This week’s annual Leading Women’s Alliance (LWA) Summit: Seizing Opportunities - Leading Women to Headship and Beyond, is perfectly timed.

Not only will it bring together aspiring and current women headteachers, taking advantage of the changing leadership landscape to gather practical tips for headship and executive headship recruitment, but it also coincides with the inauguration of Donald Trump to the US presidency.

This, a signal of a changing world order with such a provocative representation of influence and power, provides a counterpoint to our exploration of ethical, values-led leadership.

What a difference a year makes.

It all seemed so simple at last year’s summit. All we had to do was address the disproportionate number of women headteachers to men by developing a network of women who would encourage each other to apply for headship; raise governor awareness about how unconscious bias mitigates against women; set up a women’s coaching and mentoring network and address the structural barriers to women applying for headship through a pledge and strategic plan.

Although our influence has had an impact, our work is not yet done.

We have helped to re-frame models of headship through, for example, advocating co-headships and we’ve helped to inform the Department for Education’s women’s coaching programme.

We have encouraged an extension of the NCTL Equality and Diversity Grant for Schools, many of which have developed effective gender and diversity continuous professional development and learning (CPDL) programmes developing confidence in women’s leadership as described by Ruth Smith, deputy head at Mulberry School for Girls and co-founder of the LWA.

An increasing number of women are part of regional and national networks through, for example, the LWA network and WomenEd, enabling women to share practice and draw strength from each other.

‘Confrontational leadership behaviours’

However, none of us could have foreseen, twelve months ago, the tsunami of change in national and international politics that would impact directly on our schools, our communities and our leadership.

Although many of us, as headteachers, have always provided a safe haven and education for refugee children fleeing war-torn areas, we could not have predicted the impact that such large movements of peoples would have on media exploitation and the consequent impact on communities.

Debates before and after the EU referendum exposed underlying divisions across the population, a rise of xenophobia and an increase in racist hate crimes which has directly affected many of our schools and their communities.

The American election gave voice to misogyny and confrontational leadership behaviours, made legitimate by its outcome and the new world of “post-truth” politics.

So, how might we lead our schools in such a world? Doesn’t following our moral purpose in leadership extend to a moral obligation at this time?  

An obligation to resist a rising voice of prejudice by asserting and educating for values of equity, fairness and social justice?

If so, how might those values inform our school curricula, how will we equip our aspiring school leaders to lead now and in the future? What might we add to our Leading Women’s Alliance Pledge?

The 2017 Summit will seize the moment. In addition to providing practical solutions and case-studies of effective community school leadership, we will network women in order to develop collaborative, nurturing and empowering leadership strategies.

We will make our values explicit as we continue to influence, heal, and lead our school communities during these turbulent times. We look forward to welcoming you.

On 20 January 2017, Mulberry School for Girls will be hosting the second annual conference of the Leading Women’s Alliance: Seizing Opportunities - Leading Women to Headship and Beyond providing further opportunities for women leaders to gather to define what it is to be an effective leader and to champion inclusive, values-led leadership.  Some tickets are still available on Eventbrite and the full programme is available here.

Carol Jones is chair and co-founder of The Leading Women’s Alliance and a former London headteacher of two secondary schools and a Pupil Referral Unit

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