This paper examines the influence of intense scrutiny from Ofsted on school leadership and policy enactment. Data was collected in a coastal area of deprivation, providing the setting for a detailed case study of school leadership in a state secondary school and a state primary school, both with recent or ongoing experience of intense scrutiny…

Leading is not the same as teaching, and middle leaders in schools require different capabilities to those of classroom teachers. This article explores the ways in which these capabilities are acquired by middle leaders in the independent sector during the early stages of their appointment as they progress through a transitional period. It draws…

A continuing challenge for the education system is how to evaluate the wider outcomes of schools. Wider measures of success--such as citizenship or lifelong learning--influence each other and emerge over time from complex interactions between students, teachers and leaders, and the wider community. Unless methods are found to evaluate these…

The experience of headteacher socialization has been described as challenging and often traumatic for new headteachers. The research reported in this article provides a theoretical explanation of that experience by analysing the socialization of new primary school headteachers in England from a role boundary perspective. The role boundary is the…

This study considers the rhetoric and practice of self-assessment by governing bodies of schools and colleges. The context expects governing bodies to reflect on their performance and this is supported by theoretical approaches to self-assessment of "boards". However, there are both general notes of caution and interview evidence of the…

For three years from 2008 every school in England had a designated school improvement partner (SIP), portrayed as a critical friend, whose role was to support and challenge the headteacher. A mixed-methods study involving a national survey and face-to-face interviews evaluated the enactment of the national policy from the perspective of the direct…

The contemporary English policy discourse in higher education of "Putting Students at the Heart of the System" has led to an increasing use of managing by performance "smart-data" reinforcing a consumer-led representation of students as "partners" in the "business of learning" within the academy. This…

Literature examining effective leadership in education describe a number of models such as Transformational, Learner-Centred, Distributed and Situational. A similar example is "pedagogical leadership", a phrase that frequently appears in literature and one referring to forms of practice that shape and form teaching and learning to be…

This article examines illustrative cases of partnerships from a government-funded programme of experimental projects in England designed to test out the potential of senior business managers to provide leadership across a group of schools. The article places the programme within the context of international public service reforms and, more…

The most recent decade has seen a major growth in interest in teacher leadership, but there is limited research on the extent to which early career teachers can take on teacher leadership roles. In this article we explore this question by looking at teachers prepared through the alternative certification programme Teach First (TF), which aims to…

Most research and scholarship in the field of educational leadership and management seems focused on leaders and managers and their perspectives, while the perspective of an entire constituency--"the led"--is generally overlooked and neglected. This article contributes towards redressing this imbalance. Located within the context of the…

This article reports on research investigating the factors which impact on the recruitment and support of high performing leadership teams, funded by the National College. The research involved a comprehensive literature review and case studies of nine English schools. The results show that four themes emerged in relation to high performing teams:…

The "moral imperative" of school leadership has been identified as seeking to bring about social justice in ensuring all children are given the opportunity to succeed in education. Empirical research among 18 headteachers in a single local education authority in the English Midlands shows that some headteachers simultaneously work within…

The English education system has been radically transformed over the last two decades. Throughout this period, the New Right and New Labour government policies have embraced the rhetoric of empowering schools to become self-managing institutions. In the course of this transformation, school leadership and management have become exceptionally…

Workforce Remodelling in England implemented between 2003 and 2005 has been presented by the "New Labour" government as a means of enhancing the development of teachers and promoting rising educational attainments. While the processes that schools were to follow to achieve the desired "fundamental alteration in mindset" were…