Head Teachers
A key tenet of Teaching Scotland’s Future (2011) was that high quality school leadership was necessary to support effective learning in schools. Such a sense is endorsed by the OECD report on leadership in schools 2009 and 2021
“Leadership plays a key role in improving school outcomes. Effective leadership is essential to improve the efficiency and equity of schools.”
The establishment of a school as a genuine learning community is a high-level challenge particularly so when the role of school leaders is changing to meet the demands of preparing young people to function in a rapidly changing world. The GTCS Standard for Headship 2021 confirms the scope of the role:
“The Standard for Headship includes a focus on leadership of and for learning, teacher leadership, and working collegially to build leadership capacity in others. Those in, or aspiring to, the headteacher role will develop increasing responsibility and capacity, in relation to the kinds of roles outlined here, including enabling and empowering individuals and teams across the wider learning community.”
Across Aberdeenshire there are various management in structures. In some schools the Head Teacher oversees all management and leadership responsibilities whereas in other establishments there are Depute Head Teachers, Faculty Head Teachers and Principal Teachers that make up the overall management of the school. In situations where there is a Senior Leadership Team it would be the responsibility of the HT to devolve responsibilities, delegate tasks and monitior practices to ensure they are being carried out.
Across our service we would expect that Head Teachers lead, motivate and manage staff by delegating responsibility, setting expectations and targets and evaluating staff performance against them.
Senior/Middle leaders
The GTCS Standard for Middle Leadership 2021 confirms a range of expectations and new challenges for middle leaders in schools whether they be faculty leaders or principal teachers with specific areas of responsibility. Additionally, the GTCS explicitly confirm the importance of this role:
“The Standard for Middle Leadership includes a focus on leadership of and for learning, teacher leadership, and working collegially to build leadership capacity in others.”
In schools, directing focus towards learning and improving outcomes for learners is critical and is endorsed by the GTCS expectation for middle leaders to take a lead role:
“Middle leaders will work and contribute to the school improvement agenda, particularly in building a culture of high-quality learning and teaching and inclusive practice, while also contributing to the development of colleagues, more generally, across their school and learning community”.
Overall responsibility for the ongoing work of a school is the responsibility of the Head Teacher. To support this, where there is a management team in place, there would be a clear system in place detailing responsibility for different aspects of learning, teaching and assessment.
As a senior leader it would be expected that you would contribute in a number of different ways to the overall development of learning, teaching and assessment in ways such as detailed below:
Supporting learning and engagement:
- Communicate effectively, actively building positive and inclusive practice within the learning community amongst all stakeholders to ensure that wellbeing of all is prioritised.
- Build, sustain and model co-created vision, values and aims which underpin the work of the school.
- Fully understand how to develop and demonstrate a strategic vision which sets out positive relationships and high expectations for every learner and stakeholder.
- Support all staff to have an accurate understanding of their own levels of skill sets and provide professional and collaborative development opportunities to ensure staff feel confident in delivering a curriculum fit for the 21st century.
- Encourage, support and empower staff to be innovative and creative in their approaches to learning.
- Provide and encourage opportunities to share the leadership of learning with other professional colleagues and support a culture where learners are encouraged to lead aspects of their own learning.
- Lead collegial practices and collaborative approaches to digital literacies and the use of digital technologies which enhance learning and teaching.
- Monitor and review learning experiences for all learners so that they are effective and provide strengths
- Ensure systems are in place to support the rights and wellbeing of every member of the school community.
Ensuring high quality teaching
- Ensure that the culture and ethos of the school is underpinned by our vision and values which reflect the UNCRC and contributes to respectful high expectations.
- Agree and establish consistent approaches to high quality classroom experiences for all learners and engage in regular self evaluation of these.
- Establish strategic plans to improve the professional skills and knowledge of self and colleagues.
- Promote and facilitate opportunities for staff to enrich their knowledge and understanding of their teaching to support positive learning contexts for all.
- Inspire a culture of critical reflection and self-evaluation and establish approaches to review curriculum practices which gathers views from colleagues and others across the learning community.
- Take a positive solution-focussed approach to promote innovative and creative practice to meet the needs of all learners.
- Ensure the necessary resources, including staff and other agencies, are allocated and deployed effectively to provide appropriate support and challenge across all learners.
- Facilitate opportunities to share high quality practice across faculties, school and beyond in order to support improvement.
Using assessment effectively
- Agree, develop and establish whole school processes to validate and enhance the quality of curriculum practices(including pedagogy and assessment practices).
- Ensure moderation processes and approaches are applied to all aspects of learning, teaching and assessment to improve the validity and reliability of judgements of progress and attainment within and beyond the school(National Benchmarks, course specifications for qualifications).
- Quality assure the effective use of a variety of different assessment types which are used throughout the academic year to ensure staff build a range of evidence to show learners’ progress and then use this to plan appropriate next steps.
- Facilitate robust analysis of assessment data to validate evidence and inform next steps in learning and teaching.
- Ensure that assessments are accessible to all learners and appropriate strategies are put in place to meet the range of needs they may present.
- Provide opportunities fro all learners to reflect on assessments completed so that they can identify their own strengths and areas for improvement
Planning, tracking and monitoring
- Ensure the cyclical process of planning, tracking, and monitoring is ongoing and meaningful to all learners’ progress.
- Facilitate structured collegial review planning, tracking and monitoring meetings which are used to identify strengths as well as areas for improvement which are then monitored and measured for impact.
- Ensure that there is robust, in-depth analysis of current data including comparator data which informs improvement priorities, planning and practice.
- Regularly review all barriers to learning and support the co-creation of a culture in which pupil’s need are identified and well met.
- Have a clear critical understanding and knowledge of how improvements are having a positive impact on all learners.
