Lessons in Leading Change: What Working with 100 Schools Taught Me

Between 2015 and 2018, I had the privilege of designing and leading five cohorts of a citywide EAL Champions Programme across more than 100 schools in Leicester and Derby. What began as a part-time project during a short break from headship to raise my young family soon became one of the most formative and systemically impactful experiences of my career.

While the programme was never intended as a research project, the scale and depth of delivery inevitably revealed patterns and lessons that continue to inform my current work with school leaders. In this blog, I want to share what I’ve learnt, lessons I believe can support schools aiming to foster a genuine culture of change, and providers designing professional development (PD) programmes that actually make a difference.

Why CPD Often Falls Short

We all know that professional development is important. It enhances subject expertise, sharpens pedagogy, and signals that professionals are valued. But too often, CPD doesn’t translate into sustained change or improved pupil outcomes.

Why is that? And what can we do about it?

These are the questions I aim to explore through the lens of the EAL Champions Programme, an initiative sparked by a need and shaped by lived school realities.

The Origin Story: A System Under Strain

The programme began with a call for help. In Derby City, school leaders were grappling with a rise in “new to English” learners. Teachers were unsure how to meet the increasingly complex needs in their classrooms. Having spent years leading two inner-city schools through tough times, I had firsthand experience of these challenges. But I had also seen the opportunities, especially when staff felt empowered and aligned.

With the encouragement of Pauline Anderson, who had been commissioned to lead a city-wide review and was a passionate advocate for underrepresented learners, I developed the EAL Champions Programme to build capacity within schools. The aim wasn’t just to “train” staff, but to nurture in-school leadership for EAL. A similar need soon emerged in Leicester, and with the support of the SDSA, the programme was expanded across the city.

Over three years, we ran five cohorts of nine-month programmes involving primary, secondary, and special schools. Each cohort brought its own rich set of challenges and insights.

The Black Forest Gâteau of CPD

To explain the structure, I often describe the programme as a Black Forest gâteau: rich, multi-layered, and thoughtfully constructed. Here were the key ingredients:

• Strategic onboarding: From the second cohort onward, we required headteachers to attend the launch session, ensuring strategic alignment with whole-school priorities.

  
  

• A tailored audit: Schools completed an audit covering four areas: leadership, teaching and learning, assessment, and induction, based on frameworks from The Bell Foundation, NALDIC, and the British Council. Input was gathered from EAL leads, their teams, and the headteacher to triangulate perspectives.

  
  

• Content-rich training: We combined EAL pedagogy with applied leadership development and embedded evidence-based change management models, specifically, the Knoster & Lippitt models and Kotter’s 8 Steps for Leading Change.

  
  

• Action planning with coaching: CPD days included coaching triads and leadership simulations. Each school had 2 x 2 hours of personalised coaching mentoring to support action planning and align initiatives with their context.

  
  

• A final “marketplace” event: Schools shared the outcomes of their action research projects, a celebration of impact and peer learning.

  
  

• Follow-up PLCs and sustainability: EAL leaders were supported to continue in Professional Learning Communities, and local SLEs were developed to ensure long-term capacity.

  
  

The intention was never “one size fits all”, it was always bespoke and asked “what will work here?”

Combined with Kotter's 8 Step Change Model, these were used to plan context specific change in schools.

What We Learnt: Insights for Providers and Designers

1. Context is everything

Every school was unique. One day I’d be mentoring a confident senior leader in a “Good” school with 15% EAL learners. The next, I’d work with a newly appointed middle leader in a school in special measures with 80% EAL pupils, many of whom were international new arrivals.

Flexibility and contextual awareness were critical. So too was equipping SLEs with the emotional intelligence to adapt support accordingly. As Viviane Robinson notes in Student-Centred Leadership, “problem-solving expertise” is a key domain of effective leadership—and this applied equally to us as programme leaders.

2. Change tools matter—but only when applied with care

The leadership elements, particularly the use of Kotter’s and Knoster &Lippett change models proved invaluable. They helped participants see change as a flexible process, not an event. Used in coaching sessions, these tools helped scaffold conversations and action planning in meaningful ways.

We walked through leadership conversations live, created space for rehearsal and co-designed school-specific plans. Theory and application sat side by side.

3. Connectedness determines traction

One of our key insights came early. After the first cohort, it became clear that isolated initiatives, even well-planned ones, floundered without strategic alignment. From cohort two, we made headteacher involvement a requirement at launch. This was about buy-in as well as enabling leaders to see the connection between EAL and other priorities (such as oracy, inclusion or assessment).

Participants were also encouraged to feedback to SLT after each coaching session, reinforcing the golden thread between classroom-level change and whole-school strategy.

4. Sustainability is relational

Building sustainability meant developing local capacity. I supported experienced EAL leaders to apply for SLE status, mentored them in coaching skills and helped them become multipliers of good practice.

But more than systems, sustainability rested on relationships. Trust, collaboration and psychological safety underpinned everything. As Amy Edmondson’s research shows, high-performing teams thrive on candour and connection. This was true for the EAL leaders and equally true for the leaders who enabled them.

When CPD Really Works: A Story of Culture and Agency

One school in Leicester particularly stood out.

A young, newly appointed EAL leader, alongside a TA, was tasked with implementing their project. Their headteacher had strategically aligned the work with an existing priority: oracy. They planned to use Tower Hamlets’ Language Structures to amplify both aims.

During a mentoring visit, I witnessed the head drop into the PPA room and check in. What followed was a short, powerful exchange. The EAL lead shared her thinking confidently, offered some challenge, and was met with curiosity, not defensiveness. The tone was trusting, equal and focused on pupil outcomes.

When I returned several months later, the impact was clear, not just in improved provision, but in the sense of professional empowerment. That conversation, though small, symbolised a culture where everyone felt responsible for improvement.

Contrast that with other schools where staff felt unable to challenge upwards or align their work. Change fatigue, unclear remits, or fear of “overstepping” held people back.

Key Lessons for School Leaders

So, what does this all mean for leaders seeking to get the most from CPD?

1. Prioritise relational trust and psychological safety

If your staff are going to lead change, they need to feel safe to speak up, challenge assumptions and take ownership. Coaching conversations and clear, respectful communication are vital. As the DfE’s CPD Standards remind us: “Professional development must be prioritised by school leadership.”

When staff have agency and can see their part in the bigger picture of improvement this creates a snowball of impact.

2. Listen carefully to build accurate context

Use tools like audits to triangulate views. Often, senior leaders rate provision more positively than those working at classroom level. Gaining an honest picture, through staff and pupil voice, supports better decisions and empowers leaders at all levels.

3. Highlight the connectedness

Schools are awash with initiatives. Help your team see the links between them. Align CPD with existing priorities. A project on EAL might also support literacy, belonging or staff wellbeing. The clearer the thread, the greater the traction.

When leaders are balancing the tightrope of leading significant changes and avoiding collective overwhelm, helping the team see the connections really will help. Prioritising what's most important and focusing on the small steps everyone can take will help keep change manageable.

4. Measure and celebrate impact—beyond data

Yes, track pupil data. But also look at induction experiences, sense of belonging, and staff confidence. Non-onerous feedback loops and visible recognition can sustain momentum and motivation. As we know from Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory, autonomy, competence and relatedness drive human motivation—and professional development is no different.

Did It Make a Difference?

While I’m mindful of the biases in post-course feedback (no one wants to say their hard work had little impact), we triangulated feedback with audits and pupil data where possible which showed positive impact during and after the programme. The programme was also recommissioned multiple times. More significantly, a year after our final cohort, I received a message from Sue, who’d led commissioning in Leicester - as a city-wide professional development evaluation Heads were still reporting high impact from the programme.

Final Reflections

This programme taught me more than any textbook ever could about professional development and change. And while I now work more broadly with leadership teams across a range of settings, these lessons continue to shape my practice.

To those leading schools: your culture matters more than you know.

To those designing professional learning: don’t just deliver knowledge, construct a gateau: create structures, relationships and enable powerful conversations that allow change to take root. Work in partnership with participants, flex with their needs and empower them to feel the way forward within their context.

And to all of us in education: let’s keep working together and keep learning from each other.

I’d be interested to hear from you.

What lessons have you learnt about what makes CPD stick? What gets in the way?

The link below will take you to the DfE Standard for Teacher Professional Development which I used to help develop and then refine the programme.

Department for Education