Primary Heads

Book excerpt: Primary Heads contains lessons on leadership from a group of highly successful primary head teachers. The book starts with an overview of current thinking on good leadership practice and then takes the reader through the personal stories of 12 head teachers who have, sometimes in the face of extraordinary adversity, transformed their schools. Each has a very personal view on what it has taken for them to succeed and what successful leadership in primary schools should look like. Bill then draws out the key elements from their accounts and details how primary schools and primary heads can create the best possible environment for learning by concentrating on the identified aspects of exceptional leadership. This detailed translation of theories into notably successful practice, presented through the personal accounts of a group of outstanding head teachers, will have a particular resonance for practitioners engaged in the challenging business of education today. Stories of achievement by the successful are not always a source of inspiration or comfort for other teachers, who may search in vain for evidence of the difficulties and adversity they encounter in their own work or possible solutions to them. These clear and honest accounts, however, explore the subject of effective leadership in a way that makes them essential reading for all those, from head teacher to the least experienced staff, who bear responsibility, in varying degrees, for the management and direction of primary schools. The book will be relevant, too, for administrators, school governors and those involved in teacher training and continuing professional development