Members' library

• Leading schools
  • Developing your leadership
    • Middle leadership
      • Middle leadership in primary schools
        • Set direction and plan
        • Innovate and lead change
        • Motivate and influence others
        • Professional expertise and knowledge
        • Teams and teamwork
        • Value inclusion
        • Role of the headteacher

Innovate and lead change

Innovation in schools is about finding ways of doing things differently, and putting them into practice, in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

The video clip shows Debbie Weible who is the strategic leader for ICT at Oldway Primary School, Paignton. She works closely with the curriculum leader for ICT and the ICT manager.

Debbie's monitoring of teaching and learning identified where practice needed to change and what support was required. Her innovations are an integral part of the school’s development plan, which outlines the reasons for change and the criteria for judging success.

Teachers can find it daunting to learn to use unfamiliar technology in the classroom, or to teach scientific enquiry to young children. Debbie’s leadership has enabled class teachers to use new technologies to improve children’s learning across the curriculum.

Debbie has found it important to establish a climate of trust and to build her colleagues’ confidence. She has made good use of modelling to help her colleagues develop the new knowledge and skills they need. Staff value and draw upon her expertise to enable them to change their practice.

Team building has been an important part of this process too. Debbie has been able to foster a common sense of purpose and to motivate her colleagues through positive feedback and encouragement.

We asked Annabel Brown, a senior teacher at Appleton Primary School, Oxfordshire, what she thought was key to being a middle leader.

"I think that you have to have very good interpersonal skills to be able to talk to people and make them feel 'at home', so that they can tell you what they’re worried about. And then they’ll listen to you, and I think if you’re prepared to go in and work in their classroom and even take their classes, they will respect what you say to them. If you can do it, they’ll feel they can do it too."

Annabel is responsible for science. Her monitoring identified the need to improve the teaching of scientific enquiry across the school and raise standards in the subject. She has worked hard through modelling and regular dialogue to help teachers feel more confident about teaching the challenging area of scientific enquiry. As a result of her leadership and the planning systems she has put in place, the skills of scientific enquiry are now well established and standards in the subject have been rising steadily over the last few years.

View a transcript of this video.