Reflections on school leadership

First published on The Future Leaders Trust Insights blog on 20 October 2015 (no longer available). Yesterday morning, Policy Exchange and ASCL conference hosted a conference on the future of the teaching workforce. I went along because we know from our network of nearly 150 heads and 450 senior leaders – as well as the CEOs we’re working with on our Executive Educators programme – that teacher supply is a huge issue. The shortage is a major disincentive to senior leaders considering headship, especially in rural and coastal areas and contributes to the other (perpetual) “crisis” in the school workforce around the supply of great heads. In our world of high-stakes accountability, a head’s job is dependent on the ability to hire quality teachers – so a shortage in their supply is one more disincentive to taking on headship. The reasons for the shortage of teachers were well-rehearsed at the conference. They include increasing demand from pupil numbers and curriculum change, an

First published on The Future Leaders Trust Insights blog on 1 October 2015 (no longer available). In the 2014-15 academic year, 62% of Future Leaders securing primary headship were women, as were 50% of those appointed to secondary headship. Overall, 53% of teachers supported to headship by The Future Leaders Trust were women. This is the first time the proportion of female Future Leaders has been above even 40% and bucks a trend which has historically seen few women in headship positions in the UK. I talked to some of our 2015 Future Leaders female heads to find out how they did it and what advice they would offer to those hoping to follow in their footsteps. Some common themes emerged – around the importance of role models and coaches; adopting explicit confidence-building techniques; drawing on their moral purpose to keep going in the face of setbacks; and the need for a network of family and friends offering practical support with balancing work and family.