Growing Leaders

National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services

The background: Navigate has been working with the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services since September 2006 to support the College’s “Tomorrow’s Leaders Today” programme, designed to bring forward the next generation of headteachers as the current, ageing, population of heads retire in greater numbers.

The challenge: By 2011, three out of five current headteachers are likely to have retired, creating a significant challenge to the school system. The response – driven by the National College – is focused around a comprehensive succession planning strategy with an emphasis on encouraging local organisations to devise and implement local solutions which are appropriate to their needs. The College engaged Navigate to help it develop the materials to support local planners, providing them with the resources and intelligence they needed to develop their own evidence-based plans.

The solution: The Navigate team developed concepts for a range of succession planning support materials focused on local audiences. Our first hand experience of the recruitment challenge at local level meant that we were ideally placed to develop materials for aspiring heads embarking on practical career planning as well as local employers looking to attract potential leaders. Subsequently, we have used our wide networks within the sector to collect insights and intelligence from local succession planners to produce a series of “Evidence into Practice Guides” on “hot issues” – from the challenge of recruiting primary headteachers to a review of main labour market themes.

The result: The materials produced by Navigate for National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services have received positive initial evaluation and the content has been re-used across a wide range of outlets.