Multi-academy trusts (MATs) have a huge role to play in driving school improvement, providing a first-class education and enhancing the educational outcomes for all pupils. At the heart of achieving these goals lies a crucial component - leadership development.
After all, if MATs can ensure leaders are imbued with a deep understanding of a trust’s core values, objectives and priorities, they can drive forward effective initiatives aligned with the trust’s wider mission, ensuring coherence and synergy among schools while being bespoke to each community.
This is why, at Step Academy, we have developed a bespoke leadership framework designed to support all leaders across our school to do just this - starting with our headteachers and moving on other leadership roles.
Developing a framework
The first thing we had to do was define the characteristics and behaviours we wanted our leaders to have so there was a single leadership framework to guide leaders and ensure that any collaboration between staff would start from the same basis.
So, in 2021, within our executive leadership team, we started discussing and refining what defines strong and effective leadership at Step, and were aligned on six core behaviours - as opposed to personality traits - that we want to see:
- Emotional intelligence
- Resilience
- Humility
- Strategic thinking
- Courage
- Wisdom
Supporting the next generation of leaders
With these six terms agreed, we then defined each leadership behaviour at a basic level, intermediate level and expert level to help clarify exactly what each term represented for us as a trust.
We also mapped these on to our coaching model and against the Nolan principles, which are the basis of the ethical standards expected of public servants and guide all our work. This allows our leaders in every school to assess each other against these behaviours and focus on conduct.
The executive team first rolled the framework out to headteachers at our senior leadership team conference in December 2022.
This was designed to provide time to further discuss and refine the framework ahead of introducing it into our 360-degree review process to complement the formal appraisal cycle in 2023-24 and appraisal target setting.
By incorporating the six behaviours into our review process, our leaders have the opportunity to consider their conduct by taking on board the views of their peers, line managers and those they line manage. These findings are then supported by subsequent coaching, which we provide to help the professional development of our leaders.
We know that school leaders are most effective when they are supported, empowered and nurtured by the executive. So, following its introduction to headteachers in 2022, we are now rolling it out to academy-specific leaders, including assistant and deputy headteachers.
Most of our leaders at Step Academy Trust are homegrown and we want to support this talent pipeline by offering the highest level of leadership training to as many of our senior leadership team as we can.
Strengthening the trust
For our trust and school leaders, the importance of having a shared purpose and vision cannot be overstated and the benefits of this framework are now evident in everyday practices across our schools.
For example, one of our headteachers actively and explicitly based their performance during a recent Ofsted inspection on the leadership behaviours framework. Their personal areas for development were to be more strategic and courageous.
So, in their first inspection as the headteacher, they successfully led staff, focusing on decision making, problem solving and overall demeanour throughout the rigorous inspection, resulting in a positive outcome.
By prioritising leadership development, we have ensured continuity, alignment, collaboration, successful succession planning, local empowerment and, ultimately, improved educational outcomes across our schools.
With a cascaded rollout, from the trust executive team to academy-specific leaders, we have fine-tuned our framework, strengthening it, and our leaders, along the way.
For trusts across the country, developing a trust-specific leadership behaviour framework to complement national qualifications can support them in achieving their goals.
Every trust has its own context within which it operates - for example, different regions, primary-only, secondary-only or mixed trust, which are all contributing factors that create different opportunities and challenges.
Ultimately, this bespoke approach to developing leadership behaviours allows you to take into consideration your own realities, embed your trust’s values, and provide the support and development needed by your leaders.
Zoe Griffiths is executive headteacher at Step Academy Trust
