“School leadership that works’ is the latest report from the Education Review Office (ERO). It highlights, for school leaders, as well as school communities, what highly effective school leadership looks like.
The report highlights what might be called the ‘6 habits of highly effective school leadership.’
These 6 habits include:
- Setting goals and targets to raise achievement to promote equity and excellence, and to actively involve parents and caregivers to raise achievement
- Supporting and promoting student wellbeing
- Regular planning and evaluating of teaching practice to ensure that the school is meeting the learning needs of all students
- Aligning student learning needs, with the professional learning and development of teaching staff
- Using evidence, evaluation and inquiry regularly to monitor student achievement and to improve teaching practice
- Building strong relationships with other educational and community institutions to increase opportunities for student learning and student success.
The Ministry of Education, along with the Education Council and the NZ School Trustees Association (NZSTA), are working together to help more schools to develop highly effective leadership practices that work for all schools, students , and school communities.
For example, proposed changes to the Education Act will make raising achievement the most important focus for our education leaders. The Ministry is also building more collaboration between schools around leadership and teaching, in our Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako programme. And the Education Council is developing more effective leadership programmes for our education services and schools.
ERO’s ‘School Leadership that works’ shows the great things our best school leaders and teachers are already doing to raise student progress, wellbeing and achievement. It is a useful guide to recognising what good school leadership looks like. We hope it is widely read in our school communities.
ERO’s “School Leadership That Works” report is on the ERO website.