Succession planning in England: new leaders and new forms of leadership

Abstract

There are concerns about the supply of head teachers in many countries. In England, this problem arises from demographic changes and the perceived difficulty of the job. The National College responded to this problem by initiating a Succession Planning programme. This article reports the main findings from the external evaluation of the programme and links them to the wider literature.

Keywords:

• headship
• demographic changes
• leadership development
• federations

Acknowledgements

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not the National College. The research team for this project was Tony Bush, Tracey Allen, Derek Glover, David Middlewood, Richard Parker and Robert Smith.