SLT pathways

At this year’s (brilliant) Music Teachers’ Association conference, I sat on a panel for a session amusingly titled: ‘Moving to the dark side: stepping up to SLT’. The ‘dark side’ is a common perception of our school senior leadership teams (SLTs). It’s a view rooted in a lack of confidence in their understanding of music, based on experience where it is forced into systems that simply do not work. But, for many reasons, we need creatives in leadership teams – music leaders bring a voice to the whole school leadership table that is unique and significant.

Fundamentally, we need leaders with the vision and courage to place creativity at the centre of our learning communities. If music is going to survive the catastrophic decline we currently see in the state sector, we have to have leaders who cherish, understand and know how to nurture it. More practically, music leaders already have so many attributes that are desirable for whole school leadership. Musicians are great analysts. Musicians can come out of the detail and see the big picture. Musicians are experts at people management. They work with talented individuals that they bring together under a clear vision to produce something greater than the sum of those individuals, managing egos, issues of self-confidence, celebrating success and addressing under performance. Music leaders are used to organising events for the whole school, working with tight budgets, negotiating with other leaders and drawing staff in from all disciplines to support. They know how to be leaders and team players, and can easily flex between the two.