‘System leader’ consultancy development in English schools: a long-term agenda for a democratic future?

Within the policy rationale of a ’ self- improving’ school system, there are now several thousand National College designated ‘system leaders’ working as consultants in English schools on aspects of school to school support. So far, there has been no systematic consideration of the long term development of these consultants in ways that are consonant with values and concerns of education professionals. This article addresses this challenge by presenting an agenda for consultancy development in English schools which will also have wider relevance for the international community. Six areas of enquiry and propositions for action are identified and the principles and practicalities of implementing them in a school led system examined. Conclusions are drawn about the importance of being proactive in setting a long- term agenda for ‘system leader’ consultancy development in schools that is historically grounded in democratic process and notions of public valu

Evaluation of valued youth: a national peer-tutoring programme to increase self confidence and motivation

Established first in the USA, Valued Youth has operated in the UK since 1996, and is currently implemented in about 50 schools in 8 regions. The programme is intended to help secondary school students who are at risk of disengaging with school or underperforming for a variety of reasons. These students are selected as tutors, given training on how to work with younger children and placed in a local primary school where they support pupils' learning. Valued Youth can be seen as one of many initiatives in secondary schools on re-engagement in learning and contributes to the UK government strategy of extending opportunities and providing flexible learning experiences to meet individual learners' needs and aptitudes. Evidence from the USA has shown the value of the programme in reducing drop-out, strengthening youngsters' perceptions of self and school, and reducing disciplinary referrals and absenteeism. The evaluation discussed in this paper considers the effect of the programme in a UK context, not only in terms of young people's attendance, attainment and confidence, but also in terms of what sort of youngsters seem to benefit and the effects of financial rewards, if any, on the outcomes. The paper reports on the first year of a two-year evaluation. Data were obtained from a pre- and post-questionnaire survey among tutors, a workshop with coordinators and visits to selected case study schools in several regions. Almost all tutors enjoyed the programme and would recommend the experience to others. There was a relatively low dropout and the programme was warmly appreciated by participating primary schools. We have evidence that Valued Youth markedly raises confidence, improves communication skills and keeps some at risk youngsters on track in school. Many types of youngsters benefit from the experience; those who lack confidence and have poor communication skills seem to make the most progress. Successful tutors tend to be those who are committed to the programme, willing to learn, are flexible and cooperative, and have some ability to interact with others, particularly children and primary teachers.</p

Microwave-mediated synthesis of N-methyliminodiacetic acid (MIDA) boronates

A library of over 20, mainly aryl or heteroaryl, N-methyliminodiacetic acid (MIDA) boronates have been synthesised. A rapid microwave-mediated (MW) method (5–10 min) has been developed using polyethylene glycol 300 (PEG 300) as solvent. However, acetonitrile (MeCN) and dimethylformamide (DMF) were found to be alternative solvents, the latter especially for 2-substituted aryl boronic acids

AiREAS: Sustainocracy for a Healthy City: Phase 3: Civilian Participation – Including the Global Health Deal Proposition

Development Economics, Atmospheric Protection / Air Quality Control / Air Pollution, Urban Studies/Sociology, Social Choice/Welfare Economics/Public Choice, Group Theory and Generalizations, Data Mining and Knowledge Discover

Developing system leaders : A research engagement approach

For those in ‘system leader’ roles in English schools, whether formally designated or informally appropriated, there has not been much systematic or long-term thinking about professional development to date. To contribute to such thinking, this paper presents a common framework for system leader development, based on consultancy research. The framework is broad in scope and critical in approach and can be adapted to role and function. Working within the assumption that all system leaders are consultants, it shows how a research engagement process can combine consultancy practice with consultancy research to generate professional development activities. During this process, system leaders work with higher education institution (HEI) researchers, to progressively interrogate their practice against consultancy research around four themes: ‘relationships’; ‘skills’; ‘outcomes’; and ‘the wider context’. At the same time, the researchers variously move through the roles of providers of research summaries, to co-creators of professional development activities, to co-facilitators of Action Learning Sets. It is argued that this research engagement process has much to offer HEIs and groups of schools wishing to collaborate on system leader development in the interest of generating principled, long-term helping relationships in a self- improving system

Investigation and comparison of multi-state and two-state atom laser output-couplers

We investigate the spatial structure and temporal dynamics created in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by radio-frequency (RF) atom laser output-couplers using a one-dimensional mean-field model. We compare the behavior of a `pure' two-state atom laser to the multi-level systems demonstrated in laboratories. In particular, we investigate the peak homogeneous output flux, classical fluctuations in the beam and the onset of a bound state which shuts down the atom laser output.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

The use of consultancy research in the development of Specialist Leaders of Education

‘System leadership’, the offering of school to school support, now has a 10 year history of research and practice in English schools. System Leaders of Education who offer such support are essentially consultants. Yet so far, consultancy research has not been used to help System leaders inform and reflect on their practice. (Could this have something to do with consultancy’s bad press in the critical business literature?) So, we want to find out how such research might be used to inform practice and the design of professional development activity for the most recent tranche of ‘system leaders’, Specialist Leaders of Education, in the context of a Teaching Schools Alliance

A Bright Solitonic Matter-Wave Interferometer

We present the first realisation of a solitonic atom interferometer. A Bose-Einstein condensate of $1\times10^4$ atoms of rubidium-85 is loaded into a horizontal optical waveguide. Through the use of a Feshbach resonance, the $s$-wave scattering length of the $^{85}$Rb atoms is tuned to a small negative value. This attractive atomic interaction then balances the inherent matter-wave dispersion, creating a bright solitonic matter wave. A Mach-Zehnder interferometer is constructed by driving Bragg transitions with the use of an optical lattice co-linear with the waveguide. Matter wave propagation and interferometric fringe visibility are compared across a range of $s$-wave scattering values including repulsive, attractive and non-interacting values. The solitonic matter wave is found to significantly increase fringe visibility even compared with a non-interacting cloud.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Leadership, Preparation and Development (LPD) RIG annual report, May 2019

This Research Interest Group (RIG) grew out of rounds of British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS)-funded small-scale research projects, a number of which were reported in BELMAS journals. Members of the group are interested in what the implications are for Leadership, Preparation and Development (LPD) of the structural changes to system leadership (in particular), how these can be researched and what research tells us about the implications. Specific areas of interest include: * an analysis of leadership preparation and development from the micro-, meso-, macro- and international levels; * School-to-School Support (S2SS), Systems Leadership more generally, and the roles of Specialist and National Leaders of Education (SLEs and NLEs; Local Leaders – LLEs – are no longer to be designated from 2018 onwards); * types of leaders and leadership that emerge, and the motivations that drive these, and types of support preparation that they require through system change, such as National Professional Qualification for Executive Leaders (NPQEL); * monitoring the ongoing changes in NPQs; the rise of the Chartered College LPD qualifications such as the CTeach qualification; * the demise of NCTL, and the creation of TNLF and its research arm; * the changes to school improvement funding rounds, conditions and scale, and where appropriate, the ongoing Opportunity Area (OA) funding developments. The RIG meets twice a year. The most common format is an invited speaker and/or presentations by RIG members on their own research. Meetings in previous years have taken place focusing on leadership development changes and role of SLE deployment, S2SS and so on, and the history of all our meetings to date is on the LPD RIG page: http://www.belmas.org.uk/Rig-LD/Latest. The two meetings for 2018–2019 academic year are: * 8 November 2018: Systems Leadership: where are we up to with structural change development impacting on system leadership capacity, held at the University of Derby. This was a set of five divergent presentations from current system leaders and a talk from Rob Higham on the Greany & Higham August 2018 Report. * 27 June 2019: UK/US textbook Book Launch at Sheffield Hallam University, with contributions from five of the authors of the book that has come out of some of the RIG contributions and wider BELMAS contributions by Val Storey, Pauline Stonehouse, Phil Mason and others. The immediate focus of the group’s work is on the June event, and then we will turn our thoughts to what next for the RIG. Over the next year, it is hoped that this RIG will continue to explore further issues at the UK level that came out in the recent textbook, in line with our macro and international research dimensions, as well as our ongoing S2SS support work at the micro- and meso levels. We are aware of our overlap with other RIGs and the influence of their work on ours, especially the Structural Reform Group, Governing and Governance and Critical Education and Policy Studies (CEPaLs), and continue to be very happy to work with them as appropriate

Elaboration of tetra-orthogonally-substituted aromatic scaffolds towards novel EGFR-kinase inhibitors

Nitration of three regioisomers of bromo-fluorobenzaldehyde proceeds regioselectively, notably with H2SO4/HNO3 at 0 °C. The thereby synthesized tetrasubstituted aromatics, endowed with orthogonal substituents, can be elaborated via Pd-catalysed coupling, reduction and reductive amination reactions. As a test-case, these compounds were converted into EGFR inhibitors related to Gefitinib, whose activity was rationalised by docking studies