Malcolm Trobe, the former acting general secretary of the ASCL school leaders’ union, will chair a 12-member panel convened to review the government’s headteacher standards.
The standards, which are non-statutory, offer advice and best practice for heads, governors and aspiring school leaders. The government wants them to be “of more practical use for heads”, and hopes they will be adopted more widely. The standards were last updated in 2015.
According to the government, the review will seek to establish that the standards “continue to effectively serve the education sector in England” and ensure they “reflect how the sector has evolved since the last review, alongside how the standards can be best embedded in the sector”.
Trobe’s vice chair will be Leora Cruddas, ASCL’s former head of policy and the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, and the panel will also include current ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton and Carolyn Roberts, a head and leading ASCL member who chairs the union’s ethical leadership commission.
Other panellists include NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman, academy leaders Mufti Hamid Patel, Lesley Powell, Stuart Lock and Sarah Wilson.
Lauren Costello, the Academies Enterprise Trust’s national director for primary and SEND, will also sit on the panel, as will National Governance Association chief executive Emma Knights and Ambition Institute executive director Tom Rees.
“I am very pleased to have been asked to chair the review group on headteacher standards,” said Trobe, who also served as ASCL’s deputy general secretary.
“There have been several changes in the educational landscape since the standards for headteachers were last reviewed in 2015 and it is essential that these changes are taken into account as part of this review.
“Both the profession and society rightly have high expectations of those that lead our schools and it is important that the standards accurately reflect those expectations. I very much look forward to receiving and reviewing the evidence that is presented to the group as we consider how we can best represent the standards expected of our school leaders.”
The group will report to ministers by November, and the standards will be revised by September 2020.
The panel
Malcolm Trobe (Chair) – director of the National Professional Qualification for Executive Leadership, ASCL; Interim Executive Director, Foundation for Leadership in Education
Leora Cruddas (Vice Chair) – CEO, Confederation of School Trusts
Mufti Hamid Patel, CBE – CEO, Star Academies
Lesley Powell, CBE – Executive Headteacher, Academy at Shotton Hall; CEO, North East Learning Trust
Carolyn Roberts – Headteacher, Thomas Tallis School, Greenwich
Sarah Wilson – Headteacher, Joseph Norton Academy, Huddersfield
Lauren Costello – National Director for Primary and SEND, Academies Enterprise Trust
Geoff Barton – General Secretary, ASCL
Paul Whiteman – General Secretary, NAHT
Tom Rees – Executive Director of School Leadership, Ambition Institute; Education Director of Northampton Primary Academy Trust
Emma Knights – CEO, National Governance Association
Stuart Lock – Executive Principal of Advantage Schools
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