Leading from the middle

27th September 2002, 1:00am

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Leading from the middle

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/leading-middle-1
The new National College for School Leadership isn’t just for headteachers, writes Phil Revell.

Headteachers aren’t the only ones who’ll be hearing a great deal about the National College for School Leadership in the coming weeks. The NCSL has just moved into a new pound;28 million building in Nottingham, and next month there’ll be a grand opening, with Estelle Morris or Tony Blair expected to cut the ribbon.

Less senior teachers might be forgiven for thinking the NCSL is not relevant to them. But they’d be wrong. The college doesn’t just run programmes for headteachers. In fact, anyone with any ambition to progress in their teaching career would do well to keep an eye on its activities.

The college believes in “distributed leadership”, where responsibility for decision-making is accepted throughout the school. College researchers argue that education’s leaders aren’t just born; rather, their development begins as soon as they enter teaching. Good schools invest in their staff and good leaders work hard to ensure that their replacements are already making their way up the ladder.

The project was first announced by Tony Blair in 1998, and preparations got under way two years later. NCSL staff moved to a temporary site on Nottingham University’s Jubilee campus in November 2000, and took over the running of the headteacher training programmes. These are the national professional qualification for headship (NPQH), the leadership programme for serving heads (LPSH), and the leadership and management programme for new headteachers (Headlamp). Almost 7,000 people are now working towards the NPQH qualification, which will soon be a must-have for aspiring heads.

Qualifications and training programmes for headteachers may be at the core of what the NCSL does, but new courses are aimed at those outside the senior management team. There’s a programme for bursars and a national system that allows schools to share experience of innovative projects, with funding to help them establish links. The 50 or so networks set up involve more than 500 schools.

Top of the list for middle managers is a programme aimed at secondary heads of department and primary co-ordinators; the course will be available from January 2003. A pilot “equal access to promotion” programme for ethnic minority teachers aspiring to headship has just finished (see page 25). The college’s website carries details of all courses as well as links to other education sites.

All these courses will be run from the NCSL’s spanking new premises, where a 160-seat auditorium will host conferences, with video satellite link facilities. Seminar rooms have the latest ICT equipment, and when delegates have finished putting the education world to rights, they can wander down to a lakeside restaurant or, if they’re staying, to one of the 100 en-suite bedrooms (with internet access). But future leaders won’t have to make the journey to Nottingham to take part in NCSL events. Most of the college’s work will take place at regional centres and online.

And who leads the leaders? The NCSL’s director is Heather Du Quesnay (pronounced Dukenny), an ex-deputy headteacher who has been director of education in two local authorities, Hertfordshire and Lambeth. Her sights are set high. “The college is key not only to a better education system but to a more prosperous society,” she says.

NCSL: 0870 0011155; www.ncsl.org.uk

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