Friday 1 - Saturday 2 March 2013
University Arms, Cambridge

Identifying the difference between a mess and a difficulty in your language centre, and the best approach to tackling either situation, is one of the intriguing highlights of this year's English UK ELT Management Conference. Book now to secure your place.

In a wide-ranging programme, the conference will cover concepts as diverse as continuing professional development, change management, the colour of delegates' brains, and inspection.

"We're really excited about the programme this year because it combines many of the issues of most interest to ELT managers with some exceptionally thought-provoking approaches," said Tom Weatherley, English UK's professional services manager.

"Embedding and extending continuing professional development is at the heart of most centres' improvement strategy, and the programme includes several different approaches to this. But we're also looking at ways of using technology, various sessions on school management, and discussing inspection and Accreditation UK."

The conference, to be held in Cambridge on Friday 1 and Saturday 2 March 2013, also includes an evening reception sponsored by Cambridge English Language Assessment as part of its centenary celebrations.

Click here to download the provisional programme.

ELT consultant Adrian Underhill, in a provocatively-named session, Your School's A Mess, will say: "Both difficulty and mess describe a legitimate and necessary condition of any human organisation. However, a problem arises when we fail to distinguish the two and attempt to solve a mess as if it were a difficulty." He will go on to outline ways of using the newly-emerging practices of "post-heroic learning leadership" to tackle messes. 

Eric Baber, President of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, and Account Support Director of the Cambridge University Press, will open the conference by looking at the challenges presented by ongoing Continuous Professional Development (CPD), offering some practical solutions. There is also a panel session on CPD, chaired by Huan Japes, deputy chief executive of English UK.

Consultant George Pickering will present two practical sessions, one on project management and another on managing change.

Perhaps the strangest session of the conference will be Duncan Foord's elective on the colour of your brain: red, green, blue or yellow. This workshop will allow delegates to examine how they think and work, and so likely strengths, weaknesses and preferences, and the implications for working with other people.

Click here to visit the 'training section' of the English UK website for more information.