Leadership library

• Leading schools
  • Improving outcomes for schools
    • Leading personalised learning
      • Leadership for personalised learning
        • About
        • Culture and values
          
        • Learning-centred leadership
        • Distributed leadership
        • Making it happen
      • Networks and partnerships
        
      • Leading change

Distributed leadership

Personalising learning will only work in schools where leadership is perceived as collective capacity rather than personal status. Leadership at the school level has to be echoed at middle leader, teacher and student levels so that the responsibility for effective learning is shared across the school. This implies building trust and developing leadership potential irrespective of age or status.

"The headteacher has played a key role in distributive leadership, not only in structural terms through the appointment of four assistant headteachers to head up the learning teams and form the senior leadership team, and five strategic directors with a paired-subject brief, but also in terms of her modelling of leadership within a culture of continuous improvement. As a senior leader put it: 'the head models what leadership is: this has made us all more effective leaders and we can see a palpable improvement in our personal vision and capacity and our own growth into the leadership role'. She believes in 'leadership at all levels' and the unobtrusive effectiveness of this approach is evidenced from staff who feel they are involved in producing the ideas. The headteacher then helps make it happen', one teacher put it, a powerful resonance with the Chinese proverb: 'when the best leaders are at work, the people say we did it ourselves." (Birches Head High School case study)

The practical implications of distributed leadership include:

• redefining leadership so that it is seen as relating to the situation (school, team, classroom) rather than being linked to hierarchical status
• empowering individuals and teams so that authority and decision-making are located at functional levels
• developing a team-based structure and making teams the basis for leading and managing
• opening leadership development provision and programmes to all
• focusing on developing teacher and student leadership as a major source of capacity and sustainability

One of the most powerful potential benefits of distributed leadership is an increase in the sense of personal responsibility and accountability. It removes dependence on the senior leadership team and so creates a culture of interdependent learning.

Case studies

The full case studies provide practical examples of how leaders are putting the ideas behind personalising learning into practice.

• Full case studies

Making it happen:practical tools

Use these practical tools to review this topic.

Reflective questions

Q: How do you develop the culture and conditions in which leaders can flourish and grow?

Q: Are all the leaders in your school skilled in the following: chairing meetings, reviewing performance, offering feedback, budgeting, project management, mentoring and coaching?

Q: How effectively do the leaders in your school persuade, influence and encourage others?

Q: What and where are the lines of accountability and responsibility that allow these things to happen?

Related publications and resources

• Distributed leadership materials
• Driving leadership
• Heart of the matter
• Primary Middle Leaders - effective practice in action
• Making a difference
• What we know about school leadership
• Are you learnin' us today Miss?
• Does it help to know?
• Meeting the challenge - growing tomorrow's school leaders
• Greenhouse schools
• Leading coaching in schools

Leadership for personalising learning: a framework