Embedding leadership at all levels is vital for a top performing school. We have talked about leadership with the staff - empowering middle and senior leadership, but what about students?
Here, we followed an approach from primary upwards. Students could start with the Junior Leadership challenge, before progressing at KS3 to the KS3 Diploma. From there, those in KS4 and 5 had a full leadership booklet, full of courses and awards to consider taking. The aim of this was to embed leadership in its many forms throughout the school and help give students not only a voice, but also to train them how to use it effectively. All KS4 students took the Duke of Edinburgh's Award at Haileybury Astana, where I was the Head, but at CATS Canterbury, where I served as Principal, this was offered alongside a range of other options.
You can see the awards here - there was a strong stress on service to others, but while overseas, a focus on appreciating and learning about Kazakh culture. One of the highlights of my time in Astana was taking all the students off site for school to live in yurts for 3 days and learn more about the rich culture of their amazing country.
As part of our contribution to the people of Kazakhstan, we won an award from the British Embassy and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to launch a special leadership booklet for girls in southern Kazakhstan to help them gain their voice in an area where forced marriage was prevalent. This needed some key adaptations to the leadership awards, and was accompanied by a programme of training local staff and a residential experience for the girls. It was a great example of national government in the UK supporting a key project for the people of Kazakhstan.