Leading Learning

TEN QUESTIONS FOR SCHOOL LEADERS - Howard Green

INTRODUCTION
The aim of these questions is to provide a focus for critical reflection by school leaders, and those who support them, on ten key issues that could help to secure the link between leadership effectiveness and school improvement. They should be asked regularly by head teachers themselves, other senior staff and team leaders. Although the questions seem quite straightforward, they have hidden depths and would benefit from regular revisiting as a form of continuing self evaluation. You can work through them sequentially or pick one or two that you find particularly relevant or interesting. Further references are provided, to help you explore some of the background to the ideas that are discussed in the questions.

Leadership itself is a fascinating and elusive concept. Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach (1999) write:‘Leadership as a concept and a set of practices has been the subject of an enormous quantity of popular and academic literature ………Arguably, a great deal has been learned about leadership over the last century. But this has not depended on any clear, agreed definition of the concept, as essential as this would seem at first glance’ (p.5)

Perhaps an agreed definition of leadership will remain an unfulfilled ambition and is, in fact, secondary. More important is the result of the century of learning about leadership: we do have some shared insights into the nature of leadership and how it differs from management and administration.

Certainly, my own experience of headship, plus over a decade of professional development work with school leaders, suggest that the shifting emphasis from administration to management and now leadership to support effective teaching and learning has been necessary. All three are required to secure improvement, but leadership is the key. It is through leadership that the climate is created in schools and classrooms where learning will flourish. This has been confirmed by the Hay McBer studies for the DfEE into headteacher and teacher effectiveness that have informed the development of the Leadership Programme for Serving Head teachers, the revised National Standards for Head teachers, the Threshold Standards and the proposed national framework for continuing professional development. It is also strongly supported by school effectiveness research (see Sammons, Mortimore and Hillman, 1995).

So, let’s now move on to the first of the questions designed to help you probe deeper into the nature of effective leadership and your own work as a school leader.

1. ARE YOU LEADING AS WELL AS MANAGING YOUR SCHOOL?

A helpful and amusing illustration of the difference between leadership and management is based on the story of Noah’s Ark. Leadership was the quality that Noah demonstrated by getting the animals and people on to the Ark in the first place. Management was his skill in building and organising the Ark so that the elephants did not find out what the rabbits were up to! One can imagine the initial scepticism of his family when Noah was feverishly building this great wooden ship and saying that God had given him a vision that it was going to rain like hell and the whole world was going to be flooded. But he was able to share this vision with sufficient conviction to get the people and animals on board. He valued both the word of God and the well being of those around him. As a result lives were saved and the people moved on to a better future. But if Noah had not also been a good manager, the Ark may have sunk under the weight of elephants!

Does your school have a clearly articulated set of values that provides the framework for teaching and learning and a collective attitude of mind that seeks continuous improvement? Is there a shared vision of what ‘excellence’ might look like for us? How effectively are our values and vision being implemented? Are they due for review, taking into account changes in the world around us? Do we spend enough time thinking about and planning for the changes that may have medium and long term implications for education, schools and learning? Do we make 'quality time' available for this strategic thinking and planning?

Certainly, Southworth's (1998) evidence is that many headteachers do not do this. An informal survey provided evidence that, at best, most primary heads spend 80% of their time on management and only 20% on leadership but, at worst, they consume 100% of their time on management. This is potentially disastrous for both their schools and themselves, often forcing those responsible for the leadership of the whole school into short term and reactive ways of working. A crucial responsibility of head teachers is to find the quality time for whole school leadership, working with governors, appropriate senior colleagues and all the main stakeholders in the life of the school. A starting point may be to review how you spend your time. Could some of your current activities be undertaken by other people to create more space for your strategic work?

2. IS YOUR LEADERSHIP FOCUSED ON SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT?

The last question leads on to a related question: what is the focus of your leadership? Is it school improvement at the level of classroom practice and pupil achievement? Effective school leadership is a complex business but many of the ways that we consume our working hours have only an indirect influence on these aspects of school life. So spending time with a local building contractor discussing the colours for classroom redecoration, writing a bid for extra funding or being out of school at yet another meeting may all help to secure school improvement in the broadest sense but does all this busyness leave enough space not only for strategic thinking and planning but also for core activities like classroom observation and feedback or the analysis and application of pupil performance data for target setting?

The House of Commons Select Committee Report on The Role of Head Teachers (1998) was based on a wide range of evidence from stakeholders in our schools and concluded that, above all possible functions, head teachers should be 'educational leaders'. This view has been strongly supported by the models of effective leadership emerging from the Hay McBer studies for the DfEE. By their attitudes and behaviour, head teachers in good and improving schools have a direct and powerful influence on the climate of high expectations, the standard of classroom practice and the quality of pupil achievement. Regretfully too many school leaders either have other priorities or say that these things are important but spend most of their time on other activities. There is an old proverb about leadership that puts this in a nutshell: ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying because what you’re doing is shouting at me’.

So, are we focusing enough of our time and energy on setting these expectations, monitoring and evaluating teaching and learning, ensuring that best practice is being shared throughout the school and supporting pupil progress?

3. DO YOU USE EVIDENCE TO HELP SECURE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT?

For various reasons there has been a traditional reluctance by teachers to use relevant research and inspection evidence to inform the debate about school improvement and their own school development planning. And yet this evidence can provide a wealth of insights into key issues for improvement and how schools around the country are finding creative and successful ways of addressing them. For example, Rudduck, Chaplain and Wallace (1996) have drawn together the results of a fascinating and important study about the pupil view of learning. Hughes (1999) has produced a very practical guide to improve learning based on the last decade of brain research. The Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), using the aggregated data from school inspections, publishes regular reports about some of the more successful solutions to specific issues like raising the attainment of minority ethnic pupils, dealing with specific learning difficulties in mainstream schools and maintaining earlier progress in science at Key Stage 3 (of the National Curriculum).It is perhaps more surprising that relatively few schools have systematic approaches to sharing best practice within. Reynolds (1999), writing in the Times Educational Supplement (TES) about a recent research study, explains the challenge for school leaders in these words:

‘There is evidence of substantial variability in quality within our schools, in terms of departmental performance and in teachers’ effectiveness. Indeed, the range of effectiveness within schools dwarfs the variation between them, currently the main focus of our performance indicators’. Reynolds goes on to say that this concern applies as much to ‘good’ schools as to those that are average or below in their overall standards.

At Eggbuckland Community College (an 11 to 18 mixed comprehensive school in Plymouth), where I was Principal from 1992 to 1998, we developed strategies to examine internal variations in standards much more systematically. Information about pupil performance, particularly value added data, was used to identify and then share working practices from the most effective subject departments. We then implemented a learning improvement programme, at all Key Stages, based on peer observation by teachers across curriculum areas and feedback from pupils about their experiences of teaching and learning. The combined information from harder performance data and classroom observation provided a rich base of evidence from which we could share and then extend best practice.

Is your discussion and planning for school improvement based on research and inspection evidence? Do you read research reports and book reviews in the TES and other educational journals and on appropriate web sites? Do you get the Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools and the publications’ list from OFSTED? Is the most relevant and informative of this type of material shared regularly with staff? If your reaction is that you don’t have time to investigate and read all this, should you make more time? (It might save reinventing wheels). Do you contribute to a network of school leaders discussing key issues for school improvement and sharing information about best practice? In this context, why not join one of the international networks to be set up by the National College for School Leadership?

4. DOES YOUR LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE OTHERS TO IMPROVE?

We know that a vital aspect of effective leadership is motivating oneself and other people in the team and, linked to this, providing plenty of encouragement and support. But, what of the other side of the coin: the need to set high expectations and challenge others to work for continuous improvement? There is plenty of evidence that leaders in all types of organisation, including schools, are less confident in this role, particularly getting the balance right between challenge and support for individuals, teams and the whole organisation to secure improvement. But what is this evidence? Following are a few examples.

OFSTED’s Chief Inspector of Schools, in his annual report for 1998-99, comments with concern that the weakest aspect of school leadership and management in schools of all types is the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of teaching and learning and the standards of pupil achievement. Overall school leadership has many strengths and is improving but this core function is still neglected in about 25% of primary and secondary schools and 50% of special schools. Without this monitoring and evaluation work, leaders will have limited evidence on which to base important judgements during times of performance review and their ongoing contributions to staff development.

E.C.Wragg and his co-authors (2000), reporting on the results of the Teaching Competence Project, found that of 654 head teachers who had dealt with cases of alleged incompetence about a quarter felt that they should have taken action earlier. Problems ignored usually escalated. However, a practical problem highlighted by these head teachers was a lack of training, not only in the legal issues around poor performance and possible incompetence but also how to give negative as well as positive feedback to colleagues. The evidence from this Project is supported by the aggregated data emerging from the 4000 head teachers who have now been through the DfEE’s Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers. One of the weakest leadership characteristics (from the fifteen necessary for effectiveness) is the ability to ‘hold people accountable’ for their performance against agreed roles, responsibilities and targets.

Does your leadership challenge as well as support others to improve? Are you effective enough at ‘grasping the nettles’ of poor performance, with pupils, staff and teams? Do you have the evidence that you need to address these issues convincingly and propose positive ways forward? If not, would further training help to increase your capability and confidence in this area of work? Are you prepared to review your own performance, and that of the senior team, in open and honest ways and so be an appropriate role model?

5. IS YOUR LEADERSHIP CREATING A SUCCESSFUL ‘LEARNING COMMUNITY’?

There is now a shared wisdom that effective organisations of all types that sustain high performance are ‘learning communities’: continuously evaluating their work, seeking to improve, seeing their people (rather than organisational structures and management systems) as central to success and being close to their ‘customers’ - in our case, pupils and parents. Those of us working in education might assume that good schools would be shining examples of ‘learning communities’. Many are for their pupils, but often less so for the staff and, more importantly, for the leaders. For example, do you plan quality time and provide the associated resources on a regular basis to support your own professional development? Are you a role model of what Barth (1990) described as the ‘leading learner’?MacGilchrist, Myers and Reed (1997) have brought together a range of evidence from four inter-related areas of research on school effectiveness, school improvement, teaching and learning plus insights from work on multiple intelligences and the nature of organisations to develop the idea of the ‘intelligent school’: the school that has the capacity to achieve its goals successfully. Among the nine components of the corporate intelligence of such schools is ‘academic intelligence’, which values and promotes teachers’ (as well as pupils’) learning; ‘collegial intelligence’, which views the staff as learners, and, ‘spiritual intelligence’, which values the development and contribution of all members of the school and its community.

It is also important to consider the range of opportunities for training and development and the nature of the learning experiences that might best facilitate adult learning in our schools. Traditional approaches to continuing professional development (CPD) are not necessarily the best. For example, evaluative evidence suggests that formal training, where you go ‘on a course’, devised and delivered by other people, with topics and content that may or may not relate directly to your specific needs and often with little if any relevance to your specific working environment, usually has limited long term impact. You return to your school and forget most of it. So what might be better approaches? Certainly the regular review of individual training and development needs, opportunities that are rooted in best practice, sometimes in your own situation but also looking at how other people do similar things and working with ‘experts’ in your field.

Rajan (1996) studied leaders and leadership development in about 500 organisations. He asked the leaders what had been the most valuable training and development opportunities that supported their progress towards top positions in a variety of organisations. They listed five, in order of priority: coaching and mentoring; sideways moves (often into unfamiliar settings either inside or outside their current organisation); challenging assignments, that really stretched existing capability; networking with peers, and, formal training. There are lessons from this study for those of us working in schools and with school leaders, not least the low ranking of formal training. We should be considering strategies to increase opportunities for the top four at all levels: within and between schools, regionally and nationally.

Do you understand the nature and importance of organisations as ‘learning communities’? Is the training and development of your staff (including support staff), and yourself, as well organised and successful as the teaching and learning of your pupils? How effectively do you evaluate the impact of CPD on the standards in your school? Have you considered alternative, and possible more effective, approaches to CPD than formal training?

6. DO YOU SHARE YOUR LEADERSHIP?

It has been said that the lone warrior model of leadership is heroic suicide. Clearly leaders, whether of teams or organisations, have specific responsibilities that they should not delegate or duck. On some issues the buck does stop with the leader and, after appropriate investigation and consultation, they must take a decision. However, having accepted that reality, many aspects of leadership can be shared. What are the advantages of sharing leadership more widely? Here are a few suggestions.

It draws on a much wider range of knowledge, understanding, skills, experience and wisdom. Schools are complex and challenging organisations to lead and manage successfully. Therefore several minds working on an issue may be better than one.It provides opportunities for other people to contribute, develop and grow in confidence. Of course, the leader must demonstrate confidence to share the role and allow others to demonstrate success in leadership roles.It helps to prepare the next generation of leaders.It relieves stress on those with formal leadership responsibilities.It provides additional time for them to focus on their most important activities.It gives an implicit but clear signal about the school as a learning community based on the sharing of ideas, issues, good practice and experience.

Day and his co-authors (2000), in a study of leadership in twelve successful schools, underline the tensions and dilemmas of headship but note the following.‘The heads in this study adopted highly creative approaches to tackling the complex demands of implementing multiple changes. The decision to work with and through teams as well as individuals was a common response to the management of change….the heads operated a form of collaborative leadership and saw staff and students as central to achieving the school’s purpose’, (p.173).

Southworth (1998) argues for the renaming of deputy heads in primary schools as ‘assistant heads’ to shift the focus of their role from deputising for the head when he or she is off site to actually sharing leadership responsibilities. Lawson (1999), in reflecting on the demands of leadership in the future, develops the concept of ‘liberating leadership’. Such leaders will unlock the leadership potential of everyone else in their team to devolve ownership of the shared vision, develop the confidence of other people and demonstrate the belief that they can take responsibility for themselves while contributing to the wider overall effort. Lawson adds that, ‘ People can only take responsibility for playing their roles in organisations and communities if they feel liberated and trusted. But they must be trusted to fail as well as succeed’, (p.15). Perhaps school leaders sometimes treat adults too much like children - not to be trusted - and, in these days of greater public accountability, find it even more difficult to allow people to fail and then learn from their mistakes.

To what extent do you share your leadership? What, in your view, are the barriers to sharing your leadership more widely? How can these barriers best be overcome? Have you reviewed leadership in your school at all levels and with both staff and pupils? Are you aware of the opportunities created by the new Pay and Conditions for Teachers (from 1.9.2000) and the broader Leadership Group?

7. ARE YOU AIMING TO BE A ‘GOOD ENOUGH’ OR A ‘PERFECT’ LEADER?

This question follows naturally from the previous one. Job adverts for head teachers typically suggest that governors are looking for superman or superwoman. The relentless pursuit of excellence in organisations and perfection in the performance of leaders may be inspiring but it can also be immensely damaging, resulting in self-delusion and arrogance or doubt and despondency. Greenberg (1999) wrote a fascinating article about this issue under the sub title, ‘I used to be a perfectionist, but now I realise that it is the plague of modern life’. I would also argue that it works against the best interests of organisations and their leaders. So what about the alternative?

The ‘good enough’ leader is one who will sometimes fail, who is not the heroic role model. The way you manage failure is at the heart of ‘good enoughness’. Political leaders cannot in the final analysis, control how a complex modern society develops, nor can a head teacher determine all the outcomes of the formal educational process. However, while every thinking person knows this, most of us are still stuck in a world where plans are supposed to work. There is a split between people’s cognitive understanding - that their leaders cannot work it all out - and their emotional desire for them to do so. I have already referred to the complexity of leading and managing schools and, if anything, the task is getting more complex. The answer must lie with those recruiting leaders, those who are led (the followers) and the leaders themselves accepting this reality and creating their expectations, of both the leader and the organisation, within its constraints.

The idea (and the reality) of the ‘good enough’ leader does not imply that we must accept second best. Leaders should always be striving to learn new things and improve their performance. They should set challenging targets for themselves, their teams and the organisation. But they must acknowledge that the best leadership for sustained improvement and long term success is shared leadership. They must create a climate in the organisation where people are encouraged to take risks for the sake of improvement, to be allowed to fail and then to learn from the things that do not go according to plan. ‘Good enough’ leaders keep learning, with and on behalf of their colleagues.

This type of courageous leadership also allows for the fact that sometimes it is right to break the rules. MacBeath (1998) describes rule breaking as the first of seven heresies of leadership. Without the creative tension between needing rules but sometimes breaking them, there is a danger of universalism and the constant (but unrealistic) quest for the right answer, the exemplary set of rules and the perfect plan.How do you react to the idea of ‘good enough’ rather than ‘perfect’ leadership? If you find it personally liberating, how are you going to share these insights with others, avoiding the impression that second best is acceptable? If you find it shocking (perhaps because you naturally want to do everything perfectly or, for various reasons, you have been forced into this mould), how do you best deal with this reaction?How can you create a climate in your school that encourages calculated risk taking, appropriate rule breaking to secure lasting improvement and learning from mistakes?

8. ARE YOU USING BOTH SIDES OF YOUR BRAIN AND ALL THREE INTELLIGENCES IN LEADERSHIP?

Much has been written over the last decade about the functions of the two sides of the brain in thinking, learning and theories of intelligence. It is now widely accepted that the left side of the brain has more to do with analytical, convergent and sequential thinking while the right side plays a particularly important role in divergent, creative thinking and intuition. The development of both sides of the brain through appropriate forms of learning is vital for balanced thought and broadly based intelligence. Arguably, Western methods of teaching, learning and thinking over the last three or four hundred years have over emphasised the use of the left brain, limiting the development and application of creativity and intuition or right brain thinking. Hopefully the balance is now shifting back towards a proper combination of the two.

It has also been proposed that management is more about left brain activity and leadership derived more from the use of the right brain. Using the example in the previous section, devising systems of rules for an organisation and applying them systematically is a management task. Breaking outside the ‘box’ of the rules and thinking laterally to meet a specific need is a more creative activity of the right brain and a characteristic of leadership. Of course, this almost certainly oversimplifies a complex situation but it does emphasise the importance of drawing from all one’s mental powers in being an effective leader and manager.As with the debate about the functions of the brain, there is similar controversy about the nature of intelligence. Some still believe in a basic general intelligence, measured as IQ, that can be applied in a variety of contexts. However there is a growing body of opinion that ‘intelligence’ is multi-faceted and may have several discrete elements or manifestations. For example, Gardner (1993) has proposed a theory of multiple intelligences, Goleman (1998) has written about emotional intelligence (or EQ) and, most recently, Zohar and Marshall (2000) have described spiritual intelligence (or SQ) as the ultimate intelligence. The latter involves the ability to see the connections between diverse things, to be inspired by vision and values and to be ‘field independent’ or work against convention - an important quality of leaders who are responding to rapid change.

There remains a vital place for analytical thinking and traditional notions of IQ in the problem solving and planning undertaken by those in positions of leadership. However it may be right that there is a growing emphasis on training and development for emotional intelligence in leaders and managers. EQ and SQ are more important than IQ when dealing with the ‘people’ aspects of organisations, frequently the make or break of success. They include the self awareness and self regulation needed by leaders, motivation, empathy and a range of social skills. An experienced management consultant once asked the question, ‘Why do people with an IQ of 140 usually end up working for people with an IQ of 100?’. The point he was making is that, although a reasonable level of IQ is necessary for those in positions of leadership, much more important are the intra and inter-personal skills that are derived from high levels of EQ and SQ.

Are you using both sides of your brain and all three intelligences (IQ, EQ and SQ) in your leadership? If you don’t know much about EQ and SQ, why not read one or two of the references? Should your future CPD objectives include more focus on EQ and SQ?

9. ARE YOU A SELF-AWARE LEADER?

To be effective in leadership, it is particularly important to know yourself. This means taking off the personal blinkers, being honest about one’s strengths and weaknesses, open to learning and prepared to accept support from others in the team. The use of some form of 360 degree appraisal can help to nudge off your blinkers. Certainly, most of the head teachers who have been through such an appraisal as part of the Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers have found it challenging but informative and developmental. According to an old Finnish proverb: if one person calls you a horse, smile; if a second person calls you a horse, have a good laugh but, if a third person calls you a horse, buy a saddle! MacBeath and Myers (1999) have also provided helpful advice about how school leaders can evaluate their current performance and improve their potential.

Be realistic about what you can reasonably achieve, even if others aren’t as honest. MacBeath’s (1998) fifth heresy of leadership is that good leaders behave like grown-ups, not like children who always want to be rewarded with the best seat or need to prove themselves to their parents. Reflecting on this theme, he writes:‘There is a large degree of consensus in the literature that the immense, or perhaps really rather fragile, egos of the charismatic giants are not what is looked for in educational leadership. Nor, it is agreed, are effective leaders ‘selfless’ either. For people in positions of power and influence selflessness may be an equally dangerous and self-indulgent excess. Good leaders have grown up’. (p.12)

I have already mentioned, as an aspect of my thoughts on Question 5, the importance of head teachers making their own professional development a high enough priority but it is a point worth reiterating. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that too many heads put themselves last in the queue for CPD resources. I remember Keith Evans, who was for many years the Chief Education Officer in Clwyd, Wales, commenting about the performance of head teachers. Based on many years experience of working with schools, he had identified three levels, in ascending order of importance. First was the skill of head teachers to cope successfully with the ‘nuts and bolts’ of running a school. Second was the ability to step back and think strategically about the school. Third, and most important, was the desire to ‘nourish themselves’ - to keep learning and to find time for both CPD and relaxation. He expressed pleasure that all the heads in Clwyd operated successfully at the first two levels but regretted that far too few were established at the third. It could result in negative consequences for their schools and themselves.

Do you know yourself well enough, particularly in the professional context? If you have not used 360 degree appraisal, wouldn’t it be a good idea to do so? Do you make your own CPD a top priority? If not, plan now to do so.

10. ARE YOU A LEADER WITH AN APPETITE FOR CHANGE?

Schools must strike the right balance between maintaining what they have got and doing it as well as possible and changing how they do things with the aim of improvement. The second part is more difficult because not everyone has an appetite for change. However the world around us is changing all the time - and has been doing so since the dawn of civilisation. Leaders must acquire the skills of reflecting on that change, deciding what requires a response and then leading and managing appropriate changes within their organisations.

Your responses to some of the earlier questions will determine how effectively you do this. For example, are you finding quality time for leadership as well as management? (Question 1); is your school a ‘learning community’, with regular self evaluation as a core aspect of your work? (Question 5); are you sharing your leadership and so drawing on the insights of your colleagues? (Question 6) and, are you encouraging staff to try new things and take risks for improvement? (Question 7).

Developing the theme of leading and managing change in an article on ‘Futures Thinking’, West-Burnham (2000) argues that the process needs to be extended and formalised in schools. He writes:

‘School management and leadership does need to develop the capacity to talk meaningfully about the future. It also has to be recognised that the strategic planning process has to be mirrored by the actual social reality and experience of the members of the school community. Futures thinking cannot be a management obstruction, nor can children be the subject of the process. They have to be active participants in developing their futures’. (p.14)

It is for the children and young people in our trust that we create our visions for the futures of our schools and then plan for change. We must lead this process with confidence and optimism.

For a closing thought, I cannot better a quote from Senge in Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach (1999):‘… we are coming to believe that leaders are those people who ‘walk ahead’, people who are genuinely committed to deep change in themselves and their organisations. They lead through developing new skills, capabilities, and understandings. And they come from many places within the organisation’. (p.4)Do you spend time thinking about and planning for the future? Do you involve other stakeholders, including pupils, in the process? Are you outward-looking in seeking a broad range of information, insights and options? Do you have an appetite for change and improvement?

REFERENCES

Barth, R.S. (1990) Improving Schools from Within: Teachers, Parents and Principals Can Make the Difference (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass)

Day, C., Harris, A., Hadfield, M., Tolley, H. & Beresford, J. (2000) Leading Schools in Times of Change (Buckingham: Open University)

Gardner, H. (1993) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (London: Fontana)

Goleman, D. (1998) Working With Emotional Intelligence (London: Bloomsbury)

Greenberg, S. (1999) ‘Previous Convictions: I used to be a perfectionist, but ….’ in Prospect Magazine, June 1999 edition

House of Commons Education & Employment Committee Report (1998) The Role of Head teachers (London: The Stationery Office)

Hughes, M. (1999) Closing the Learning Gap (Stafford: Network Educational)

Lawson, I. (1999) Leaders for Tomorrow’s Society (London: The Industrial Society)

Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D. & Steinbach, R. (1999) Changing Leadership for Changing Times (Buckingham: Open University)

MacGilchrist, B., Myers, K. & Reed, J. (1997) The Intelligent School (London: Chapman)

MacBeath, J. (1998) Effective School Leadership: Responding to Change (London: Chapman)

MacBeath, J. & Myers, K. (1999) Effective School Leaders: How to Evaluate and Improve Your Leadership Potential (London: Pearson)

Office for Standards in Education (2000) The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, 1998-99 (London: The Stationery Office)

Rajan, A. (1996) Leading People (Tunbridge Wells)

Reynolds, D. (1999) ‘It’s the Classroom that Counts, Stupid!’ in the Times Educational Supplement, 28.5.99

Rudduck, J., Chaplain, R. & Wallace, G. (1996) School Improvement: What Can Pupils Tell Us? (London: Fulton)

Sammons, P., Hillman, J. & Mortimore, P. (1995) Key Characteristics of Effective Schools: A Review of School Effectiveness Research (London: OFSTED & Institute of Education, University of London)

Southworth, G. (1998) Leading Improving Primary Schools (London: Falmer)

West-Burnham, J. (2000) ‘Futures Thinking’ in Croner’s The Head’s Legal Guide Magazine

Wragg, E.C., Haynes, G.S., Wragg, C.M. & Chamberlin, R.P. (2000) Failing Teachers? (London: Routledge)

Zohar, D. & Marshall, I. (2000) Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence (London: Bloomsbury)

Copyright Howard green
For the full text see www.ncsl.org.uk