Apr 17, 2024
After a holiday break it’s time to get myself into writing mode which, I can assure you, is far from easy. The big question is to find a topic worthy of a letter to principals which suits my motivational purpose.
My letter-writing emerged from the forced lockdown of March 2020 in a simple attempt to keep in touch with isolated principals in those unprecedented times. Then my notes morphed into an experienced former principal’s weekly and then, after 60 letters, fortnightly mentor’s musings.
My purpose is to support principals either with solid advice on an issue or with useful content for introductory use at a briefing, team meeting or parents evening. The 30 principals I have coached receive a Sunday evening topical message for weekly inspiration. It is often adapted and contextualised and distributed to teachers, later that evening, who definitely need all the positive support they can get. So, let me share a few things I’ve read and pondered recently.
‘Cost Containment’ is a nightmare for schools and districts. National Treasury is forced to shrink budgets by billions and particular portfolios by hundreds of millions. Decisions on freezing vacancies and ending temporary contracts are taken by number-crunchers who simply delete whole columns and leave bureaucrats to implement the cuts. That a class will have no teacher or no school that day doesn’t hit the headlines till months later.
My advice to principals is to, firstly, have a group of colleague principals at hand to share actual daily developments, to discuss tactics in designing motivations, to identify the right contacts within districts, to consider copying to district directors and, all failing, to get governing body to approach the MEC directly. You can’t take a cut of six or eight substantive posts lying down. You have to ‘hustle’ like a community leader fighting for running water. Just use all the right channels in writing and within the law. I’m sure sanity will prevail.
Secondly, do your best to shield your staff from all the negativity. Communicate daily and gain the confidence of your teachers. They must see you fighting for them and for their school as if your own children were losing their class teachers. You can’t allow the loss of that indispensable Mathematics or Foundation Phase specialist. Make a plan. Yes, you are the principal. Make a plan.
In times of negativity divorce your school from the chaos and noise of an issue and adopt an island mentality – an island of excellence focused on getting on with the daily business of education.
I respected Prof Jonathan Jansen’s direct and insightful analysis in his latest Life Lessons weekly column entitled ‘Instructional time unnecessarily lost in schools’. He used phrases like ‘inbuilt tardiness’, exploiting ‘the slightest calamity or opportunity to waste more time’, ‘routinised absence from school and classroom’. “This is not about one school,” he says, “I have found this in most of the schools I work with.”
He makes the point that 80% of public resources for education goes into teacher salaries. That’s the single most important instrument available to improve results: how teachers use their time in the classroom.
Objectively examine your own school for ‘inbuilt tardiness’ and ‘routinised absence from school and classroom’. There are numerous national studies on this very real phenomenon. Is your school different? Apply your systems thinking tools.
I’ve been glued to DSTv’s age-restricted Chasing the Sun 2 which allows us to re-live all the tension of last October’s Rugby World Cup triumph with behind-the-scenes footage in the changing-room, inside the homes of players’ parents and in clubs and pubs throughout diverse South Africa.
At a press conference last week, Jacques Nienaber, who now coaches Leinster, explains what it takes:
“You have to have INTENT, you’ve got to have ENERGY and you need to be PHYSICAL, and you need to be ALIGNED and ACCURATE in your PLAN.”
Surely that applies in both the staffroom and the classroom. It just boggles the mind to see the level of data and detail invested in coaching a rugby team. We have the human resources to invest the same alignment and accuracy in planning our teaching. Perhaps, in an education setting, we should change PHYSICAL to STAMINA, which has become such a key ingredient in our post-Covid teaching and learning reality. We can dwell on each of the emphasised words with a little contextual input or explanation. Try it with your team or with a subject or grade committee.
That’s my musing for now. Till next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 06/24
16 April 2024
Mar 19, 2024
When we get together as PAT mentors (currently of 102 schools) we often highlight the number of principals who find the pressure of leading an underserved school detrimental to their health. And, we all know, that principals not at their best cannot expect to positively influence their school community. We discuss issues such as proactive daily and weekly organisation, effective delegation, better teamwork and accountability of the staff as a whole and improved relationships between key personnel, but, as we all know, there’s nothing easy about being a principal.
There are so many qualities expected of the school principal and I have highlighted them regularly week after week. But, if we look beyond the academic literature and focus on the actual experience of currently serving principals, there must be a few guidelines we can share to make the hot seat just that bit more temperature controlled.
. One needs to accept what becoming a principal requires as a new and different way of life. All of a sudden everything one says at the front of the staffroom, on an assembly platform or even in the office is repeated, even beyond the school. One learns to be more measured, to think carefully before choosing one’s words and to own what one says.
That means there’s only one way; the right way, and only one version; the truth. That consistency underpins one’s effectiveness as a principal. Not everybody appreciates the decisions that have to be made. Today everybody loves the principal, but tomorrow’s decision is vilified. A popular principal should be liked most of the time!
There’s also an assertiveness that’s required when dealing with so many stakeholders. Not just confidence, but the ability to say what needs to be said. There and then. With clarity and respect. I may be wrong, but I don’t think a passive principal can lead teachers and teenagers in the right direction. Everything about the job is motivation, collaboration and action. An assertive principal is always positive but knows when to say ‘No’.
Yes, there is policy and process and transparency; and the school has distributed leadership, but there is only one Leader, and that leader should be taking the lead. The same goes for the deputy-principal; the school day needs to be led.
One often deals with parents on issues like admission, performance, attendance and behaviour. The principal’s office should be a safe space with a tone that invites instant welcome, straight-talking and complete confidentiality. Every school leader knows how his or her sensitivity, interpersonal experience, interview technique and listening style can facilitate all-important understanding in difficult school and family issues. The school community has a right to expect that little office to be a place of wisdom.
Much of the pain and despair of the fatigued principal is the result of the constraints of the community leader whose mantra is energy, enthusiasm and hope. There is only so much one can do to change underlying poverty and unemployment. A principal deals daily with organs of the state like the WCED, Safe Schools, Social Development, SAPS, municipalities, etc. Every single one of these entities is under serious budgetary pressure. All schools should have a team of support specialists, but that’s not our current South African reality. Principals, teachers and volunteers do the best they can, and their interventions alter many lives. The nutrition programme I witness every day is the greatest success story in our system.
But I have so much respect for the principals who forge impressive relationships with SAPS, who nurture their contact in the district office, who rely on the circuit manager who is just a call away, who use their parent at Home Affairs to speed up that permit.
I will never forget District Director, Wendy Horn’s advice to principals at our conference last year, to ‘hustle’. She gave so much meaning and impact to a word which every principal who wears the title ‘community leader’, should take to heart. I know it’s a tall order, but the modern, assertive principal is a ‘hustler’, doing the very best possible for one’s school and its precious learners.
Principals often bemoan the fear and chaos caused by gang violence in many communities. The victims and the perpetrators are invariably the close family of children at local schools. Principals are at the heart of much of this trauma. How does one deal with such senselessness? It’s not for me to say, but the principals I serve see themselves as guardians of their school and its people. They bring a calmness and an authority to the school community. They see their school as a haven, they support their staff, and they demand decent and respectful behaviour.
The outgoing deputy-chairperson of the Provincial Principals Forum, Mark Mosdell (Principal of Knysna High School) says it so well. ‘School is the core that holds communities together. I personally consider our work, what we are doing and producing in our schools, to be one of the most important roles in the country.’ He goes on to say that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and isolated by how daunting it is. ‘Please remember that you are part of a much broader community’, he said, and you do not have to do it on your own’.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 05/24
18 March 2024
Feb 28, 2024
This year I have the privilege of coaching three newly appointed deputy-principals. Our policy is to mentor only those young deputies whose principals have already enjoyed an association with the Principals Academy. Investing in the development of young leaders in their forties makes good sense.
The focus is so firmly on principals, certainly in my writing, so let’s shine the light on the role of the deputy-principal. First and foremost, deputies must be experienced, expert and very successful teachers. Being professional role models in the classroom is, from a core business point of view, the most important part of their job. These days deputies are called upon to be academic heads, curriculum delivery specialists and mentors of the heads of every subject department.
I realise that great teachers don’t necessarily take to the demands and pressure of school leadership, but great teaching is an indispensable requisite for leading other teachers. It’s not just about expecting subject meetings, minutes, control and moderation to be in place; it’s about taking teaching in every classroom to a place which ensures that all learners develop their full potential.
One of the critical weaknesses of our education system is the effectiveness of Heads of Departments who are not simply promoted to post level two but are tasked with actively raising standards of teaching and learning. Deputies have a big role to play in growing that realisation.
Generally, deputies have to find their way. Their roles and responsibilities are dependent on so many factors like:
the respect and trust which characterise their relationship with the principal,
- their standing in the staffroom,
- their actual expertise as sound administrators and data handlers,
- their ability to generate the modern demand for evidence of simply every happening in the school,
- the compassionate and competent way in which they gain the confidence of the community in dealing with teachers, teenagers, parents and the public,
- their financial acumen,
- their feel for ethics and good governance,
- their ability to manage a school discipline system which is workable, supported, consistent and fair,
- their skill in the field of conflict resolution involving teachers, teachers and learners, parents and between the learners themselves,
- their attention to detail in all aspects of running exams and other assessments,
- their flair for initiating and coordinating a co- and extra-curricular programme,
- their ability to successfully involve teachers in activities beyond the classroom,
- their visibility at the gate, in the corridor and at the stairs,
- their strength in bringing the school together in the quad or in the hall,
- their practical know-how in managing the maintenance and cleanliness of the campus.
Whereas principals are instructional leaders so much of their day goes to dealing with issues such as safety and security, the wellness of personnel and pupils under pressure, the demands of the district and lengthy procedures involved in appointing and monitoring staff to name but a few.
It is imperative that busy principals empower their deputies to actively become the de facto academic head.
However, our schools are so complex that deputies are just as detached from instructional responsibilities by dealing with student discipline and personnel issues.
We all know how divisive and dysfunctional school staffrooms become when principals and deputies are at loggerheads.
One SA study of deputies indicates that ‘although deputy principals perceived themselves to be leaders and the principals’ right-hand man or woman, their power or authority rested with the principal. There was very little that deputy principals could do without the principal’s approval’.* I can’t say I agree with this sentiment. The truth is that principals and deputies can achieve so much together. That collective impact is based on openness and communication. And, these days, deputies get very real chances to be long term acting-principals. If you are acting for a term or more you are, in effect, the principal.
Principals get to meet one another regularly at a range of meetings. Deputies definitely have fewer such opportunities. One should never wait for someone to get deputies together. Make it happen, but take care to meet with deputies of schools similar to yours in type (primary or high) and size. That interaction will be valuable.
I came across an interesting quote. A Canadian deputy principal espoused the feelings of many when he commented in a survey, ‘I love my job, I love what I do. I just cannot do it.’ ** I can hear you clapping.
Everything possible should be done to ensure a positive and healthy relationship between principal and deputies; positive in that it works through that regular communication and the promotion of a partnership, and healthy in that it is based on the emotional maturity expected of a school’s most senior managers.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 04/24
28 February 2024
Feb 14, 2024
You can imagine how much experience matters in a police station, a maternity ward or a food processing plant. And no different in a school. Just look around and see how many principals and senior teachers are about to retire in the next few years.
One place literally overflowing with experience is the Principals Academy. Do you know that just the 17 coaches who responded to my online query have 79 years of combined experience as deputy-principal and 323 as principal? That is some serious collective experience. But it doesn’t end there because each coach has considerable in-depth experience of the schools where principals are mentored in their offices about twenty times each year. I literally feel that experience when I attend our fortnightly meetings and I learn so much from the insights and ideas shared.
I think our principals immediately relate to someone who has sat behind that desk, stood at the front of that staffroom, stewarded a governing body and faced a quad full of a thousand or more children. Our coaches have all experienced the anxiety and joy and the adrenalin of leading a school. They have learned the calmness and common sense of principalship, and it shows.
As a new principal you bring energy to an expectant school and freshness to its focus. You grow into the role with every teacher or teenager you engage, family you see and situation you solve. You make your mark from day one but, with experience, you bring a presence and a personal style to leadership.
Principals don’t grow in isolation. Like CEOs they interact with key stakeholders every day. So, experience matters. I’m sure you have felt the undoubted benefit of privately meeting two or three of your colleague principals for some personal and professional interaction. Doing so regularly in an uncompetitive, collaborative and confidential atmosphere makes so much sense. This sort of sharing is valuable because it is based on common concerns, current issues and varied approaches. Nothing impacted my thinking as a principal more than my partnering with key mentors and colleague principals.
Unfortunately, there is a crucial difference between years of service and experience. The latter encapsulates the new things you have learned, the knowledge gained, and the skills developed.
In sharing with a principal who was previously the deputy at the same school I asked, ‘Don’t you miss having a deputy who does all the things you did as deputy to the previous principal?’ That’s why experience matters. Every school needs high quality leadership at all levels of the organogram. Guard against having the school’s expertise in CEMIS or in network administration or in finance being centralised in and protected by one person. Encourage all such experts to be enabling team leaders who build experience.
One of the deputies I coach followed up her BSc by managing a laboratory in the private sector. When she became a high school life science teacher and subject head, she brought a range of skills from an environment where accuracy, attention to detail, stock levels, deadlines and targets were paramount. Her teaching and her leading were directly enriched by that experience.
I have often mentioned how valuable it is for a primary school principal or deputy to have substantial and successful foundation phase experience. If neither has the skills required, the foundation phase HoD must enjoy critical influence at the top decision-making level of the school management team.
If you are in a high school or if you are introducing subject teaching in a primary school, you will know how valuable it is to have experienced time-tabling experts who understand the process, the limitations and the most effective use of the teachers available. The best expert is the one who looks far and wide for workable solutions. Many other schools have tried software options, classroom complexities, different weeks or cycles and have refined these over many years.
I have also often mentioned how much I enjoyed teaching the same lesson four times in the same day. I approached each lesson based on the experience of the one or the ones before. Experience accrues when one is committed to getting better, to responding to particular needs, to trying new ways.
In conclusion, think of a teacher new to your school this year. What has this novice experienced in the last month in terms of the culture of the school, the loyalty it engenders, the work ethic and relationships? What are the chances of the new teacher being positively engaged and thriving from term one.
Experience tells me it’s time to stop here!
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 03/24
14 February 2024
Jan 30, 2024
We’ve had two weeks to digest the 2023 NSC results and to look beyond the self-congratulatory political electioneering and the media hype. I fully realise that the cohort in question was most seriously affected by the pandemic, but having a lifetime of Grade 12 experience, I know that the learners would not have been disadvantaged by Umalusi. In truth, many subjects’ marks had to be adjusted downwards with the school-based assessment advantage lost in umpteen cases because it fell outside the final exam performance parameters.
Firstly, let me share a personal response. As a coach, in the last five years, I have worked closely with nine principals in underserved high schools. If I were a politician, I would be very happy with four of them because they have remained stable around a 90% pass rate. As a coach, though, I would have liked to have seen better progress in key areas. But, the other five, although stable, remain fragile and deeply disappointing, despite dedicated leadership and committed teachers.
The purpose of a school is to prepare learners to become good citizens with the knowledge, skills and attitude necessary to live independent, free and fulfilling lives. In the communities I serve we are way off the mark.
My previous province, the Free State, was placed No1 with an 89,3% pass rate but it has the lowest throughput rate. Only 54,9 of Grade 10s in 2021 passed matric in 2023. In comparison, the Western Cape had a pass rate of 81,54% but a throughput rate of 69,3%. In Limpopo the Grade 10 repetition rate in 2022 was 35%. These are stats provided by highly rated, Prof Servaas van der Berg of the University of Stellenbosch’s Research on Socioeconomic Policy Unit and quoted by Tamara Khan in Business Day, 29/01/24. He describes our education system as ‘abysmally inefficient’.
Prof Jonathan Jansen, whom I know well and rate, is a thorn in the side of the system because he talks truth to power. Although written off by many as super-critical and unconventional, he has worked tirelessly to research schools that work and to provide hundreds of pages of regular, practical and inspirational professional advice to principals, teachers and learners. To my mind, he asks the right questions (Daily Dispatch, 25/1/24).
Which 80% do you choose as the better indicator of the health of the SA school system? The 82,9% NSC pass rate or the internationally benchmarked study that showed that 81% of Grade 4s cannot read for meaning in any language? Surely that is the right question.
In the same time I have coached 17 primary school principals in the Cape Town metro. I have absolutely no doubt that that is where the solution lies. We need serious teacher upgrading in ECD and in Foundation Phase and a strong focus on resources at those levels. We need principals and school leadership teams who are skilled in the teaching technologies of FP literacy and numeracy. But, more than anything, we need the political and the professional will and the emphasis on competence and accountability to get our teachers to guide 100% of learners to reading and writing fluency before they start Grade 4.
As principals we can’t wait for the right context or for the system to upgrade teachers and teaching. We are the key deliverers of the system. A school’s professional development programme should focus unequivocally on helping every FP teacher to meet the teaching milestones of every term. This involves high quality leadership, genuine collaboration and sincere commitment.
Principals, you’ve had that one-page NSC Summary Report on your desk. It’s a clear window into your school’s academic standard and its major educational strengths and weaknesses.
Use your systemic thinking training to understand the contextual factors underpinning the extensive detail that accompanies the learners’ individual result advice information. Have your teams studied this page? Have you compared your school with your statistical neighbours?
Even your current Grade 12 learners have much to learn from the detail being shared with them in a positive and proactive way.
If you are a primary school principal, you are awaiting your systemic results. They, too, provide a credible and relevant benchmark for evaluating your functionality as a school. You, too, have all the detail and the chance to compare your systemics with your Grade 3 and Grade 6 November internal assessment.
We all trust our medical professionals to study our blood tests, sonars and scans with pinpoint accuracy and expertise so that a pathway to recovery and health can be determined. We owe our teachers and our learners the same professionalism.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 02/24
30 January 2024
Jan 10, 2024
This is my fourth day-one letter to principals who are tasked with bringing a school, its staff and learners back to life. My purpose is to list a few issues which help to shine a bright light on the leadership of instruction. Links to last year’s first letter – very similar – is provided below for one simple reason. The Principal should take the lead by being as prepared as possible, and publicly so, to indicate to your team that re-starting the school should be similar in detail, hype, urgency and teamwork to the opening of a big new supermarket or to the build-up at the start of the first Grand Prix of the season.
When any sports team has a tough day, the losing captain, in the post-match interview, says that there are a few positives to take out of the team’s performance. The winning captain is full of praise for both teams, but, you can be sure that coaches will spend hours on those positives. Take the positives out of 2023 – even ask your teachers to carefully write down one positive – and make a set of positives for 2024. What about a few positives for each classroom?
The word positive means good. It’s the opposite of negative. Making a positive start is all about attitude – that one word that sets a school, a classroom, a teacher or a student apart.
By the time your first staff meeting starts, the principal is in ‘back to my best’ mode. You’ve got rid of the cobwebs in your head, the fear in your gut and the holiday slowness in your step. The teachers are back. You have a key role. No, it’s not to lead them into battle like Napoleon, but to provide that calming presence that is the hallmark of a good principal. The teachers are in recharge mode and your calm, confident and positive attitude serves to bring out the best in your team and to ensure a high-performance level from day one.
Have you given sufficient emphasis to what you expect from those tasked to mentor brand-new and relatively new teachers? Not show them how to get a worksheet photocopied? No, rather to walk them through the year; to help them find the positives each week, to guide their classroom management, their teaching strategies and to hone their attitude.
If I were leading a school next week my focus would be on text. Not text as in textbook, but text that the learners craft and draft every single day in every single subject. That diary entry or short three sentence lesson summary or expression of opinion. I would make text a topic for daily discussion among teachers in the foundation and intersen phases. It would be monitored weekly.
A solid piece of new year advice for teachers is ‘Don’t do it Alone’. Having a professional relationship with another teacher in your grade, phase or subject is a commitment to a joint growth mindset. Learners are far better off when teachers work in teams.
A good way to start the year is to stress that it’s all systems go – ensuring everyone understands the complete range of behind-the-scenes processes that distribute leadership throughout the school. Talk them through the organogram and spell out the detail from GrR to Gr12.
Now’s the time to commit to a joint interpretation of 2024’s number one word – ACCOUNTABILITY. A teacher takes personal and professional accountability for assessing where the learners are in terms of mastery and commits to taking them to a particularly designated level. This journey is undertaken as a team and teachers should be able to identify the issues and individuals which make accountability such an imperative.
A new year offers teachers the chance to up aspects of their game especially their classroom presence, their range of teaching skills and their effectiveness. That first lesson, the planning it clearly shows and the use of every minute sets a standard with a class. Any experienced and competent teacher knows that a teaching climate with a particular class is unique and dependent on many factors which need to be actively managed. Principals have a role to play in making the school teaching-ready for teachers and learners.
Restarting a school from Monday requires the WHOLE team – that’s every single teacher. The staffroom should be totally free of staff chatters. Everyone should be out there – everywhere – setting the tone for a busy year.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 01/24
11 January 2024
