education leadership | Schools Week

Making the Leap: Moving from deputy to head by Jill Berry

My first thoughts when I received this book was that the crevice over which the person on the cover is jumping was not wide enough! Perhaps this is because of my own journey to headship… it was not a little hop but a large jump – and, if I am honest, I still haven’t quite […]

We must mend the primary and secondary split in education leadership

If primary and secondary leaders better understood each other’s phases, children would be better prepared for the move from key stage 2 to 3, says Allana Gay. School leaders suffer from fear of missing out. They aim to keep up with all of the latest trends for teaching styles, data manipulation, Ofsted and sources of […]

Understanding Leadership: Challenges and reflections

John West-Burnham and Libby Nicholas are what I would describe as big players in the Education scene with a career spanning age groups, leadership positions and big roles in the Academy scene. This ensures that whether you particularly take a side in the Academies debate, you’re interested in this book.When I first flicked open to […]

Best books of 2016 for teachers and school leaders

The best books 2016 had to offer, chosen by Schools Week features editor, Cath Murray. 1. Don’t Send Him in Tomorrow by Jarlath O’Brien The beautifully written Don’t Send Him in Tomorrow rails against the “cloak of invisibility” over people with learning disabilities and suggests that every mainstream teacher should spend time in […]

Powerhouse: Insider accounts into the world’s top high-performance organisations

Any leader worth their salt spends most of their time seeking to gain insights into the successes and failures of those that have come before them. Books, speeches, interviews and research data gathered on leadership that achieve sustained results continue to be consumed on a mass scale. At this moment, not much can truly be […]

Thanks? No thanks: Why only 1 teacher received a thank you letter from the education secretary

The government has written one thank-you letter to a retired teacher in the past four years, despite launching a campaign to reward their contribution. The Department for Education (DfE) unveiled a scheme in 2012 in which outgoing teachers who made an “exceptional contribution to education” could be nominated for a personal letter of thanks from […]

Tuesday Humby, principal, Ormiston Chadwick academy

Never in a month of Tuesdays did I think Bankfield, a comprehensive in my home town and well-known as “the dodgy school”, would become a turnaround success. When it went into special measures two years ago I advised local councillors to raze it the ground. But it didn’t take a month of Tuesdays to resolve […]

New group to boost status of ethnic minority teachers

A networking and events group aimed at encouraging more black, Asian and ethnic minority candidates into teaching and headship roles will launch in January. BAMEed aims to emulate the success of the recently launched WomenEd and “raise the status” of teaching among communities from ethnic minority backgrounds by encouraging progression up the career ladder. Co-founder […]

Non-teachers should be hired to plug school leader shortage, says report

Schools should hire business people with no classroom experience for non-teaching executive roles to plug an expected shortage of up to 19,000 school leaders in England by 2022, says a new report. School Leadership Challenge: 2022, published today by the Future Leaders Trust, Teaching Leaders and Teach First, warns of growing school leadership recruitment problems […]