Members' library

• Publications

Career moves: are you ready for school leadership?

Do you have the passion and potential to lead schools? Are you now ready to progress to the next stage in your career?

Whether you're an experienced deputy, on the fringes of the leadership team, or somewhere in between, you will probably be aiming to step up to headship within the next five years. Whatever your current position, this guide will help you to plan and take your next step.

Career planning

This section of the guide, which will be most relevant to those of you who are at an early stage of your career path, takes a pragmatic view of career planning. It offers themes that guide a real-world approach to career management, explores the goal of headship as a target for career progression and charts some of the development routes that are available to get there.

Understanding the recruitment market

If you are actively applying for headship, this section on recruitment and the dynamics of the current leadership market will be useful. It looks at how you can prepare for the recruitment process and develop a clear proposition that defines your experience.

Getting the job

This section explores the challenge of recruitment and selection processes from a candidate's perspective. Whilst the section is focused specifically on headship application processes, some of the general themes are applicable to recruitment more generally. It takes a step-by-step approach to a typical recruitment process, considering how you can best present yourself at each stage.

Career moves: are you ready for school leadership? is part of a series of booklets to help support succession planning. More about succession planning.