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Developing talent

Once potential new leaders have been identified, schools should prepare them for leadership. As well as enabling individuals to access national programmes, there are a number of ways to provide development in-house.

Leadership experience in school

Research by the National College, Identify and grow your own leaders, pinpoints practical steps schools can take to encourage and develop new leaders. They include:

  • providing opportunities in school to exercise leadership
  • giving staff the opportunity to take risks in trying out leadership tasks
  • promoting individual leadership on whole school issues
  • encouraging everybody to see the school holistically, rather than focusing on their individual areas
  • putting emergent leaders in key roles

Skills for leadership

Identifying individuals’ potential and providing them with opportunities to exercise leadership is only part of the story. They are likely to need extra support to lead and manage their new roles, responsibilities and accountabilities. For example, as leaders, they are likely to have increased responsibility for managing others and they will need to develop skills associated with enabling others to succeed and develop, such as coaching and delegating tasks with trust (Hay Group, 2007).

The support- and leadership-oriented opportunities that will accelerate their growth have been identified as:

  • job shadowing to observe and work closely with more senior leaders
  • job rotation in order to work in unfamiliar functions or contexts
  • participation in and consultation on organisation-wide initiatives
  • mentoring and coaching to support the interpretation of experience

(Hay Group, 2007)

Such opportunities to try out leadership enables staff to see what day-to-day leadership is really about.

External programmes

Schools that are serious about leadership development will also provide opportunities to link leadership development in a school context with external training programmes such the Middle Leadership Development Programme.

Aspiring heads

Individuals who are aiming for headship should be encouraged and supported to pursue the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH), the recommended qualification for headteachers which prepares candidates for headship in accordance with the National Standards for Headteachers.

In addition to NPQH, we have several other leadership programmes targeted at potential heads. Find out more about these programmes.

Role of governors

There is a crucial role for governors to play in creating the climate in a school in which new talent can develop and flourish.

Some may feel that nurturing leaders and leadership potential is a job best left to the school management team and professional bodies, but this is wide of the mark.

Schools that offer talented staff opportunities to develop leadership skills have found that staff turnover decreases. Moreover, in-house development creates a ready-made pool of potential leaders from which the school can draw when a senior vacancy arises.

Any changes that a headteacher intends to make in order to create leadership opportunities for staff, such as devolving responsibility for key strategic areas, secondments to other schools or international visits, need the support of governors. Such support will be required even if the direct benefit to the school is not immediately obvious. The creation of a school succession plan within the context of a school leadership development strategy is therefore crucial.

Related publications and resources

Further information

For further information, email the succession planning team at successionplanning@nationalcollege.org.uk.