Rethinking leadership in an all-through school

Does organising leadership by primary and secondary phases in an all-through school make sense?

This is how most all-through schools operate, and it is what our International Baccalaureate Continuum school, from early years to post-16, had done for many years. It had worked well.

But if pupils move through school as a continuous progression, why are the teachers they interact with organised by phase?

It was this question that, in November 2025, we asked ourselves as part of a review of leadership responsibilities, accountability and the way school improvement work was distributed.

The outcome was that we felt there was a better way to organise ourselves - not by phase, but by areas of school focus. As such, from August 2026 we will base our school leadership focus not around ages but three interconnected pillars central to student success:

• Teaching and Learning
• Curriculum, Standards and Assessment
• Student Life and Culture

Leadership based on areas of focus

These pillars reflect the focus areas of our improvement journey: strengthening classroom practice, sharpening standards, improving transitions, and ensuring that student wellbeing, behaviour, leadership and belonging have the same intentionality as academic outcomes.

The real benefit is that this model allows leadership to sit around priorities that students experience consistently throughout school.

For example, our approach to inclusion will now sit within the Teaching and Learning pillar rather than as a referral process to a separate function.

This matters because inclusion is not phase- or age-specific. Students’ strengths, needs and barriers to learning do not sit neatly within primary or secondary structures.

A learner who requires adaptive teaching, language support, executive-function support, stretch, emotional regulation strategies or carefully planned access arrangements needs continuity of understanding as they move through the school.

By placing inclusion within the Teaching and Learning pillar, we ensure that inclusive practice is part of everyday pedagogy: identifying barriers, adapting instruction and creating learning environments that allow all learners to access, participate and succeed.

The same principle applies elsewhere.

For example, by bringing curriculum, standards and assessment together through a whole-school lens, we can strengthen progression between IB curriculum stages and ensure that students are better prepared for each stage of learning.

Similarly, expectations around behaviour, wellbeing, student leadership, belonging and voice should develop as students get older, and need to feel consistent across the school. A Student Life and Culture pillar allows us to achieve that while still respecting age-appropriate differences.

For example, student leadership can become a progressive journey with the confidence, responsibility and agency developed in the primary years built upon in the middle years and then strengthened in the Diploma and Careers-related Programmes.

Supporting leaders through the transition

This change has put a focus on leaders to think outside of their phase and develop new relationships with colleagues, use evidence effectively and translate strategic priorities into practice.

Leaders are being given structured time to deepen their understanding of phases and programmes beyond their previous areas of direct responsibility.

This will include working alongside phase leaders, programme coordinators and middle leaders; spending time in classrooms across the full age range; reviewing curriculum and assessment practices across the continuum; and engaging directly with staff and students to understand how the school is experienced at different stages.

We recognise, too, that this leadership redesign carries the risk of diluting phase expertise or overstretching leaders. Our intention is not for leaders to become experts in every phase of the school, but to connect expertise and strengthen accountability.

To this point, staff engagement has been an important part of the transition. Colleagues were informed a term before implementation, giving us time to explain the rationale, address questions and begin aligning leadership work before the model formally begins in August 2026.

Responses included both interest and practical questions, with colleagues wanting to understand how responsibilities will work in practice, how phase expertise will remain close to decision-making, and how the model will support rather than complicate their work.

All valid questions that you’d expect from such a significant change.

The response has been to make it clear that this is not a criticism of previous structures, nor a move away from the importance of phase expertise.

It is an evolution designed to reduce fragmentation, strengthen collaboration and create clearer whole-school ownership of improvement priorities.

What success will look like

What’s more, because any new approach takes time to become embedded, implementation will be iterative, with evaluation of both quantitative and qualitative evidence to adapt how the model is working.

This evaluation will include student progress and attainment, curriculum implementation, the quality of teaching, student wellbeing, staff engagement, parent feedback and the effectiveness of transitions.

We’re confident the model will bring benefits in all of these areas and many more we haven’t even considered yet. We are excited to begin the new term under our new model, confident it will allow us to adapt and respond to student need more effectively and with greater consistency.

Nevita Pandya MBE is principal and CEO of GEMS International School in Dubai