Living+Headship+Chapter+11

=Modelling Development Alternatives=
 * by David Gower**

This chapter concentrates on David's genuinely comprehensive secondary school in the North West of England, which despite a significantly below-average intake, is achieveing national average exam results.


 * 1. What was the culture of the organisation prior to the change?**
 * David is very much a Lead Learner
 * The school was already involved in self-evaluation and had a co-operative plan in place.
 * Welfarist school culture (Hargreaves,1995), but with high expectations for the pupils - this has led to their success


 * 2. What were the triggers for the change? and how did the leader build on these?**
 * The increasing numbers in Year 7 intake
 * The consequences of this role increase on staffing, accommodation, timetable, option choices and LMS income
 * Head Teacher's MBA research project and idea that business theory could have a place within education

The LEA forecasts showed a continued growth in year 7 uptake and the HT saw this as an exciting prospect, however there were issues that needed to be addresses and this made the situation far more complex. There was no guarantee that the numbers would keep rising and an increase of one pupil could be enough to force an increase in teachers and class space (costing around 5%) without delivering an equal increase in finance (adding around 0.2%)

The HT decided to try to construct a Decision Support System (DSS) which he hoped would help give answers now, for situations that would happen in the future. ie that as pupil numbers changed, the computer model would forecast the effects on key management variables and thereby deduce optimum resource patterns for school development.

Concentration on the School Board. This was the method of bring the parents on board. Pupils not really mentioned.
 * 3. What strategies were used to motivate staff/pupils/parents to participate?**

The DSS measured hard indicators well and effectivly but, as with most models, they didn't measure soft indicators. The school's results were already in line with national averages and the impact of the DSS is (a) to early to identify and (b) not accurate as the DSS was not in its completed form.
 * 4. What impact did the development have on pupil learning or achievement?**

Time and resources limited what was achieved but the school did input data into the model and it did appear to provide a means of forecasting the outcomes of continuous, predictable change, but it had not been tested on the unpredicatability which is so common within education.
 * 5. How was effectiveness measured?**