A practical half-day masterclass for headteachers and principals who want their senior leadership team to lead well and not just manage effectively in conditions of growing complexity and change.

Senior leadership teams were built for a different kind of school. The roles, the meetings, the decision-making structures, the ways of working were designed at a time when the demands on schools were different in kind, not just in scale. As expectations have risen and the pace of change has accelerated, many SLTs find themselves doing more of the same rather than leading differently. The result is a team that is busy but not always strategic, capable individually but not always coherent collectively.

This workshop, led by Kathryn Gorman FCCT - former headteacher, executive coach and serving chair of governors - draws on the National Standards of Excellence for Headteachers and relevant inspection frameworks to help leaders think clearly about what high performance in a senior team actually looks like, and what gets in the way of achieving it.

Grounded in research from the Clarion Pulse Survey 2025-26, which gathered the experiences of 100 senior leaders across education, the session moves from diagnosis to action: helping heads identify the specific changes that would make the most difference to how their team thinks, decides and leads together.

Course Outcomes

• Understand what distinguishes a high-performing SLT from one that is working hard but not leading strategically, and identify where your own team sits
• Recognise the most common patterns that prevent collective leadership, including role blur, unspoken tensions and the tendency to manage rather than lead
• Understand what inspection frameworks (Ofsted and ISI) expect of senior leadership and how a high-performing SLT strengthens your position
• Develop a clearer picture of the culture you want your SLT to model and the gap between that and current reality
• Identify practical changes to how your team meets, decides and communicates that would improve both performance and wellbeing
• Explore the relationship between the SLT and the governing board and how that relationship shapes what is possible for the team
• Leave with a specific and prioritised action plan for one or two changes you will make to your SLT's ways of working in the next half term

Course Outline

• What high performance looks like and why many SLTs aren't there yet. Opening provocation, framing the day, brief self-audit.
• The three things that most commonly get in the way role blur, managing vs leading, and the board relationship. Small group discussion with structured reflection.
• Comfort Break and Virtual Networking.
• From diagnosis to action practical frameworks for changing how your team meets, decides and leads. Individual action planning.
• Plenary & final Q&A.
• Close of day.

Presenter Profile

Kathryn Gorman FCCT is the founder of Clarion Education and a former Headteacher. She holds an MEd from the University of Cambridge, is completing her Level 7 ICF coaching qualification and is a Level 5 accredited workplace mediator. She currently serves as Chair of Governors at a primary school and co-hosts Beyond the Status Quo, a leadership podcast. Kathryn is the lead researcher on the Clarion Pulse Survey 2025–26 which explores the nature of leadership in the current climate and speaks regularly at national education conferences on the future of education. She works with school leaders on SLT effectiveness, executive coaching and governance.

Cost: £150 per delegate; £50 each for subsequent delegates from same school

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