In the lead up to my session at ResearchED Rugby on 15th June, I am serialising a chapter from my upcoming book on school leadership. If you want to find out more, come along. In Part 2 of this series of posts, I considered how intelligent we need our leaders to be. The conclusion was … Continue reading Do we need clever leaders? (pt3)

In the lead up to my session at ResearchED Rugby on 15th June, I am serialising a chapter from my upcoming book on school leadership. If you want to find out more, come along. In Part 1 of this series of posts, I considered how intelligent we want our leaders to be. The conclusion was … Continue reading Do we need clever leaders? (pt2)

In the lead up to my session at ResearchED Rugby on 15th June, I am serialising a chapter from my upcoming book on school leadership. If you want to find out more, come along. Part 1: Do we want our leaders to be clever? “Who's the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows … Continue reading Do we need clever leaders? (pt1)

Generic management practices run rife in many schools, and we’re beginning to wake up to how pervasive and damaging they can be. Flight paths appear to be the latest target for disdain. I’m all for rooting out the rot. However, we also need to understand how the rot set in, else it will happen again, … Continue reading When first we seek to control

Some encounters I've had recently have made me realise that some of the stuff I write actually gets read, and has even been well received. It is a funny thing. Blogging is often like launching one of those spacecraft out in to the universe, never to return, hoping that some alien race will intercept it … Continue reading The Substance Project

In Episode 2, Season 6 of Game of Thrones, my favourite character, Tyrion Lannister, utters his greatest line. The moment is thus: Tyrion Lannister: Dragons do not do well in captivity. Missandei: How do you know this? Tyrion Lannister: That's what I do. I drink and I know things. A version of this quote occurs … Continue reading I think and I know things

As I write, I am on my way back from the Lake District with a group of colleagues from my school. We spent our weekend walking in the mountains. It was cold, boggy, very windy and altogether wonderful. I find human company taxing at times. I am not prone to make friends at work (or … Continue reading Winterland

I had a brief period in my career when I used to speak at lots of conferences and events. It was the era of specialist schools and of sufficient funding, and there was a real buzz around sharing innovative practice (if you're too young too remember then trust me, it really was like this for … Continue reading Is there a place for the profit motive in state schools?

The grandly titled ASCL Ethical Leadership Commission have published their final report which sets out a moral framework for school leadership 'to support leaders in their decision-making and in calling out unethical behaviour'. This is a laudable piece of work. I am one of the voices, to which they refer, calling for a more ethical … Continue reading Ethics is an economic problem

Following on from two posts here and here in which I made a case for the importance of leadership knowledge, and against the idea of generic leadership competencies, this series of posts will explore the parameters of a domain of knowledge to be developed by all school senior leaders. Part 1 can be found here. … Continue reading The domain of senior leadership (II)