Practical steps: How to... lead for school improvement

Angela Spencer delves into a new National College report to bring you these key steps to improving your school.

Sustained school improvement can’t happen without your purposeful, effective leadership. So where do you start?

A new report, Ten strong claims about successful school leadership, looks at schools that have improved pupil learning outcomes over at least three years under the leadership of the same headteacher.

It finds that successful heads make the difference through who they are as well as what they do, and they progressively distribute leadership and layer combinations of strategies – according to their unique context – over three broad phases of school improvement: foundational, development and enrichment.

With examples – and leader quotes – taken from one part of the report, here are some of the things you can do to successfully lead your school.

Define your vision and values
Look at your school and diagnose the key individual and organisational needs within it, placing the needs of pupils first. Define your own values and vision, share them widely and make sure they are understood. They will help raise expectations, set direction and build trust.

“I always had a vision of where I knew the school had to be. That was always there.”

Improve conditions for teaching and learning
Develop strategies to improve the school buildings and facilities in order to create the best possible conditions for maximising the quality of teaching and learning. In changing the physical environment, you confirm the connection between high quality conditions and staff and pupil wellbeing and achievement.

“The biggest changes have been a new school building, new facilities, especially in certain departments. It has been a settling in process, but I think it has been a positive change.”

Restructure the organisation: redesign roles and responsibilities
Progressively redesigning your organisation’s structures and distributing leadership will promote greater staff engagement and ownership. Typically successful heads redefine senior leadership functions, change from a horizontal to a vertical pastoral structure and use teaching and learning responsibilities (TLRs), advanced skills teachers (ASTs) and support staff more widely.

“So there was the reshaping of the senior management team and we started to look at accountabilities a lot more.”

Enhance teaching and learning
Continuously look for new ways to improve teaching, learning and achievement and provide a safe environment for teachers to try new models and alternative approaches that might be more effective. It will affect the way they see themselves as professionals, which will impact positively on their interaction with pupils and each other.

“I think the head gives you the freedom to experiment, obviously not to go completely overboard and mess it all up, but he’s very positive, very supportive, and he will listen to you.”

Redesign and enrich the curriculum
Focus on redesigning and enriching the curriculum as a way of improving engagement and achievement, remembering that academic attainment is not in competition with personal and social development. Broaden learning opportunities and improve access for all children, with the emphasis on ‘stage not age’ learning.

“Each student is doing a personal curriculum, something that we have tailored for them to help them get the best out of the school while they are pursuing their various curriculum options.”

Enhance teacher quality
Provide a rich variety of professional learning and development opportunities for staff – both internal and external – as part of a twin drive to raise standards and sustain motivation and commitment.

“We tend to have more people coming in so that the whole school can benefit from the same things.”

Build relationships within the school community
Work to develop and sustain positive relationships with all staff to make them feel valued and involved. The relationship with your senior leadership team in particular should be one of trust and mutual respect and you should strive to engender loyalty from parents, staff and pupils.

“He’ll go into lessons, he’ll cover, he leads assembly, he goes in both staff rooms and he knows the children, he knows the parents.”

Building relationships outside the school community
Building the reputation of the school and engaging with the wider community are essential to achieving long-term success. Work to develop positive relationships with community leaders and build links to other organisations and individuals that will benefit your school.

“We are certainly a well-known school. We have good relationships in terms of staff training, and quite a number of our staff go to other schools to do INSET. Likewise staff come here. I think we have a good status.”

And finally...
There is no single model for achieving success. You should use your practical knowledge and intuition and draw from a repertoire of leadership strategies according to your local context, remembering that your staff see you as the main source of leadership in your school. You have a direct effect on their expectations and standards, which in turn influence pupil outcomes.