Developing a School Leadership Coaching Team

Charlotte Randall

Through private invitation, the Dubai English Speaking School (DESS) was asked to present at the 'What Works' Leadership event on April 16^th 2013 at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) in Dubai.  The Headteacher, Mr David Hammond, along with myself, jointly delivered a presentation that focused on the success of introducing the ILM Level 3 Award in Coaching accreditation into the professional development programme of our senior and middle leaders.

The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) is a regulatory authority of the Government of Dubai and is responsible for the growth, direction and quality of private education and learning in Dubai.  'What Works' was established by the KHDA, as an invitation only event, to provide a forum for collaborative learning within Dubai’s private education sector. Their vision, to bring schools together to share best practice and develop professional relationships based on underlying values that put the pupils at the heart of learning.

By taking the approach of training all members of the leadership team (teaching and non-teaching) on a rolling programme due to complete in 2014, we have started to build capacity and capability across the organisation for increasing performance at all levels. This is being achieved through individual coaching sessions, performance management conversations and the integration of the coaching dialogue into the core of the organisation.

Areas that have been developed as a result of enhancing the schools professional development opportunities with an accredited leadership coaching team are:

Leadership and Management:

• Team collegiality, motivation, challenge
• Behavioural changes at leadership level to get the best from the team
• Raising the profile of leadership roles through addressing staff performance

Career/Role Development:

• Linked to the above leadership and management points but also….
• Career progression within the organisation (long term and short term goals linked to teaching and learning)
• Understand my role within the organisation

Teaching and Learning:

• Develop teaching and learning strategies
• Developing in key areas such as formative and summative assessment

Time Management:

• Using the Time Management Matrix to support colleagues through pressure points in the term
• How to deal with stress and panic

Project Management:

• Building a rationale and action plan towards implementing a project

Change Management:

• Supporting colleagues to adapt to change within the working environment
• Transition out of the organisation and succession planning

Raising the profile of a department:

• Developing skills and practical actions to raise the profile of the department/subject area

It was a privilege to have been invited to the 'What Works' event and be able to share the good practice, commitment and hard work of my colleagues at DESS to ensure that as an organisation we are always moving forward.

During the presentation, visual harvesting or graphic recording was used to collect the content of the talk in real-time, the result of which can be seen in the photo below.

Charlotte Randall

Read more about the coaching programme the British School of Coaching are implementing at Dubai English Speaking School here