School Leadership and Education System Reform

How can school leaders shape organisations that offer consistently high quality, rounded and equitable education in the context of rapid change? How can wider education systems support and encourage all schools to succeed in this way? What are the challenges and opportunities involved? What can we learn from existing evidence and research?

School Leadership and Education System Reform considers the ways in which school leadership and its practice has changed and developed in response to a rapidly changing educational context over the last decade. This new edition is substantially revised and updated, with ten completely new chapters. It includes contributions from a range of leading thinkers and researchers in the field of educational leadership and management. Theoretically and conceptually informed, the contributors draw on recent empirical research studies into leadership, learning and system reform in England and more widely to explore the key issues for contemporary school leadership and management in high-autonomy-high-accountability systems.

New chapters look at:

• System governance and lateral accountability in ‘self-improving’ school systems
• Leading curriculum development and accelerating progress for disadvantaged children in schools
• Effective deployment of teaching assistants/leadership for inclusion
• School collaboration, partnerships and ‘system leadership’
• Securing improvement at scale, across multiple schools and across localities
• New conceptions of leadership, including ethical and invitational leadership

School Leadership and Education System Reform provides accessible but research and theory-informed chapters, each of which includes summaries and suggestions for further reading.