It was the long service awards last night...

It was a brilliant evening, fantastically well organised by Claire Macklam and her colleagues.
Balloons, stars, good food, great company and 'Lizzie Kyte and the Quintessential Five', a wonderful band from Lawnswwod School. This is what I said to the colleagues who attended...

"The weather and the dark days leave many of us cold, sad and miserable and most of us long for brighter days and the summer sun. We live in an ever more complicated and chaotic world where we are facing a huge number of apparently intractable issues and our own fair share of problems. However, amidst all this darkness, there are so many, many, many wonderful, and amazing things happening around us and that is what we are here to celebrate this evening… your amazing service to Leeds!

Margaret Chase Smith said…
"My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honour is to be earned, not bought."

We all know that despite the press coverage at its best, education in Leeds is brilliant. We are working together to create a passionate learning community with a focus on leadership, coaching, brilliant teaching and learning, intelligent accountability, ownership, choice and voice. We are working together to create a powerful learning network where we share, discuss and develop our learning, our creativity and our ideas… everyone of us.

We must tell our children and our colleagues what Martin Luther King said…
"Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve."

The colleagues here this evening are wonderful examples of this and your achievements show what can be done with persistence, determination and hard work…through a life of service.

Albert Einstein said…
"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."

And it is so worthwhile to visit brilliant primary schools, special schools and secondary schools and our centres to see colleagues who are committed to delivering brilliant services, brilliant support, brilliant initiatives and brilliant projects. We live in a new world of learning teams, learning partnerships, of learning networks and joined up multi-agency working on learning campuses. A new world of brilliant learning places where every child, every young person and every one of our colleagues working in this amazing enterprise must be happy, healthy, safe and increasingly successful and where no child can be left behind.

Our success here in Leeds doesn’t depend on national strategies or synthetic phonics. It depends on amazingly talented individuals, like yourselves, whose work day-in, day-out is making such a difference.

Marian Wright Edelman said…
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."

Congratulations on all your achievements.
Remember James M Barrie said
"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves."

It is great to see talented, brilliant, gorgeous and wonderful colleagues releasing their magic and through their service, persistence and determination making a real difference for the most important resource we have in this City… our children and young people.

THANK YOU"

These are some of the evenings that make this job so worthwhile.
Chris