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2 introduction
"Good leadership is critical to a successful school. Success comes from aiming high with the clear vision, ethos and communication that good leadership brings. We will act to support high quality school leadership and inspired, ambitious school communities." Ambitious, Excellent Schools (November 2004) |
In Ambitious, Excellent Schools the Executive made a commitment to "establish new routes to achieve the Standard for Headship, during 2006, to provide choice and alternatives to the Scottish Qualification for Headship". The aim of providing alternatives to the Scottish Qualification to Headship ( SQH) is to offer candidates for headship as wide a range of development opportunities as possible to support their progression toward the Standard for Headship ( SfH).
As a result, and following a series of informal meetings and focus groups with stakeholders throughout the country, the Continuing Professional Development Leadership Group have developed proposals for more flexible approaches. These are set out in this consultation document and your views on them are invited.
This document suggests how candidates will be able to combine experiential learning with established and new development programmes. It raises a number of questions around ways that flexibility and choice can be offered to individuals, particularly in the context of other continuing professional development initiatives, while maintaining over-all quality with an appropriate balance and rigour of approach.
The proposal is that flexibility should emerge from a plan of activity developed individually by each candidate. The opportunity to put together a personal plan of action to meet the SfH, with varying levels of support as necessary, will allow an individualised approach to develop, tailored to the candidate's own particular context, experience and needs. This will be both demanding and challenging and require candidates to take professional and personal responsibility in developing their programme of activities.
Each candidate adopting a flexible approach to meeting the Standard will draw up a Professional Development Plan, through the Professional Review and Development ( PR&D) process, outlining actions and learning outcomes to meet the SfH based on identified development needs. Crucial to this plan are opportunities to lead and develop.
"The critical factor in leadership development is to be given opportunities to develop leadership skills through active involvement in leading school developments/improvements as a Depute, Principal Teacher or classroom teacher." Headteacher |
This may mean a combination of development activities that is very different from the SQH. But it may also mean candidates drawing on aspects of the existing SQH programme, with candidates opting into those parts which best meet their needs. Over time, candidates will be able to choose from a wide variety of development opportunities, including formal programmes, modules, coaching support, secondments, residential workshops, e-learning provision and so on, from a wide range of providers and with agreed support from their local authority. There is however a clear recognition in the flexible approach of the importance of experiential opportunities within school, authority and beyond.
In this consultation document we offer advice and guidance to candidates, and current and new providers of leadership development opportunities, about the principles which will apply in developing approaches and programmes, and some examples of practice. We also indicate some of the measures which will help ensure consistency of experience across Scotland.
We would particularly welcome responses to, and consideration of, the specific questions posed throughout this paper.
Information on how to respond to this consultation paper is given in Section 10.
"I had been an APT in a large school for 2 years when I became a Development Officer for a specific subject area of the curriculum.
I delivered in-service training for large numbers of staff (special, primary, secondary), produced materials, assisted with school reviews and supported individual staff/departments. I was entrusted with responsibility and learned leadership skills as well as being able to observe good practice which in turn influenced my own teaching and approaches. After being a Principal Teacher for 3 years, I again became a Development Officer, this time for a more generic area and with responsibility for the curriculum 3-18. Again, this job afforded me an overview and knowledge of whole school issues as well as leading a high profile curricular priority. I would change nothing about these experiences! They gave me the challenge, responsibility and overview I was looking for and were the platforms from which I became firstly a Principal Teacher and secondly an Assistant (now Deputy) Head." Depute Head |
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