NPQH Final Assessment

NPQH Final Assessment

Guidance for Trainee Headteachers

Contents Page

Overview of the Final Assessment Process 2

NPQH competency framework 3

Award of NPQH 5

Task 1 Leading a School Improvement Priority 5

Task 2 Leading school improvement working in partnership

with the Placement School 12

Task 3 Practical knowledge and expertise demonstrated

in test environments:

case study and presentation/interview 19

Appendix 1 NPQH Competency Framework 25

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© 2012 National College for School Leadership

Overview of the Final Assessment Process

Graduation from NPQH will demonstrate your ability to be an effective headteacher and that you are ready to take up your first headship. The NPQH Final Assessment process has therefore been designed to provide opportunities for you to demonstrate your leadership in practice through the successful completion of school improvement work undertaken your own and in other schools, as well as your capacity to perform well in presenting, at interview and in making decisions in test environments.

As for the Gateway Assessment, NPQH Final Assessment is competency based, testing the key competencies that are required for successful headship.The assessment process will therefore enable you to demonstratethe progress you have made since the Gateway stage.Full details of the competencies tested are given below.

The Final Assessment comprises three tasks:

Task 1You will undertake a task in your school (or agreed school setting if not based in school) in which you lead for an extended periodon an actual school improvement priority.

Task 2You will undertake a task working in partnership with your placement school in which you lead for a short period on an actual school improvement priority working closely with placement school staff and the school leadership. You will also, over the whole period of the placement, develop a relationship with the placement school to enable you to extend your own learning about school leadership and to improve your leadership.

Task 3 This task comprises two elements in test environments:

Firstly, you will undertake a case study assessment that will cover:

• Leading school financial management
• Leading teacher appraisal

You will need to demonstrate youare able to manage these key aspects of a school that you may not have been able to take full leadership of while on NPQH and show you are able to make appropriate decisions and justify your actions.

Secondly, you will attend a presentation/interview. You will make a presentation to a panel and answer questions put by the panel on the content of your presentation and your progress towards successful headship through NPQH. You will need to be able to show you have developed the competence to present in a credible way as a headteacher. You should also be prepared to demonstrate how you have used your NPQH experiences to reflect upon and improve your own leadership competencies to a level that shows your readiness to take up your first headship.

The school-based work undertaken in Tasks 1 and 2 will need to be achievable within a 12 month period, to relate to the schools’ improvement priorities and must produce demonstrable positive impact and sustainable change.

For all aspects of the assessment you will be expected to draw upon your practical experience, research and school evidence to inform your leadership decision making. Youwill also be expected to apply your learning from the essentialand elective modules you have completed and todraw upon your knowledge and expertise in key national policy priorities, for example, leading and improving the quality of teaching and pupils’ behaviour, teacher appraisal and financial management.

The assessment tasks can also be used towards CATS points if required.

NPQH competency framework

NPQH is underpinned by a competency framework of 16 competencies. These competencies define the characteristics that are needed to be ready for headship.In preparing for your development and Final assessment it is important that you read and understand the competencies in the NPQH Competency framework – there is a description of each competency and a statement as to ‘Why it matters’ for each of them in Appendix 1.

The competencies include characteristics that are needed to be ready for headship, including knowledge (including specific technical knowledge), skills, motives and ability which are expressed in actions or behaviours:

• Knowledge is what a person knows about a particular area, for example, strategies for improving teaching and learning, ways of managing financial and human resources, and project management for planning and implementing change, performance management and legal issues relating to employment or child protection.
• Skills are things a person knows how to do well to achieve a goal, for example, collecting and analysing data, monitoring progress, using new technologies, planning, communicating, getting community feedback and carrying out accurate self-assessment.
• Motives may be expressed in a person’s values such as what he/she believes in or what he/she believes it is important to do (for example, commitment to the pursuit of excellence, working in a collaborative way, insisting on a safe and healthy working environment or through preferences (such as achievement or affiliation), for example, a person with a strong achievement motive will continuously want to achieve and make things better.
• Ability covers both a person’s ability to think and act rationally and to use their emotional intelligence, for example, identifying trends in performance, using school self-review to make sound decisions, and the ability to build effective teams. Ability can be affected through the working of the emotions and changed through self-awareness and self-management of these.

The 16 competencies in the framework are grouped into three areas that reflect key dimensions of highly effective leadership, as demonstrated through research evidence:

Strategic leadership: highly effective school leaders have a strong sense of direction: they have a vision for the school and a clear sense of how to achieve their vision. They can lead successfully in a highly autonomous and accountable system.

Educational excellence: highly effective school leaders have the leadership of teaching at the heart of their work: they can lead effectively in a self-improving system to deliver high-quality outcomes for all pupils and students.

Operational management: highly effective heads have very effective systems and processes that are consistently applied by all staff: they manage the school to ensure efficient and effective use of all resources and achieve a fit-for-purpose organisation.

Figure 1: Three areas of competency

Not all of the 16 competencies will be directly tested in the Final Assessmentprocess; there will be a focus upon assessing the following nine leadership competencies.

Figure 2: Competencies tested at Final Assessment

The descriptions of these nine leadership competencies can be found in Appendix 1 but there will be further guidance in the sections that follow on the three tasks on the specific competencies that will be tested and how you will be able to develop these and then demonstrate them when presenting for Final Assessment.

Award of NPQH

The award of NPQH will depend upon reaching a high standard in all of the eight leadership competencies tested. Each of the tasks will contribute to a single judgement on your readiness for headship and the award of NPQH and therefore you will not receive individual test results and feedback. You will receive some overall feedback at the end of the process.

However,ifin any task you not reach the required standard you will be advised of this and given the opportunity to take the task again and if you do not reach the highest possible standard in any of the competencies you will be advised of this to enable you to plan further development and to prepare for the presentation/interview element of Task 3.

Task 1 Leading a School Improvement Priority in own (or agreed) school

This element of the final assessment will enable you to demonstrate that you can deliver successful and sustainable school improvement in your school setting(or agreed school setting if not based in school) and that you can use the experience to reflect upon and improve your own leadership competencies.

This task will test six leadership competencies:

Figure 3: competencies tested in Task 1

The descriptions of the six leadership competencies tested can be found in Appendix 1.

Key elements of the task:

• You are requiredto lead for an extended period (a minimum of two terms) on an actual whole school improvement priority

• The school improvement priority selected should be in the school improvement plan or similar whole school plan.The task should be strategic and positively impact on the whole school

• The school improvement priority selected should be one that is sufficiently challenging to firstly enable you to develop and secondly toprovide evidence of the competencies relating to Educational excellence and Strategic leadership being tested in this task(see below for further specific guidance)

• The task should enable you to develop and implement a strategic plan, taking actions which involve leadingand holding to accountother school leaders and staff, and being accountable to stakeholders, including governors or equivalent

• The task needs to be completed within a twelve month period and must be sufficiently advanced by the time of submission for you to demonstrate sustainable improvement–you will need to evaluate the outcomes from your leadership and provide quantified evidence of your personal impact including the positive difference your work has had in the school and on meeting its goals and of systems/structures in place to sustain the change and/or of specific proposals for further action to be include in the school improvement plan or equivalent

• You will need to show how you used:
• research and school evidence
• learning from the essential and elective modules
• knowledge and expertise in key national policy priorities

to inform your leadership decision making, andprovide evidence of your development as a school leader(see below for further specific guidance).

Specific guidance on providing competency-based evidence on leading a school improvement priority and developing as a school leader

You should begin by reading the descriptions of the six leadership competencies to be tested in Appendix 1.

Undertaking the task should enable your further development in Educational excellenceand you should be able to demonstrate in your submission for assessment:

• Delivering continuous improvement including involving and inspiring governors and stakeholders to support the school vision for the school improvement priority and in strategically planning for its delivery, determining and evaluatinginnovative strategies for action to improve teaching and learning and/or the curriculum in the context of the school’s performance using relevant data and information (including research, learning from essential and elective modules and expertise in key national policy areas), setting suitably ambitious targets and success criteria, and working with leaders, staff, governors (or equivalent) and other stakeholders on delivery
• Modelling excellence in teaching, includingyour understanding of the characteristics of excellent/outstanding teaching and the theories and research on effecting teaching and learning, your capacity to articulate your expectations of teaching and learning and to identify strategies to improve these that are critical to the success of the task, your ability to recognise and use good leadership in teaching and learning in delivering your strategies and to share your knowledge and expertise in teaching and learning to embed good practice, systematically monitoring the impact of your work throughout the task and evaluating its impacton teaching
• Learning focus, includingsharing your passion for improving learning and your capacity to develop staff and to embed a culture of learning for all members of the school community through your leadership of professional development in relation to the task, addressing diversity issues or barriers to learning which are critical to the success of the task such as high standards of attendance, punctuality and behaviour and/or issues faced by pupils and parents in and outside of the school, and systematically monitoring the impact of your work throughout the task and evaluating its impact on learning of individuals and groups of pupils
• Holding others to account including creating levels of accountability within the school and ensuring all understand their roles and responsibilities, standards required and accountabilities, distributing leadership and delegating effectively, demanding high performance through making expectations clear and spelling out the consequences of non-compliance, using the performance management (teacher appraisal) systems effectively to set objectives and targets to deliver school priorities, systematically monitoring performance and progress against objectives and targets, praising success and giving constructive feedback but also taking swift action when performance levels drop

Undertaking the task should enable your development in Strategic leadership and you should be able to demonstrate in your submission for assessment:

• Personal drive and accountability, including being results orientated through settinggoals on what you want to achieve for yourself and the school in relation to the task, being self-motivated, energetic and decisive in taking responsibility for achieving these goals and adopting a high personal profile while leading on the task, using the experience of leading the task to enhance your own and others’ effectiveness and motivating others to achieve results, regularly measuring progress towards both personal and school goals and evaluating the outcomes and impact of your work, accounting for your own and school performance to governors or equivalent, and to other stakeholders on the successful deliveryof sustainable change
• Resilience and emotional maturity, includingbeing resilient and tenacious to achieve the task and secure sustainable improvement within the time allowed, remaining optimistic and focused upon the task when under pressure or when faced with resistance to change, addressing difficult situations and resolving any conflict in a restrained way, responding positively and with resolve if faced with personal criticism or setbacks, speaking and acting in accordance with school values when it is necessary to implement decisions that others find challenging and being able to bring the task to a conclusion even in changing situations

Undertaking the task should enable your development in Operational management and you should be able to demonstrate in your submission for assessment:

Specific guidance on the submission of evidence

The submission to the Assessment Panel will be in two parts:

• Your submission to the Assessment Panel
• Your sponsor’s submission to the Assessment Panel – based on both observation of your leadership of the school improvement priority and your submission to the Assessment Panel.

Yoursubmission to the Assessment Panel

Youare able to choose what you submit and the form your submission takes, subject to the limitations set out below. Your submission should compriseactual school documents but unless these documents are comprehensive and self-explanatory you will also need to include a short commentary to explain how you demonstrated the leadership competencies being tested through your leadership of thepriority for school improvement.

You should ensure that your documentation covers:

• The nature of the school improvement priority
• Your leadership of the strategic planning process and setting of personal and school goals and targets
• Your leadership to implement the strategic plan, including actions taken and how you led and held to accountother school leaders and staff and overcame challenges and difficulties
• Your monitoring and evaluation of the school improvement priority and of progress towards meeting your personal goals
• Your accountability to stakeholders for the outcomes of your leadership of the priority
• Your evaluation of outcomes for the school: quantified evidence ofyour personal impact in the school and on meeting its goals and of systems/structures in place to sustain the change and/or of specific proposals for further action to be include in the school improvement plan or equivalent
• Your evaluation of personal outcomes: development of your leadership competenciesand of ability to apply learning from the essential and elective modules and expertise in key national policy areas
• Reflects the guidance given above on the ’Key elements of the task’ and ‘Providing competency-based evidence on leading a school improvement priority and developing as a school leader’.

Documentation

When submitting the actual school documents that provide competency-based evidence of your leadership and leadership development and theexplanatory commentary,if you wish to include this,you must not exceed 12 pages of A4 in font size 12 and these must be capable of being read and understood within 30 minutes reading time.