{"id":10158,"date":"2018-07-24T14:13:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T14:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/?p=10158"},"modified":"2019-04-08T14:23:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T14:23:59","slug":"creating-a-future-of-wholesome-school-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/education\/2018\/07\/24\/creating-a-future-of-wholesome-school-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a future of wholesome school leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"
Tom Rees is the Executive Headteacher of Simon de Senlis Primary School<\/a> and works across eleven primary schools as the Education Director of Northampton Primary Academy Trust<\/a>.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been a leader in schools for around 17 years across different contexts, counties and countries. Between Headships, he also spent time in the education technology sector working alongside schools, academies, local authorities, and multi-national companies.<\/p>\n His book, Wholesome Leadership<\/a> looks at everything about leadership in schools, from people management, teaching and learning to personal development and growth.<\/p>\n \u201cThis job of leadership is primarily a moral activity,\u201d says Rees. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about league tables or balancing budgets, it\u2019s about playing a part in a wider education system that enriches lives and creates opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of primary school leaders are working incredibly hard to do a good job but might not necessarily have the right training, support or resources to help them. Running a school is complex but not impossible,\u201d he continues. \u201cI\u2019ve learned so much from people over the last 10-20 years and I wanted to write something that was relevant and accessible for everyone, especially primary leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is why his book is based on what Rees calls a \u201cH4 leadership model\u201d and draws on the experience and thoughts of colleagues spanning the whole educational spectrum, including: Sir David Carter<\/a>, Clare Sealy<\/a>, Daisy Christodoulou<\/a>, MAT CEOs, Julia Kedwards<\/a>, Stephen Tierney<\/a>, and Andrew Morrish<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe H4 leadership model is about the heart, head, hands, and health of school leaders,\u201d he explains. \u201cEach of these dimensions of leadership are important and have to work together in balance. Ultimately, school leaders have to be a lot of things to a lot of people.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a real concern about the need to recruit and retain good school leaders in the years ahead. By 2022, it is estimated that there will be a shortfall of 19,000 school leaders and we have to do more as system to support colleagues who come in to positions of responsibility. It\u2019s important that we recognise there is no \u2018secret sauce\u2019 that creates transformational change. Schools get better one day at a time, one person at a time through hard work, good decision making and incremental improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n Rees recognises the huge part that technology can play in supporting school improvement, and writes about this within the Hands section of the H4 leadership model.<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology helps you run a lean operation,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt helps schools to work more efficiently and effectively and enables better communication, particularly across a complex organisation such as ours with 11 schools across 14 sites. It doesn\u2019t matter how great your people are or how inspiring the vision is, unless schools are well-organised and a slick organisation, things becoming chaotic. Running Office 365 across all our schools, Governing Bodies and Trustees enables us to work much smarter together.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology also plays a big part in analytics and to help us understand how effective we\u2019re being. In recent years, we\u2019ve developed Power BI as an analytic tool to see assessment not just as a descriptive activity, but a predictive and ultimately prescriptive process. Recent trials of machine learning across the trust\u2019s database with Coscole Ltd<\/a>. have started to predict KS2 SATs result to degrees of accuracy that we are cautiously excited by.\u201d<\/p>\n Rees has written before about how his Trust have started to use powerful data<\/a> through PowerBI and other Microsoft technologies and we are excited at what might develop next out of this work which now includes Microsoft partner, Groupcall<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n