Following the success of WIGT, Heather Clements and Ann O`Hara created a second toolkit, this time designed to foster the development of leadership in primary schools and to build knowledge based on clear description. “What is Good Leadership?” (WIGL) aims to support the self-evaluation and personal development as well as the professional development planning of a school. The framework uses a Quality Standard to improve your the practice to your leadership team, ensuring that your influence and capacity continues to grow.
What is Good Leadership:
The What is Good Leadership? (WIGL) toolkit presents a comprehensive and interlinked set of tools that enable school leaders to develop and refine their role-specific skills while developing their leadership repertoire and contributing to the overall quality of leadership and management in their school. The toolkit can be used by individuals to improve their practice and also by leadership teams. It supports appraisal, professional development, self evaluation and school improvement planning. Where it is used consistently it supports succession planning because each matrix is linked through the key questions with increasingly higher expectations as roles move from middle to senior leadership.
The matrix is designed to create a strong visual overview of the quality of leadership and management and uses a ‘best fit’ methodology. Key areas of strength emerge and development points can be identified. Upon completion of the matrix, the key strengths and development points can be summarised in the relevant sections at the end of the document.
The toolkit is based on core leadership and management skills and attributes. It is tailored to the specific middle and senior leadership roles found in the majority of primary phase schools.
WIGL is written by Heather Clements and Ann O’Hara, both highly experienced educational consultants, who have worked with experts within specific areas to ensure that the descriptors in the toolkit truly represent the best practice nationally for each role identified.
What is Good Teaching:
The What is Good Teaching? (WIGT) toolkit includes a series of formats which allow for easy recording of insightful ‘judgements’ about the observed teacher/s’ performance. The system is based on what teachers can do rather than what they can’t do and is therefore very unthreatening. However, it makes very clear how far they have to travel to reach the next standard level. The Toolkit includes:
- Teaching quality standards for all Key Stages including the Foundation Stage
- Formats for teacher self evaluation
- Formats to enable pupils to evaluate their own learning
- A framework to support student/pupil support work scrutiny Materials to support the development of a whole school policy for teaching and learning
- A manual to guide the lesson observer
- A pen drive/USB with all the pages so that they can be easily photocopied and a Powerpoint explaining how WIGT should be used
WIGT will ensure that the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) are confident to make judgements on the quality of teaching and learning. It will enable paired observations to moderate judgements, ensuring the school achieves the consistency that Ofsted expects, leading to sustained and embedded good practice.
