What is the most important aspect of school leadership?

This post is in an attempt to reflect on personalisation and collaboration. I find that by writing here, I'm forced to clarify my thoughts!

I'll start with a story that illustrates the danger of assumptions. While having a conversation in a staff room about 4-5 years ago, talk turned to who was to blame for poor education:

Colleague: I blame single mothers.
Me: Interesting, I was raised by a single mother and she did a great job and here I am teaching.
Colleague: Well then, it's teenage mums.
Me: Interesting, my sister gave birth at 15 and still went on to gain GCSE's, A'Level's and a degree while raising a lovely daughter.

This illustrates both the danger of assumptions and the need for personalised approaches.

So why is it that so often, the answer for personalisation comes in the form of an off-the-peg solution - tried and tested in other places? This especially goes for the delivery of CPD.

Such an approach leads to this:

Above, I had fallen face first into the snow in front of a group of colleagues that I was trying to impress. I went about my demonstration in the usual way, but hadn't factored in different conditions - I hadn't check the depth of the snow!

This brings in the most important part of school leadership: acknowledging and developing the professionalism of teachers. It's teachers who subtly adapt each lesson, activity, phrase or resource to meet the needs of the learners in front of them. There is no solution, just a lot of tools in the box!

When I use this to reflect upon my own practice I always need to remember that something that works for me, won't necessarily work for other people. Similarly, when advocating changes, I need to remember that something I have seen work well elsewhere, won't necessarily work for me.

That doesn't mean that it's not worth changing though :-)

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David Rogers

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