‘A HEADTEACHER’S MOST IMPORTANT RESPONSIBILITY IS TO FOCUS ON THE QUALITY OF TEACHING’
The Prince’s Teaching Institute (PTI) held its first residential seminar for head teachers at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, this week (17 – 18 January).
This follows three one-day seminars on ‘what works in schools’ arranged for heads in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and is in response to heads’ enthusiasm for a longer session.
In her opening address to delegates, Mrs Bernice McCabe, co-director of the PTI, welcomed the reference to heads having more freedom to find local solutions to local problems in the Government’s White Paper,The Importance of Teaching. She encouraged delegates to discuss how this new freedom could best be used.
‘The PTI’s principal focus in the past eight years has been on the classroom teacher; and their evaluations of the many courses and training days we have run with them have endorsed in the strongest possible terms our contention that the most effective teaching is rooted in academic rigour and subject knowledge and a passion for communicating it.
‘As every school wishes its teaching to be effective, that has clear implications for school leaders: about the imperative of recruiting, developing and supporting teachers with these attributes.
‘The PTI maintains that the most important responsibility for a head is to focus on the quality of teaching in the school, and that good teaching is centred on knowledge of, and passion for, specific subjects.’
The aims of the conference were to consider some key elements of good school leadership, especially how to promote excellence in teaching and learning. The keynote speech was given by Professor Keith Grint, Professor of Public Leadership and Management at Warwick Business School. Heads of 50 state secondary schools in England attended.
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