Liverpool Diocese Headteachers Annual Conference 14 th October, 2014 Keynote Address Neville Norcross How can we sing the Lord s song in a strange land Introduction a privilege to be asked to give this keynote. Some of you will have attended courses in which I have used this line from Psalm 137 and as it is the title of our conference it may be helpful to give you a little background. The children of Israel had been defeated in battle about 500 years before the birth of Christ. Many of the most skilled and talented members of the population had been deported to Babylon where they were despised and where their God was not accepted. In spite of having their musical instruments with them they found it impossible to sing God s praises because of the oppression they were suffering. As some of you have heard me speak on this theme before I thought it would be good if I took a rather different line whilst still sticking to the overall theme and so my theme this morning is how do we live left handed in a right handed world? First then a rather risky story story of the married couple and the golf clubs I have done a little research on left-handedness and the results have been quite fascinating. You see, those who are left handed have until recently been totally neglected by the makers of scissors, filing cabinets and even the original computer mouse. There are even websites for left-handed people. One website told me that left handed people have better vision underwater and I now expect all left handed headteachers to take up Scuba diving. Four out of the five inventors of the original mackintosh computer were left handed and so on. The world can be hard on left handers. Even language has given our left-handed friends a bad reputation. The word gauche means awkward or tacky and of course in French gauche means left hand. The word sinister is the Latin word for left handed. On the other hand excuse the pun the word dexterity which means skilful and clever, in Latin means right hand. You get the idea don t you. One of the lesser known but compelling characters in the Bible is Ehud who you can find in the book of Judges. We are told in Judges 3:15 that he was a left-handed man literally translated it means that he was bound in his right hand. In other words he was handicapped and he had only the use of his left hand in an era when being left handed carried with it a social stigma. In this situation it would have been easy for Ehud to complain saying, Why don t I fit in. Why am I different?
What I love about the story of Ehud is that God used him to overcome his limitations to lead others a left-handed man in a right handed world became a leader of Israel and a model of God s grace. He is a great reminder that in weakness we are made strong. His story reminds me of the words I often use with aspiring headteachers, God does not call the qualified but he qualifies the called. So what is the point of all this business about being left-handed? After all I am not even lefthanded myself. Well maybe you feel like a left-handed person in a right handed world. Maybe you feel that some of the values emanating from the DfE run counter to your personal values. I want to tell you that whatever your background, whatever your limitations, whatever your left-handedness, God can use you even if you do feel that the culture of the current educational scene and of society in general makes you feel as if you are indeed left handed in a right handed world. Let s look then at the context in which we work the educational context and the social context. Tony Blair, on coming to power said that he had 3 priorities Education, Education, Education. John Major responded by saying that he had had the same 3 priorities when he was in power but he had them in a different order. Thankfully it looks as though education will not be one of the big issues in the forthcoming elections. So what are today s prevailing educational values. To put it bluntly, education is in danger of becoming instrumentalist. The desired outcome is for young people who can contribute to the country s wealth. Peter Abbs in his book Against the Flow may have exaggerated a little when he said, The fear is that schools have become no more than corporations run by managers without character, charisma or charm. Well not in church schools and not in Liverpool diocese. Living left handed in a right handed world. The economic narrative behind current education policy seems to be go to school, work hard, pass your exams, get a good job, spend lots of money and be happy. The trouble is, it ain t working! A major study of international standards last year showed that between 2000 and 2010 the UK had dropped from 7 th to 25 th in reading and from 8 th to 28 th in maths. Nor can we retreat into the fact that our children are happy because that s not true either. A UNICEF report in 2007 revealed that out of 21 industrialised countries the UK came bottom on a measure of well-being. A more recent report has shown some improvement. Are our children over-schooled and under-educated? Let me give you an amusing but also worrying example of this story of the horse on the school trip. Since the academies act of 2010 we have a fragmented education system. We also have a system in which the only constant is change. I guess that like me, most of you were educated within a system that was brought about by the 1944 Education Act. Did you know that between 1944 and the Great Education Act of 1988 which brought in the National Curriculum there was only one education act in 1980. Since 1988, how many education acts have there been 17. Constant change at a time when what many of our children, not to mention our headteachers need, is stability.
We have a new secretary of state who seems to be keeping a very low profile at the moment. Are things going to change? Well I think I can best answer that by telling you the story of the aeroplane that was being pushed out onto the runway. The Church of England, with all its problems does at least offer consistency in a changing world. Jeremy Paxton once said, There is nothing so permanent as an experiment in the Church of England. This takes us back to our beginnings. When Joshua Watson founded the first church schools through the National Society he did so partly because Europe had become unstable with a number of successful revolutions. He saw the Church, through its schools, as offering stability in uncertain times. Remember the moving words of Bishop James who on this platform spoke of the family relatives of the Hillsborough disaster saying, Bishop, you are our only hope. But we have a different narrative to the economic one. And if you have the words Church of England over your school door then it is a narrative that must begin and end with the life of Jesus Christ. We have much in common with our colleagues in the community sector and we even share many of the same values of Trust, Hope, Thankfulness, Courage and so on. The difference lies in the distinctive starting point, the source of those values. If you are to be left handed in a right handed world then you must ensure that those values are not cut off from their roots. I worry for a society that has free-floating values cut away from the roots that gave them their life. The story of hope. We must ensure that the values that we promote in our schools are not cut off from their roots. Christian schools at least know the basis of their uniqueness and the source of their strength. Living left handed in a right handed world. It is not just the education system however that is piling commercial pressure onto our children. Listen to this article from 110 leading professionals and academics, We are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children s behavioural and developmental conditions. They are pushed by market force to act and dress like mini adults and exposed via the electronic media to material that would have been considered unsuitable in the very recent past. And we are under increasing pressure and criticism from the British Human Association and the National Secular Society who want to see the end of church schools. They are not huge organisations but they pack a powerful punch in Westminster and in society in general. The story of the London buses. Living left handed in a right handed world because in the words of the Chadwick report, what we offer is, A life enhancing encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. When the government measures your school they do so in black and white but church schools measure in colour. We must see education not in terms of SATs results alone but in terms of human flourishing. As someone else said so passionately, Let us remix the music of Westminster with the love of God. Living left handed in a right handed world.
So what is it you have to offer? Celebrate your left-handedness through your personal values. Not the whole school values that I see plastered on the school hall. No, your personal values, the ones that should be stuck up in your office in large letters. Firstly Hope I remember visiting a school in an extremely deprived area. The school had the strapline from Jeremiah, I know the plans I have for you, plans for a hope and a future some details about the school. Someone called Alan Flintham carried out a piece of research for his doctorate that he called Reservoirs of Hope In his paper he shows how headteachers are both the bringers of hope and are themselves in need of hope. He refers to the headteacher as being the wellspring of a schools values. That s a tremendous responsibility you carry because your values become the school s values. It is you that are best able to bring hope to the communities that you serve. But you also need hope. Alan Flintham found that all successful leaders need their very own reservoir of hope. For some that reservoir may be found in their friends and families, for others it may come from their leisure pursuits and times of relaxation. But I would like to think that for us working in our church schools that our reservoir can be found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Secondly Humility Jim Collins in his book Good to Great describes the research in which he identified the chief executive of the most highly successful companies in the states and then analysed their leadership styles what made them tick not just good leaders but great leaders. Collins himself was surprised by his findings. He found that great leaders had 2 main sets of characteristics. One could be called professional determination stickability, grit, whatever label you like to put on it. But the second was personal humility That shouldn t come as any surprise to those who follow the greatest leader of all. Finally Service Jesus gave himself no special privileges. He washed the feet of the disciples. Servanthood was central to his ministry. He declared that, The son of man came not to be served but to serve, This servanthood was not a weak demonstration of a lack of will. Servanthood to Jesus was about making himself available to those around him. But it wasn t about servitude. Servanthood is not about being a doormat and allowing everyone to walk over you. This theme recurs again and again in the gospels, He who is least among you is the one who will be great. We are right to respond to the call for distinctiveness but our distinctiveness must go beyond mere words or displays on classroom walls. We must live out our distinctiveness through our lives of service to our children and the communities that we serve. Just remember that Jesus was into towels not titles.
Hope, Humility and Service not a bad CV then for any leader of a church school. Vision Martin Luther King, I have a dream Finally let me encourage you to be radical in your leadership. I m not talking about being radical for its own sake but about being radical in standing up for what you believe in. I m tired of being told that the children in Finland and South Korea out-perform our children in maths. I ve visited schools in Finland on several occasions and let me tell you that the teachers in Liverpool Diocese can knock spots of those I see over there. And what they don t tell you is that the repressive regime in S. Korean schools leads to appallingly high suicide rates amongst the children there. I m tired of being told that Free Schools are the answers to all our dreams. They are modelled on the American Charter schools. What they don t announce is that one brand of Charter schools is KiPP. Knowledge is power. You get the idea don t you. The academic results in KiPP schools is impressive but so is the fact that the university dropout rate by KiPP students is very high. Why? because if you over emphasise the academic at the expense of personal and character development then you get students who simply can t hack it in the big wide world when things get tough. It s like having a racing car with no petrol. Let s replace the government economic narrative with the Christian economic narrative that you have to give in order to receive and that you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself. Please don t allow your efforts to help children to flourish to be reduced to being Ofsted ready How about this as an aim for church schools, To create an inspirational space in which we can serve God with his children at the centre of all that we do Hold fast to those values, those ideals in the schools of Liverpool Diocese that have been so encouraging to me over the past 10 years. Don t be afraid to be left-handed in a right handed world. And when it gets tough just remember this story about Joseph of Aramathea.. They ve only borrowed it for the weekend. Neville Norcross, 14 th October, 2014