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Empowering successful leaders

The College has worked with outstanding leaders to develop and deliver leadership strategies in City Challenge areas

Harnessing the expertise of great leaders to drive continuous improvement

National Leaders of Education (NLEs) are outstanding headteachers who run excellent primary, secondary or special schools and who have the skills, expertise and capacity to help other schools. Each designated NLE provides additional leadership to schools in difficulty, including those in the ‘notice to improve’ and ‘special measures’ Ofsted categories and those in transition towards closure, amalgamation, federation or academy status.

  • By 2012, there will be 500 designated NLEs.
  • Ofsted recently reported that "of the schools that came out of special measures during 2009-10, 24 per cent had been assisted by an NLE".
  • Half a million children have benefited from the expertise of NLEs and their staff since October 2006.
  • Between 2008-10:
    • primary schools supported by NLEs and national support schools (NSSs) improved their Key Stage 2 results by 7.9 per cent, while nationally the results remained steady.
    • the rate of improvement in the percentage achieving five or more A*-C grade GCSEs (including English and maths) for secondary schools supported by NLEs and NSSs is almost twice that compared to those who had not had this support.

The College has worked with outstanding leaders to develop and deliver leadership strategies in three areas: London, Greater Manchester and the Black Country, and has developed the role of the local leader of education (LLE). An LLE is a successful headteacher who provides coaching and mentoring support to headteachers of schools facing challenges. The LLE focuses on enabling the partner school to build capacity for sustainable improvement. Over the course of 2010-11, 597 headteachers worked as system leaders across 767 schools.

Between 2008-10, primary schools increased by 13.2 per cent points compared to 1.2 per cent points for local peers. Secondary schools increased by 10.5 per cent points compared to 7.3 per cent points for local peers.

For more detials about the information on this page, please email impact@nationalcollege.org.uk.