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May 2023 Update- why Eurovision reminds me of ICP

  I can’t claim to be a fan of the Eurovision song contest. Yet two things about it caught my attention this year. One was the fact that it was held in my home city of Liverpool and the other was the impact of countries around the world spending time with each other. I fear that Eurovision is never going to win awards for great artistic merit and if I am honest there wasn’t a single song during the evening that fitted in with my musical tastes (other than the rendition during the interval of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’). However, the event had an impact that went well beyond the music that was heard because it highlighted the power of different parts of the world sharing their culture and experiences with one another. I can promise those coming to our Council Plus and Emerging Leaders Forum in Rovaniemi, Finland in September an experience that is very different from Eurovision. However, in just the same way, our time in Rovaniemi offers the chance to share and learn from one anot...
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April 2023 Update- ICP Emerging Leaders Forum in Rovaniemi, Finland

  I hope that you were able to enjoy a well earned rest and some time away from the job over the past few weeks. As we move further into April many of us find ourselves either starting or about to start a new term. During my 23 years as School Principal, I was always fascinated by the way in which each term seemed to take on a character and identity of its own. The emphasis of each school term tended to be dictated by its priorities and key activities, for example preparing for external examinations, writing reports or getting ready to meet with parents. In many ways the work of ICP follows a similar pattern, with the coming months shaped by preparation for our Council Plus and Emerging Leaders Forum in Rovaniemi, Finland from September 20-24. I continue to be impressed by the way in which the guidance we have received from ICP members has influenced our planning for these two major events. During last year’s Council Plus in Singapore three major themes emerged as the prioritie...
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Shaping Futures of Education: Why Leadership Comes First

The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated many of the pre-existing challenges and inequalities in education provision worldwide, including the hundreds of millions of children who were not in school before the pandemic and those not learning while in school (Save the Children, 2021). When reconsidering how the futures of education can fulfil the learning potential of children in schools, we must understand why leadership comes first .   Drawing on what we have learned from real leaders in real primary and secondary schools globally, I wanted to share four strong research-informed claims about successful school leadership: Research Claim 1 : There are differences in culture between schools and between countries, but challenges are broadly the same. One of the key challenges facing school leaders in many countries across the world is to enact incoherent, disjointed, and at times contradictory external policy initiatives successfully. Policy shifts...
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WHO CARES FOR THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL?

  The wellbeing of school principals has been the study of Prof. Phil Riley and others for a number of years. Statistics coming out of these studies regularly indicate that school principals experience higher workplace demands, higher burnout, higher stress symptoms, more irregular sleeping patterns, higher depressive symptoms, etc. than the general population. Adam Fraser in his 2018 article ‘It’s a lonely job: how can we help stressed-out principals?’ indicated that principals “have more than 12 different and distinct areas of work, many of which require different skill sets as well as emotional agility in order to cope while moving from one highly stressful task to another”. He further states that “the risk-adverse nature of our society means they (school principals) have more reporting and compliance to do. This ensures that standards are met, that principals are delivering on expectations of students, parents, staff, community, the department and even themselves.” In a Mon...
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'We have much to learn from one another'- The Priorities of Leaders Worldwide in 2023

  After we met with leaders around the world in Singapore, we asked them to write down the personal learning points that had emerged from the meeting. Their list shows the power of leaders working and learning together and also crisply summarises ICP’s key priorities for the year ahead: ·        The experience of being in an international meeting has been very powerful ·        The educational system's similarities, both positive and negative, are remarkable! ·        We are the VERY LUCKY ones in Europe.... and need to continue to help other parts of the world ·        Equity is a big issue that we as ICP need to embrace and respond to. ·        Student voice is now more essential than before with the times changing so rapidly. ·        Teacher and leader supply is a worldwide challenge which needs to be...
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Focusing on the Solution not the Problem

  What was the best thing about ICP’s Council in Singapore? For me the answer had to be the way it focused upon positive solutions to complex problems. Yes, we found we faced common issues in terms of workload, recruitment and energising the next generation of leaders, but we then moved on to putting forward solutions to these challenges. It is always therapeutic when meeting together to spend time letting off steam, but if we just stop there the problems remain unchanged the next time we gather. There was a clear challenge offered by our panel of leaders drawn from ICP members across the world. They told us: ‘We are tired of hearing people say I would not want to do your job. it we don’t act as advocates for teaching and leadership, then who else is going to do it?’ Hence we all agreed it was time to take action by organising an Emerging Leaders conference in Cape Town on 2-4 May 2023. Our aim is to enable the current generation of Principals to bring the next generation with ...
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You Don't Walk Alone

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  You Don’t Walk Alone Alongside my family and love of porridge, the other great passion of my life is following Liverpool Football Club. LFC is famous for its anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and I can still remember being challenged to sing it by members of Council when I was elected President in Shanghai (I did and the resulting sound was not pretty!) The problem for many of us in the leadership community is that we often feel that we do walk alone. A sense of being isolated and the only one who is facing this particular problem is one of the biggest causes of stress for leaders, wherever they are in the world. I have found that the same can also be true for leadership associations, who can feel that the challenges they are facing are particular to their own jurisdiction. For this reason I found ICP’s Pre-Council survey particularly powerful, since it offered the chance to demonstrate that both the challenges and opportunities faced by leaders are often the same, regardles...
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