Oldham Athletic manager and author Micky Mellon joins EdStart Schools as director of leadership and culture, bringing his wealth of leadership experience in professional sport, research, and writing into the education sector.
Following his pioneering appointment at the special educational needs (SEN) and alternative provision (AP) school, Micky’s work has started with EdStart’s leaders to differentiate between management and leadership and, through core values, learn how a ‘team’ and ‘people’ focus will see development and progress in everyone within the organisation.
The philosophy Micky has developed is that whilst good management is based around following processes and maintaining high standards, great leadership is about thinking bigger picture, and supporting, motivating and inspiring every day.
He wants the school leaders to put themselves in the background and improve everyone else around them with the focus of following his ethos of ‘making brilliant 16-year-olds’ and the vision of rolling the programme out across the education sector to help improve other schools.
Micky is a former professional footballer with a career spanning across some of the EFL’s most prestigious and historic clubs including Bristol City, West Bromwich Albion, Blackpool, Tranmere Rovers, Burnley, and Kidderminster Harriers before moving into management in 2006 with Burnley’s youth team and moving on to Barnsley as assistant manager.
In 2014 Micky moved to Shrewsbury Town as head coach, before spells in the same role at Tranmere Rovers, Dundee United, and then returning to Tranmere. As Micky works in his role at EdStart he has also taken the position of head coach at Oldham Athletic with the aim of restoring the club to its former glory, and he has found that there is a huge amount of crossover between the education sector and footballing world, meaning he can apply learnings from one to the other seamlessly.
Micky Mellon says: “What I’m doing at EdStart is constantly evolving and the more I get to know the business, the more I love it. I love the kids because they are kids of character and kids of need, and we are working to develop them under my mantra of ‘making brilliant 16-year-olds’.
“Working alongside the Edstart CEO, James Lowe, we’ve just put together a year-long leadership course for ten leaders of ten SEN and alternative provision schools with the aim that they take the learnings back to their schools, put leadership into practice and find the next generation of leaders within the organisation.
“I’ve also taken over as manager at Oldham Athletic and the crossover has been really interesting; I’m taking things that I have developed within education into football and vice versa, and it’s very exciting to see that standards are improving in both worlds as a result.”
EdStart CEO James Lowe comments: “I didn’t know we needed a Micky Mellon, until I met Micky Mellon. We had an opportunity at EdStart to increase leadership within the organisation, but we are not about just employing new people to tick a box, we are about developing the skills and qualities of our amazing existing team members.
“We met at an education conference where Micky was speaking about the book that he wrote alongside Phil Denton The First 100 Days: Lessons in Leadership From the Football Bosses and he invited me along to the facilities at Tranmere Rovers, where he was manager at the time.
“When I walked in, the culture within the training facilities and the attitude of every member of staff from players to chefs blew me away; they were all proud leaders, and it was clear that Micky had put all of this in place. His passion for working with young people matched mine, and we knew we had to work together to move our ideas forward. The impact he has had in just two months at EdStart is quite remarkable.”
EdStart aims to offer educational provision with the opportunities to gain recognised qualifications to young people with special educational needs or who are unable to maintain regular attendance at a mainstream school, identify issues which underlie non-attendance and disengagement from education and to support young people in addressing and resolving these issues.
The team works hard to ensure each learner has an equal opportunity to develop spiritually, morally, socially and culturally, raise levels of confidence, self-esteem and aspirations, offer a clear route into further education, employment or training, and to celebrate achievements to evaluate performance and to constantly work towards school improvement.
