The Chartered College of Teaching will be launching an “innovative” course for school leaders next year, Tes can exclusively reveal.

The Chartered Teacher (Leader) course will run alongside the existing Chartered Teacher Programme, and revolve around “leadership of learning”, with a focus on “pedagogy, assessment and curriculum design”, according to the college’s chief executive, Dame Alison Peacock.

The announcement comes as Tes reveals that the college will be self-sufficient by the end of March 2020, despite the fact it is on course to miss its membership target by thousands.

The college said the programme would be funded by The Mercers’ Company, a charitable organisation, but it has not disclosed the value of the investment - referring to it only as “substantial”.

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Candidates will not be required to have chartered teacher status in order to embark on the leadership course.

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Jen Baxter, chief operating officer of the Chartered College, said staff were “really excited” about the new programme, which will be piloted with a small cohort next September.

Teaching unions have given the news a cautious welcome.

Dame Alison said: “This is quite innovative because it’s not to replace any of the existing leadership programmes. This is about leadership of learning, so the whole focus will be on pedagogy, assessment, curriculum design.

“We’ve got a new landscape now that wasn’t even in existence 10 years ago, in terms of heads of school.

“If you’re a head of school, you’re responsible for the standards within your school, but you’re not probably spending much of your time focusing on budget - you’ve got a CEO of your trust maybe that’s focusing on that. What you are expected to spend your time doing is making sure the school runs really well and that the standards are high.

“If we have school leaders who are very knowledgeable on how to improve their schools, there is less of a need to feel worried about someone else coming in and checking up on you, because you can explain really coherently what you are doing and why.”

She said the aim was to “remove barriers to learning” by teaching leaders about the “latest thinking”, including cognitive psychology, while acknowledging that “everything is contestable”.

“We believe it’s really important that school leaders understand the breadth of what the science is telling us,” Dame Alison said. 

“We’re talking about building a collective sense of an intellectual endeavour that is: to be a teacher should be to be a learner.”

She said the course would help leaders to prioritise their time, with the aim of building a “much more confident, resilient, informed profession that does the best for children”.

“Those people who are just about keeping their head above water are not going to become chartered teachers or chartered leaders,” she added.

“But if they’re in a school where their head of school embarks on the Chartered Leadership course, the chances are that their workload requirement reduces or becomes far more tailored to the needs of the children as opposed to a scattergun approach.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “We welcome any programme which helps leaders to develop insights into pedagogy and the latest research, as this is an important part of continuing professional development.

“But it will be important that the programme is clearly distinctive from existing leadership programmes and provides useful and practical knowledge that leaders can apply in their schools. We will be interested to see the detail of the programme and wish the Chartered College every success with this initiative.”

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said: “It’s hard to say whether I think that this is a good idea without seeing the proposed programme - but, in principle, I have no objections.

“The leadership programme would be a benefit to teachers if it emphasised to leaders that their teaching staff are their most precious resource, that they should be given good work and be treated with professional respect.”