Leverage Leadership: Lessons from further education

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to review the models of leverage leadership which are currently available in the compulsory sector to establish whether the models are appropriate for post compulsory education, and in particular for general further education colleges. In addition the article explores how a further education institution has gone about implementing leverage leadership. The article does this through a series of semi-structured interviews with senior and middle leaders and teachers on the aspects that they have implemented. Due to the complexities of the environment in which further education colleges operate, models of leverage leadership have not yet been extensively applied to this sector. What was derived was the emphasis of leverage leadership has been placed on a shift in approach to seeking assurances around the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. Moreso, then the use of data, which the institution in this article recognises that they are still some way of achieving, within the spirit of the proposed model.