Sample 1

An approach to work that doesn’t tell you what to do, but does ask you to think.

There are hundreds of ways of picking up knowledge and information relating to your work.  If, for example, you wanted to know more about the factual elements of administration there are many books that could tell you just that.

But in terms of improving the efficiency of an organisation as complex as a school a book or a training programme that says, “do this” and “do that” may not achieve all that you want.   When it comes to making an organisation more efficient, what is usually needed is insight.

Insight is a difficult thing to get but a great thing to have once you have it.   When the idea of the S.E.A. putting together a course for administrators first arose, there was universal agreement that what we wanted was a course which encouraged greater efficiency in the school office through insights.

But we quickly realised we were not quite sure how to do it.

However in the end we think we got there, and as a result the Certificate in Educational Administration course is radically different from almost all other forms of in-service training.  It asks you to consider, to think, and to say, “what would happen if instead of doing it like this, we actually tried it like that?”

The course doesn’t insist that you do try out your ideas – after all many of the students on the course do not have the authority to make such changes.  If you can change procedures fine, but if not, the course is still highly relevant since it encourages you to do the thinking that leads up to the change, and for many it is a route towards a higher position within the school.

As part of their work our students undertake a series of on-line seminars in which groups of students are posed questions, and then asked to send in their comments and thoughts.   Students then continue by commenting on each other’s ideas.

For many administrators this is the first time that they will have been able to exchange thoughts with colleagues in other schools on a regular basis – and in many ways that is one of the most valuable aspects of the course – the starting point for their insights. 

For a prospectus please call 01536 399 007 or email Prospectus@admin.org.uk   

 

 

Sample 2

It was a moment I couldn't have invented, and you wouldn't have believed me if I had.

On www.admin.org.uk there is a humorous piece called The Diary of a School Administrator.  It is based on the stories school administrators tell me – all I do is string them together, and then add a bit of background.

Part of that background involves giving our diarist (April First) a bit of a private life – and this I just make up as I go along.

After a couple of months of writing I started to try and give the private life part of the writing a bit more colour – and one day I wrote that feeling her job in the school was under threat and that her efforts were generally undervalued by the school managers around her, April decided to apply for a job with MI6.   To her utter amazement she gets the job, which involves spying on her headteacher.

Now this is all extremely silly – a bit of background to the more recognisable events of the school day.  But I quite enjoy jotting down the imaginary exploits of April, and from the correspondence I get it is clear that some people do like reading it – so I have kept the story rambling along.

Which was all there was to say, until last week when I was working on the www.schools.co.uk web site. 

Schools.co.uk is the site that provides links to the web sites of schools across the country.    We take adverts on the site and some of the adverts are fed through to us via the Google ad service.   We don’t control what advert is going to pop up – they are all educational.  Google selects them and feeds them through to us.   

So imagine my amazement when I looked across at the Google ad box and found an advert from MI5 inviting school administrators to apply for jobs with them!

I thought when I wrote about April applying for and getting work with military intelligence it was the silliest stupidest idea imaginable.   Indeed I saw it as unimaginable.   It just shows the unimaginable can happen.

The advert has now moved on, but it may well reappear – you might want to keep an eye on the Google ad box on the site.   Quite clearly one can never know what is going to turn up – which is just what I have tried to do with April’s diary.

 

Sample 3

When they suddenly ask me to do a completely new job, how do I know that is a reasonable request?.