Successful School Leadership provides a comprehensive analysis of the values and qualities of head teachers. It assesses the strategies they use and how they adapt these to their particular school context in order to ensure positive increases in the learning, well being and achievement of their students. The authors:

• Identify a basic set of leadership practices resulting from their findings
• Analyse and describe the leadership values, qualities and behaviours related to different phases in schools’ improvement journeys
• Provide illustrative case studies of primary and secondary schools that highlight context sensitive strategies
• Provide a contemporary overview of international research and thinking about successful school leadership
• Recognize similar and distinguishing features between schools in different socio-economic groups

David Hopkins is the inaugural HSBC Chair in International Leadership, International arm of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and the Leadership Centre at the Institute of Education, University of London. Between 2002 and 2005 he served three Secretary of States as the Chief Adviser on School Standards at the Department for Education and Skills. Previously, he was Chair of the Leicester City Partnership Board and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Nottingham. David is also an International Mountain Guide who still climbs regularly in the Alps and Himalayas. He has previously outlined his views on teaching quality, school improvement and large scale reform in Hopkins D. (2001) School Improvement for Real, Routledge / Falmer and Hopkins D (2007) Every School a Great School, Open University Press.