In this post we introduce the UK Sustainable School Leadership Survey and why it’s important.
What do school leaders in each UK nation spend most time on during their working weeks? What professional development and support do they receive and how well do they think it prepares them for their roles? How do they describe the culture of their schools? Are they thriving, surviving or sinking?
These and many other questions form part of the UK Sustainable School Leadership Survey, which launched in early November (2024) and will remain open until mid-December (2024) (you can access the link to complete the survey below). The survey is the next stage of our investigation into sustainable school leadership in the UK. Our work over the last year has prepared us to develop and launch the survey now.
In the last year, we’ve visited seven localities across the UK. We’ve spoken to school and local leaders about the current challenges of leadership in schools, about what drains them in leadership and what sustains them. In previous blog posts, we’ve described our initial thoughts about what we were hearing in Northern Ireland- Coast here, England-City here and Scotland-City here.
There were some strong common themes. Everywhere, individual headteachers have spoken about being sustained by the visible impact schools have on the achievements and lives of young people, by working with great teams and by networks of relationships and support. Equally, we’ve heard, amongst other things, how it has become increasingly challenging to address and meet all the needs of young people when the complexity and volume of those needs are increasing, and resources have been endlessly stretched. We are also aware that place and context make a big difference to exactly how people experience leadership roles. The more we hear, the richer the picture gets, and that is why we are launching the survey now.
We have analysed the interviews with leaders to inform the design of the survey. Social researchers call this research approach a ‘Sequential Exploratory Design’ – where the interviews explore the issues, and then the survey reaches out to hear the perspectives of all school leaders. Our conversations with school leaders have helped us decide what areas to concentrate on in the survey, and also to design specific questions. There are questions about leaders’ professional roles and identity, well-being, experiences of leadership, and career plans. With a good response in each UK nation, we can better understand whether these issues are present, and how they play out over large range of contexts – we hope you can help us with this by completing the survey and telling us about your experiences, perspectives and context.
We want to hear from as many senior and middle leaders working in schools and colleges in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland as possible. If you are working across multiple settings, for example in a Local Authority or Multi-Academy Trust, we’d still like to hear your views, everyone will receive questions relevant to their roles.
The results, which we will report on during 2025, will give a deep insight into the experience, motivations and plans of school leaders across the UK, and provide a unique evidence base for thinking about the sustainability of school leadership.
Thank you for supporting this research.
The survey can be accessed here
There is some more detailed information about the survey itself on the Leadership Survey page.
Sustainable School Leadership 