Assisting Schools in Ensuring They Are Getting the Right Leaders Now and into the Future

Using psychometric assessment to identify the required leadership attributes for success in a school environment.

Situation

Schools have been experiencing significant change in recent years. The expectations on schools to not only to educate our students in an academic sense, but also from a social and behavioural perspective have increased. Further, with advances and changes in technologies and complexity of work, comes a different skillset for our future students to graduate with (e.g. creativity, collaboration, digital literacy, and problem-solving), requiring leaders of schools, to continue to evolve and adapt their curriculum to ensure these requirements are met.

We are also seeing a shortage in experience and talent within teachers, and therefore the traditional pipeline of talent for leaders within schools has reduced significantly.

Challenge

From all this change, we are seeing different leadership roles being created at schools, such as Director of Wellbeing and Innovation, and a change in skillset for leaders to be successful now and into the future.

There is much more focus on leaders being visible, engaging and building relationships with children, staff, and parents; increased commercial focus while balancing this with providing the required education, and being adaptable and responding to what is needed is vital.

Further, the traditional recruitment processes utilised by schools to promote from within are not sufficient to be able to fill the number of and diversity of leadership roles required.

Solutions

We have worked with several schools, predominantly high schools, to assist them in identifying the right people for their leadership roles.

This has involved meeting with key people within the school (e.g. Human Resources, Principals) to understand the key competencies required for the different leadership roles, and how this might change or evolve into the future.

From this, we select the psychometric assessments that best measure these key competencies. Once candidates have completed these assessments, we provide written reports, feedback, and advice with results interpreted in line with the key competencies.

Result

Using psychometric assessment provides schools with greater confidence to consider candidates who may be external to the school and/or a different industry as it provides them with objective information about the person and increases the accuracy of making the right decision.

For internal candidates, using psychometric assessments as part of the process, assists internal candidates in seeing the recruitment process as objective, and the interview panel can provide objective feedback. Further, internal candidates can receive feedback on their results and use this information as part of their leadership development plan.