There is no shortage of literature about becoming a better leader, but how much of it have you found to be truly relevant in leading your school?

Leadership books often talk about leadership as something that is separate from the domain in which it is happening. The assumption is that there are generic competencies and approaches that can be applied in any context. But leading a school is not the same as leading a business or a sports team. When we approach leadership as a concept that is separate from that which is being led, discussions can become abstract and overly generic; the guidance can be unfocused and unhelpful.

Unfortunately, generic approaches to leadership are already embedded across the education sector. They are well established in professional standards and qualifications, and dominate both leadership development programmes and the wider discourse.

So, what does this mean for school leaders’ training and CPD?

While generic leadership books have been somewhat useful to me, they have also left huge gaps in my knowledge about what good school leadership is. Perhaps it is time to consider the importance of the specialist knowledge, traditions and histories that experienced and effective school leaders hold, and to acknowledge that insights and generalisations about leadership from other fields may be of limited use. That means ditching the leadership literature and instead focusing on further developing your knowledge of what goes on in schools, and filling any gaps in your expertise there.

Let’s take the example of the curriculum, an area that is unique to schools. Senior leaders have to lead on the substance of curriculum development across many subjects, despite not having pre-existing expertise in all of the subjects. For example, it is very hard for a school leader to establish that the curriculum is of the best quality in geography and maths, English and art, music and design and technology, while also unpicking the interrelationships between RE and literature and understanding what separates the different sciences. Without the right knowledge, it is difficult to quality-assure the substance of what is happening in all these different subjects. And that can make a leader feel vulnerable.

As a result, they may fall back on generic pedagogical or curricular frameworks and rely on unhelpful proxies for measuring quality, such as internal progress data or the structure of planning templates. These approaches act as straitjackets for subject leads and teachers, and the school then risks compromising the teaching and impoverishing the curriculum by inadvertently disrespecting the distinctiveness of each subject.

What can leaders do to avoid this? The obvious solution is for leaders to place trust in their subject leads, who are experts in their fields, and to get better at asking questions and listening to the answers.

However, while I absolutely believe in trusting the expertise of subject specialists, school leaders will most likely still struggle if they lack expertise in the subject themselves.

In my experience, it is almost impossible to effectively line manage a subject without grappling with the substance of that subject. Even as a non-specialist, you must be willing to engage in the debate over place, physical geography or the local area in geography; to unpick what is meant by “mastery” in maths; or to explore the difference between linguistic phonics and alternative systematic synthetic phonics approaches.

Essentially, as a school leader, you need to become something of an expert in all subjects. This sounds like a monumental task - and it is. It would be tempting to retreat. But I think it is incumbent on us to embrace the challenge.

So, where do you start?

1. Get reading

I recently committed to reading at least one new book in every subject taught at my schools over the coming year. While this will not instantly give me sufficient knowledge to fully engage in specialist debates, I am hoping that it will allow me to engage further in discussion and help me to put the substance of the curriculum at the centre of my leadership.

For instance, before reading Diane McGuinness’ Early Reading Instruction and engaging with debates on the teaching of reading, I found it difficult to understand what my wife - a primary headteacher - was talking about when she described implementing a phonics programme with fidelity. Now my discussions with primary colleagues are of a significantly superior quality.

2. Work alongside your subject leads, not against them

Leaders must also be cautious when they engage with subjects outside of their own specialism. The last thing you want is to be a leader who knows just enough to be an irritant to your subject experts, without knowing enough to productively challenge and support the development of curricular thought. Worse still, you don’t want to be the leader who believes they know more than their subject experts and becomes a micromanager.

But the alternative cannot be to simply shrug and say that it’s too hard. It’s our job to embrace the challenge. It is also our job to do this alongside subject specialists. Our role includes helping them to be better at their jobs, establishing trust, being collaborative and valuing their disciplines, while modelling engagement with the substance of the school.

3. Ditch generic interventions

Of course, school leaders are already busy. Where on earth will you find the time to read around other subjects? For starters, you can avoid the lure of generic leadership initiatives and reject intensive intervention programmes or cumbersome “quality assurance” procedures that might impoverish your curriculum. For example, I believe that if you cancel all meetings and analysis about generic internal data divorced from substance, and make those conversations about curriculum and subjects instead, then your data will be better.

Ultimately, the most effective school leaders are likely to be more knowledgeable, interested and involved in the institution, context and people they’re leading, rather than “leadership” itself.

Stuart Lock is CEO of Advantage Schools and editor of the ResearchEd Guide to Leadership

This article originally appeared in the 30 October 2020 issue under the headline “How to master leadership? Be a jack of all subjects”