Leading Schools in Challenging Circumstances ― Strategies for Success

The leadership of schools can make a significant difference to enhancing the life chances of students in schools and enabling them to succeed. This book examines leadership within schools, focusing on securing success within a challenging social and political environment. It explores the approaches to leadership adopted by four successful secondary school headteachers in a local authority situated in an area of high social deprivation and identifies the impact the headteachers of these schools have on staff, students and community. It analyses the key leadership strategies of these successful school leaders, strategies that can be deployed in all schools, and explores the links between leadership theories and leadership actions. The book goes on to examine how these strategies were actually implemented in a failing school in challenging circumstances and shows how other schools might benefit from such strategies and the insights on which they are based.

Philip Smith works across a family of schools situated in some of the most deprived areas of England and is the Principal in one of the academies within this family. He has a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Sheffield, UK.

Les Bell is Emeritus Professor of Educational Management at the School of Education, University of Leicester, UK, and Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Lincoln, UK. Before his retirement in July 2006, he was a member of the Centre for Educational Leadership and Management and Director of the Doctorate in Education programme at the University of Leicester, UK.