Assistant & Deputy Heads: Key leadership issues and challenges

Effective leadership has long been establishedas a key factor in securing schooleffectiveness and school improvement.However, in many research studiesleadership is equated with the role of the headteacherand, consequently, evidence concerning schoolleadership largely emanates from this perspective. Ithas been suggested that too much of the schoolleadership literature has relied upon the accounts ofheadteachers to define effective leadership in action(Razik and Swanson, 2001; Owens, 2001; Morrison,2002). By comparison, the research evidenceconcerning the leadership of other established schoolleaders, such as assistant or deputy heads, is relativelysparse. Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of thefew literature reviews of assistant or deputy headship isthe paucity of research studies on this importantgroup of school leaders (Harvey and Sheridan 1995;Ribbins 1997).