The government encourages schools to have ‘a dozen effective managers’. The NCSL provides leadership training for both senior and middle managers as its approach to ‘distributed leadership’. In my opinion as the remodelling agenda is producing greater autonomy for many staff it is also producing new middle management roles, but do these staff receive training in their role as a middle manager/team leader?

Another aspect of school autonomy and strategic planning is the need to introduce Business Continuity Planning (BCP). This is best described as strategic risk assessment. It includes disaster recovery planning but involves more than that. It is about assessing the school development plan and the school’s processes and systems and asking “What could go wrong? What effect would it have on the continuing performance of the organisation?”

This is a relatively new concept in the maintained sector, but with falling rolls, the ageing population, changing demographics, recruitment issues and changing approaches to the delivery of the curriculum it is becoming an increasingly important aspect of leadership and strategic planning.

I have experience spanning over eleven years of membership of the senior management team in:

• Strategic planning (linking the curriculum with the budget and resources)
  
• Ethos building
  
• Introducing Business Continuity Planning
  
• Managing change
  
• Middle manager training
  
• Managing teams
  
• Effective meetings
  
• Objective Setting
  
• Introduction and management of effective administration systems
  
• Human resource planning and management
  
• Policies and procedures
  
• Customer care
  
• Positive communication skills