To what extent can headteachers be held to account in the practice of social justice leadership?

Internationally, leadership for social justice is gaining prominence as a global travelling theme. This article draws from the Scottish contribution to the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN) social justice strand and presents a case study of a relatively small education system similar in size to that of New Zealand, to explore one system's policy expectations and the practice realities of headteachers (principals) seeking to address issues around social justice. Scottish policy rhetoric places responsibility with headteachers to ensure socially just practices within their schools. However, those headteachers are working in schools located within unjust local, national and international contexts. The article explores briefly the emerging theoretical analyses of social justice and leadership. It then identifies the policy expectations, including those within the revised professional standards for headteachers in Scotland. The main focus is on the headteachers' perspectives of factors that help and hinder their practice of leadership for social justice. Macro systems-level data is used to contextualize equity and outcomes issues that headteachers are working to address. In the analysis of the dislocation between policy and reality, the article asks, 'to what extent can headteachers be held to account in the practice of social justice leadership?

Getting to good: how headteachers achieve success

This report examines the key steps taken by headteachers in schools that have improved from satisfactory to good or better. It draws on evidence from good practice case study visits, headteacher focus group meetings and previous Ofsted survey reports, and offers guidance for headteachers and governing bodies in schools aiming for improvement

Nominee handbook for schools and PRUs, from September 2010

"This handbook is designed for nominees who will be the school representative on the inspection team during their school's inspection. The handbook has primarily been developed with the needs of school headteachers, deputy headteachers and senior managers in mind and has a strong emphasis on practical application responding to the key question - 'What do I have to know to be an effective nominee?'." - introduction

Ways of knowing among women headteachers in government schools

The main purpose of this study was aimed at exploring ways of knowing applied by women headteachers in the course of their daily leadership and decision-making activities. A phenomenological research paradigm is used in this study. The data used in this exploration was collected mainly through interviews, conducted from a feminist perspective. The knowledge construction experiences were collected from excellent and successful women headteachers from government primary and secondary schools through purposeful sampling. In addition, informa

Revised professional standards for education practitioners in Wales : Consultation document

"This consultation document outlines proposals to refine a number of professional standards to reinforce education improvement priorities for Wales. We propose to refine: • the professional standards for Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTA) • End of Induction Standards which will be renamed as the Practising Teacher Standards • the National Standards for Headteachers in Wales which will become Leadership Standards to emphasise their use to recruit and develop high quality headteachers and also to develop leadership potential across the system." - Overview

Questionnaire data: summary of findings - year 4, 2006

ICT Test Bed questionnaire analysis - learners, teachers, headteachers and familie

Headteachers as leader of change in primary schools in Cyprus

This study investigates how primary school headteachers of Cyprus lead a particular change, namely ICT implementation. Specifically it investigates the leadership styles headteachers use when leading the particular change, focusing on the possession of attributes of transformational, transactional and passive leadership. In addition, it seeks relationships between headteachers' leadership styles and particular variables such as headteachers' beliefs about this change, headteachers' educational background and headteachers' training in leadership and management. Moreover, it explores teachers' perceptions of their headteachers' leadership styles and how these affect teachers' beliefs about the particular change. It finally examines headteachers' perceptions about their training for headship and for leading change attempting to identify deficiencies and needs they have when leading change. In order to investigate the research topic and address the research questions a survey, along with interviews and document collection, were conducted. Instrumentation included questionnaires distributed to headteachers and teachers, interviews conducted with them and document analysis which included minutes of staff meetings. The questionnaire sample consisted of 95 primary schools, giving 95 headteachers and 475 teachers (5 teachers from each school). Responses were received from 42 headteachers and 207 teachers. Five headteachers from the respondents who gave consent were selected and interviews were conducted with them and with three teachers from each school. Also minutes of staff meetings from the same schools were collected for analysis. Findings reveal that headteachers of this study report using more transformational leadership styles than transactional or passive ones however possessing higher levels of some aspects of transformational leadership and lower levels of others. It was found that while headteachers are concerned with their teachers' personal, professional and intellectual needs they have difficulties in addressing these needs by providing intellectual stimulation and modeling behaviour on how to implement ICT more effectively. They also report dissatisfaction with their training for headship as well as for leading change and define a number of needs that would enable them to carry out their role more efficiently and effectively and possibly use higher levels of transformational leadership practices. These needs reveal that headteachers expect from the Ministry of Education and Culture to act more as a transformational leader. Teachers were found to agree with headteachers' responses in most of the issues, however with some difference in the mean of each variable. This could imply that teachers have higher expectations from their headteachers and need them to act even more as transformational leaders. In addition, headteachers' beliefs about change were found to affect all dimensions of transformational leadership, whereas no correlation was found between beliefs and transactional leadership. Correlation was also found to exist between all dimensions of transformational leadership, as well as contingent reward, and teachers' beliefs about change. Finally, no relationship was found between headteachers' educational background as well as knowledge in leadership and management with their leadership styles, other than that of educational background with vision and modelling behaviour

The Challenges of Developing Distributed Leadership in Scottish Primary Schools:a 'Catch 22’

This article analyses the experiences and perceptions of headteachers taking forward a distributed perspective on school leadership. It reports on research conducted in Scottish primary schools through three case studies. It draws on findings from a sequence of headteacher interviews, staff questionnaire and sociometric analysis data. The article analyses the headteacher's role within a distributed perspective. It presents and discusses key findings which suggest that headteachers are caught in a ‘catch 22’, having both an enabling and constraining effect. Implications are drawn for educational leadership at both school and system levels

Guidance for governing bodies on school uniform and appearance policies

This document provides guidance for governing bodies and headteachers on issues relating to implementing or changing a school uniform and appearance policy