Sustainable Leadership

In keeping with our core purpose of enhancing leadership capacity, effectiveness and sustainability, a key focus for IPPN’s advocacy work has been to seek progress on the implementation of the recommendations in the Sustainable Leadership report.

IPPN published its progress report on the project in November 2023. The purpose of the progress report was to
• reaffirm the rationale underpinning the project
• highlight what actions had been undertaken and what progress has been made since the publication of the original report
• provide an up-to-date evidence base that demonstrated an ongoing need for urgent action.

At the IPPN/NAPD symposium on education and leadership in January 2024, the DE acknowledged that it accepted the data and analysis with regard to the unsustainability of school leadership roles and that the focus now needed to move to actions and solutions.

To that end, IPPN developed discussion documents with specific proposals. The following is by way of summary of those specific proposals;

Role Clarity / Leadership effectiveness

• recognise the use of the quality framework as a basis for establishing of a shared understanding of the practice of effective leadership in primary schools among practitioners and stakeholders.

Time to Lead

• sanction an increased allocation of discrete leadership time to all primary schools in accordance with the size of the school and in keeping with the model used in post-primary schools
• remove the impediments to schools being able to avail of team coaching for their leadership & management teams.

Enhancing current governance practice

• sanction a second phase or iteration of the small schools’ project to run until June 2026.
• agree a role specification for an Administrative/Compliance Officer, designed to support school leadership and enhance governance
• allow each cluster participating in the second phase of the research project the opportunity to avail of the support of an Administrative/Compliance Officer, should they wish to do so
• identify a cohort of schools who would be willing to participate in a cluster who had access to shared professional services on a pilot basis
• ensure the cohort of schools identified includes schools of varying size, context, etc., so that it is a representative sample.

Determining what governance structure would best meet the needs of schools into the future

• establish a working group of the Primary Education Forum whose focus is on school governance
• task the working group with facilitating collaborative engagement with a view to the development of discussion papers for the consideration of the wider membership of the Forum
• request progress reports from the working group at each meeting of the Forum.
• set a target date of June 2026 for the finalisation of proposals for governance reform.

IPPN met with DE officials in March, April and May to progress these proposals which will also form the basis of our Budget 2025 submission. IPPN has also had a number of bilateral meetings with stakeholders to align agendas and to build a coalition of support for our proposals.

Progress to date

• a tool has been developed by IPPN to allow schools to reflect on their leadership practice with reference to the domains and standards of the quality framework for leadership and management
• IPPN has developed three costed models for the increased allocation of leadership time to primary schools
• Oide has signalled that greater access to team coaching will be afforded to schools
• the Minister sanctioned a second phase of the Small Schools Action Research project to run until 2026
• an increased number of clusters are exploring the Administrative Officer role
• IPPN has written to the Chair of the Primary Education Forum requesting that a working group be established to focus on what governance structure would best meet the needs of schools into the future.