The Teaching School successfully secured a grant in 2013 from the National College for Teaching and Leadership, to further develop and share good succession planning and talent management practice.

The Hemel Hempstead School (Board Member) lead this project and decided to use the funding to deliver a Leadership Toolkit programme to two primary and two secondary schools.

Programme Outline

Participants were required to:

• Attend the training sessions outlined below. The sessions were taken by two senior members of staff from the participating schools, where possible one primary and one secondary.
• Arrange cross-phase visits to observe KS2 or KS3 in order to observe teaching including that of English and Mathematics.
• Extend their knowledge through wider reading.
• Complete an online reflective journal.
• Present a reflective journal, an evaluation of the programme, and professional development plan to a panel.

Following completion of the programme, the participants were requested to complete an evaluation. The results of which are shown below:

How could the Leadership Toolkit Programme be improved for future cohorts?

I really enjoyed the course. It has given me a greater insight into what some of the challenges of being in the senior leadership team are. I really enjoyed the presentation too, although it may have been useful to have received some feedback afterwards.

I think it would be really helpful to get some feedback from the course. For example the opportunity to practice giving a presentation was important, but without any honest analysis, I don't know if I am any closer to showing Head teachers what they need to see from a potential Senior Leader. Further to this, I feel it would have been helpful to have some additional direction on what was required from the presentation; it was quite challenging to put something together with such a broad brief.

Timing of trying to visit year 6 around SATs time and school plays was a challenge, although it was a good time to make links. It would be even better if the course was able to include more feeder schools to set up links, although this was an initial plan but one school was not able to participate. The opportunity to connect with leaders from other schools and key stages in a open environment to share experiences was a real bonus and something to be encouraged in a future course.

Possibly a follow up session to give a chance to consolidate some of the thoughts. The sessions were in quick succession but this kept us on our toe's and focused the project quite nicely. It would be nice to see how people have moved forward or managed to follow things through though. It would encourage us to make the time to do this. The primary visit was a little problematic at this point in the year, but still worthwhile.

I think the best thing about the course was sharing information between schools including primary and secondary colleagues. I found this particularly useful. The only thing I can really think of is perhaps looking at interview techniques or tips for applying for leadership positions. However, different levels have different requirements so this might actually be too difficult to coordinate! Overall I was really pleased with the course and it has given me more confidence to apply for a role in leadership. Thank you for all the hard work.

I am not sure that the text recommended was helpful. It was very meaty and I'm not sure what I got from reading the chapters. Was great to visit the different schools. Just a shame that only 4 schools took part. Thank you very much, Patrick.