Best Practice

Leadership and staff retention: Surgeons vs architects (part 1)

Recruitment & Retention Pay and conditions Whole-school issues Senior leadership Teaching staff Workload
In a new five-part series, Matt Bromley looks at the links between school leadership and the retention and recruitment of school staff. In part one, he considers research into the different types of leadership approach – and the implications of these for school staff

“The strength of a nation’s economy and the vitality of its society depend on the quality of its schools.”

So begins a report by the Centre for High Performance (published in the Harvard Business Review in 2017) on what it takes to be a successful school leader.

The study, by researchers Ben Laker and Alex Hill, examined 411 school leaders working in 160 academy schools in England. Laker and Hill concluded that the education system in England was appointing, recognising and rewarding the wrong kind of school leader. Our system, they argued, favoured short-term thinking – quick fixes rather than sustainable improvements.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the system is somewhat myopic when you consider that policy decisions are made within Parliamentary cycles and often with the objective of making a politician look good rather than with the best interests of pupils in mind.

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