School leadership and management policy and the training of the school leader in English reforms through the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL)

The paper examines the English school leadership and management education policy that has been in a state of flux since the coalition government came into power in 2010. Sweeping changes have come with the rapid introduction of academisation, free schools, new standards for teachers, new performance management systems, new national curriculum for primary and secondary 2014, new assessments including General Certificate for Secondary Education and other Key Stage Four qualifications, new accountability regimes, and new funding models. School leadership has the second greatest influence on learning, with the first being the learning in the classroom. Two discourses of school leadership are introduced. The first is the heroic headteacher accountable for school success. The second is distributed school leadership where the success is distributed throughout the team. Headteachers need to be prepared for headship with planning for the continuing professional development. The argument is made that the National Professional Qualification for Headship prepares headteachers to be heroic and provides them with concrete experiences of leadership supported by mentors and/or coaches. Postgraduate research programmes then enable headteachers to conduct research to facilitate enquiries into their professional challenges, and critique and reflect upon the interplay between policy and their school contexts and community with a focus on moral purpose, deep democracy and working for universal access to equitable achievement. Tentative practical implications from the findings reveal that as headteachers pass through the NPQH and onto postgraduate research programmes, they may develop their humility, confidence and wisdom to become custodians of the field. Their knowledge, skills and experience may then position them as key to leadership capacity building in education systems with a commitment to continual Learning to Critically Analyse, and Reflect for Emancipation.