Leadership


London: leading the way


The London Leadership Strategy – born out of the London Challenge – is working to spread best practice across the capital and beyond. Dorothy Lepkowska explains


Labour-led scheme had resulted in spectacular results across the capital. So it was probably for reasons of ideology and the climate of austerity, rather than any other, that funding to the project was withdrawn by the coalition government last March. However, now reformed as the London Leadership Strategy (LLS),


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the organisation is looking not only to continue its work, but to move beyond the capital. As Dame Sue John, a director of the LLS, explained: “The


London Challenge started out as a relatively small group of secondary heads who were outstanding practitioners and leaders with a commitment to raising standards for all children. “It grew over the years and now more than 1,000 primary, secondary and special schools are involved, which is a quarter of all schools in the capital. The challenge, in the real sense, for us now is to maintain and expand on that work, and to continue to harness that expertise so that it and the relationships that have been forged are not lost.” It is easy to see why there is a moral will to keep this initiative alive.


When it began in 2003, London had the lowest proportion of pupils achieving fi ve A* to C grades at GCSEs out of England’s nine regions. But by 2010 it was at the top of the table – the only capital city in the developed world where academic performance outstripped that of the rest of the country. While the LLS does not claim to have all the answers, or even to be the


main contributor to London’s surge in performance, there is suffi cient evidence – verifi ed by Ofsted – to show it has played a major role. Dame Sue continued: “In the past the approach may have come from


the local authority of the school requesting support and we would broker that support, and be engaged with matching up National Leaders of Education (NLE) or Local Leaders of Education (LLE) with the school concerned. “This was crucial to the success of the scheme. Between us, over the


years, we have learned all about the heads and know their strengths, the type of school they lead and even their personalities. “We do not use a one-size-fi ts-all approach. What we are offering is a bespoke service with the right match for the right context. You have to


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t comes as no great surprise when a government initiative is quietly closed down and forgotten. Usually this is because it has failed. But the London Challenge was an exception. Far from failing, the


have a global intelligence to do this effectively and our concern was that, if (the London Challenge) broke up because the funding had ended, then we would lose all that knowledge and expertise.” These levels of support do not begin and end with school leaders,


however. The LLS has developed a wide range of programmes which are offered at whole-school level or can be aimed at individual teachers or departments needing some additional input. David Bartram, director of the LLS’s Inclusion Support Programme,


said there were six primary, eight secondary as well as a number of programmes aimed at supporting schools with challenges around special needs and behaviour.


“We do not use a one-size-fi ts-all approach. What we are offering is a


bespoke service with the right match for the right context.”


He explained: “Aspirational schools will examine the work of every


department and the service we offer may include heads of departments working directly with their counterparts in other schools, or leading practitioners from pupil referral units passing on their expertise to mainstream schools. Heads of department are often plunged into a position of responsibility they may not be prepared for so they need to get the context right. “In some cases they are working with SENCOs or teaching assistants on


an alternative curriculum. What we aim to do is to move that knowledge and expertise about. And it is not the case that schools are matched with neighbouring schools. Sometimes they will be linked with those from the other side of the capital if that is the most appropriate partner.” Previously funded by the government, via the National College for


School Leadership, the LLS now aims to become a self-funding, not- for-profi t organisation. In the past few months it has managed to keep


Continued on page 32


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