{"id":182,"date":"2012-02-29T09:32:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T09:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/?p=182"},"modified":"2012-02-29T11:09:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T11:09:42","slug":"whats-in-it-for-me-pt1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/whats-in-it-for-me-pt1\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s in it for me? Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Why give up a great job to take on a project that has little hope of success, for no pay; risking reputation and friendships?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong> In this blog post, and the next few, I hope to inform those who wonder what drives someone to get involved in something as nebulous as a &#8216;Big Society&#8217; project. The big surprise for many is that, for me, it is not money!\u00a0I have been leading a proposal for a secondary free school in Oxford &#8211; <a href=\"www.onschool.org.uk\" target=\"_blank\">ONSchool www.onschool.org.uk<\/a> since June 2011.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/om-dec.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-188\" title=\"om dec\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/om-dec.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"124\" height=\"166\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>From<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/onschool\/\" target=\"_blank\"> day one of announcing this idea<\/a>, people asked me, &#8220;Why are you doing this?&#8221;. Apart from all the reasons to do with education, there had to be more to it, right?<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who knows me, and my views on social justice, knew that I could not be doing this because of the politics.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I am not ideologically\u00a0driven to support the Coalition Government policies.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, most assumed I wanted to be the Head, or Principal Designate.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I didn&#8217;t \/ don&#8217;t want to be Head &#8211; and want a full, open recruitment process for all roles.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although only my closest friends could ask, there is also the question of &#8216;Ego&#8217; and &#8216;Legacy&#8217;. Perhaps I was doing this to become famous &#8211; or something! I cannot honestly answer this &#8211; except to say that, given that 90% of the applications last year failed, I could not be doing this for this reason alone .<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>It is likely\u00a0<strong>my ego will take a bashing<\/strong> and I will lose &#8216;perceived&#8217; respect of those in my professional networks, as a &#8216;failed&#8217; applicant.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The next assumption was that I&#8217;d teamed up with an Academy Chain, or profit driven businesses who were paying me to do this &#8211; or would do if we were successful.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">There is no such arrangement with any company driven by profit. I receive no &#8216;retainer&#8217; or have any promise of one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Finally, those who care about me and our family asked if I had a hidden pile of cash to draw on. Any money we had saved had just mostly gone on an extension and improvements to our house, that finished in May 2011.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>We are not rich, or even &#8216;comfortably off&#8217;<\/strong> (whatever what means!).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When friends heard this, they asked how we were going to survive, and if I was mad!<\/p>\n<p>I had been very successfully leading a fantastic business providing educational resources for schools, and (if I am honest) being paid more than I had been expecting to be &#8211; working with great people, with a great boss. I was not pushed &#8211; I left by choice.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that leading the ONSchool proposal, with a vision built around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onschool.org.uk\/onschool-is-innovation\/\" target=\"_blank\">Innovation<\/a> &#8211;\u00a0threaded through with transformative use of digital technology &#8211; was &#8216;in tune&#8217; with my professional interests &#8211; in that I have been working in educational organisations to bring change and improvements through use of &#8216;ICT&#8217; for 20 years. However, there was no obvious way for me to make a living from this. One of my ex-clients said to me recently:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What you are doing is amazing, but we don&#8217;t know how your new skills and knowledge could help us, as you have moved out of the &#8216;box&#8217; we knew you were an expert in.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I have been doing this <strong>without pay or any employment<\/strong> (or expectation of any resulting from this project) and have been working close to 100% on this since the Summer.\u00a0So, you might ask again, &#8216;Why?&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Firstly, I believe in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/purposeducation-500words\/\" target=\"_blank\">ethical education and an ethical society<\/a>. If we don&#8217;t run this campaign &#8216;right&#8217; what message would it give our kids?<\/li>\n<li>Secondly, having seen the &#8216;issues&#8217; around some of the other free school proposal groups, and the ways that the education of children was often left behind in the discourse, I felt that we could learn and improve on this.<\/li>\n<li>Lastly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/from-agitation-to-proposition\/\" target=\"_blank\">I wanted a great school for my kids and their peers to learn in<\/a>. I knew it was needed, and believe we can provide it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But, there is still a big question&#8230;\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How can I help to pay the mortgage (again)?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In my next blog post, I want to talk about the income options available to me &#8211; and some of the ethical issues I am finding myself dealing with, such as:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Is it right to profit in any way from being involved in ONSchool?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Is there a moral difference between being paid by a Local Authority and a private company if the work is the same?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>How can I learn from others who have opened free schools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Given that the free school policy is changing the landscape in education &#8211; is it ok to stake a claim in the new territory \u00a0&#8211; or should I wait till others have proven the ground?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>How many more risks can I afford to take?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why give up a great job to take on a project that has little hope of success, for no pay; risking reputation and friendships? In this blog post, and the next few, I hope to inform those who wonder what &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/whats-in-it-for-me-pt1\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[48],"tags":[44,46,161,37,47,6,15],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects","tag-big-society","tag-free-school","tag-freeschools","tag-onschool","tag-oxford-new-school","tag-purposed","tag-schools"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2vDki-2W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezekiels.co.uk\/eylan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}