Academy reward

What does it take to be a leader in an academy, asks Lucie Carrington.

When the first academies opened in 2002, there was a certain mystique surrounding the people who ran them. But with over 200 academies up and running and a further 100 set to come on stream this September, it’s clear that more and more teachers will be taking on leadership roles in academies over the next few years. It is, therefore, perhaps time to unravel the mystique and work out what makes for great leadership in an academy.

The National College has been working with academies for several years providing leadership support through its network of National Leaders of Education (NLE) and National Support Schools and 10 academies are themselves National Support Schools. More recently, the College has started looking at how it can support succession planning in academies and is currently piloting an associate principals’ programme to help develop the next generation of academy principals.

Di Barnes, Operational Director for Strategic Initiatives Secondary at the National College, is clear that developing the academy principals of the future is not about creating a cadre of super-heads. Nonetheless there are behaviours and leadership styles that academy principals need if they are to succeed. ”The freedoms – and the lack of an LA support structure – that academies have over, for example, the curriculum, mean that principals tend to be greater risk takers who have considerable entrepreneurial flair.”

Di highlights the case of Liz Sidwell, chief executive of the Haberdashers’ Askes Federation of three academies in south east London. Liz has set up a trading arm and uses it to generate funds from consultancy work which she then ploughs back into the academy. ”As more chains of academies develop, we will increasingly see this sort of approach,” Di says.

Michael Wilkins, chief executive and academy principal of the Outwood Grange family of academies, is perhaps a case in point. Formerly Outward Grange College, an outstanding school in Wakefield, the school sponsored itself as an academy and is now working with local authorities in the north to develop four other academies.

”I have a completely different role now from when I was head of Outwood Grange College. I’m working across five schools that between them have about 6,000 students, 1,000 staff and a budget of around £35m.”

The schools Outward Grange takes on are challenging schools and Michael, an NLE, has developed an Outward Grange approach to school improvement. The key is having a set of strong, talented leaders who understand and can implement this approach. As a result, Michael spends about 40 per cent of his time on building capacity and succession planning. ”Four out of five of our heads of school come from within Outwood Grange. You have to be able to grow your own” he says.

Paul Mortimer, principal of the Isle of Sheppey Academy in Kent (which is made up of five schools across two sites totalling over 2,500 students) argues that context is king when it comes to academy leadership and no one style fits all. ”There isn’t a standard principal model,“ he argues. Furthermore, he thinks it is far too simplistic to suggest that academy leadership is necessarily different from other types of headship or that it is only for those with previous secondary headship experience.

Nonetheless Paul is clear that it was his 21 years across five headships, including one of the first executive headships, that enabled him to do what needed doing to get the Isle of Sheppey Academy up and running. It took four years to get the academy open and in that time there were two judicial reviews and 40 public meetings. ”This is a very exposed job in a highly charged environment,“ he says.

Many principals of new academies find themselves in a similarly heated environment. An academy is often what happens to a school when all else has failed and there are a lot of tired, disappointed, possibly angry people around. At the same time politicians and sponsors want a quick return with improvements right from the start. Leading education successfully in this situation requires political savvy and strong communication skills.

It’s not just about communicating with staff, pupils, parents and the community, points out Graham Soles, NLE broker with the National College. Graham has analysed the leadership support that academies value and notes that a key difference between academy principals and other heads is working with sponsors. In the early days it was wealthy individuals contributing their £2m, now principals often have to work with multiple sponsors from a variety of backgrounds – colleges, local authorities, companies, independent schools and more.

”Every single one of those sponsors – plus the Department for Children, Schools and Families – will have its own vision for the academy. An academy principal must be able to understand where sponsors are coming from and develop a collaborative vision with them,“ says Graham.

He insists that the relationship between a principal and the academy sponsors is a crucial one – even more so than that between a headteacher and the governing body. Thankfully, if a principal is likely to have problems buying into the sponsors’ vision, it often comes out in the recruitment process, Graham says. He knows of a couple of outstanding headteachers who have gone for academy jobs and not got them because the sponsors just didn’t take to them.

Sian Carr, principal of Skinners’ Kent Academy in Tunbridge Wells agrees that this relationship with sponsors marks out the job of principal. She has three sponsors – the Skinners’ School/the Skinners’ Company; West Kent College; and Kent County Council. ”All our sponsors come at the academy from a slightly different point of view and I have to be ready to juggle their nuanced agendas,“ Sian says.

She also has to rise to the challenge of her sponsors’ high hopes for the academy. They are all steeped in education and Skinners’ Company is steeped in history and tradition. ”They wouldn’t put their name to something that is going to fail and I have to meet their expectations,“ Sian says.

Like Paul Mortimer, Sian believes that all academies are different and their leadership needs are different too. What’s more they are changing all the time. ”There is less money than there was for the first tranche of academies and there will be still less in the future,“ Sian says. ”Academies are still a relatively unknown quantity but as they become more embedded in the system, the challenge will be to establish what being an academy really means. I don’t think anyone has completely worked that out yet. Or perhaps that is their unique selling point? They are what is required in a particular context and provide the local solution to a set of local challenges.”