The to do list of the school leader is daunting to say the least. Just glancing at standard job descriptions for those in leadership positions can prompt the question: how does one human being do all of that? It seems monumental.

And yet, school leaders do it. For those aspiring or new to school leadership, the more we can see inside the role and understand what happens day to day, the better we can be in leadership roles ourselves.

There is no shortage of books on the theory of leadership. But what is harder to find is work on the action: what to do as a school leader. I’m working on a new book that focuses on just that.

This book will look at four aspects of running a school: curriculum, behaviour, teaching and operations. It is intended to be a helpful, practical guide to school leadership. I know there are thousands of inspirational school leaders across the country doing great work, and so I’m asking for volunteers to share their experiences and expertise to form part of this book.

If you have a particular aspect of your role you know you do well, or if you’ve had impact in improving a particular area of school life, I’d love to include your voice and what you’ve done.

It’s a practical book, so I’m looking for what you did, step by step. You might have rolled out a teacher coaching programme. Rather than the evidence behind coaching, I’m looking for what you actually did: how did you get buy-in? How did you organise coaches? How did you clear time for training? How did you organise timetables for coaching to be able to happen? You might be the school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead: what is your checklist? How do you approach new concerns raised? How do you check in with key pupils and how often? You might have re-worked your school’s duty points. How did you choose where to have these? How did you manage timetabling teacher duties? How did you train teachers in doing these well? How do you follow up if they miss a duty?

If you’re interested in contributing your expertise, either as a short, 500-word narrative or as a checklist or other helpful artefact you’ve used in your role, please click on the form.

A list of current proposed areas the book will explore is below, so I’m especially interested in hearing about any of these aspects – however, if you have something related that you don’t see listed here, please do get in touch!

• Supporting middle leaders to create or review subject curriculums
• Assessment
• Line management
• Working with Heads of Department
• PSHE or Character curriculums
• Literacy and the curriculum
• Early Years
• Sixth form
• Extra-curricular
• Careers education
• Professional development
• Instructional coaching
• Monitoring and evaluation
• Safeguarding
• Working with pupils with Special Educational Needs
• Working with pupils who have English as an Additional Language
• Whole school routines
• Rewards and sanctions
• Classroom routines
• Uniform
• Suspensions
• Uniform
• Safeguarding
• The shape and structure of the school day
• Timetables
• Break time and lunch time
• Canteens
• Exams and external assessments
• In school exams
• Duties
• Reporting to parents
• School governance
• Office administration
• Non-teaching colleagues
• Meetings

Click here to contribute!

Update: as of 21 October 2023, this form was disabled due to the deadline for submissions passing. If you are still interested in contributing your expertise, please get in touch via the comments on this post.