Leadership, Headship and Effective Primary Schools

The idea of studying effective schools seems to be a useful avenue of study. If particular characteristics associated with improving effectiveness can be isolated and identified, and if these characteristics can be shown to be present in other so‐called effective schools then, with increasing confidence, these characteristics can be emphasised as issues schools need to address and attend to in order to facilitate school development and improvement. However, the identification of characteristics associated with effective schools is only the early stage of investigation and research. The identification of particular characteristics should also prompt further investigation in order that each characteristic is analysed in depth. This article focuses on one such characteristic, namely leadership. In the light of the contemporary literature the article considers what we know about primary school leadership, what we need to know more about, and offers a provisional interpretation of what an effective primary headteacher appears to look like.