Leadership can be imperfect. “In a way, imperfect leadership is the essence of professionalism. If the imperfections are COLLECTIVE rather than INDIVIDUAL, they increase the prospects of getting things RIGHT, and of taking the collective responsibility rather than assigning personal blame when we don’t” (Hargreaves, 2024). I believe distributive leadership delivers this. The proof is out there. Build the relationships from the beginning. It will happen. Bring to life the 11 paradoxes of management (see the graphic). Success will follow ????

Pupils assessed on body language, academic effort ! See this article attached. “Exams create immense stress, narrows the curriculum and has led to an industry of grind schools that unfairly favour the students of economically privileged parents (Hargraves, 2024).

 “Our role is to help make sense of what we see and hear, feed it back, and use it to affirm, challenge, and stretch what educators are doing together with a trusted and collaborative relationship of critical friendship”(Hargreaves, 2024, p. xi). This is the “Why” expressed by Sinek (2009) when we need to build sustainable leadership from the middle. To mentor, coach and grow our middle leaders is not just rewarding, but a privilege I continue to enjoy and share insights of. 

In schools we’re often caught in the pursuit of quantifying the unquantifiable. As teachers, we strive to measure aspects of student life that inherently resist simple metrics – wellbeing, effort, collaboration, character etc. But the challenge isn’t just in the measurement; it’s in our approach.

Ed-tech utilisation and spending are growing significantly in absolute terms and as a proportion of overall school budgets. This is happening alongside rising user expectations, increasing use of unauthorised “shadow IT”, and powerful education mega-trends that are driving increased reliance on technology. Navigating these changes is particularly challenging when selecting and deploying the core systems school staff rely on to keep each school running – their School Management Systems (SMS)1 and Learning Management Systems (LMS). These systems in particular require wholesale change across many areas of school activity, impacting users across the whole school community. Selecting and deploying the right core operating system is therefore one of the most challenging decisions facing school leadership teams today.

The most important thing in schools is to ask questions about significant, unresolved issues. Students need to identify problems in the real world, come up with questions that point towards solutions, and gather, organise, and analyse information.