Join our free webinar about how trusts can balance autonomy vs alignment at 4:30pm on 18 April.

Applications are now closed

Expert Middle Leaders

For ambitious middle leaders. This fully-funded course rapidly improves teaching and pupil outcomes, supporting middle leaders to keep getting better.

  • Drive school-wide improvement
  • Design an expert curriculum
  • Join a cohort of 500 school leaders
  • Two-year programme
  • Fully-funded by the DfE
#encodeForHtmlAttribute( photo.alt )#

Why us?

Benefits for you

Learn how to embed positive and lasting change
You’ll be exposed to the latest in behavioural insights so you can effectively and strategically drive school-wide improvement.

Learn from the best
The programme is designed by experts, includes the latest knowledge and skills needed to meet the new Ofsted framework and embraces findings from 10 years’ experience of delivering impact-driven middle leadership programmes.

Design an expert curriculum
You’ll develop your subject expertise and learn how to design and implement a curriculum that is valued by pupils, is memorable and enables deep learning using the latest cognitive science of learning research.

Further career development
Go from strength to strength as an expert middle leader. In a 2018 survey of the predecessor Teaching Leaders programme participants, 63% of respondents had been promoted since completing the course.

Get evidence-informed training
It’s fully funded, so you’ll get all the benefits mentioned here at no cost. It’s win-win for you, your school and your pupils.

Build a peer network
Becoming a leader of a school in a disadvantaged area can be challenging, isolating and hard work. You’ll join 10,000 committed, like-minded and optimistic school leaders from over 2,400 schools, forming a powerful peer group to help you tackle these challenges face on.

Benefits for your school

Transform the quality of teaching
Your middle leaders will learn how to embed a positive and lasting change. They’ll be exposed to the latest in behavioural insights so you can effectively and strategically drive school-wide improvement.

Unlock the potential of your most promising leaders
Now is the ideal time to think about who could be leading your school(s) in the future. This programme will help you develop high-potential staff. The course is fully-funded and training takes place out of school hours so your school will get all the benefits for no cost.

Design an expert curriculum
Your middle leaders will develop their subject expertise and learn how to design and implement a curriculum that is valued by pupils, is memorable and enables deep learning using the latest cognitive science of learning research

Retain your best staff
Investing in your staff makes them more likely to stay at your school – and in the teaching profession. In a 2018 survey of the predecessor Teaching Leaders programme participants, 63% of respondents had been promoted since completing the course

Learn from the best
Your middle leaders will benefit from a programme that is designed by experts, includes the latest knowledge and skills to meet the new Ofsted framework and embraces findings from 10 years’ experience of delivering impact driven middle leadership programmes.

Curriculum

The Expert Middle Leaders programme will give you the skills you need to lead on curriculum, assessment and pedagogy (methods of teaching) in primary, middle or secondary schools.

Over two years, you’ll benefit from:

  • Intensive residential training over 7 days to learn from others, and gain expertise and knowledge to put into practice in your school. You’ll do 4 days in the 2021 summer holidays and 3 days in 2022.
  • An additional 7 days of face-to-face training outside school hours, plus 12 hours of virtual sessions with facilitators experienced in school leadership to enhance your skills
  • A transformative 9 hours of virtual coaching to achieve your goals
  • Academic tutoring with an experienced tutor for 5 hours to get to grips with key topics
  • Peer learning group sessions, totalling 10 hours, to learn from like-minded peers
  • Access to a network of thousands of leaders for personal and professional support
  • Access to the latest teaching research and evidence and a range of assessment and curriculum planning tools to work more effectively

NPQ

Expert Middle Leaders will offer the opportunity to complete the new National Professional Qualification for Leading Teaching. This is subject to Ambition Institute successfully renewing the license to deliver the new suite of NPQs.

More information on the new NPQs to be launched in September 2021 can be found here.

There may be a cost per participant to cover the assessment to complete the NPQLT.

Find our performance against nationally set NPQ metrics here.

Team

Testimonials

"It’s a real privilege to be able to network and share good practice with other driven, like-minded colleagues."
Laura, KS2 Maths Co-ordinator

“It’s great to see the scale of what’s happening here - the potential to make so much change happen with this crucial catalytic role.”
Sam Twiselton OBE, Director of Sheffield Institute of Education

“Brilliant to see Ambition Institute’s Expert Middle Leaders focusing on curriculum and subject specificity. Looks like an epic training programme. So happy that middle leaders are at last being given the professional development they deserve.”
Summer Turner, Head of Curriculum Development, Inspiration Trust

Cost

The Expert Middle Leaders programme is fully-funded, so there’s no cost to schools or participants. It is funded by the Department for Education’s Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund (TLIF).