School and System Leadership: Changing Roles for Primary Headteachers

Schoolleadership is undergoing significant change as headteachers respond to newopportunities and challenges offered to or imposed on them as a result ofgovernment policy. There have been increasing callsfor transformational change to redesign the school system to provide asuitable workforce for the knowledge economy and to manage the anticipatedshortage of future school leaders. Sue Robinson combines her professionalexperience as a practising primary headteacher and National Leader of Educationwith recent research into the impact of government policy on the roles ofprimary heads to offer an analysis of the shifting nature of school leadership.Headteachers have taken advantage of roles available including consultancy,leadership of academies and federations and children's centres.Including interview material with 27 ‘outstanding' primary headteachers, thisis the first book combining research and practitioner insight to show how:- heads have managed the educational agenda- how they have built capacity in school to sustain their new internal andexternal roles- their motivations, insights and experiences- the implications for government educational policy and leadershipdevelopment