A scheme to help struggling schools is being expanded by Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary.
The national leaders of education programme, run by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL), is set to increase from 124 to 500 by 2012 which should provide support for 300 primary schools and 200 secondary schools.
Toby Salt, NCSL’s Strategic Director of School Leadership Development, said: “The programme is already providing tangible results in struggling schools and our proposal to expand it further mean we’ll be able to focus resources on even more schools in need of leadership support. Schools gain from the experience and there is improvement in children’s lives, he added.
Lisa Vyas, headteacher of Ladybarn Primary School, Manchester, has acted as a national leader of education at Green End Primary School, five minutes away from Ladybarn Primary, since last year. Green End Primary was placed in special measures before her arrival and since then Ms Vyas has divided her time between both schools.
She set to work quickly by changing the leadership structure at Green End and redefined leadership roles. This move increased direction and support to teachers and provided staff with developmental leadership opportunities.
“I identified the strengths in both schools and identified a package of measures to move Green End on using those two resources,” says Ms Vyas. “I wanted to reduce the school’s dependency on the local authority for support; I wanted the school to stand on its own two feet. This method has led to much greater ownership of the initiative by the school.”
““We’ve also done a lot of work with staff on improving teaching and learning, so the lessons themselves are now more active and more participatory, and children who are active learners are enjoying it more,” she added.
Children’s experiences at school were made more enjoyable by offering a range of out of school activities including music tuition, samba lessons, football, tennis and rugby.
The school was taken out of special measures and Ofsted inspectors rated leadership skills as ‘outstanding’
“The national leaders of education programme is an excellent example of how leading professionals can reach outside their own institutions, pairing up a supporting school with one that needs support, and driving up standards in both,” says Balls.
