Abstract
Leadership and management in schools have sought to produce high quality education for all pupils. To inform and support school leaders’ educationalists have developed theories and undertaken research studies identifying the relationships, contexts and characteristics that enable effective leadership. However, recent times of turbulence in primary schools have had an inevitable impact upon the key drivers for successful leadership and management. This study builds upon our previous research into outstanding leadership in primary education to examine the impact that such change has had upon the leadership of serving head teachers. It utilises an adapted Q-sort methodology to identify the views of serving head teachers to gain insights into the impact that such change has had upon their leadership. Overall, the analysis identified a need for aspirational characteristics of leadership, underpinned by personal values to guide schools in such times, as they strive to produce high quality education.
Highlights
No one could have anticipated the scale of crisis for schools as a result of the large-scale impact of COVID-19 on the daily and strategic lives of school leaders and their leadership teams
We propose that outstanding leadership involves individuals who are adaptive and driven by the pursuit of excellence, whatever the context in which they provide leadership
The conceptualisation of leadership suggested by [11] is helpful as it outlines the qualities and practices of outstanding primary school leadership
Summary
No one could have anticipated the scale of crisis for schools as a result of the large-scale impact of COVID-19 on the daily (operational) and strategic lives of school leaders and their leadership teams. Leadership has needed to be flexible and reactive to such times of crisis so that they may continue to secure the highest quality of education for the pupils in their care. During this crisis much focus has been on schools being able to deal with swift and sudden change in a timely manner. We propose that outstanding leadership involves individuals who are adaptive and driven by the pursuit of excellence, whatever the context in which they provide leadership This includes times of turbulence and crisis, such as a pandemic where they have to respond quickly to rapidly changing circumstances. In the following sub-section, we review research literature on leadership that is relevant to this study
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