Coaching skills for School leaders

Within a relatively short period, schools and trusts typically begin to see:

• leaders responding more deliberately rather than reacting or defaulting to scripts
• more adaptive, higher-quality professional conversations
• increased staff ownership of professional development
• a shift towards a more solutions-focused, intellectually engaging culture
• greater consistency in how leaders develop others across schools

The programme is delivered through a blended model, combining:

• Five online learning modules available via our anytime anywhere online learning platform
• Focused, accessible content introducing key theories, models, and frameworks
• Four 3-hour facilitated workshops
• Opportunities to explore, apply, and rehearse coaching approaches
• Practice and reflection, with staff beyond the course benefiting from working with programme members whilst they undertake their training
• Structured opportunities to apply learning in context and reflect on impact
• Coaching practice hours
• Participants develop their skills through sustained, real-world application

The design ensures a manageable workload while maintaining depth and rigour.

This programme is accredited by the Institute of Leadership and forms part of LLSE’s wider coaching development pathway:

Coaching Foundations (6 hours)
Coaching Skills for School Leaders (this programme)
ILM Level 5 Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring

This enables schools and trusts to build a coherent, long-term coaching strategy.

This programme is particularly suited to schools and trusts that have already introduced coaching but are not seeing consistent impact, and want to strengthen the return on investment in CPD. Organisations that are seeking to build internal coaching capacity, reduce reliance on external models and want to align professional development with current expectations from Ofsted. Organisations that are focused on improving staff retention, engagement, and professional agency.

Rather than training leaders to follow a single coaching model, this programme focuses on developing professional judgement. With this course, leaders learn to decide when coaching is appropriate, when alternative approaches are needed and how to adapt their approach to context and individual need. They will develop their depth of understanding and engage with a range of coaching and leadership theories, including:

• facilitative and directive approaches
• facilitative and directive approaches
• emotional intelligence and leadership styles
• psychological safety and professional dialogue

These are always explicitly connected to practice in school contexts. The course provides opportunities for deliberate practice by combining concise, high-quality online learning with facilitated sessions focused on rehearsal and application with structured reflection and feedback built into every session. This ensures learning translates into observable changes in leadership behaviour.

LLSE is a Lead Provider for National Professional Qualifications (NPQs), working with tens of thousands of leaders nationally.

Our programmes are:

• grounded in evidence-informed practice
• designed and delivered by experienced leaders
• focused on translating professional development into sustained changes in practice
   

We are proud to have been judged Outstanding by Ofsted.

Participants consistently highlight the impact of our programmes on their leadership:

“The course has been expertly facilitated, intellectually stimulating, and practically relevant. It has equipped me with the mindset and tools to lead with clarity, evidence, and empathy. The balance between academic rigour and applied practice was well-judged, and the facilitators’ ability to create a safe but challenging professional learning environment has had a lasting impact on my leadership approach.”

For trusts reviewing the impact of their coaching and professional development, we offer a Trust Coaching Diagnostic conversation.

This is a short, focused discussion to:

• Evaluate how coaching is currently working across your organisation
• Identify gaps in consistency, quality, and impact
• Explore how a more sustainable, trust-wide approach could be developed

Get in touch
If you would like to explore how this programme could support your school or trust, or to arrange a Trust Coaching Diagnostic conversation, please get in touch. Email coaching@llse.org.uk