The best feeling!

The best thing about being a QIO is not much different to working in a school. Its that feeling you get when you see someone (whether a child a parent or member of staff) really developing their skills. A lot of my job is to do with supporting establishments – nurseries, primaries, secondary – in their whole improvement agenda. Part of this involves all the  ongoing work towards preparing for HMIe. As far as I’m concerned thats just part of the whole self evaluation, improvement agenda within an establishment.This should be work that is done all the time, not in the three weeks after the box appears… Over the past session I’ve seen some fantastic examples of how, fully engaging with HMIe, really leads to  sustainable improvement within establishments. The other day I had the delight of listening to the dialogue session at the end of a follow through report. The pleasure of seeing the pride of the establishment in the focused work they had undertaken, the increase in real concerted talk about learning, the teamwork that had blossomed was something special. So I’m taking a stance, I’ve seen too many positives come out of HMIe visits. Its maybe time some serious myth busting was done about HMIe. Like so many things we listen too much to the negatives about the process. I think part of that negative bit is the natural process of learning after a visit, but sometimes thats the only bit we listen to. Like principle 1 of CfE that time can be pretty challenging, it can make people feel low etc but just like that challenge and enjoyment bit, the challenge of planning, improving, developing can give a huge feeling of achievement once the real journey to improvement gets underway and the buzz of what I saw the other day was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had at work.