Early headship Coaching Offer (EHCO)

Benefit from an experienced headteacher coach / mentor over the period of one year.

Over three cycles over a year, you’ll receive guidance from an experienced, serving headteacher who works in a similar setting or phase, to help you apply expertise from the NPQH, to overcome the challenges and complex problems you face in your day-to-day role

Our EHCO provides you with tailored, personalised support to apply knowledge from the NPQH to your school context.

We have designed this support offer for new headteachers to complement and build on learning from the NPQ in Headship, to help you put the evidence and expertise from your NPQH into practice in your new school setting.

• Personalised, tailored support to your role
• One-to-one expert coaching and school visits
• Access to an experienced Headteacher
• Get help applying expertise from your NPQH to your context based on problems pertinent to you

Who is it suitable for?

Must be a headteacher or principal in a substantive role and in your first five years of headship.

Benefits for you

• Get ongoing personal support:  Being new to a headship role can be daunting. The EHCO will help you to find your feet by identifying your priorities and looking at structured, practical ways to tackle context specific problems.
• Receive one-to-one coaching:  You’ll get one-to-one coaching from an expert Headteacher who can provide support, insight and feedback to help you deal with the specific challenges you’re facing in your school.
• School shadowing experience:  contextualise your NPQH expertise in a real school setting by shadowing an experienced headteacher. Your coach will explain the steps they have undertaken, their rationale, and any obstacles they have overcome in their school, supporting you to understand how they have applied expertise to their practice.

Benefits for your school

• Improve staff retention:  An investment in your new headteacher shows your commitment to their career progression and job satisfaction. This means they’ll be more likely to stay in their post and become an effective leader.
• Learn from experts:  your headteacher will receive one-to-one coaching and support from an experienced headteacher who will share their knowledge and professional insight.
• Tackle existing challenges:  Coaching and shadowing will focus on applying expertise from the NPQH to the problems your headteacher might be experiencing in their role. They will be guided by expert coaches to arrive at effective solutions to tackle the problems they face in their school.
• Create a positive school culture:  A headteacher that feels supported and has the training and tools to create positive change, will lead to a happier workforce, better teaching and more positive outcomes for your pupils

About the course

• The curriculum for the EHCO is tailored around you – content is shared via workbooks situated on our online development platform Steplab.  Participants will access materials for each persistent problem they select to work on with their coach.
• The materials build on the expertise developed in the NPQH. Participants will use this knowledge building to focus and define a context-specific problem.
• This course focuses on developmental opportunities for you. Your context specific problem / solution will be developed through one-to-one coaching sessions with an experienced headteacher.
• You’ll be able to shadow the expert headteacher, engaging in a range of activities which will help you to better understand your problem and possible solutions. You will also have regular peer-group discussions with other headteachers via online video conferencing, to work through work-related dilemmas

Our Programme Structure

Our Early Headship Coaching Offer is tailored to your needs with the content covered depending on your school’s specific challenges.

It’s structured around the persistent problems of school leadership. You will select from these topics and personalise the course to support areas they want to develop expertise in.

Each EHCO participants will select three persistent problems over the duration of the course which are pertinent to them:

• School culture: Establishing a professional and supportive school culture and encouraging staff to contribute.
• Learning and development: Ensuring effective approaches to professional learning and development.
• Curriculum: Organising and teaching the curriculum.
• Behaviour: Attending to pupil behaviour and wider circumstances.
• School improvement: Analysing and diagnosing problems, planning and implementing strategies for continuous educational improvement.
• Administration: Managing an efficient and effective organisation

What does the EHCO include?

The EHCO consists of three cycles of coaching-shadowing-community. For each cycle, participants select a workbook which focuses on an area of school leadership. The images below indicate how these three components are interconnected and mutually supportive by exemplifying the structure of one cycle and how one cycle fits in to the full EHCO:

Across the EHCO participants therefore attend three cycles of:

> 1-hour coaching session, from an experienced serving headteacher, supported by pre-work and post- work. This coaching session will be personalised and focussed on a context-specific problem that you are facing.

> 1 Shadowing visit, to your coach’s school. These shadowing opportunities are the most important part of the post-work from the coaching sessions. The visits follow on from your coaching session and allow you to contextualise the conversations in a real-school setting, through shadowing the headteacher who is coaching you.

> 1-hour peer-led community. This small group will provide you with an opportunity to discuss your problem of school leadership with others in similar positions and to build supportive networks outside of your school setting.

Final Assessment

There is no assessment as part of this programme

Costs and scholarship funding

New funding arrangements for NPQs – applications open on 1st July 2024

The DfE have announced that NPQ funding from Autumn 2024 will be targeted to those teachers and leaders serving more disadvantaged communities.

There will now be a capped number of funded 10,000 places nationally. Funding for the April 2025 cohorts and beyond has not been confirmed.

Scholarship-funded places are extremely limited on each NPQ programme, so access to funding will be subject to availability. 

To have the best chance of claiming a funded place, please apply as soon as possible to the DfE AND Ambition Institute via our application process once applications open on 1st July 2024: participants from eligible schools identified below will be prioritised on a first come first served basis. Other places are available at a cost to schools and settings.

For the EHCO, funded scholarships will be available on a first come first served basis for those who meet the following criteria:

• Work in the 50% of schools with the highest proportion of students who attract pupil premium funding or early years settings identified as having high disadvantage in England

If you’re unsure whether you will qualify for this ‘pupil premium’ based on funding, please use Ambition Institute’s online eligibility check tool.  Some nurseries are not available yet on the tool. If you work in a nursery and / or you cannot see your school or setting, please contact us directly at [email protected]

Scholarship-funded places are limited, so access to funding will be subject to availability. To have the best chance of claiming a funded place, please apply as soon as possible once applications open. 

New headteachers are eligible for this targeted support package if you meet all these criteria:

• are in your first five years of headship
• have previously completed an NPQH, are applying for an NPQH, or are currently doing an NPQH with us or another NPQ provider.

Costs for others, such as those in independent schools or those who do not meet this criteria is £800 + VAT

How to apply

Applications close in early September in readiness for an October start.