David Dixon, Headteacher, Bowbridge Primary School, Newark
This workshop provides an overview of education for sustainable development (ESD) looking at curriculum coverage, school procurement and managing the school site. It demonstrates the links between ESD and strategies for school improvement, highlighting key implications for school leaders. Practical activity illustrates the importance of ‘systems thinking’ and how this links to the ESD approach.
View the slides from the Green leadership workshop 
(2Mb, 34 pages) Warning: large file
Pam Barnes, Headteacher, Longshaw Junior School, Blackburn with Darwen
Hillary Healey, Headteacher, St Silas Junior and Infant School, Blackburn with Darwen
Keith McDonald, School Improvement Adviser for the Collaborative in Blackburn with Darwen
Maxine Froggatt on behalf of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL)
Putting Heads Together is an innovative pilot programme developed in partnership with schools in Blackburn with Darwen and NCSL. In the programme, a collaborative of headteachers, assisted by the local authority, take responsibility for identifying future leaders in their groups of schools, assessing their skills and knowledge gaps and developing bespoke leadership programmes. The programme includes compulsory elements of work-shadowing headteachers in the borough and provides each candidate with a headteacher coach/mentor. The programme has been adapted to include the induction of new headteachers within the collaborative of schools.
This workshop outlines the elements of the Putting Heads Together programme and discusses the real benefits of such an approach, not only for the prospective leaders, but for the experienced heads in sharing good practice and promoting school self evaluation, as well as developing them as future trainers in succession planning.
View the slides from the Putting Heads Together workshop (880kb, 17 pages)
David Carter, Principal, John Cabot City Technology College (CTC), Bristol
This workshop focuses on the three key strands of the personalised learning framework.
View the slides from the Creating and developing a personalised learning culture workshop (313kb, 28 pages)
Vanessa Wiseman, Headteacher, Langdon School, Newham
Alasdair McDonald, Headteacher, Morpeth School, Tower Hamlets
This interactive workshop focuses on the opportunities and challenges we all share in developing and maintaining a positive and inclusive ethos, whilst continually raising achievement. It offers the opportunity to share experiences and positive practice and to reflect on the core values and moral purpose that underpin all we try to achieve in challenging circumstances.
View the slides from the Creating a community ethos workshop (1.34Mb, 19 pages) Warning: large file
Truda White, Headteacher, Highbury Grove School, Islington
Siobhan Leahy, Headteacher, Edmonton County School, Enfield
Caty Marchant, Deputy Headteacher, Ridgeway Primary School, Croydon
Joanna Redzimski, Headteacher, Ridgeway Primary School, Croydon
Dylan Wiliam, Deputy Director, Institute of Education, University of London
In this interactive workshop, delegates will learn about how two schools, one primary and one secondary, have supported the development of assessment for learning, and have the opportunity to reflect on the relevance of these models for their own institutions.
View the slides from the Models for leading assessment for learning workshop (1.8Mb, 37 pages) Warning: large file
Richard Gerver, Headteacher, Grange Primary School, Long Eaton
This workshop focuses on developing and leading creative and personalised approaches that stimulate and engage the whole school community. It explores practical teaching approaches and wider issues related to vision and the broadening of experiences and vocational learning. Using Grange Primary School as a context, delegates will have the opportunity to follow one school’s journey in developing the agendas of creativity and personalised learning and to hear about the Grangeton Project and the move to their new curriculum.
View the slides from the Grangeton…out of the ordinary workshop (224kb, 12 pages)
Wendy Garrard, Headteacher, St Mary’s Primary School, Mildenhall
Pam Craig, Assistant Headteacher, St Mary’s Primary School, Mildenhall
Alison Earl, Assistant Headteacher, St Mary’s Primary School, Mildenhall
Therese Allen, Headteacher, Wychall Primary School, Birmingham
This workshop focuses on raising aspirations and expectations through working with the whole school community, considering some of the issues raised when working in challenging circumstances. A range of activities will enable delegates to reflect and develop strategies to support their own work in schools.
Paul Grant, Headteacher, Robert Clack Comprehensive School, Dagenham
What do you do if you have inherited 25 supply teachers out of a staff of 80; two thirds of the previous senior team have taken early retirement; your results are rock bottom; your pupil attendance is in the lowest one per cent; you have a budget deficit of £200,000 and Investors in People is not within anyone’s consciousness? You obviously need to come up with a coherent approach that restores confidence and offers a bright future. Paul Grant explains his strategy for using the strengths of his staff effectively over the past ten years, managing talent and succession planning.
View the slides from the Making performance management work workshop (1.3Mb, 29 pages) Warning: large file
Dame Yasmin Bevan DBE, Headteacher, Denbigh High School, Luton
Stephen Hehir, Teaching and Learning Leader for Humanities, Denbigh High School, Luton
Denbigh High School has had an innovative curriculum and approach to the teaching of humanities in Year 7 for the last three years. This was designed to ease the process of transfer from junior school and encourage learners to develop a more reflective approach to their learning in the early years of Key Stage 3. This workshop looks at how a cross-curricular approach to history, geography, religious education and citizenship has brought about a provision which is highly enjoyed and valued by young people, which has had a visible impact on their learning and which has necessitated the development of a unified approach to assessment and reporting to parents in these areas of the curriculum.
View the slides from the Developing the Key Stage 3 curriculum workshop (608kb, 17 pages)
Dave Harris, Principal, Serlby Park School, Doncaster
This workshop looks at the lessons learnt from taking an infant, junior and secondary school and amalgamating them into one all through 3-18 school. The evolution of an organic, more empowering leadership structure is having implications far outside the area of transition. The workshop draws on the work of international leadership experts such as Charles Handy and Margaret Wheatley to challenge all schools to prepare leadership for the future.
Nicola Shipman, Headteacher, Monteney School, Sheffield
Angela Armytage, Headteacher, Yewlands Technology College, Sheffield
This workshop reflects on the new leadership models at all levels across a ‘family of schools’. The seven schools have worked collaboratively since 2002. They serve a diverse community, ranging from three per cent free school meals to 50 per cent free school meals. The ‘family’ includes one special school, six primary schools, one secondary school and one sixth form college.
The original work was founded on teaching and learning and has moved beyond this to look at effective systemic change in areas such as safeguarding, administration and facilities management.
View the slides from the Next Practice models of leadership workshop (612kb, 19 pages)
Dave Smith, Headteacher, Long Levens Junior School, Gloucester
Martin Young, Headteacher and NCSL Leadership Network Regional Leader, Cranford Park Primary School, Hillingdon
As a leader, where does the vision for personalisation come from? How do we articulate this and engage our communities in supporting it? Where are the tensions and barriers that we must overcome? This workshop looks at how two schools are leading the development of a personalised curriculum, exploring the relationship between creativity and personalisation, and the challenge of personalisation in a school where there is great diversity of culture and ethnicity. Structured discussion will focus delegates on engaging with personalisation, and will leave them with a clear vision and rationale for personalisation in their own establishments.
View the slides from Dave Smith´s workshop (996kb, 15 pages) and Martin Young´s workshop (218kb, 9 pages)
Mike Wilkins, Headteacher, Outwood Grange School, Wakefield
The whole point of schools is that children come first, and everything we do must reflect that single goal. Never has it been more important to offer every available opportunity to children in order to increase their life chances. Staff need to be flexible in their approach, adopting the notion of ‘confident uncertainty’ in exploring ways to meet the needs of our students. This presentation examines the way Outwood Grange College is personalising the curriculum for students, explores the two year KS3 and three year KS4 and demonstrates how students are tracked six weekly using our Praising Stars monitoring system.
Damian Allan, Executive Director of Children’s Services, Knowsley MBC
Elaine Ayre, Service Director Quality Assurance, Knowsley MBC
Pam Jervis, Headteacher, Brookfield High School, Kirkby
Knowsley is committed to transforming education by creating a world-class education system with 21st century learning environments at the heart of local communities where schools support the needs of the whole child; are responsive and adaptive to societal and economic change offering learning for all, alongside integrated child, youth and family services; and develop partnerships with wider community services. Knowsley was awarded Wave 1 funding from Building Schools for the Future, which aims to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school by the year 2020.
The way provision is currently organised must change in a number of ways to meet the needs of 21st century learning environments. Four main areas have been identified: leadership and management; design; governance; and curriculum. This workshop considers research focused on the urban setting of Knowsley’s leadership and management and how it will need to alter to be capable of supporting and sustaining the transformation of education within the Borough.
View the slides from the Models of leadership for an urban setting workshop (356kb, 14 pages)
Gary Fooks, Executive Director of the Chesil Education Partnership
Chesil is a partnership of 28 schools and colleges of all phases and types in Weymouth and Portland, Dorset. Gary Fooks, Executive Director of the Chesil Education Partnership, explains what the partnership is, what it does and how it developed, with a particular emphasis on the challenges faced by its leaders. Through questions and answers and table discussions, delegates will be invited to share their own collaborative leadership challenges, the solutions they have found or strategies they could try.
View the slides from the Challenges for collaborative leadership workshop (2.9Mb, 29 pages) Warning: large file
Barry Day, Headteacher and NLE, Greenwood Dale School, Nottingham
Hazel Pulley, Headteacher and NLE, Caldecote Community Primary School, Leicester
Pupils win when you share your excellent, inspirational and outstanding leadership and your staff models good practice with other schools.
The NLE and Support School model enables school leaders to share and grow excellent leadership, teaching and learning opportunities.
Join Barry Day and Hazel Pulley, two of the first heads to be designated NLEs, for an interactive and informative session around this visionary model…could you be up for this too?
View the slides from Barry Day´s workshop (210kb, 23 pages) and Hazel Pulley´s workshop
Sharon Jefferies, Headteacher, Newark Orchard School, Newark
Anne McCormick, Headteacher, Queens Park Lower School, Bedford
John Pickett, Headteacher, Hazelbury Junior School, Edmonton, London
Late in 2006, NCSL assembled a team of current, former and future headteachers to redesign headship. The team worked alongside designers and social scientists to develop models of headship which are attractive to future headteachers, sustainable for current heads, and more effective at improving children’s outcomes. Three of the heads involved in the project present and discuss their work and findings in this workshop.