ABSTRACT

The first detailed idea I got about the Schools Make a Difference project (SMAD) was from Kate Myers, the project manager, when she came to talk to the senior management team (SMT) of the school. I was not happy after that meeting. My first reactions were sceptical and hostile. I had become very weary and cynical about the almost daily DFE circulars and the sort of initiative to which we had become accustomed: in return for spending days filling in a seventeen-page bid form and attending six planning meetings, someone would give us 87p towards setting up a major project to introduce macramé across the curriculum. (The money, of course, to be spent from the school’s LMS budget and then claimed back with more interminable forms, phone calls, loss of paperwork and tempers, and a time lapse of eight months.)

It is worth reporting this, I think, because it was based on a misconception of the purpose of SMAD, and of its set-up, and illustrates clearly what SMAD isn’t. I thought that it was yet

another acronymed initiative, with its own agenda, offering schools money to do things which they didn’t want to do. I also assumed, wrongly, that there would be a fairly meagre amount of money available. The reverse turned out to be true, and this is what I think is SMAD’s great strength. In fact:

1 The money was there to support the school’s own development. We set the agenda, and were given a lot of help in achieving what we wanted to do. SMAD recognized that schools can best identify their own priorities, and set out to support them in addressing those, rather than imposing yet more from outside.