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Deep Leadership

Since 2004, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) has been working with Professor David Hargreaves and a number of specialist schools to explore the concept and practice of personalising learning (PL).

This research has identified nine gateways that schools see as key components of PL. More recently, these gateways have been clustered into four areas - Deep Learning; Deep Experience; Deep Support and Deep Leadership - in order to help schools to establish a more coordinated approach to personalising learning.

The Trust's approach has been to establish and support Development and Research (D and R) hub schools to explore new practice and lead the research and dissemination process in each region. Hubs have already been established in the areas of Deep Learning, Deep Experience and Deep Support.

The Trust has now partnered with NCSL and appointed 11 regional hub schools to undertake D and R in the area of Deep Leadership.

A brief history of the Development and Research networks (23kb, 3 pages)

Deep Leadership hub schools

This network consists of a small group of innovative schools where exemplary leadership has been shown. Heads of these schools have demonstrated a commitment to securing a personalised learning experience for all children. They are prepared to look radically at the nature of schooling and to abandon old structures and to exploit the complex links between the nine gateways of the personalising learning agenda for the benefit of students, staff and the wider school community. This network of schools will work to establish a common understanding of the challenges posed to school leaders by the 21st century educational imaginary. Specifically, the network will undertake D and R in the following areas:

• What are the implications for leadership?
• What types of leadership are needed?
• Which people would undertake which leadership roles?
• What models of leadership emerge from the 21st century educational imaginary?

Over the next two years the deep leadership network will further develop the successful work that has already been undertaken in this area. This network will:

• Bring heads and senior leadership teams of innovative schools together to discuss key issues.
• Give heads and deputies of these schools the opportunity to make visits to each other's schools to learn about their practice and to extrapolate key ideas.
• Track the exchanges that take place during these visits.
• Map the consequences of these outputs and in particular the trajectory that personalised learning has taken in these schools under the leadership of different heads.

Deep Leadership hub schools (19kb, 1 page)

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