Speaking school finances- making mistakes_642

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Speaking school finances: making mistakes
A headteacher was walking around his school one afternoon when he was stopped by a member of support staff. She explained that the interment of her mother’s ashes had been arranged for the following Tuesday and asked for permission to have time off to attend. The headteacher smiled sympathetically and nodded his agreement: ‘Of course’, he said, ‘no problem at all’. He then paused for a moment, as if settling on something appropriate to say. ‘So’, he finally asked, ‘how is your mother?’This is a true story – I know,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], because I witnessed it myself (for obvious reasons, the main characters will remain anonymous). It is maybe a bit extreme – both horrible and hilarious at the same time – but nevertheless a very telling example of a distracted senior leader trying really hard to play the part of the caring people-manager while at the same time clearly not taking in a word of what is being said to him. There are many other more mundane examples of this kind of thing that go on every day, and which cannot help but get our backs up: the deputy head who still can’t remember the receptionist’s name even though she has been in post for five years; the head who comments in a puzzled tone that he hasn’t seen someone for a while, even though he announced the birth of her baby in staff briefing the week before; or the department head who cancels a meeting with you but somehow forgets to tell you that she has done so.It’s easy to be indignant about this kind of thing, and to react immediately, reading it as a sign that the offender in question is completely devoid of emotional intelligence. And it’s true that this can certainly be one explanation. However, perhaps this can sometimes be an unfair assessment. After all, having a poor memory,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or even not listening, is not necessarily a sign of inhumanity. It could just be an indication that the person concerned is overloaded with the sheer weight of their responsibilities: complaining parents; complaining staff; complaining governors; unruly students; government initiatives and leaking roofs to name but a few possibilities. Of course that still doesn’t totally exonerate them – the perfect manager,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], after all, would be able to juggle all of those things and remember our names and the names and health status of our children, parents and pets. And they would automatically get us cards on our birthdays, would always thank us for our work, and would notice when we looked a bit peaky and send us home early. It goes without saying, of course, that they would run a perfect school, making all the right decisions at all the right times based on a combination on logic, thoughtfulness, keen strategic insight and sheer innovative genius.Funnily enough, though, although I’ve thought about this manager a lot, and I can describe him or her in great detail, I have never actually met them. And although on my cockier days I sometimes aspire to that model, I know (as, I’m certain, do all of the staff that I manage) that I am many, many miles off the perfect mark. Twice this week I have shown exasperation to colleagues at the consequences of a decision, only to be reminded that it was me who actually made it. I have had long and involved conversations with staff, agreed detailed lists of actions, written them down very officially in my notebook and never looked at them since. I have smiled and nodded and made sympathetic noises through countless personal crises while my mind has drifted off to consideration of car-park resurfacing or staffing costs. Of course I don’t do it on purpose, but the combination of workload, fatigue, the sheer range and variety of interactions and the things I am supposed to do and remember inevitably takes its toll on occasion. Sometimes I even wonder whether I have actually made hundreds of atrocious gaffes every bit as bad as the one described at the beginning of this article, but that I am just so far off the mark that I don’t even realise it. The fact is that always doing and saying the right thing is extremely difficult anywhere, but almost impossible in the fast-paced and panic-ridden world of education. Multi-tasking is a way of life, and it’s understandable if we occasionally lose the plot. However, an acknowledgement that it is inevitable for us means that it will also be inevitable for others as well, including those at the very top of the pile. There are worse things that we can do than make the occasional well-intentioned mistake, and there are certainly worse things we can do than recognise and forgive it in others.Ruth is assistant headteacher (director of school and extended services) at Ribblesdale School in Clitheroe, Lancashire
The Court of Appeal pointed out that R and F's submission in the county court was of overt, conscious racism, and it was not prepared to find that there had been unconscious discrimination.The decisionThe Court of Appeal said that, unlike the ordinary civil claim where the judge decides, on the claimant's evidence only, whether the claimant has made out a case, in this case the judge had had the benefit of the whole of the evidence. Despite the school's failure to comply with the statutory requirements, the judge had been entitled to find on the basis of all the evidence that R and F had not proved racial discrimination.

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

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