Recent policy developments are changing the work of local education authorities (LEAs) in Wales requiring them to play a broader role in the community and a significant role in raising educational achievement. LEAs are obligated to set out their improvement targets in institutional plans and are called to account by external inspection, which…

When co-principalships were initiated in Aotearoa/New Zealand during the 1990s, they encountered a range of issues around this country's new public management requirements for market, managerial and split governance/management accountabilities. This article draws on a case study of one initiative to discuss how elements of these requirements were…

This article provides a response to the previous papers. It sets out a descriptive overview of the National College for School Leadership and then discusses issues of: scale; on-the-job learning; innovation as technological and networking; start-up organizations; leadership effects; international awareness; evaluating leadership and impact. The…

This article reviews three historical phases of leadership development in England and Wales, together with parallel changes in in-service training and the broader professional infrastructure, in order to show how the idea of a national college developed and became viable. It argues that, as a policy innovation, the NCSL has built on earlier…

The growing interest internationally in leadership development and how leaders contribute to student learning makes the development of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) an intriguing and potentially significant event. This article examines the aims and programs of the NCSL from a North American perspective. Based on a context in…

This article addresses the international positioning and role of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL). The article argues that the college stands as an initiator, exporter, importer and disseminator of leadership research and practice and that the role it adopts in regard to these will determine its international influence. The first…

Managing organizations in modern societies takes place through persuasion and the seductive use of language rather than, as in past societies, through physical violence and repression. In this respect new management discourses imply a linguistic process where actors within education gradually become defined within other frames of reference. This…

This article examines the relationships that link student experience in schools, student outcomes, the nature of society and school leadership process. Each of these areas of study has its own literature and this article does no more than indicate where some of that may be read. The linking of these phenomena indicates a tight relationship, which…