Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by National Foundation for Educational Research
1. Thank you for the opportunity to give oral evidence to the Select Committee on Wednesday 5th June. I am writing to provide some additional research evidence that may be of interest to the Committee.
Leadership Development
2. As Susan Gregory stated in the subsequent session, high quality leadership is key to high quality provision in Children’s Centres. Our research into children’s centre leadership (Sharp et al, 2012) confirmed that there was a lack of clear pathways to leadership in Children’s Centres. Interviewees were concerned about the leadership “pipeline”, especially given that leaders of the first Centres are nearing retirement and it is difficult to find suitable training and development opportunities for deputies/more senior staff.
3. Children’s Centre leaders are drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds which means that they will not necessarily have experience or formal training in child development and/or family support. Leadership training is therefore of considerable importance. Our interviewees valued the National Professional Qualification for Integrated Centre Leaders (NPQICL). They wanted it to be a high status qualification (post graduate level) focused on the particular requirements of the role. They wanted reflective activity and practice-based learning coupled with content on particular issues, especially: leadership theory and practice, child development, family support, multi-professional working, managing change, managing and developing staff, financial/business skills, data handling and evaluation. They would be happy to have a modular format but wanted opportunities to learn from one another through visits, work shadowing and leadership learning groups.
Impact of Fewer Resources: Organisational Models
4. Our research on leadership considered the impact of different organisational models. Leaders and local authority staff were more positive about cluster models (where several Children’s Centres work together on strategic goals) than “hub and spoke” models (whereby a leader of a hub Centre is responsible for the work of satellite Centres). This may be influenced by the fact that “hub and spoke” models sometimes resulted from decisions to reduce costs by making staff redundant in satellite Centres (for example, by cutting leader/manager posts). Leaders felt they were unable to get to know the families using satellite centres and reported inefficiencies in managing split sites (such as taking time in travelling). A few complained of increased accountability without the autonomy to remodel their Centres to meet local needs.
Payment by Results in Children’s Centres
5. There was some discussion at the Oral Evidence Session about Payment by Results in Children’s Centres and you mentioned that you are awaiting the publication of an evaluation of the pilot scheme. In the meantime, the Committee may find a report of the feasibility study (La Valle et al, 2011) useful in illuminating some of the issues involved.
References
6. La Valle, I, Gibb, J, Brzyska, B, Durbin, B, Sharp, C, Aston, H and Rutt, S (2011). Feasibility Study for the Trials of Payment by Results for Children’s Centres. LGA. Available: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/91048/
7. Sharp, C, Lord, P, Handscomb, G, Macleod, S, Southcott, C, George, N and Jeffes, J (2012). Highly Effective Leadership in Children’s Centres. Nottingham: National College for School Leadership. Available: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/ELCC01
June 2013