Jane Smith, FIfL, FInstLM

Jane Smith teaches management and practises it, all in one job. She’s the Associate Director: Administration, Higher Education and Management at Birmingham Metropolitan College, and she has about 300 teaching hours every year. Most of this is on the foundation degree courses which the college runs with the University of Aston, but she also runs management courses for employers. For example, she trains managers at Birmingham City Council – mostly first line managers who are either new to the role, or have had no training in it.

So she’s both a manager and a teacher, and can’t afford to be left behind in either of these professions. She’s both a Fellow of the Institute for Learning (IfL) and the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM), and keeps up to date with CPD advice provided by both organisations.

ILM skills training and CPD helps ensure she is up to date with management techniques, both for her teaching and for her role as a manager. Managing part time lecturers, safeguarding students, even – in today’s circumstances – preparing staff for the possibility of redundancy – they are all things a head of school needs to know how to do.

As a teacher and IfL member she is required to do at least 30 hours CPD every year. She is about to take a course on using computers more effectively in the classroom . “I use this CPD largely for personal development. Teaching changes so much and I need to make sure I am delivering at an appropriate level” she says.

47-year-old Ms Smith’s career in management began with a two year college secretarial course. Rising through the ranks at Central Television, she started to manage staff and took a part time diploma in management studies and an MA in education and professional development at Birmingham Polytechnic (which became the University of Central England while she was studying there.) She became a teacher of administration and management at City College Birmingham, and moved to Mathew Boulton College to be Head of School: Administration and E-learning. Later, Mathew Boulton College merged with Sutton Coldfield College to become Birmingham Metropolitan College.

Her membership of ILM “is about keeping what she teaches up to date, and also as a practising manager she needs it in her work” says Hilary Hall, ILM Director of Customer Services. Jane was one of 90,000 people who took ILM courses last year, and one of its 35,000 members.

Although Jane started out as a manager, and that’s what she teaches, many ILM members start out in another profession entirely, and do not think of themselves as managers. “They think of themselves as, say, a town planner first and a manager second” says Hilary Hall. “But the skills of management are just as important to what they do.”

No one has to belong to ILM, she says, but “ILM membership shows they are committed to their professional development.”

“Teaching changes so much and I need to make sure I am delivering at an appropriate level”