Applying learning from the course directly into day-to-day work
Jon Turner is an assistant head studying the Senior Leader Apprenticeship plus MA in Educational Leadership, which his school's Apprenticeship Levy fully funds. Here he talks about his experience on the course, the key messages of becoming an authentic leader and relating that learning directly back to his school to make a material impact.
Why this course?
I'm an assistant head, I have been now for four years and going to my fifth year. And I was asking myself, where do I go next? How can I take my career further?
I thought about things like the NPQH programme and alternatives but I liked the idea of the MA.
And so, when the email about this course flashed up, my interest was piqued.
Cost was an important consideration. I wanted to do an MA but, personally I couldn't afford to fund that. And equally, for the school, £14,000 plus for CPD is just not possible, our entire CPD budget is less than the cost of the full cost of the MA! So that was a key thing, the apprenticeship solved that issue.
NITE’s MA was very clearly linked to the SLA and going through the apprenticeship process added a bit more to the experience.
It is also workplace-based, I think that's really important. A lot of courses I looked at were very theoretical and focused on the theory of education and leadership, but this course was very clearly about developing your leadership.
Being the ‘authentic you’ as a leader was a key message throughout. From the very beginning, I could relate it directly to what I was doing. Part of that was the apprenticeship and part it was the design of the course, the modules and style of the course.
Course highlights
A real highlight for me was how we were able to build up a real sense of community through the tutorial groups. Initially you stand back and think, well, it's an online course, it will be really remote and it's just my own journey, but the way the course was put together ensured this was not the case.
Through the online components and tutorials, and we built our little group and we got to know each other really well. It was a very disparate group, which was fantastic. We came from different walks of life and from way up north, way down south and geographically absolutely scattered to the winds. We had primary school teachers, really experienced headteachers, middle leaders and senior leaders in school. This brought in so much variety of experience and what that brought to our conversations which was so interesting.
The residentials were a highlight, not just in terms of the structure of the course. The three-day residentials can feel like that's a lot of time out of school, but three days was perfect; you could forget about school, put your emails and laptops away because you're not here for that. It's really liberating as you could really engage, rather being a few hours when you've always got other things in the back of your mind.
So that aspect of it didn't feel like an online course. It really didn't because you were so involved with people. And with all online learning, through FutureLearn, being able to correspond, comment and talk to each other was so easy. It was really good having people draw on and share that experience. I think this networking aspect is so important in educational leadership.
I think another really key thing was the style of the course was brilliant. It was very much delivered through real-world case studies, so it wasn't just theoretical. We were given scenarios to consider, asked how we would approach that case. It was incredible sometimes how real-life they were – you could visualise yourself in that scenario. Initially, we approached things quite naively and then you start to build in the learning, the theory behind it and the knowledge gained in prior experiences of real episodes.
I think that is a really powerful way of learning.
Personally, just learning theory doesn't work because I can't always see how it relates. So, the fact that we took real-world case studies and, after exploring them and getting a handle on them, we could bring that learning back to school and actually make a material impact was incredible.
Another real highlight for me was the module looking at organisational culture and culture change. In school we'd affected a culture change a few years before, so in the light of that, our discussions and the case studies we explored were fascinating. It enabled me to go back and say ‘we're not doing this right’ and it felt like I could have a genuine material impact on something that, had I not taken the course, I probably wouldn't have looked at in the same depth.
And I think as a school, we're a better school because I've been able to apply that learning from the course directly into what I do day-to-day.
Support from course leaders and tutors
The course tutor and the course leaders are incredibly experienced. This is one of the number one things about this course. They are former school leaders and even acting school leaders at this moment. This adds so much credibility to what they say.
It could be quite intimidating to engage with such people. You might hesitate to ask what might be a stupid question, feeling they are far too important to ask, or you shouldn't be asking them because they're busy.
But I think uniquely, all the tutors and all the course leaders made themselves totally available. From the word go they were open, supportive and so happy to engage with us and have conversations, be it online or face-to-face.
I think they genuinely shared the same vision in terms of what we would get out of this programme. That really inspired us to work far more collaboratively with them. And as a result, I think we've got a lot more out of it because we had this expertise to draw on. They absolutely threw themselves into bringing us on and nurturing us.
Then once we were properly into the course, we found out more about them, got to know them as individuals. We realised the rich tapestry of where they had come from, geographically, as well across the sector. That variety of experience was just mind-blowing. It gave us faith and confidence.
Even after finishing the course our tutor group are still in touch regularly and we have an open offer to go to Ireland and visit our tutor.
Feedback is also positive. Not just through a printed report or a Word document, but the video elements were really great and the sense of humour that came through in some of those was brilliant and made it very down-to-earth and accessible.
Impact
The course has had a massive impact on me in a number of ways. I felt affirmed professionally in some of the practices and approaches I was using, but it also showed me subtle ways to make those more effective and move further. How can I be even better at what I'm doing?
It empowered me, it gave me tools, it gave me ways of thinking, ways of approaching situations that would give me far more effective outcomes.
I've been able to make use of that new knowledge and experience in my relationships, particularly with colleagues, in trying to move objectives on and get things to happen. It’s the idea of culture and that you have to battle through that and get the culture right initially.
We're in a much better place, and certainly some projects that I have been involved with from the start of this course, I think have gone a lot better and been far more productive and effective, because I've gone through the course and can take that learning and apply it to real-world experience.
The course made me address so many different areas. It's really upskilled me. As a school leader, it encouraged me to look back at research and consider what's the rationale, why do I do certain things? What is the process behind why we do things? My way of approaching things is now far more evidence-based.
Being a teacher is a vocation but it's also a profession. This course has both that professional and academic element to it.
I feel more confident as well. In terms of my interactions, in all ways with all stakeholders, and in doing my job and for the jobs that come in the future, I feel far better prepared that I'm equipped with the skills, knowledge and abilities to do those. I've had the opportunity to practice those and get some feedback to make me a better leader in that sense.
And ultimately, I've got a master’s degree which is incredible. I have a real sense of accomplishment to have got to the end of that.
There is also the Chartered Manager status, which affirms what I'm doing, the skills I've got are fantastic for my own employability.
These achievements, having the MA in Educational Leadership and being recognised as a Chartered Manager, are fantastic things for a CV that will help me to access my next step.
Advice for others
I think it's really simple, the headline is ‘do it’. The course was fantastic. It's hard work, but if it wasn't hard work, it's probably not worth doing.
I think the absolute benefit of this course, as opposed to many others, is certainly the online technology such as FutureLearn. It added so much flexibility to the learning journey, not always having to be online on a Monday at 9am, or to attend certain things at certain points. So, when there were times where I was really busy in school, I could pause my studies to some degree, do what was needed in a busy workplace as a teacher, and then when there was a quieter point in school, I could dive back into my studies.
So that flexibility was really good, a real positive and, certainly in hindsight, was one of the real strengths, the ability to manage and take ownership of that learning process.
Looking at the course at first can feel daunting: you're doing an MA, there are all these modules and a dissertation at the end of it, but it's so achievable because the way that it's structured, the amount of lead time and support you get from fantastic tutors.
That makes it all highly achievable. It's just the investment of time and knowing that you can do it.
FutureLearn is such a good platform. I've got quite a bit of experience with leading students and equally staff doing MOOCs using it. It’s so useful having the reference library approach. We could go back, look at videos and revisit content.
Clearly this is a course which has been written by education professionals, not some management consultant. People who have been teachers, who've been through the rough and smooth and got proven results. It's written by teachers for teachers. All the way through, for myself and talking to my tutor group, it was always so relevant to what we've been doing. The way the course has been put together is just so understanding of where a teacher's coming from.
It's not an MA designed for an academic. It is an academic course, but it is so finely tuned and nuanced to what being a teacher is about, being able to manage a course like this and to be so effective.
