SPOTLIGHT: LEADERSHIP
Leading the way F
reelance journalist Mike Glover explores the role of leadership in improving schools’ performance.
Hard-pressed schools are being urged to use leadership training for senior staff to meet challenges threatening their performance. The training, delivered by out-sourced companies used to providing the service for businesses, is designed to promote a positive school culture, defined as an atmosphere where students and staff feel valued, respected, and encouraged.
The trend started across the Atlantic, and according to the US Department of Education, a positive school climate correlates with higher attendance, test scores, and graduation rates. But it is increasingly being employed in the UK in both the private and state sectors to help fight cash shortages and high staff turnover while improving pupils’ academic achievements. Independent research by Newcastle University Business School, which is increasingly engaging with the education sector, demonstrated schools with the most effective head teachers had higher grades in GCSEs.
Teacher absenteeism is reduced in schools with effective head teachers, and teacher retention is also improved, says the research supported by the Nuffield Trust and the Education Policy Unit. One leading proponent of leadership training says he is surprised that more schools don’t take
up such schemes.
Neil Jurd OBE, from Kendal in Cumbria, has been delivering programmes to world-wide finance and pharmaceutical companies for 15 years, but he has always kept in touch with the education sector through his extensive charity work.
He is also a governor of Windermere School in the Lake District.
Mr Jurd, founder of Leader-Connect, says: “Where you get effective leaders in schools, it makes a massive difference.
“It can transform schools, freeing up decision- making, creative thinking to address challenges creatively and opportunities for the children beyond the curriculum.
“It shifts the mindset of people in schools in ways that benefit pupils immensely. “It reduces turnover of staff, including head teachers. The current duration of head teacherships is around 38% of secondary heads leave within 5 years. It should be nearer ten. “Good leadership leads to functioning, friendly staff rooms. Good leadership brings organisations to life with the emphasis on positivity.” Mr Jurd has worked with several schools and trusts over the 15 years he has been running his leadership business, training around 20 deputy heads in 21/22 in an online course. He has just released a hardback edition of The Leadership Book, his guide on how to lead and making leadership simple, with explanations on
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www.education-today.co.uk
what to do to become an effective leader. The first edition has sold 9,000 copies across the world.
One of his current clients is the Abingdon Learning Trust in Oxfordshire, which has a long commitment to leadership training. Mr Jurd has enrolled 40 senior leaders from the Trust, which runs four schools, in his on-line learning site, run two training days and one-to- one coaching sessions for its heads and deputy heads, as well as working with governors. Dr Fiona Hammans, the Chief Executive Officer of Abingdon Learning Trust says: “We know that great leadership has the biggest impact on unlocking staff’s ownership of, and investment in, an ever-improving school - whatever their role. “We objectively measure its impact through continued improvement in results, attendance, staff turnover and satisfaction, annual appraisal impact reports and cross-trust collaboration. “We started with trustees and executive training from Neil Jurd and then rolled out to school leaders (via Leader-Connect website access as well as in-person) and their teams, with a focus on leadership at the Staff Conference in July 2025.
“More than 50 individual staff members ran seminars and presentations on their own work for colleagues across the trust - demonstrating leadership not just within their school but at Trust level.
“It’s about investing in the people, not June 2026
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