I wanted to write at the end of another amazing year to thank colleagues for all your hard work and to encourage you to celebrate our many achievements over Christmas and the New Year. These are not mediocre times and your contribution to the Education Leeds story has been one of passion, commitment, energy, courage and hard work and I am really grateful because the impact has been fantastic.

We have had another incredible year… as well as delivering the last two PFI buildings, we have seen the opening of the first three new BSF buildings at Allerton High School, Pudsey Grangefield School and Rodillian School, with Allerton High School being officially opened by the Prime Minister. We have also had notification from the DCSF that our Primary Capital Programme proposals have been agreed with some minor amendments, which means that we can start work on an ambitious programme of work that will deliver another £100 million capital investment across the city. Our continuing success has been recognised through our nomination for the Carl Bertlesmann Prize, the extension of our Beacon Status for healthy schools, the Leeds Transformational Project celebrating the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade which secured £450,000 of lottery funding and the success of our ‘Find Your Talent’ bid, which has secured around £2.5 million of lottery funding.

We launched our emotional health and wellbeing toolkit, and our Investors in Pupils programme has moved to a national roll out. We are continuing to develop our sustainable schools programme and held our first Leeds schools green day. We achieved and exceeded our 2007-08 PE and school sport targets, launched our "Happy Healthy Active Lunchtimes" initiative, and established ‘Spirit Alive’ as our response to the 2012 Olympic Games in London.We were the first authority in the region to gain re-accreditation of our Inclusion Chartermark, and our visually impaired service achieved Quality Mark as well as successfully tendering and winning the contract to develop a visually impaired service for British services abroad. We also developed, organised and successfully delivered the first national Gypsy, Roma and Travellers History month and poster competition and more recently we won two of the national BSF Excellence Awards for the ‘BEST LEP’ and ‘Innovation in ICT’.

The STEPS programme continues to develop with more and more targeted parents and carers benefiting from the programme, and 39 clusters of schools and partners are working towards delivering the core offer of extended services; which has been commended by the DCSF for good progress. We have received recognition from the House of Lords for our work with International New Arrivals as well as recognition from Ofsted through one of their thematic surveys which identified good practice on social responsibility and community cohesion. Our Chinese Supplementary Schools have also been recognised as providers of excellent practice by the House of Lords. Many more of our services have achieved Chartermark and the company was the first to achieve the cabinet office’s Customer Service Excellence standard. We have achieved our best ever GCSE results; fantastic results at 5 A*-C, 5 A*-C including English and mathematics, 5 A*-G and 1A*-G , and our feedback from the Audit Commission survey gave us the best satisfaction rating we have ever had from our schools.

Finally, we held our first ever 'Spirit Awards' at Elland Road on Friday night to recognise the brilliant achievements of our coleagues. Thank you to everyone who attended, well done to everyone who was nominated and to those who made it into the top three, and congratulations to the winners: Ann Lomas, the BSF team, the Operations service, the Health initiatives team, Kaya Barker, Eve McLeish and the VI team, Peter Saunders and Sally Bavage - you really are fantastic, wonderful, brilliant and talented colleagues, and now you have the awards to prove it!

Thanks to everyone for your persistence and determination to make a difference. Our brilliant schools, and our fantastic children and young people, have achieved more than ever thanks to the energy, patience, and commitment of the many talented teams working so hard across the city. Together, here in Leeds, we have made a tremendous difference and we must continue to find, nurture and release the magic. We must continue to celebrate our schools’ successes, and work to create an even better tomorrow for all our children and young people.

I hope that this Christmas brings you and those you love… delight and simplicity, foolishness and fantasy and noise, angels and miracles and wonder and innocence and magic… we have certainly proved this year that you are talented, brilliant, gorgeous and wonderful!
Best wishes
Chris

It has been a quieter week but I still had a great week...

A week when I remembered that we must:
· Keep on with doing the business and doing it brilliantly;
· Stick to the basics and keep it simple!
· Continue to manage by wandering around and seeing what is happening;
· Be absolutely straight with people, especially those at the front line;
· Ensure that we keep promoting our 'no blame' culture and all take collective responsibility for what we do;
·Banish "satisfactory", "fine", "gloomy", "negative", "boring" and "can't do" from our vocabulary, even if it kills us!
· Have a positive mental attitude; AND
· Know our strengths, and turn our challenges into opportunities and successes.

Dirk and I had lunch with the amazing visually impaired team before I attended the Leeds Schools Music Association Christmas Festival concert. I visited Boston Spa School and met some fantastic young people before I attended executive board to get approval for an important series of papers. The snow came on Thursday morning, and while I got to the David Young Community Academy no-one else did, so I had breakfast with the academy colleagues. Later, I met with Helen Plimmer and the hugely successful partnership development managers for PE and school sport from the PE specialist colleges. Even later, I attended and chaired another wonderful Leeds Mentoring Celebration at the Civic Hall before I attended the 6th Leeds Peace Poetry Competition and presented awards to some talented young poets. And finally, I attended the leadership forum session at Weetwood Hall and I visited Crossley Street Primary School to see their fantastic new classroom block.

Weeks like this, and a distinct lack of sleep, have given me time to think about the challenges and opportunities facing us as one year comes to an end and another new year rapidly approaches.

Are we doing all we can to ensure that all the resources at our disposal are deployed and targeted on the things that create the most value and make the most difference? Are we making it absolutely clear to everyone who works with us and for us that the only thing that really matters is achieving brilliant outcomes for our children and young people? Are we thinking enough and spending enough time looking for opportunities to build brilliant provision and develop the talented colleagues we work with, and using our ongoing successes as an opportunity to attract the very best colleagues to join us? Are we constantly recognizing and celebrating the achievements of those colleagues and teams who are working hardest on getting things done and building effective relationships? Are we using, adopting and developing "face to face" contacts as the key medium for delivering good, tough, or any news to colleagues, and our partners? Are we doing everything we can to keep all our colleagues and partners fully informed of our plans and our strategies? How tuned in are we to the health and emotional wellbeing of our colleagues, our teams, Education Leeds and children's services? Are we doing our best to stay out of negative and unproductive conversations and away from negative people, and how are we stimulating positive and productive conversations and people? And finally, are there any ways in which we can re-engineer what our colleagues are working on in order to make better use of their strengths and abilities?

Why not make a list of the things you want to achieve in 2009 and then let's get on with achieving them now?

Chris

What difference are you making?

After yet another week where we re-invented what we mean by successful and where it is hard to believe everything that has happened, I want to urge everyone to continue to put in the hard work so that we continue to make a real difference for the children, young people, families and communities we serve...

It was a week of brilliant events and great visits. I went to Windmill Primary School to listen to the 'Sing Leeds South Choir' which draws children from eleven South Leeds primary schools and to the brilliant 'Talking Leeds Talking Success' event organised by our talented young people at The Met Hotel. I visited the young people's leadership and management project at the Carnegie Stadium where I met some fantastic young people from Freeston Business and Enterprise College in Wakefield. I visited Lawnswood, Ralph Thoresby and Allerton Grange High Schools where I met committed, passionate headteachers and colleagues who are making a real difference. I attended the primary headteachers conference 'Making Learning Irresistible' at Elland Road with around 200 wonderful colleagues working to release the magic in our younger children. I attended the 'Global Citizens for Peace/PeaceJam' event at the Civic Hall celebrating the amazing young people and colleagues from six secondary schools who had attended the PeaceJam event in Los Angeles with Nobel peace laureates including Desmond Tutu. And then on Friday I attended the official opening of the brilliant new Allerton High School building by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls before dashing across Leeds to the 'Meet the Cabinet' session at the Royal Armouries. I was also delighted that Penny Fields SILC won the 'People's Millions' and that we won two wonderful awards at the 'BSF Awards for Excellence'.

We are doing amazing things here in Leeds but to continue to achieve real excellence we need to understand the world in which we now operate. We need to build BRILLIANT learning places in localities with strong community engagement and powerful and modern governance. We need to build deep learning in all our learning places. Deep learning to equip our little learners with the functional and personal and social skills they need to be successful bigger learners in a world that is increasingly automated, and where the routine, the repetitive and the ordinary are done by machine. We need to powerfully use ICT and local networks to develop and nurture excellence and share good practice and great ideas. We need to nurture talent, creativity and imagination… wherever we can find it and we need to share and network the things that work.
It seems to me after such an incredible week that successful organisations, successful schools and successful teams, all have the following characteristics...

• a vision, values and sense of purpose which shapes the way colleagues behave and helps everyone know they are making a difference;
• the courage to set challenging goals and to develop new and cutting-edge solutions;
• an innovative and creative culture that values people and makes them feel special;
• an innovative and creative culture that trusts, empowers and engages colleagues' distinct and unique talents;
• a rigorous and relentless approach to evaluating performance and individuals’ contributions;
• a concern for the wider community and the bigger picture;
• a reputation for excellence, hard work and passionate commitment; and
• excellent long-term performance.

After all, as Tom Peters said... "Leadership is the process of engaging people in building the future, creating a legacy of excellence and making a difference"... so what difference are you making?
Chris

My colleague Eddie Colquhoun who works in the Attendance Strategy team sent me a copy of his latest liitle book, 'You're Never Too Old To Be Young Again!' and it's a brilliant read...

"Believe in the best, think your best, study your best, have a goal for your best, never be satisfied with less than your best, and in the long run things will turn out for the best."
Henry Ford

This is a collection of stories, pearls of wisdom, great advice, fabulous quotes and would make a great Christmas present. Sections on have a mid-life adventure!, if you don't know where you are going any road will take you there!, laugh and the world laughs with you, you could be a priceless antique, be a risk taker!, and the best is yet to come are wonderful antidotes to the usual miserable stuff in the papers and on the news.

The epilogue of this little book says " I am told that we laugh a staggering three times less than we did in the 1950's. Remember, fundamentally, we don't need to be happy to laugh, but we can laugh to be happy. If laughter is the best medicine isn't it about time we all introduced it again to every area of our everyday lives? Let's bring celebration back into every moment of our lives!"

Thanks Eddie and Judy for a great read which made me laugh, smile and occasionally weep.
Chris

It has been another really wonderful week...

I attended the Leeds Young Peoples Positive Achievment Awards at the Royal Armouries, gave and received awards at the Big STEPS Celebration at the Civic Hall, and spoke at the ADCS, Aspect and RM's Building Schools for the Future Visioning event in Stratford-upon-Avon. I had breakfast with the Morley FOS headteachers , attended another wonderful Staff Induction session at Derek Fatchett CLC and yet another fantastic STEPS celebration at Hollybush Primary School before finishing the week with lunch with the amazing Dinneka Smillie, our AimHigher Young Sixth Form Learner of the Year. I also managed to get to St Peter's CE Primary School to see Liz Holliday and her team who are releasing the magic at the heart of Leeds.



I won another award this week but unless I am mistaken most of us miss out on life's really big and important prizes. I know that I am never going to be Prime Minister, win the FA Cup, win a Pulitzer Prize or win a Nobel Prize and I am unlikely to win X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing, win the lottery, win an Oscar or get a Knighthood. But I do recognise how incredibly lucky I am because I know that I am eligible for life's small pleasures; small pleasures that are worth so much... a thank you after I've done something really well. A touch or a word when I am feeling down or things haven't worked out well. A kiss or a cuddle from a friend. A starry night. A full moon. An empty parking space. A beautiful smile. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Freshly baked bread. Cold beer. Chocolate. Great coffee. Why don't you add to my list?

Don't be upset about the fact that life's big awards and rewards simply won't come your way. Enjoy its small and wonderful delights and pleasures. There are plenty of those for all of us and we can help each other share them.

Chris

After yet another wonderful week here in Leeds, the scary thing isn’t what we have achieved, but the potential we have to achieve so much more if only we can release the magic…

We need to switch more people on by engaging their interest, connecting with things that motivate and enthuse them, nurturing and developing their energy and potential. What always surprises me is how much potential there is out there. Our job as leaders, as managers, as coaches, as teachers, as parents, as people who care, is to help individuals set their goals, realise their enormous potential and understand that this is not as good as it gets!

Another week in Leeds where I realise that it is all about co-operation, teamwork, networking and partnering. We must constantly celebrate our successes... chocolate helps! We must continue to encourage the BRILLIANT projects, challenges and initiatives that are making such a difference. We must dig deep to continue to find, nurture and sustain talent wherever it is. We must declare war on bureaucracy, complexity and mediocrity and keep it simple and create simply beautiful systems. We must above all communicate and share everything that is great about what we are doing across 265 schools with 17,000 colleagues working for and with 108,000 children and young people. I have been to some incredible learning places recently. And everywhere and wherever colleagues are releasing the magic they are trusted, talented, empowered and effective... brilliant colleagues working in schools and classrooms supported locally by focused and efficient teams releasing the magic and delivering world class outcomes.

AND we know what it takes to build brilliant... it's alive and well here in Leeds...

• leadership really, really matters;
• enthusiasm is contagious;
• small is beautiful;
• relationships are key;
• whatever you do be passionate;
• coaching counts;
• persistence and determination go a long way; and
• you tend to get what you expect.

This job we do is too important for any of us to be ordinary. We must all strive, each and every day, to be extraordinary, to be outstanding, to be brilliant.

Chris

"People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing."
Walter H. Judd

Every moment is a celebration...

Ask Lewis Hamilton because winners know this. If you focus on the positives, on your successes, on your achievements you will excel and reach your higher goals. It isn't rocket science and this is one of the most important secrets of success. But if you dwell on the negatives in your life,you will get nowhere fast.

So get into the habit of focusing on the positives today. You will be amazed!
Chris

So many people tell me that they find it hard to manage the stress and the pressure and ask how I manage to stay so cheerful, so positive and so enthusiastic...

It's easy if you know how and if you have the right attitude and the right tools and strategies to manage the XXXX...

1. Get a to do list, learn to say "no", ask for help when you need it, and set realistic and achievable goals.
2. Take more breaks from your work, get away from your desk, go for a walk.
   
3. Be positive, lighten up, smile more and laugh a much as you can.
   
4. Don't waste time on the small stuff or worry about the things you just can't change.
   
5. Get more sleep as it will increase your energy levels and your ability to concentrate.
6. Find mentors, friends and people to talk to.
   
7. Spend as much time as you can with optimistic people and people with a positive attitude to work and life.

Try just one of these for a while and see what happens. I promise that it will change your life!
Chris

As the nights draw in and the news adds to the gloom, it is easy to let it all drag you down – but only if you let it!

How do we avoid the sad syndrome:

• Smile at life and laugh a lot: laughter is a great medicine!
• Make time for yourself and those you love and care about!
• Get out, walk, exercise and enjoy the fresh air whenever you can!
• Enjoy the positives; the changing colours of the seasons, chocolate, red wine and the company of those you love and care about;
  
• Take up a hobby or interest, learn a new skill, a new language or go on a course;
  
• Have an autumn/winter de-clutter, throw out the past and the rubbish in your life;
  
• Avoid spending too long watching the news or reading the newspapers – unless you want to be depressed!

Whatever you do, don't let it get you down. Always remember it could be so much worse.
Chris

“There is a brilliant child locked inside every student”
Marva Collins

Sometimes I think that we are 'painting by numbers' in a world monitored, policed and controlled by 'bean' counters, 'keep within the line' consultants and 'let's weigh the pig again' inspectors. In this crazy world to meet their targets the 'bean' counters, the 'keep within the line' consultants and the 'let's weigh the pig again' inspectors rush around developing more and more initiatives that no one owns and that make little or no real long term difference to outcomes for our children and young people... and sadly, in that sort of world, the evidence suggests that all you get is mediocre.I often ask myself what are we trying to achieve together here in Leeds? What is our vision for our children and young people? How do we build brilliant learning, in brilliant learning places to serve brilliant learning communities? What is the trick to releasing the magic and unlocking the potential of each and every child, of each and every colleague and of every family and every community to be their brilliant best?

Our culture, our beliefs, attitudes, and values, determines our choices, our decisions, and our effectiveness. We know that beliefs, attitudes and values are the best predictors of individual behaviour and that these things influence our perceptions, our judgements, and our behaviours. Research also indicates that beliefs, attitudes and values are powerful and highly resistant to change. ‘The way we do things round here’ is the culture and it is really important that we regularly check out what it is we all believe should be the beliefs, values and attitudes driving our work and shaping our behaviours.

I have worked for over thirty years trying to answer these questions. I have recently visited Stockholm and Helsinki looking for the magic ingredient and I have come to an interesting conclusion. I think that the future is already here. Just in terms of the people and places I have visited recently, it’s at Pudsey Grangefield School, John Smeaton Community College, Carr Manor High School and the David Young Community Academy. It’s also at Harehills Primary School, Asquith Primary School, Swinnow Primary School, Hunslet Moor Primary School and Robin Hood Primary School. And it’s at the Horsforth Children’s Centre and the NE SILC at West Oaks.

Those of us who have spent our lives at the front line know the real answers lie where they have always been...

• strong, disciplined, focused and passionate leadership;
• clear, shared vision, values and beliefs;
• talented, energetic, enthusiastic and creative teaching teams;
• empowered, trusted and disciplined colleagues;
• brilliant teaching supported by strong assessment for learning;
• stimulating, exciting and engaging curriculum pathways;
• powerful, stimulating and interesting learning environments;
• high self-esteem and high expectations of everyone;
• strong, dynamic and meaningful coaching relationships;
• high engagement and involvement of young people;
• positive engagement and involvement of parents and carers.

We all know that command and control doesn't work and we all need to wake up to the fact that what really, really matters is our children and young people and the outcomes they achieve. We need listen to young people, trust them, empower them and to help them make informed choices. We need to focus on improving the skills, knowledge and understanding of the colleagues working with our children and young people, the quality of the leadership around them and the quality of the local services supporting our brilliant learning places. We must continue to nurture and support our local learning teams to ensure that they deliver for our children and young people and let's take the very best of what we do here in Leeds and learn from the best practice anywhere we can find it; nationally and internationally; from Reggio Emilia, and from Sweden, Finland and Denmark and anywhere that will help us to continue to build brilliant local provision… whatever it takes!

Chris

Set the vision!

Leadership is about setting the future direction of any organisation...

We must describe our shared vision and how colleagues ideas, creativity and innovation can contribute to that vision. We need to constantly question what we are doing and to ask ourselves where will Education Leeds be in five years time and what part will innovation play in refining and re-imagining the company?

We must communicate our vision and mission and then communicate it again. Colleagues must be committed , passionate and enthusiastic and we must all work to protect those people who are shaping the future for us; trying out new ideas, breaking the rules and pushing the boundaries. We must accept risk, search out things that work and create networks of innovation and excellence.

The future is already here we simply need to find it, nurture it and make it happen in all our learning places.
Chris

I was listening to Keane's new album 'Perfect Symmetry'...

There is a great message in one track...

"You can tell yourself you are doing your best,

but you can do so much better than this"

So our message has to be:
BRILLIANT YEAR, FANTASTIC RESULTS...
we can tell ourselves that we are doing our best,
...BUT we can do EVEN better than this!
Chris

What happens to creativity within organisations...

When creativity disappears within organisations, schools and teams it is all about leadership or the lack of it! If it doesn't receive the ongoing and explicit backing of leaders creativity, innovation and ideas disappear. You can generate all the good ideas in the world but without leadership committed to creativity, innovation and imagination forget it. Research suggests that leadership for creativity is just an important as having creative and imaginative people in the first place. Like with everything else creativity and innovation starts and finishes with the leaders of an organisation who must model the way and develop and support ideas wherever they come from.

The sign on everyone's door must be 'just do it!'
Chris

Communication is one of the keys to any organisations' success...

Leaders need to be great storytellers constructing powerful images of the future in which every colleague has a starring role. These leaders convince us that through our goal setting tomorrow can be better than today, communicating with each and every one of us and persuading us that we can make a real difference. How are you telling our strory?
Chris

In his new book Malcolm Gladwell argues that it is practice that makes perfect...

Ability, according to Gladwell, is just one factor in success. Work ethic, luck, a strong support base and even being born in the right year play a far larger role. Gladwell argues that there is no such thing as a “self-made man”. Instead, the years spent intensively focused on their area of expertise place the world’s most successful people above their peers. In 'Outliers' he claims that the best way to achieve international stardom is to spend 10,000 hours honing your skills. The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field.

So the answer to building brilliant is practice, practice, practice.
Chris

I am not into change management any more...

The trouble with the term change management is that it implies that we are tearing things up and starting again; giving up on the last experiment, the last initiative, the last strategy and replacing it with the latest experiment, the latest initiative, the latest strategy . What we are actually about is growth and development... growing brilliant people and developing their amazing potential to help us change the world for our children and young people, their families and their communities.
Chris

I was listening to the radio as I drove home this evening and Radio 5 Live was looking at how we win even more medals at the 2012 Olympics...

What was interesting for me was the focus on coaching as one of the keys to success and goal setting as a discipline. The message which we have certainly signed up to here at Education Leeds is decide what you need to achieve; your goals. Then work out how you do it!

It's exactly the same message we have to adopt here in Leeds. I have said it before but it is all about goal setting:

• set the goal and make it happen;
• set the goal and invent the way;
• set the goal and shape the future.

What are you waiting for?
Chris

It's great to read the letters in the Yorkshire Evening Post last week especially when today the national results showed that on every measure we are closing the gap and producing fantastic results...

People constantly question what we have achieved over the last seven years; with their usual criticism of anything new, anything different and that perpetual cry from the unions and individuals that everything is OK and things should be left alone. They appear to hate Education Leeds, PfI and Academies with equal venom because we have challenged the boring and monotonous offer that these people cling to. We challenge the systems and structures that keep them where they are and undermine their position in these communities who surely deserve so much more from their schools. It's sad really that these people have so little expectation or aspiration or belief in our young people and I sometimes despair that they can't see what we have achieved so far by challenging the status quo, the routine, the ordinary, the irrelevant and the useless.

But of course the trouble is for our fiercest critics, they are the ordinary, the irrelevant and the useless.
Chris

Perhaps it's me, but after another day and another National Strategies meeting I sometimes wonder if I am living on the same planet as everyone else...

We had a meeting this afternoon where nineteen Leeds colleagues and six National Strategies colleagues watched by Government Office spent three hours to reach the conclusion that we need to continue to address standards in the Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. Perhaps it's simply accountability. For me it's about trust and respect. Surely we can accept and understand that everyone in that room wanted to improve outcomes for all our children. Surely we can recognise the talent and the ability sitting in that room and the difference these colleagues are making... most of them are doing it day-in and day-out in some of the most challenging contexts and communities.

I can't believe that we have to constantly go over the issues with a group of people who don't really understand our context, our culture and our challenges. Perhaps it's me but I simply can't bear to work out what the meeting cost and I daren't ask myself what difference it made to provision in schools here in Leeds because I already know the answer!
Chris