Emeritus was founded in 1997 by its director, Dennis Lavelle, to provide high quality training and development opportunities for teachers and managers in schools and colleges. Since that time more than 30 schools and colleges have utilised the services of the company. All training is provided by experienced practitioners who have a proven record of success in education and who have received only the highest grades from Ofsted or FEFC inspectors, as appropriate. Further training to enhance their capabilities as facilitators and coaches has been undertaken, most notably by Hay Management Consultants.
 

One-day courses for staff groups on-site in school or college:



• Improving Teaching and Learning Post-16.
• Leadership for Middle Managers
• Working with Emotional Intelligence in Education
2 or 3-day bespoke programmes for Middle Managers or SMT, off-site or in school or college :
 
• Leadership Development Programme
One-day regional conferences in hotel training suites:
 
• Effective Team Leadership
• Developing the Senior Management Team

• To make a general enquiry about course content, availability, costs or any other matter contact Emeritus by e-mail at enquiries@emeritus.co.uk
• To speak to Dennis Lavelle at Emeritus ring 01257 464770
• To fax a message dial 01257 464770

Dennis Lavelle is the founder director of Emeritus. He currently works as a trainer and organiser of training and development opportunities for teachers and senior staff in schools and colleges. He is a lead trainer at Manchester University's Centre for Educational Leadership where he teaches on the following courses:    National Professional Qualification for Headteachers         (NPQH) Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers             (LPSH) Further Education Senior Management Team Programme (FESMT) Middle Managers Course                 Also he is a licensed facilitator  for the Hay Management Emotional Intelligence programme. Dennis Lavelle graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1966 and worked for over 30 years in schools and colleges, initially as a teacher of mathematics and ultimately for 16 years as principal of Winstanley College, Wigan.

Improving Teaching and Learning post-16.

In this one-day course teachers are invited to consider some of the basics of how students learn and what this means for the teaching strategies we employ. A model of learning styles, based of the work of David Kolb, is introduced and participants are enabled to complete a simple inventory to determine their own preferred learning styles. We then consider how schemes of work may be constructed which will enable all students, whatever their preferred learning styles, to participate fully and develop to the best of their ability. The group then works through some basic elements of teaching programmes and determines descriptors of good classroom practice based upon practical examples. Reference is then made to how these descriptors can be used as the basis for a powerful, developmental model of classroom observation. Real-life examples are given, in some detail, to illustrate how this works in practice and how effective feedback may be given. Even though the emphasis throughout is on improvement for the benefit of students, participants will be able to link these ideas to the elements of classroom practice which constitute the basis of grade 1 lessons in the inspection framework.

Leadership for Middle Managers

This one-day course is designed for those members of staff who have responsibility for the work of others either in teaching or in tutorial work. One of the basic premises is that some middle managers may be diffident about exercising leadership in what has been traditionally a collegiate profession and other members of staff may be unused to seeing them exercising this role. Participants are invited to consider the nature of leadership as a set of learned behaviours and are enabled to complete a simple inventory to determine their own default leadership styles. They then consider the impact they are making upon the various people they are responsible for leading and determine strategies for coping with the different demands made upon them by different people. The importance of Motives is considered and a brief, relatively light-hearted, self-analysis of Social Motives is completed to introduce the idea that understanding what drives others in their daily work is one of the key attributes of the successful leader. Strategies for prioritising activities within the inevitable day-to-day time constraints are considered which will maximise the impact of the leader on their basic  purpose of improving standards of learning and student welfare.

The qualities which traditionally have been used to recruit people in education are not necessarily those which distinguish subsequent high performance as a teacher or a manager/leader. In his seminal books, Emotional Intelligenceand Working with Emotional Intelligence , Daniel Golman of Harvard University has introduced the notion that a whole set of behavioural competencies, called Emotional Intelligence, is a far better indicator of success in the working environment than  I.Q. or paper-based qualifications. In this one-day course participants will be introduced to the basic ideas of E.Q. and will be given the results of an inventory, previously completed by themselves and their colleagues, which will indicate their current profile against the set of E.Q. competencies. Consideration will be given to exactly what this means in the day-to-day context of schools and colleges and participants will be shown how to develop their E.Q. competencies in order to become more effective in their inter-relationships with each other and with students.
N.B. This course will require each participant to provide on-line completions of a questionnaire by 4/5 colleagues together with their own questionnaire. This process needs to be completed 3 weeks prior to the course and will cost an extra £90 per participant to have these results processed by Hay Management Group. Full details will be provided upon application.

This programme is designed individually for each group of managers, usually the SMT or faculty/pastoral heads, depending on their needs and any leadership activities they may have undertaken previously. A typical programme lasts for two or three days and can be run in school or college but many clients prefer to be off-site in a local hotel where the team can work in a more concentrated manner. This programme works best when a feedback instrument is used prior to the programme to determine how the work and effectiveness of the SMT is perceived by the team itself and by other members of staff. This instrument can be provided by Emeritus. Participants receive input on aspects of leadership theory which they then use to examine their own work and that of their colleagues in the team. All elements of this demanding programme are related to the needs of the particular team and will result in individual and team plans based upon necessary behavioural changes to improve performance. In longer programmes it is possible to incorporate sessions on Emotional Intelligence and to arrange for each member of the team to receive an individual feedback inventory measured against the set of E.Q. competencies. A composite team inventory is also received which highlights the strengths of the team together with any areas for development.