Recommended
Books for School Leaders

The Wellbeing Toolkit by Andrew Cowley is a valuable resource for promoting wellbeing and resilience among school staff. It challenges myths surrounding wellbeing and offers practical strategies to foster a positive atmosphere. It emphasises the importance of understanding staff members, their motivations, and factors that affect their confidence. By implementing the book's strategies, school leaders can improve staff attendance and retention while reigniting teachers' passion for their profession.

A Little Guide for Teachers: Efficient Marking is full of highly innovative, practical and labour-saving strategies that shows busy teachers exactly how to provide feedback which moves learning forward, but which also inspires and motivates pupils to want to improve.

In "Simplicitus: A Handbook on Primary Curriculum Design," Emma Turner masterfully distills 24 years of experience into an insightful guide on primary curriculum design. The book explores this unique knowledge domain through both academic and child development lenses, offering a blend of academic thought, empirical research, and practical wisdom. With practical strategies and a profound understanding of primary education, "Simplicitus" simplifies the complexity of primary curriculum design. Turner's work is an invaluable resource for educators aiming to design and implement a rich, high-quality curriculum for young learners.

Insightful, captivating and authentic, Mandy suggests fresh and practical new ideas and opportunities to strengthen your school and teachers, better equipping them to support their pupils.

The book discusses two opposed models of school improvement: the deficit model (which assumes problems are someone's fault) and the surplus model (which assumes problems are unintended systemic flaws). By aligning ourselves to a surplus model we can create a system of Intelligent Accountability.

‘My Secret #Edtech Diary explains the history of EdTech, and the great potential that is the future. It is an easy-to-read book, with lots of practical ideas to use in schools, and many time and money saving tips.

"Leadership: Being, Knowing, Doing" by Stephen Tierney is a book that talks about how to be a good leader in education.

There are no secrets to school improvement. There are no silver bullets and no magic answers. It is far less glamorous. It is a question of identifying numerous actions and applying effort 'day in, day out' to improve them.

This practical handbook offers a month-by-month guide to the curriculum, assessment, progress, and leadership over the school year. It provides a clear, comprehensive, and coherent structure to the academic year helping school leaders to prioritise their time and workload, supporting them and their team to work as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Written in the context of an education system on the edge of a crisis, with students burning out, staff walking out and schools under increasing pressure to singlehandedly provide the social care so many young people desperately need, Lighting the Way argues that schools stand on the threshold of a new way forward. Angela uses her wealth of experience to show school leaders the path to being torchbearers, leading children with purpose, staff with integrity and the community towards wisdom with practical strategies, optimism and guidance.

Leaders With Substance is not a handbook. It sets out to change the way we think of leadership and school improvement. It is both a critique, a manifesto, and a call to arms.

Have you ever felt like workplace politics were distracting you from doing your job? Ever been lost for words in a difficult conversation with a colleague? The Emotionally Intelligent Teacher is a unique guide to managing your emotions in order to enhance teaching, boost wellbeing and combat power struggles in schools.

This invaluable handbook explores how schools can design and deliver continuing professional development (CPD) that truly lives up to its name.

Written by Chris Dyson, Parklands: A school built on love is a heartwarming account of Parklands School’s transformative journey towards becoming a safe, loving environment in which all of its learners can thrive.

In Obstetrics for Schools: A guide to eliminating failure and ensuring the safe delivery of all learners, Rachel Macfarlane presents a powerful manifesto for school leaders and teachers on how they can bridge the advantage gap and deliver positive outcomes for all pupils. In most parts of the world, the death of a baby in childbirth is now a rare tragedy rather than a common occurrence - and it would be considered shocking for medical staff to accept a significant infant fatality rate. It's also inconceivable that a hospital would have a successful delivery target much below 100%. How could anything else be acceptable in this day and age?

The Teaching Life is for anyone who wants to make the most of their time in education, for their students and for themselves.

Teachers can’t teach effectively if they’re demotivated and exhausted; and they shouldn’t they have to! A Little Guide for Teachers: Teacher Wellbeing and Self-Careexplains how wellbeing is essential to effective teaching, and gives teachers practical tools to take back control of the classroom. The Little Guide for Teachers series is little in size but BIG on all the support and inspiration you need to navigate your day to day life as a teacher. · Authored by experts in the field · Easy to dip in-and-out of · Interactive activities encourage you to write into the book and make it your own · Fun engaging illustrations throughout · Read in an afternoon or take as long as you like with it!

Practical, concise and easily absorbed in one sitting by busy teachers

The CRAFT approach of assessment for learning is a strategy that can be applied at a subject level and at a whole school level to assess student learning from across the Key Stages.

Book Review: "They Don't Behave for Me" by Sam Strickland

With nearly two decades of school governance experience across Infant, Primary, Secondary, All Through and Alternative Provision schools and academies, distilled into an easy-to-read format, My School Governance Handbook aims to make the complex world of school governance simple and accessible to all.

If there is one thing that school leaders need to get right, it is school culture.

The Nine Pillars of Great Schools examines the commonalities between the most successful institutions and demonstrates how to transform a good school into a great school.

The Behaviour Manual - An Educator's Guidebook offers over 100 strategies, approaches and teaching methods that will help any school, leader, middle leader, teacher, ECT or ITT to pro-actively lead on behaviour.

"Leadership with a Moral Purpose - Turning Your School Inside Out" by Will Ryan is a thought-provoking and inspiring book that challenges traditional approaches to school improvement. Ryan, drawing from his extensive experience as a teacher, headteacher, and local authority adviser, offers primary school leaders a refreshing perspective on leadership, emphasising the importance of moral purpose and authentic engagement.

What does it take to thrive in one of the most pressurised leadership roles in modern times? What is the real story behind the men in the football hotseat who shape the dreams and ambitions of millions?

Enhancing Wellbeing in Our Primary School: A Review of Adrian Bethune's Book

"Rethinking School Inspection" by Tracey O’Brien

The Headteacher's Handbook by Rae Snape

From influential Executive Headteacher Nick Hart comes Impact, a practical framework for improving outcomes for children in both primary and secondary classrooms, helping them thrive and succeed.

Reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni was a transformative experience. It forced me to reflect on my own actions as a team leader and helped me identify the invisible pitfalls that were hindering our progress.

Successful school leadership starts with you: who you are, what you believe in, and why you do the things you do.

Education Exposed 2 follows on from Sam Strickland's first book, Education Exposed. The book is a pacy, punchy and forthright critique of how to drive the curriculum, behaviour and teaching within a school and the pivotal role that leadership plays in pursuing the halcyon dream. The book is neatly laid out, with each chapter identifying common curricular misconceptions, posing lots of key questions to consider and offering multiple practical ideas that you can take away. Every chapter ends with five key takeaway points for you to carefully consider.

In this researchED Guide to Assessment, Sarah Donarski brings together chapters by Dylan Wiliam, Tom Sherrington, Alison Peacock and many others to consider the debates, critique the strategies and find solutions that not only better the progress of pupils but also assist the wellbeing and manageability of workload for staff.

If we do not ensure, first and foremost, that our teachers are happy, healthy, well qualified, highly motivated, hard-working, well-trained experts, they cannot be their best for their students.

Written under the guidance and with the support of Dylan Wiliam, Kate Jones writes about five formative assessment strategies in action in the classroom, with a foreword from Professor John Hattie.

Full of experiences from teachers, headteachers and inspectors, as well as Garvey's own personal experiences, this is not a book to be missed for anyone looking to journey towards teaching excellence.

Daisy Christodoulou is a leading educational commentator with many years' experience of working with schools as well as in the classroom. In this new book, she tackles the ed tech debate, asking why it hasn't yet had the transformative impact on education that has long been promised, and evidencing the benefits it could still bring to schools.