An Update From Our Chair, Deb Outhwaite
Hello everyone,
I am just doing a quick roundup of the busy Autumn 2024 Term that we had in BELMAS office, and I hope that you will take this opportunity to have a quick look at the number of things we are involved in as a Learned Society.
The term started early for a group of us that attended the CCEAM one-day conference prior to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). The Council for Commonwealth Education Administration and Management, has a long and entwined history with BELMAS, and we are committed to supporting their new leadership, with Hauwa Imam (Nigeria) as President and RoseAnne Cuschieri (Malta) as Vice President. We are very pleased indeed to see them taking on the next iteration of the society. As BELMAS Chair, I sit on their CCEAM Board once a term (on a Sunday lunchtime) in order to facilitate the links that we have.
At ECER, BELMAS had a stand, and contributed to Network 26, for educational leadership. It was good to be out in Cyprus, and meet colleagues from across Europe, the Commonwealth, Australia, and New Zealand, and the States. It is particularly encouraging to see the reach of both journals in these settings, and have people comment on the standard of them, so our thanks, as usual, go to both Editors in Chief, for the terrific work that they and their teams are doing.
These conferences were followed by the joint BERA/WERA conference, which had an attendance of around 2,000. Where we had a joint BELMAS/BERA Educational Leadership SIG event, for which our thanks go to the SIG Convenors Karen Healey and Azumah Dennis.
In October, as the Autumn Term really kicks in at universities, we did some work on our Early Career Researcher Month, and range of events were held to support our Early Career Researchers. Moving forward, what we would like to see is a university rotation with educational leadership postgraduate students, to support this event physically every year. So we held a physical event at Nottingham last year, and this year we held a range of events online, but we feel that holding a physical event would be good – so if you want to offer to host an event for our ECR month next October at your institution then please do get in touch.
Then in November we had a stand at UCL’s Centre for Education Leadership’s conference and contributed a session on behalf of the Society. This was a useful two-day event to raise our profile both with school staff who are involved in running the Early Career Framework (ECF) and/or engaged in National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) with UCL, and with a wide range of international academics who were over attending at the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP).
After this, we moved onto the University Council for Education Administration (UCEA) annual conference, this year in Los Angeles. Essentially, UCEA, is the American version of BELMAS, and is now 70 years old. Both BELMAS and UCEA jointly funded the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN), back in 2008. I attended all of the ISLDN strand sessions, as I sit for BELMAS on the ISLDN Board. Many of the contributors to this, you will all recognise as very active participants in BELMAS conferences over the years, so it was a very useful set of events, and, in particular, I enjoyed my school visit!
Since coming home, I have represented BELMAS at the Chartered College of Teaching (CCT) Ethical Leadership Group, where we are inputting to the revised Teacher Standards. We have also contributed to the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) and a range of other meetings that have contributed to the Francis Curriculum and Assessment Review.
The Spring Term looks ahead to the International Conference on School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) in Melbourne, which is being attended by our Australian member of the BELMAS Board, Berni Moreno.
Thank you to those of you who have reached out to me individually this term, we have established a new email address for this (chair@belmas.org.uk) so if you want to get in touch with me, please use that. Or if you want to get in touch with the team, the usual email address is info@belmas.org.uk. It is always useful to hear members views and positions, particularly when it relates to anything where I am attempting my best to represent you.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a peaceful New Year.
Deb
You can read more from our Chair here.
