The recruitment and retention of senior school leaders is high on the UK Government's agenda with much attention currently being given to succession planning. Future Leaders and other fast track leadership development programmes are, in part, a response to this "crisis" brought about by demographic change--many headteachers are due to…

How leaders learn to become leaders has been an area of much research. When asked what were the key experiences in learning leadership, leaders often speak of the importance of "on-the-job" experiences, yet these experiences are rarely fully detailed in the research literature. The importance of "apprenticeships" and being…

A symposium was organized at the BELMAS/SCRELM Research Conference in July 2004 to explore the issues arising from the experiences of those contracted by the National College for School Leadership to evaluate its programmes. This article presents four contributions that drew on a wide range of evaluation experience and a response from a…