School Leadership - A Scottish Perspective

Currently in Australia, during our summer break. I have found time and space to not only recharge my batteries for the new school year ahead, but also for some thinking on a number of issues concerning us in education. A few days ago I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with @stringer_andrea whilst in Sydney, and that conversation set me thinking about system leadership a bit more. Andrea was telling me about two particular issues being experienced by Australian educators, and I think both are connected to system leadership. The first was about attempts to try and control and 'manage' educators on Social media, like Twitter and blogging by national and state governments, as well as school leaders. It would seem a lot of this is pretty covert and takes the form of pressure and conversations with individual staff by school leaders, something I have experience of myself. This was also something @wappa53 and I touched on during an earlier conversation, before I went on my eas

I am currently in Western Australia as part of an extended summer holiday to visit family in Perth. Me being me, I thought this might be an opportunity to catch up with Australian colleagues who I have communicated with for some time through Twitter or my blog. I met up with the first of these yesterday in Stephen Breen, who is President of the Western Australian Primary Principals' Association (WAPPA) which is the professional organisation for primary school principals in the state. WAAPA's role is to represent school principals and work with the state government to support schools in order to help shape education provision in the state. Stephen and I have communicated online for a number of years and it was great to get the chance to meet up and chat face to face. We share a lot of the same views and opinions regarding education and the issues we face within our respective systems, but it was reassuring, as well as informative, to get a perspective from 12000 miles away from