Can you teach leadership?”. This is one of the most frequently-asked questions about the National College for School Leadership.

There is a lot that can be done to help people develop their leadership qualities and skills. If I’m wrong large swathes of the business world, the public services and the armed forces are pouring millions of pounds down the drain. There is already much high-quality work taking place. In fact, there is no problem in education to which somebody has not already found a solution.

This is the premise for one of the key concepts in our Leadership Development Framework - “consultant leadership”. We believe our most experienced and skilled headteachers have a crucial role in developing the future leaders. We have taken the term “consultant” in part as a description of the way in which we would like to see experienced leaders working to support learning.

The role may include coaching, mentoring, consultancy, or facilitation. Coaching involves the coach going into the school to observe and offer feedback on areas of strength, weakness and improvement. Mentoring is more reflective and retrospective with the mentors assisting the student leaders to describe their perceptions, to probe, analyse and find their own strategies for future action. Consultancy involves the experienced leader working with head and management team or school staff.

Facilitation brings the consultant leader into a relationship with a wide group of people committed to learning together. One of the major areas of development being undertaken by our research and school improvement group is the establishment of networked learning communities to enable leaders to learn from each other. Such communities might bring together people from schools of a particular type like beacons or schools in challenging contexts or they might focus on leaders with shared experience or needs. Networks of these committed leaders will be a powerful vehicle to enable the profession to take responsibility for its own development.

Consultant leaders must be prepared to give time to being trained in new skills. They will have to learn how to build trust and confidence. People will not be prepared to share their experiences unless they are sure that the climate is one of mutual respect. The culture must be collaborative but there has to be rigour and tough thinking if the knowledge which emerges is to be of value. That makes the consultant’s job demanding but it is a task worthy of experienced leaders at the height of their career.

It will take a culture change to make this concept real. Headteachers will have to see the development of the profession as a key part of their role. It is crucial to our vision that consultant leaders should be primarily headteachers who are still in post. We want the teaching profession to be fully self-sustaining and to provide a richer mix of challenges for headteachers as they mature in their role - challenges that successful professionals in mid-to-late career need to stay energised and creative. Governing bodies too will need to recognise and support this extension of the head’s role.

We recognise that these ideas are not free from logistical problems, particularly when they are applied to smaller primary schools where heads already find it hard to get out of school. The current concerns about recruitment and retention may make the climate of opinion in schools less than sympathetic to our proposals. But the most innovative and forward-thinking heads are also those who leap at new challenges. As consultant leaders they will play a major part in revitalising the teaching profession and in convincing young people that a career in education really is about shaping the future. They will be the champions of the transformed education service and ultimately the key to the success of NCSL.

Heather Du Quesnay is chief executive of the National College for School Leadership