As part of our wider mission to raise the awareness of the role of the middle leader in generating positive school culture and high-quality teaching, our policy arm has been working on collecting insights from our participants, alumni and partner school headteachers. The first policy piece, entitled “Challenges middle leaders face in raising achievement” was published in May 2010, and its key recommendations for policy makers are:
Addressing the missing middle CPD gap
Middle leaders suffer from the ‘missing middle’ syndrome when it comes to CPD entitlement. Whist NQTs and new Heads are provided with a minimum number of CPD hours/training, middle leaders do not have such an entitlement. As the paper has highlighted, the middle leader role marks a significant transition from being a classroom teacher, and requires learning a different set of leadership and management skills. It is crucial that middle leaders are supported through the management transition with the relevant CPD time.
Providing personalised CPD on development areas
Ensure that middle leaders are given the sufficient personal development support to assist them in their role. Areas of strengths and weaknesses could be identified using tools such as the Leadership Competency Framework which is used in our programme to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our participants’ leadership and management skills.
Peer to peer support
It is important for middle leaders in schools with similar backgrounds to communicate ideasand different practices in conducting their role. Providing a network to allow this to take place between schools can have a significant impact.