With the vital role of middle leaders in a school’s success, we take a look at how our Outstanding Leadership in Education (OLE) programme is helping to develop the skills and confidence to empower leaders of education, both middle and senior, to steer a purposeful course and drive change in their school’s journey towards excellence.gear-wheel

Middle leaders, it could be said, are the cogs in the system that keep a school ticking over. They are the link between senior leaders and teachers and are at the heart of driving and maintaining a school’s ethos, and improving the quality of teaching and learning. Many are often excellent teaching practitioners promoted to a position outside the classroom with the assumption that they will be an excellent leader of their colleagues as well.

However, once promoted, many middle leaders find themselves in positions in which real change can be hard to implement and, whilst effective leaders in the classroom, they begin to lose confidence in themselves and feel disempowered within a wider school system.

Our Outstanding Leadership in Education programme (OLE) was developed in response to providing the same level of professional development to middle and senior leaders as is available to teaching practitioners through our OTP and ITP.

The programme has two main objectives:

  • To grow the self-belief of teachers as leaders and to raise their expectations of themselves and of their colleagues and pupils. It grows the person – who they are.
  • To increase the effectiveness and impact leaders have on their pupils and colleagues, and organisations as a whole. It grows their practice – what they do.

Many leadership programmes still consist of people being sat down and spoken at, where the accountability remains with the speaker. The OLE, however, engages delegates to take accountability for their own learning in leadership; it forces leaders to think and act for themselves with a greater sense of competence and integrity. OLE delegates see and experience strong leadership being role-modelled by the programme facilitators and are encouraged to engage in their own deeper thinking.

Those who come to the OLE already competent in classroom leadership leave the programme having learnt to apply those skills across a wider setting with their peers. Equally, those who begin the OLE and are already more competent at leading adults, learn to apply their skills more effectively back in the classroom.

As a result, OLE delegates leave feeling empowered to go on to challenge inadequacies in their own practices and beyond at system level. They challenge and improve the status quo rather than be ruled and disillusioned by it. They can instil a shared belief and sense of purpose, building a culture within a department where staff are motivated to accomplish personal, team, school and pupil-centred goals, leading to greater collaboration and sharing to ensure constancy across departments, and the quality of teaching within departments.

Consequently, improvements in the success and effectiveness of leadership both inside and outside the classroom are achieved and greater impact is sustained across the whole school.
What schools and delegates say about the OLE programme

“This bespoke coaching based programme has given us the opportunity to develop leadership at different levels. Its role-modelling approach engaged individuals to develop stronger, more influential and truly effective leadership teams based on mutual respect and a common goal.”

PEGASUS, Teaching School Alliance

CASE STUDY: The Bigger Picture

Ros Bartlett, Director of Teaching and Learning, The Earls High School, shares how the Outstanding Leaders in Education programme (OLE) is helping schools achieve their goals.

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