Designing a continuous professional development for primary school assistant heads

Abstract

The role of the Assistant Head of School is still considered by many as very unclear, with a marked difference between the perceptions about the role, and what actually happens in the daily lives of these school leaders. This role has evolved over the past decades. This is in part due to a myriad of educational reforms and the increase in responsibilities of the head of school. Thus, Assistant Heads have found themselves elevated to senior leaders and increasingly engage in distributed leadership within a school. Despite this, professional development in this particular area of leadership is greatly overlooked and newly appointed assistant heads are appointed to the role without any proper induction and any professional development, as such opportunities are rare and far between. The idea of this project developed from the researcher’s own personal professional needs as a relatively new assistant head of school. The researcher investigated the current training needs of newly appointed or relatively new Assistant Heads of school in the primary sector. Principles emerging from this training needs analysis and principles emerging from international literature are analysed and compared. Such comparison and analysis has informed the design of a two year long CPD programme aimed at newly appointed Assistant Heads. The Primary School setting was chosen because of the researcher’s experience as a recently appointed assistant head in a state primary school. This study acknowledges the significance of professional development and lifelong learning and the influence these can have on effective school leadership.