Canadian guru Michael Fullan, in an online article called “The role of the head in school improvement”, points to four things that make a school successful: the knowledge, skills and attitudes of its teachers; a professional approach to planning goals for student learning; the coherence and co-ordination of their efforts; and the quality of the school’s resources.
Strong leadership, he suggests, is the way to achieve these. Fullan estimates that two in five heads offer such leadership. But he admits that there is no guaranteed method for turning good teachers into good heads. He believes that good heads get better over time, but acknowledges that pressure and the frantic pace of educational change have made learning on the job difficult. The full text is available at: http:www.ncsl.org.ukindex.cfm?PageID=ev_auth_fullan Readers can email suggestions on future Internet Insights to Sam Saunders at J.P.Saunders@leeds.ac.uk
