I believe that the post-McCrone world - I've used the expression many times in here - of autonomous professional and I do reinforce with teachers that 'You are responsible. You are experts. You are graduates. You are professionals. You are highly trained. You do not need you Principal Teacher to tell you continually what to do.' And the reality is, when you have a good Principal Teacher of a faculty, who is a good faculty manager, in the broadest sense of the word; who supports his team; makes them work together; who enthuses them; they actually enjoy that extra freedom, and that opportunity to develop their own ideas within, obviously, the parameters of the faculty. We're fortunate at this stage that we have in every single subject where there is not a Principal Teacher at least two teachers in that faculty. They're given the opportunity to debate; to bounce ideas off each other; to take responsibility; to share it. If you look at the new Standard for Registration of new teachers, it actually requires this type of thinking; this type of analysis; this type of discussion to take place. And, we're actually putting that into practice at this point. So, I would say it's working well. There were some teachers who found it quite a challenge at the start - I'd be wrong to say otherwise - who had come from an environment where the Principal Teacher had been the font of all knowledge and had passed down what he or she was to teach. And, when you give people responsibility you can't just leave them to it and say, "You're a lucky person. Go and do it!" You have to make sure the support is in there. So, we did that in the form of we put money into a CPD budget. We used the curriculum support groups. In some cases we actually went to other schools and we bought courses, which we gave to the teachers to help support them. We used all the resources, if you like, of the Authority to make sure the teachers were supported. And, we work with the teachers and the Principal Teachers just to create that new ethos, if you like, of 'You are responsible.' And, we're equally responsible in a flatter structure.
QT