Insights
We regularly produce articles that we hope will inform, inspire, and provide insights into school strategy and leadership.
Strategic Misalignment: When Busy Schools Stop Moving Together New
Strategic misalignment rarely starts with bad ideas. It starts when too many good ideas compete without a clear strategy to order them. Schools don’t need more activity. They need shared language that separates strategy, planning and execution so everyone can move in the same direction.
Your School Strategic Plan Is Probably an Action Plan
Many schools have a school strategic plan. Far fewer have a strategy. If your plan is a list of actions, pillars and review dates, it may be organising activity rather than clarifying choice. And without choice, strategy becomes little more than a well-designed action plan.
Fixing School Strategy
School strategy cannot remain a polished document that gets admired, filed, and quietly forgotten. The schools best placed for the future will be those whose leaders build the imagination, courage, discipline and shared language to keep making strategic choices when the landscape shifts.
The Art of Managing Expectations
Executive teams rarely fracture because people care too little. More often, they strain because leaders carry private expectations about excellence, urgency, and capacity that were never made explicit. Strategy becomes personal when shared language hides different standards.
Open Book Management: Why Good Ideas Get Said No To
Schools don’t lack good ideas. They’re drowning in them. Open book management gives middle leaders the context to see trade-offs, understand constraints, and shape ideas that actually land, not just sound good.
Schools Are Brilliant at Red Flags. Green Flags… Not So Much.
Schools are quick to spot what’s wrong and what needs to change. But what if the most important signals aren’t problems at all? Green flags are already there, quietly gaining traction. The question is whether we notice them early enough to do something about them.
Schools Talk About Community. Strategy Is What Actually Builds It.
Schools often say community is their greatest strength, but it rarely grows by accident. It emerges when strategy intentionally invites families, students, and staff into a shared mission. The strongest school communities are not events or slogans. They are ecosystems designed around belonging.
The Gender Pay Gap in Schools Is Not a Pay Problem
The recent WGEA report shows education’s gender pay gap sits at 7.2%. Small compared to many industries, yet progress is slow. At the current pace, parity could still be a decade away. The real issue may not be pay scales, but the leadership pipelines shaping who rises to the top.
51% of Schools Are Competing With Themselves — And They Don’t Realise It
51% of schools are competing with themselves. Not because they lack ambition, but because they refuse to choose. Strategy fatigue is often priority confusion. When everything matters equally, nothing leads decisively.
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