Ashrafa Mohmed is a Year 4 classroom teacher
at Longshaw Junior School in Blackburn and,
by her own admission, very career-minded.

She is 28, has experience as an AST, has been a
lead teacher for the borough and is always looking out for new challenges in school. Yet, until now, has shied away from applying for a senior leadership post.

“When I looked at job specs in the past, I used to tremble!” she says.

Self-belief was Ashrafa’s stumbling block until
she took part in Putting Heads Together, a pilot programme to develop leadership talent in local schools. It is one of 11 projects supported by NCSL across the country, as part of its response to the looming headteacher shortage.

Putting Heads Together was led by a network of headteachers and supported by an NCSL fieldworker and Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council.

Each candidate was assigned a coach/mentor
from among the heads taking part and was given
the opportunity to shadow two other heads for a
day. Twilight sessions focused on working with governors and other key areas plus issues with specific local relevance, including leading faith schools.

Areas where candidates’ knowledge or experience needed building up, such as safeguarding and
child protection, were brought out in individual needs assessments and tackled at twilight sessions or on shadowing days.

One of the programme’s strong selling points is
that it was designed and led by heads, says Pam Barnes, headteacher at Longshaw Junior and one
of the project leaders. “When we talked about what would prepare people for headship we all felt that, good though NPQH is, it can be a bit off-putting in that some of the best practice it highlights can feel unattainable. We decided that we would concentrate on sharing practice we all felt had worked for us and was, therefore, realistically attainable.”

Ashrafa says the programme has undoubtedly developed her confidence while shadowing another head offers genuine insight into the job, she says. “What you really begin to appreciate is that almost anything can happen and the head is the one who has to deal with it.”

She also found the mentoring invaluable. “I already knew the head I worked with, which helped, but she also works in the type of community I come from, one in which parents tend to steer their daughters away from careers if they can. The fact that she understood that this was sometimes an issue for me made it easier to talk about my particular concerns.”

Her aim now is to look for a deputy headship, possibly in a bigger school.

In the West Midlands, NCSL has supported Leaders of Tomorrow, a programme offering leadership development to deputies and others with leadership potential. It is run by Dudley, Walsall, Sandwel
and Wolverhampton LAs – collectively known as the Black Country Consortium – and 40 experienced headteachers were trained to work as coaches to support the programme.

Linda Perkins has been deputy at St James’s C of E Primary in Dudley for four years. She cites the Black Country programme’s leadership strengths analysis tool, in which candidates pinpoint what they believe to be their own strengths and weaknesses and then ask several colleagues to do the same, as especially useful in defining her capabilities.

“I do tend to underestimate what I’m capable of,”
she says. “This analysis, which incorporates the views of people who work with you, can highlight aspects of your work that you would not necessarily perceive yourself.”

Having done NPQH and recently been acting
head of a local school in the process of closing down, Linda already had a degree of insight into the reality of headship but says doing the course crystallised several issues for her. In particular, she was struck by the way the moral purpose of the role was made explicit.

“Tim Brighouse [the former London Schools Commissioner and education guru] gave an inspiring talk to us about moral purpose which we discussed together and that was really productive. It enabled us to conceptualise what moral purpose meant to us, rather than it being something around in the ether. We could actually see how you can develop your own vision with your own moral purpose and build commitment and capacity in your own school.”

Michael McDonagh, an assistant head at St Anthony’s Catholic Girls’ School, an 11-18 school in Sunderland, took part in a programme for deputies and assistant heads put together by the North East Catholic Diocese for schools across 11 local authorities and supported by NCSL.

Again, it was run by serving heads. Twilight sessions looked at the different aspects of headship from leading the leadership team to dealing with HR and leading in the distinctive context of a Catholic school there were also work shadowing placements.

The course provided a “good grounding” says Michael. The twilight sessions dealt with real-life scenarios – staff disciplinary issues, parental problems - which the participants brainstormed in groups with different heads and he particularly enjoyed the exposure to other leaders in different types of schools.

“I shadowed a head in an 11-16 school which has a different set of issues from St Anthony’s in particular to do with falling rolls. Seeing other people dealing with a different set of problems from your own school gives you a fresh perspective on what leading a school actually means.”

He is now planning to do NPQH. “I knew headship was a different sort of role with different skills required and I still think it’s very demanding but it’s also very rewarding and in the long run that’s really what you want from a job.”

The succession planning pilots have been evaluated and an unexpected bonus has been the very positive experience for the experienced heads who delivered the programmes “Many say that having a different focus to their role has refreshed and invigorated their own practice,” says Chris Kirk, the College’s director of succession planning.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families has now allocated £10 million to the College to roll out its local solutions strategy nationally. Some of the money will go in direct grants to LAs and to organisations such as the Youth Sports Trust. There will also be a national team of succession planning consultants as support.

The College has drawn up a framework for action for governing bodies, LAs, professional associations, diocesan bodies and other partners to pinpoint steps they can usefully take to bring on more aspiring leaders. It covers topics such as recruitment, talent and career management, improving retention rates and widening the pool from which leaders are drawn.

“The framework is not prescriptive,” says Chris Kirk. “Rather it is saying here is a set of solutions which have worked in other areas and a set of tools which could be used so if, for example, a local authority wants to set up a development centre they can build on what others have already done.”

Targets have also been set. The number of headships officially vacant in England was forecast to rise to 700 by this year and up to around 870 by 2009. In fact, the early succession planning activity seems already to be having an effect as the figure has been held stable at around 640 vacancies this year, says Chris Kirk.

“The aim of the national programme is to reduce the forecast rises and combat the strong demographic trends that the sector faces,” he adds.

Next steps
Evaluation of the succession planning pilots and new research into barriers to headship can be seen at www.ncsl.org.uk/tomorrowsleaderstoday