Abstract
Executive Headship refers to those head teachers in England who lead two or more schools that have entered into a Federation. A common federative model involves a lead school working to support and improve a partner school (or schools). The Executive Heads of these federations, and their wider leadership teams, constitute one of an emerging set of practices in England that has been termed System Leadership, or as working for the success and welfare of students in other schools as well as one’s own.
This chapter draws on a paper published with David Hopkins in the Australian Journal of Education
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Notes
- 1.
The federative model is common amongst primary schools in the Netherlands. There are currently around 7,000 primary schools in the Netherlands of which 80% (5,600) have one governing board for two or more schools. The average size of these federations comprises 11 schools, with 237 staff members and 2,471 pupils (NCSL, 2006).
- 2.
The 37 federations receive varying levels of Government funding amounting to £16 million overall. Half contain schools that are “in Ofsted categories, low-attaining or under-performing” (NAO, 2006).
- 3.
The rational for such national systemic working is well articulated by Michael Fullan. In Systems Thinkers in Action: Moving beyond the standards plateau, Fullan (2004) argues for the importance of school leaders acting as agents of change for the system as a whole, through collective commitment and the opportunity to engage in a wider arena. Such engagement might come through forms of lateral networking or in specific capacity-building roles. But for Fullan the important factor is the opportunity for professionals “to interact beyond their own situation in order to change the larger context” (p. 11).
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Higham, R. (2010). Federations and System Leadership. In: Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M., Hopkins, D. (eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2660-6_41
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