and security design that can be as light or heavy as required from time to time by
the school's academic and security management team.
12) A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY MODEL TO UNDERPIN SUSTAINABILITY
The educentre multiplex provides a local business model to act as a locomotive of
the local knowledge economy, driving new local knowledge based revenues, new local knowledge based jobs and new local
knowledge based consumer activities and expenditure patterns for the benefit of the collective knowledge of the local community:
truly a GREAT SCHOOL for EVERYONE.
Reserve your seat at a regional conference
To help schools to understand these issues in greater depth
we have organised a series of REGIONAL CONFERENCES where world class speakers will illuminate the key issues. Networking opportunities with potential business
partners are a key feature of the conferences. Seats are limited in each region, so we recommend early reservation by clicking
on the seminar tab above or completing our ONLINE BOOKING FORM | |
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