Plenary Session I: Strengthening the Teaching Profession for the 21st Century
Creating Tomorrow: Building Capacity for Sustainable Change
Dame Pat Collarbone, Independent Consultant, UK
In November 2001, the then Secretary of State for Education in England launched the biggest revolution in the education service in England for well over a hundred years in a speech containing the words "with the help of everyone in the education service, and many beyond it, we must make continual and rapid progress, starting now". I doubt whether even she understood at the time the extent of the changes which were to follow. In the intervening seven years expectations on schools and their staff have altered beyond recognition. There is no end in sight on this journey as the government pursues its vision for a more equitable society and a world-class education system with children and young people at the centre. Crucial to this journey is leadership but not the hero leadership strongly favoured in the past. This paper examines how the country is developing the capacity to engender such change on the scale being achieved and ensure the development is sustainable, the lessons that have been learned along the journey and, crucially, the leadership required across the whole of children's services.
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