High-Leverage Leadership

2	High-leverage leadership

  

Introduction

There are some schools which simply appear to buck the trends; schools where pupils’ academic attainment and other outcomes are so much better than national averages for similar pupils and similar neighbourhoods. High-leverage is the phrase we are using to describe leaders who work in those schools and contribute to an impressive effect on a range of outcomes for children and young people. From somewhere in the recesses of our school-level science we recall that a lever is a bar resting on a fulcrum which multiplies the effect of a force. We remember being told about Archimedes’ claim that, with a long enough lever and a place to stand, he could move the earth – apparently using the moon as a ...