In conclusion

Understanding and practice of leadership in Scottish schools is, from this evidence, undergoing a sea change. While representative of the leading edge rather than the mainstream of practice, headteachers and school staff are clearly thinking differently about leadership and its exercise. It is a long way from the traditional Scottish dominie and formidable rectors of the past. Leadership as viewed here depicts schools in a new light, in which initiative and opportunity have a chance to grow and leadership is as much the prerogative of teachers as of senior managers. Pupils too are being liberated from their role as passive consumers to be activists in school improvement and in their own learning.

The strongest of challenges that remain for leadership are to grasp the nettle of inclusion which implies radically new ways of organising school experience; to reach out more imaginatively to family and community, beyond parental 'involvement'. Underpinning these and providing the pervasive theme of the National Priorities is an urgent need to reframe achievement so that it reflects the changing nature of education in and out of school.

The stories by Scottish headteachers, by teachers, parents and students testify to a sea change in how people are thinking and talking about leadership, learning, teaching and school life. The challenge for leadership is to hold true to those values and practices when so many forces are making leadership less and less attractive, intensifying teaching and narrowing of the scope of learning to what is most easily measurable. There are five national priorities, all of equal value, all of which require leadership to be a shared concern with a pre-eminent priority of building capacity and preparing young people for an uncertain and unknowable future.