Coaching for school leaders
Leading a school has never asked more of the people at the top. I work with heads, deputies, and senior leaders carrying that weight.
The role has changed, and the pressure has grown
Headship and senior school leadership now combine educational vision with a set of demands that look more like running a complex business under constant external scrutiny. Budgets that no longer stretch. Recruitment and retention pressure. Inspection frameworks. Safeguarding accountability. Parental expectation. Staff wellbeing - held by leaders who rarely have anywhere to put their own.
For independent schools, the pressure is sharper still: fee sensitivity, the VAT change, falling rolls in some markets, and the constant work of justifying value to families who have choices.
Most school leaders carry all of this with very little space to think. The role demands that you hold steadiness for everyone else (staff, pupils, governors, parents) often with no equivalent space to be uncertain, tired, or simply honest about what the job is costing you.
If you've found that the leadership has become harder to sustain than the education itself, you're describing something structural, not personal.
What coaching actually does
This is not advice, and it is not mentoring or consultancy. I won't tell you how to run your school or hand you a leadership model to apply.
Coaching is a structured, confidential space in which you can think more clearly about the role than is possible anywhere inside the school you lead. The work is psychologically grounded and built entirely around you - your situation, your patterns, the specific reality you're navigating. It is independent of your governing body and your line management; what's discussed stays between us.
School leaders often bring these themes to coaching:
The transition into headship, or into a first senior leadership role
Leading a staff body through financial or structural change
Sustaining culture, morale, and their own steadiness under sustained pressure
The isolation of headship and the absence of anyone safe to think aloud with
Governor and board relationships, and the accountability they carry
Decision-making when every option has a real cost
The aim is not just insight. It is durable change in how you lead - and how you experience leading.
Why work with me
I'm a Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) and an ILM Level 7 executive coach, with a PhD and twenty years working inside complex, accountability-heavy organisations.
That psychological grounding matters. Most coaching draws on commercial leadership experience; I bring genuine depth - the ability to work with what's actually happening beneath the presenting problem, not just the problem itself. School leaders, who are time-poor and rightly sceptical of generic development, tend to find this the difference between a conversation that helps and one that doesn't.
I also understand the kind of environment you lead in: high in scrutiny, rich in expertise, under-resourced relative to what it's asked to deliver, and shaped by a gap between what the system says it values and what it actually rewards. My background spans the NHS, universities, and national research leadership - different sectors, but the same underlying leadership challenge.
One of my most formative coaching relationship was with an international school principal - work that anchored my commitment to leaders in education and the particular pressures they carry.
“We already coach internally - why bring in someone external?”
It's a fair question, and internal coaching done well is valuable. A trusted colleague who knows your context, culture, and people builds capability across the school in a way external coaching can't.
But however skilled, an internal coach operates inside the same system you do. They carry the same organisational narratives, hold their own relationships, and have their own place in the structure. Even with the best intentions, that creates a ceiling on what can safely be said.
The things that most need thinking through are often exactly the ones you can't say to anyone inside the building: the doubts you're not supposed to have, the decisions where you're genuinely uncertain, the moments when the weight of the role feels isolating because your job is to hold steadiness for everyone else.
External coaching does something different - not better in every respect, but different in a way that matters at senior level: complete psychological safety. No agenda, no institutional memory, no risk that what you surface reshapes how a colleague sees you afterwards. Internal coaching builds capability across your staff; external coaching creates the conditions for the thinking that's hardest to do when you're surrounded by the system you're trying to lead.
How it works
All coaching is delivered online, which makes sustained senior coaching practical around a demanding role - no travel, no time lost. Sessions are 60 minutes.
Two engagement options:
Starter: £1,250
Four sessions over 3 months. Suited to a specific transition, decision, or challenge with a defined focus.
Full: £2,250
Seven sessions over 6 months. Suited to sustained work through a significant transition or an extended period of complexity and pressure.
Team coaching
Individual sessions for each member of a senior leadership team, aligned to collective outcomes agreed at the outset, if wished. Priced to your brief.
Questions school leaders ask
Is this confidential and independent of my governors?
Entirely. The coaching is wholly independent of your governing body and any line management structure. What's discussed stays between us. That independence is part of what makes the space useful - it's the one place you don't have to manage how you're seen.
I don't have a problem - I just want to lead better. Is coaching still for me?
Yes. Coaching is not remediation. The leaders who benefit most are usually doing well and want to lead more deliberately, navigate a transition more skilfully, or think more clearly under pressure. Seeking it is a marker of seriousness, not a sign something has gone wrong.
Can my school fund this?
Often, yes. Some heads use a discretionary CPD or leadership development budget; others fund personally. Governing bodies can also approve leadership coaching as an investment in institutional stability. If it helps, I can provide a short briefing setting out the case in terms a board will recognise.
Does online coaching work for busy school leaders?
Particularly well. Online delivery removes travel and makes sustained coaching feasible around a school timetable. Most leaders find the focus of a video session is as good as or better than in person.
What happens in a chemistry session?
It's a 30-minute conversation, online, at no cost and with no obligation. The purpose is genuinely to work out whether the fit is right - most people find the conversation itself useful regardless of whether it leads anywhere.
Start with a conversation
A chemistry session is the best way to explore whether coaching is right for you. 30 minutes, online, no cost, no obligation. We'll talk about what you're navigating and whether I'm the right person to think it through with.