School leaders are faced with the challenging task not only of improving their schools, but also of sustaining improvement over time. NCSL believes that successful leadership for sustainable improvement requires leaders at many levels within the school. The College is seeking to support schools through its Leading from the Middle programme.
We are also undertaking a number of research projects to draw upon and evaluate the knowledge and experience of school and subject leaders.
The role of the middle leader is now recognised as being crucial in securing a focus on the development of learning and teaching throughout the school. In response to this, NCSL has produced a DVD with supporting materials for middle leaders and headteachers in primary schools.
By showing good practice in 12 primary schools, the DVD examines the key leadership behaviours and activities that successful middle leaders are using. It also explores the ways in which headteachers create the conditions in which middle leaders can thrive.
The DVD, website and discussion forum are now available.
This project seeks to describe the characteristics of successful middle leaders in secondary schools facing challenging circumstances. We investigated why some schools facing challenging circumstances are much more successful than others and why, within these schools, some departments are more successful than others.
Making a Difference aimed to explain this variation and to offer practical guidance for school leaders. We asked practising middle leaders to investigate what other middle leaders were doing in 21 departments, in order to understand how they make a difference to pupil learning. Detailed portraits of successful practice have been developed together with online resources to share practical tips with schools.
The project was conducted over the last 18 months, led by Professor Geoff Southworth and Professor John West-Burnham.
The project materials are available in print or can be downloaded from the Making a Difference website.
Distributed leadership is about sharing leadership across an organisation. While there is a strong belief in the value of distributed leadership, there is not a great deal of evidence about how it works in practice, or whether more or less distributed leadership matters. We have explored how it supports leadership teams, and how larger numbers of leaders can be developed. We have also devised a set of tools to help schools evaluate and develop their own distributed leadership.
More information, and details of printed materials and web resources, can be found on the distributed leadership page
Learning-centred leadership is about how school leaders influence learning and teaching in classrooms and across the school. We have identified a set of strategies that school leaders can use to help improve learning and teaching, by working closely with leaders at all levels in schools.
Further information, and details of printed materials and web resources, is available on the learning-centred leadership page
Further publications and resources about middle leadership, distributed leadership and growing tomorrow's leaders can be found on the NCSL publications pages.
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