Sustainable school leadership

Sustainable school leadership: comparing approaches to the training, supply and retention of senior school leaders across the UK.

Project description

Project Lead: 

Professor Toby Greany 

Duration:

1/12/2022 – 30/11/2025 (36 months)

Organisation:

 University of Nottingham

Research theme:  

• teaching and learning, with a focus on teachers and their recruitment, retention and professional development  

The four nation focus: 

• UK/ Northern Ireland/ Scotland/ England/ Wales 

Project overview

Aims

This study is researching approaches to the supply, development and retention of senior school leaders across the four UK nations.  It asks how well these approaches take account of individual, local and systemic needs, in particular in relation to the sustainability of leadership supply, its diversity, equity, quality and fitness for the future?

Description

The project assesses leadership development approaches for primary and secondary schools across the UK and explores how these can be enhanced. Methods include interviews with policy makers and leadership development experts, secondary analysis of existing datasets, place-based case studies and surveys of leaders. Comparative findings and recommendations will be disseminated to research, policy and practice audiences, including through web-based resources that can be used to enhance local and national leadership succession planning.

Project partners

The national Advisory Groups are key to our engagement approach. We have secured commitment from the following lead partner organisations:

• England: National Association of Head Teachers, Association of School and College Leaders
• Scotland: Education Scotland
• Northern Ireland: Queens University, BELMAS.  

These partners will help us recruit representative Advisory Group memberships in each nation.  

Partnership plans

We work with the lead organisations listed above to develop advisory group membership in each country. 

Researchers

• Professor Toby Greany (PI); University of Nottingham
• Professor Pat Thomson (Co-PI); University of Nottingham
• Dr Tom Perry (Co-I); University of Warwick 

Research findings and policy recommendations

• Getting underway with the Researching Sustainable School Leadership project Blog, June 2023
  Getting started on any large and complex research study means grappling with strategic and conceptual questions. Our questions include: How should we conceptualise leadership? What makes leadership sustainable? How should we assess and compare the experience of leaders within and between the four UK nations? But we also have more prosaic but equally important questions, such as What existing data and literatures should we draw on? How can we access them?
   
• Developing our thinking tools: time Blog, February 2024
  Pat Thomson and Toby Greany explore how time relates to sustainability of school leadership.
   
• Looking at Localities Blog, February 2024
  This post discusses our approach to using case studies to explore sustainable school leadership. 
   
• Our first Locality Case Study: Northern Ireland – Coast Blog, February 2024
  Mike Collins and Toby Greany summarise the themes they heard in interviews with 22 educational leaders in Northern Ireland-Coast 
   
• Locality Case Study: England – City Blog, March 2024
  We visited England-City in late Autumn 2023 and the early part of 2024. In total, we interviewed nearly 30 Local Leaders, headteachers and senior leads in City, either individually or in small groups.  We also observed several events and training with heads and deputies. This post is based on an initial assessment of the interviews, with more detailed analyses to follow as we progress through the project. 
   

• Locality Case Study: Scotland – City Blog, September 2024
  Our discussions with educational leaders in Scotland-City took place in the early part of 2024 and the visit was the first of our Locality Case Studies in Scotland.  We interviewed 16 leaders who were a mixture of Local Leaders, Heads and Deputes, and observed sessions of the Into Headship programme, Scotland’s headship preparation programme. 
  This introductory post briefly outlines how we’re setting up our research project to address these – and other – questions. As the project continues, we’ll use this blog to share our ideas about key issues. We’ll also share emerging findings.