School Leadership in the Pandemic: What can we learn from local and national responses to the crisis?

A Centre for Research in Educational Leadership and Management seminar

Chair/facilitator: Nick Brook, National Association of Head Teachers

Outline

This seminar will focus on findings and implications from two research projects into school and school leaders’ experiences of the pandemic. Both projects have revealed clear tensions between school level, local and national responses to the crisis, partly as a result of England’s centralised model of accountability coupled with fragmented local landscapes, which made decision-making unnecessarily difficult. Equally, responding to the crisis required schools to work in new ways, both with their immediate communities and with other schools and local partners, so there is scope for rich learning around how these new models might be built upon if we can articulate and embed the benefits. The seminar will include research presentations, a panel discussion and wider debate.

Agenda

• Welcome and introductions
•  What do we know from the research?
•  Professor Gemma Moss, University College London, Institute of Education
•  Professor Toby Greany and Pat Thomson, University of Nottingham
•  Panel response
•  Judy Shaw, Head Teacher, Tuel Lane Infant and Nursery School, Calderdale
•  Sam Freedman, Senior Fellow, Institute for Government
•  Questions and discussion
• Concluding thoughts and next steps