The great school leadership coaching give-away!

In a bid to help address the growing number of headteachers considering resignation, BTS Spark, the not-for-profit school leadership development experts, are launching an initiative to support UK school and trust leaders with the many challenges they face.

Entitled #sparkupaleader  the initiative kicked off at the 12th Festival of Education, taking place at Wellington College on 7-8 July, BTS Spark will be giving away more than 50 individual coaching prizes to UK school and academy trust leaders.

With a monetary value of over £25,000, the give-away includes group coaching and booster sessions, plus 24 one-to-one leadership coaching programmes – designed to support individual school or MAT leaders with a specific area of their choice. Winners will be able to focus their coaching on their own leadership priorities, such as:

Leading change | Personal resourcefulness | Performance leadership | Coaching others | Impact and influence | Managing conflict

“Analysis of recent data from a survey of 25,000 academy staff by Edurio found that over the last year, senior leaders have experienced the greatest increase in the risk of resignation compared to the pre-pandemic benchmark”, says Denise Barrows, director of BTS Spark UK. “And second to teachers (at 46 per cent), middle leaders are the next group most at risk of leaving their jobs (45 per cent). Considering what school leaders have had to cope with over the past couple of years, this isn’t surprising.

“School leaders impact on the lives of so many – teaching staff, pupils, and the wider school community – and the issues they face are equally wide-ranging”, continues Barrows. “While their role involves mentoring others, school leaders are sometimes reluctant to seek coaching or mentoring support themselves. Often their decision is budget-related, so we’re hoping this initiative will go some way towards removing that barrier.

“If receiving professional coaching support results in just one school leader having a change of heart about leaving the profession, then we will consider this initiative to have been successful”.

Given its not-for-profit status – and with 99.6 per cent of its 16,000+ coaching participants reporting they have improved their school leadership style as a result – BTS Spark is well qualified to offer coaching support.

Visitors to the BTS Spark stand [Zone D, Stand17D] can nominate themselves, and/or their leadership colleagues, to receive one of the prizes or go to bit.ly/sparkupaleader to enter online.

Each winner will be notified via email by the end of July 2022 and will be given a 12-month window in which to redeem their prize.

About BTS Spark  https://btsspark.org

BTS Spark is the not-for-profit education practice of BTS, a global, multi-award-winning leadership consultancy [https://bts.com]. BTS Spark supports schools, trusts, and school systems with issues relating to:

Leadership development: including leadership transitions; capability and confidence building; team development; talent pipeline; diversity.

Wellbeing: including resilience; burnout; juggling priorities; work-life balance.

Coaching & mentoring skills: including training coaches and mentors; giving effective feedback; having difficult conversations.

System change: including school transformation; school turnaround; networks and learning communities; culture change.

With over 300 coaches worldwide, BTS Spark specialises in supporting education leaders through 1:1 coaching and group coaching and workshops – supported by online leadership resources. Each session is informed by BTS’s curriculum of 33 leadership mindsets to help leaders embed new ways of:

Being: enhancing self-awareness, authenticity and personal resourcefulness.

Relating: building trust, motivation and leadership partnership.

Inspiring: tapping into core values to build a shared vision and lead with purpose.

Thinking: developing strategic agility and creating a culture of innovation and inquiry.

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