What does values-led school leadership look like?

I have been a teacher for 27 years (and a school leader for 21 of those years) and the great school leaders I have known have one thing in common – they are driven by their values. Their values inform everything they do.

Stop any colleague on the corridor and ask them what those leaders are about and they will be able to describe their ambitions for the children, the staff, and the community.

And by ambitions I do not mean a P8 score, an “average grade” target, or an Ofsted “outstanding” badge, I mean wanting brilliant things for the young people they serve.

So, when I decided to embark on a doctorate, I resolved to study values-led leadership. I wanted to define values-led leadership and I wanted to find out even more about what it looks like in English secondary schools today.

What is values-led leadership?

There have been some interesting trends in leadership approaches over the past 40 years. For example, from the 1980s the language of transformational or transformative leadership (Burns, 1978) was centre-stage in central government policy and policy documents.

In this approach power is manifested through (not over) people and unsurprisingly leadership charisma is a key component for success.

However, at the start of the 20^th century a number of studies (Day et al, 2001: Gold et al, 2003) unpicked the weaknesses of transformational leadership approaches and presented principled or values-led leadership as the real key to successful and happy schools.

This was in part because studies exposed “manipulative leadership” as the dark side of transformational leadership, with its necessary focus on change and improvement.

In contrast, “moral leadership” where the headteacher acts according to a set of values or beliefs (and thus the critical focus of leadership is on the values and ethics of leaders themselves) was roundly explored and endorsed (see, for example, West-Burnham, 2001).

In short, the headteacher’s values are a set of personal beliefs or ethics. Heads articulate their values as a vision for the school and demonstrate their values in their leadership behaviours. This is values-led leadership.

Whose values? Which values?

But just as I was starting out in my research someone asked me whether it could be a bad thing to be a values-led leader: “Could a school leader have bad values?” he asked.

After some pondering, I decided the answer was probably “no”. For the most part, this is because, from the minute we sign our contracts as teachers, our behaviour is guided by a set of values or principles – the Nolan Principles. These principles were designed by the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life in the UK (HM Government, 1995) with the purpose of bringing integrity into public life. These principles are:

1. Selflessness
2. Integrity
3. Objectivity
4. Accountability
5. Openness
6. Honesty
7. Leadership

Further to this, the Ethical Leadership Commission developed an Ethical Framework for Educational Leadership based on the Nolan Principles (ASCL, 2019). The commission identified seven personal characteristics or virtues through which school leaders should (and do) show their leadership:

1. Trust: Leaders are trustworthy and reliable.
2. Wisdom: Leaders use experience, knowledge, and insight.
3. Kindness: Leaders demonstrate respect, generosity of spirit, understanding and good temper.
4. Justice: Leaders are fair and work for the good of all children.
5. Service: Leaders are conscientious and dutiful.
6. Courage: Leaders work courageously in the best interests of children and young people.
7. Optimism: Leaders are positive and encouraging.

It was these seven principles and seven virtues that I used in my research as markers of values-led leadership. And it is these principles and virtues that largely define the values in values-led leadership in our schools.

So what does values-led leadership look like in a school?

I found there was lots to read about values-led leadership in schools. However, much of it was not as tangible as I had hoped. Despite this, several key pieces of research caught my eye.

The first – Hill et al (2016) – set out to understand why the UK was not getting a decent return on its investment in education and concluded that the system is creating and rewarding the wrong type of leaders – “surgeon leaders” (a topic SecEd also tackled at the time – see Bromley, 2018).

These surgeon leaders are celebrated and rewarded by the government – achieving an “undeserved reputation” – because they achieve quick successes in terms of student outcomes – but it is not sustained.

The research identified a better type of leader – “the architect”. In contrast, under the architect’s leadership “examination results start improving in the third year of their tenure and continue improving long after they’ve left” (Hill et al, 2016).

These architects are “strategic, transformational and inclusive thinking” and “visionary, unsung heroes”. And yet the Hill et al study notes that architects and their approach to school leadership are not really recognised or rewarded. Interestingly this research courted some controversy and challenge, but the descriptions of the “architect” leader provided a good description of a values-led leader for me to explore and develop in my research.

Alongside the Hill et al study there was another strand of interest for me. These were studies that described values-led leadership enacted by building strong systems and structures around core values that become part of the school’s DNA (Jackson, 2000; Gold et al, 2003; Armstrong et al, 2018). Distributive or connective leadership were key elements of these descriptions.

And how did that align with what I found out in my research (a combination of surveys and case studies)? Where I found values-led leadership it looked somewhat like the “architect”; a humble and knowledgeable visionary who carefully, and with the support of those in the community, redesigned the school to better meet the needs of the students. Pace of change was steady and the changes were deep rather than superficial.

Values-led leadership also looked like distributed or connective leadership. In the case study schools, the trust leaders had in their teams and colleagues was palpable.

Unlike Ofsted regimes, the accountability approaches in these schools were positive. The headteacher’s communication, openness and care for the wellbeing of all earned them the trust of their staff. They talked about what was important to them and their values were evident in much of what they said and did.

And is it actually a good way to lead a school?

Yes! Both the literature and my own research supports this conclusion. There is evidence in the literature that values-led leadership impacts on learning, positive outcomes and effective school improvement (Jackson, 2000; Gold et al, 2003; Ko et al, 2018).

In my research, the impact of values-led leadership was evident not just in student outcomes but also on the wellbeing of staff. There was a respect for expertise and colleagues felt trusted.

The schools had been modernised and developed but these developments were understood and supported; the success was shared.

There was a moral dimension to the impact of their leadership too – the focus was on all students, not just those who fly high or who were less challenging.

Finally, values-led leadership had increased respect for the role of headteacher and there was some evidence of aspiration to the role among the staff in these schools.

Some things to ponder

I thoroughly enjoyed my six years of study and research. I cannot recommend this experience it enough. It constantly gave me things to ponder, and I share them with you in the hopes that they are useful.

Do we talk about our values enough in school? I do not mean the “mission, vision and values” that we trot out at parent events or even in assemblies. Rather, on the simplest level does every member of staff in school know about the Nolan Principles? These should have been guiding their behaviour from the moment they first stepped into the building. Could they be mentioned in job and person specifications and in interview questions? In induction sessions? Do leaders in your school know about the Framework for Ethical Leadership and its seven virtues? The toolkit is good – it encourages a leadership team to reflect on each of the principles and virtues as they work on any changes or plans for the school community. It could even be a great activity in the early stages of school development planning.

Can school leaders articulate their values? One of the best activities I have ever done with a senior leadership team was to ask them all to write down why they do what they do and what keeps them strong and steady. Then I read them out and we discussed who we thought had written which one. Eye-opening!

How do you stay steady and hold tight to your values? The most dispiriting part of my research was when I explored the “place and space” for values-led leadership. It was not good news. Our accountability measures (including Ofsted) often force change (improvement?) at a pace that does not really allow for values-led leadership. Staying steady to your values is hard (and there is a lot of research about how leaders abandon their values under pressure). But discussing your values with a peer or other senior leaders in your school could really help.

Dr Claire Tasker is the headteacher of High Storrs School in Sheffield. She has been a teacher of history for 27 years and a school leader for 21 years.

Further information & references 

• Armstrong, Bryant & Ko: Values driven leadership through institutional structures and practices: How successful schools in England and Hong Kong “absorb” policy, Leadership and Policy in Schools, 17:3, 2018.
• ASCL: Navigating the educational moral maze: Final report of the Ethical Leadership Commission, 2019: www.ascl.org.uk/elc
• Bromley: Leadership and staff retention: Surgeons vs architects, SecEd, 2018: www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/best-practice/leadership-and-staff-retention-surgeons-vs-architects-part-1
• Burns: Leadership, Harper and Row, 1978.
• Day, Harris & Hadfield: Challenging the orthodoxy of effective school leadership, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 4:1, 2001.
• Gold et al: Principled Principals? Values-driven leadership: Evidence from ten case studies of “outstanding” school leaders, Educational Management and Administration 31,2,
• Hill et al: The one type of leader who can turn around a failing school, Harvard Business Review, 2016.
• HM Government: Guidance: The Seven Principles of Public Life, Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life, 1995: www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life
• Jackson: The School Improvement Journey: Perspectives on leadership, School Leadership & Management,
• West-Burnham; Interpersonal leadership, NCSL Leading Edge Seminar, National College for School Leadership, 2001.