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Excerpt from ‘Public Sector Executive’ 21/02/2008

The challenge of being a public sector manager is greater than most people think. And whilst there is a tendency to assume that it is toughest at the top, in reality, however, the lower down the scale you are, the harder it is to manage and lead because it isn't formally identified as central to your role and therefore training and support is less likely to be forthcoming, says David Pardey

Upping confidence levels was one of the challenges of the leadership and management programme developed for higher level teaching assistants in Essex. The Schools Improvement and Early Years Directorate of Essex County Council is working together with the Hertfordshire-based People Development Team on the programme which gives HLTAs an ILM Level 2 Certificate in Team Leading. Jeremy Lewis, senior trainer at PDT, says it had to develop a course for a group for people "who didn't necessarily rate themselves as having a lot of value". "They felt they were very useful but there was a tendency to think 'I'm only a midday assistant," he says.

"They are more able to delegate and take more of a workload off the teachers," she says. "The training also impacted on how they responded to the children – one HLTA, for instance, started using non-verbal behaviour to instruct the children to go out to play. It worked-they left the classroom with no fuss or commotion.

"In this instance, PDT decided not to make the training a metaphor for the school environment for fear of specific classroom examples generating too much detailed discussion and the learning being lost. The approach was welcomed by the students who, says Lewis, could easily translate examples to the school working environment.

"The examples had a fresher feel and people liked the fact that the training was taking them out of the education bubble," says Lewis. Between March and December last year, 86 HTLAs from primary schools across Essex completed the course and a further 79 are working towards the qualification, which, as Manson comments, will be relevant for the rest of their lives and not just if they remain in education. Those working on training programmes in other sectors say how the pride in getting a professional qualification is in itself a major confidence booster and it is even better when the effort put in is also recognised at a senior level.

"We have a little bit of pomp and ceremony at the end with the chair and deputy of the council to present the certificates," says Yates. "And it is nice that senior executives also come along to this."

Ultimately though, the pressure on training budgets means that any learning and development programmes must be seen to have a tangible benefit to both the organisation and individual long after graduation day.
It is encouraging that more and more examples of good practice are surfacing and public sector bodies are realising that management skills, like technical skills, need to be acquired. To leave individuals with no frame of reference for how they do this crucial part of the job is not only unfair but is potentially a false economy.

For the full article, please visit the Public Sector Executive Web site