When my friend Sir Anthony Seldon, together with outgoing Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw and Toby Young (now appointed boss of the New Schools Network), announced the plan for a school leadership college, the headlines were all about fast-tracking new teachers to headship in as little as two or three years. I took exception to what appeared to me inappropriate, almost indecent haste. Though I have no problem with fast-tracking as such, there are limits! I confess, I was critical.

The project has received approval and the University of Buckingham is ready to open its National College of Headship in Milton Keynes. In an excellent Thunderer piece in The Times the other day, Sir Anthony gave a reasoned and forceful outline both of the training that the college will be offering and of the crying national need that it aims to meet. What little metaphorical weight I have, I throw behind his brainchild: I can argue about the pace of acceleration later!

Not only is this the right idea: it’s set in the right place. Let me explain.

At the 1997 election, Tony Blair had as his priority slogan “education, education, education”. Visiting schools, he famously claimed that he could tell whether a school would be any good before he even entered it - just by meeting the head. Perhaps it takes the arrogance of a head to say this: he was right. It would be a hell of a senior team that could maintain excellence in a school while carrying the head.

Mr Blair established the National College for School Leadership. Ever one for a grand gesture, he sited it on a university campus (Nottingham), spending £28 million on what was hailed as “Sandhurst for teachers”.

Extravagance? Gesture politics? I don’t think so. He saw the need to develop the next generation of school leaders and up-skill the current one: if the NCSL was a statement, it was a powerful and necessary one.

How the NCSL lost its way

Sadly, it lost its way when politicians and bureaucrats got hold of it. First, it became not a training institution per se, merely an umbrella organisation which licensed (and housed) providers of the required courses and qualifications. Thus it became bemired in frameworks and standards.

Though it oversaw some high-quality training (I followed a few excellent courses), even the landmark National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) became too often the kind of box-ticking process we’d all sworn we didn’t want: bizarrely, it emerged that many senior teachers who gained the NPQH had no intention of applying for headship.

Thus it never operated as a staff college in the old-fashioned sense, teaching (let’s use that word!) its own unrivalled programmes of leadership development, drawing on the best leadership research and experience available (and there’s plenty). Instead, almost overnight NCSL was suddenly seen by Westminster as the machinery for delivering the government’s politico-educational agenda.

All too quickly, for example, it was running programmes to train school business managers. It was not wrong to identify the need to develop middle leaders, the senior leaders of the future: the massive Leading from the Middle programme did useful work. Worthy but wordy, sound but dull, such developments combined to dilute the vital focus on the top job, on headship, the College’s original raison d’être.

Finally, it lost its status independent of government, becoming an executive agency in 2012. Since 2013 the rebranded National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) has had a broad remit including that of policing the profession, awarding Qualified Teacher Status, hearing disciplinary cases and, where necessary, barring teachers from the profession.

These may all be necessary functions (I’m not convinced): but they don’t belong in a National College of Headship. Government interference and control-freakery messed up the last one: fortunately, policy-makers will find the private Buckingham University harder to mess with.

We must hope that the new college will avoid peddling formulaic quick fixes, keep the government at arm’s-length and maintain a robust, visionary and inspirational passion for its mission.

With the redoubtable Sir Anthony behind it, I’d say the outlook’s good.

Dr Bernard Trafford is headteacher of Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne and a former chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. The views expressed here are personal. He tweets at @bernardtrafford

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