Metro Mayor launches Centre for Educational Leadership

Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram expects LJMU’s new Centre for Educational Leadership to become a beacon for the rest of England.

At the official opening this week, Mr Rotheram said the centre would help “put teachers and other educational practitioners and leaders in the best possible place” to provide an excellent education for our children, young people and wider communities.

“Too often educationalists have been poorly treated by government, so I hope the Centre for Educational Leadership at LJMU will return some of the prestige their profession deserves and become a beacon for the whole country.”

The Centre, on Maryland Street, is part of the university’s School of Education, which is known for excellence in its early childhood and SEN provision, research collaborations, strong educational partnerships across the region and high-quality teacher education; training hundreds of newly-qualified teachers every year and developing leaders across the educational phases.

This new Centre focuses on leadership development for aspiring and more experienced professionals offering education leadership consultancy, short courses, postgraduate programmes in education and business practice that focuses on people and communities.

Ruth Slater, Head of the Centre, explained: “This centre is a neutral space for education professionals to come and work together, network, study academically, take part in our academic programmes, from across the sector including Further Education professionals, cultural educators and early years specialists.

“We also provide educational consultancy for education settings; engaging and connecting with leaders and teams to support and implement organisational development aimed at strengthening the impact of teaching and learning across the sectors,” said Director of School Dr Ceri Daniels.

"We can only make magic if we have wonderful staff" 

Pro Vice-Chancellor with oversight of the School of Education, Professor Joe Yates, said: “I think this is an excellent example of how the School of Education, in partnership with Liverpool Business School, is working to support the response to educational challenges within the city-region.”

“This centre is about working in active partnership alongside early years, school leaders and the post-compulsory sector to look at how we can do things better.”

Dr Vic Carr, Headteacher at Woodlands Primary School, said: “I think we can all work together collaboratively to develop knowledge which we can then put into practice and policy, inform government, develop practice with ITE students and with those who are more experienced and want to look towards leadership positions.”

“I think every school leader would want to get involved because we can only make magic if we have wonderful staff and the only way we can do that is if we are striving to get better and improve our knowledge and I think that is what this centre will offer.”

Paul Olubayo, Liverpool City Council’s Race Equality Officer, presented his thoughts on how leaders can work with their communities to improve outcomes from all groups and reminded us to be open to be ‘taught by our communities’ to improve education for the future.

Steve Rotheram added: “This is an amazing opportunity to show the rest of the country what we need to do to solve some of the problems that have existed for far too long on educational attainment.”

“Today is a momentous day for us all; and it’s the start of us seeing the improvement in educational standards in the city-region.”

Image: Paul Olubayo, Liverpool City Council, Dr Victoria Carr, Professor Joe Yates, Steve Rotheram, Professor Mark Power, LJMU Vice-Chancellor, Dr Ceri Daniels, Director of School of Education, Ruth Slater (back).