Last month I  had the privilege of taking part in the Whole Education Conference. Over 200 school leaders assembled to articulate a mission of how we become world-class –  what we can learn and what we can do. It took as it’s opening quote from Hargreaves and Shirley,

” The inspiring future of school improvement lies in the fear factor giving way to peer factor”.

The evening began with a Caroline Waters OBE, Director of People and Policy at BT. She described the supreme operational challenge that it took to bring the Olympic Games to the world. The statistics were truly amazing 55 000 hits a second on the games web site and protecting the Games from 11 000 malicious mail in the same period. She asked us to imagine the skills she was looking for in her operational team, at the forefront being an ability to solve problems and bring solutions. She transferred this thinking from the Olympic Project to day-to-day recruitment. Interestingly, she complained about how serious the young people she saw were.

“You can only sustain the pressure of working in these demanding projects if you can smile, and see work with your team as fun!”

No surprises why she finds that many of the  young people emerging into the workplace interview as anxious and challenged. Such is the legacy the demands of our education can create.

She also talked about how the nature of commissioning work was changing. How she was increasingly thinking more about the deployment of work to individuals who can take it on, as opposed to employing people to do a job. How do we prepare young people to take up the challenge and develop that enterprising spirit to say..”Yes, I can do that for you”.

Companies like BT face thousands of apprentice applicants for a few hundred places. How they select and the criteria to make that ‘sift’ is inevitably going to be a challenge. Responding to Caroline, Estelle Morris wondered how the proposals for curricular and school change at the moment will equip young people for this challenge. But she also described how the world of schools is different from industry. For us there is no ‘sift’. We are concerned with achieving the best outcome for every child.

A challenge for the New Year?