News Stories

This month, we said ‘see you later (not goodbye)’ to one of our wonderful colleagues, who has worked with the Educational Leadership Centre and NETSP for over 14 years, since 2010. We celebrated with an afternoon tea in York, reminiscing about her contribution to educational leadership initiatives in the North East over the last 14 years.

However, to only capture the last 14 years in this post would not do her career in education justice, so we include a biography of her whole career below.  

Elaine trained as an early years teacher (0-9 year olds) and worked in infant and primary schools for twenty-eight years, the last seventeen as headteacher in three very different schools.  During her headships, Elaine became involved with the National College of School Leadership in Nottingham, training to be one of their Consultant Leaders and Remodelling Consultants.  

On leaving headship, Elaine started her own consultancy, writing and delivering training on leadership for those who work in schools or integrated children’s centres.  In addition to her own consultancy, she spent three years as Principal Lecturer for Professional Development for Teachers at Middlesex University, where she designed, wrote and delivered modules on action learning and leadership for teachers studying part-time for their master's degrees or doctorates. 

Elaine had extensive experience developing and writing leadership development materials including re-shaping and re-writing the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL) programme, designing, writing, and producing support materials for NPQICL provider teams and she also developed and delivered training for NPQICL facilitators and mentors.  Elaine also designed, wrote and delivered a programme on System Leadership for children’s centre leaders on behalf of the National College of School Leadership.  She was lead tutor on NPQICL in London for nine years.  

In 2010, on moving from London to North Yorkshire, Elaine became the Programme Manager and Lead Facilitator for NPQICL in the North East, until the programme ended in 2014, working for the North Leadership Centre (NLC), now Educational Leadership Centre, based at Newcastle University. 

Elaine continued to work for the North Leadership Centre, writing and delivering NPQ programmes in and around the North East of England on behalf of NLC until Covid hit, when she stopped delivery and concentrated on assessment.   

When the NPQ programmes were remodelled, Elaine wrote modules for NPQSL, NPQH, NPQEL and NPQEYL.  In recognition of this work, Elaine was appointed to the role of Visiting Professor of Practice from October 2021.  

Since then, Elaine took on one of three Lead Assessor roles for the NPQ programmes, which she continued until her retirement in November 2024.   

As you can see, Elaine’s career has been special and steeped within the professional development of others. She is a wise and authentic educator, with a core of integrity that is hard to beat. Elaine will be a huge miss to us at the Educational Leadership Centre. However, as we said at the start, this is ‘see you later, not goodbye’, and we wish Elaine every success in her retirement and future travels.   

Successful promotions – Congratulations to Stephanie Bingham and Dr Lisa Ramshaw 

The director of Newcastle University Educational Leadership Centre, Professor René Koglbauer, announces proudly the successful promotion of Stephanie Bingham and Dr Lisa Ramshaw to Senior Lectureships from 1st August 2024.  

Stephanie joined Newcastle University as lecturer and programme director for the National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) for school leaders. Since her appointment in 2017, Stephanie’s contribution focused on externally accredited and funded CPD programmes for teachers aligned to the Department for Education’s golden thread programmes, NPQs and Early Career Framework. Stephanie has been leading on the development of a series of new short courses co-created with subject experts in mathematics and literacy. Stephanie has also been instrumental in leading the development and implementation phases of our NPQ assessment for the School-led Network and the National Institute of Teaching.  

Lisa joined Newcastle University as lecturer nearly three years ago and has since taken on significant roles within the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences and the Educational Leadership Centre. Currently, Lisa is co-Degree Programme Director for one of our growing international education master’s programmes (MA Education: International Perspectives) and has been module leader for two leadership modules and the dissertation module. In the Educational Leadership Centre, Lisa acts as the NPQ assessment lead moderator and is responsible for accurate assessing across our national assessor team and across all our NPQ leadership and specialist programmes.  

Professor Koglbauer commented on these successful promotion results: “I am delighted that Steph and Lisa have been recognised with this promotion for their contribution to the centre, the school, the university as well as the teaching profession regionally and nationally. Such moments allow us also to take stock; over the last decade, over 1,000 aspiring middle and senior leaders, as well as headteachers and executive headteachers, have worked with the Educational Leadership Centre team in developing themselves as leaders and/or developing their teams. I am proud of the team’s achievement as it directly impacts on the regional education eco-system and indirectly on our pupils and students in the North East! Heartfelt congratulations, Steph and Lisa! Today is to celebrate the achievements! Tomorrow is to continue our work with our regional and national partners!”  

PD Leader Collaborative Network - Inaugural Meeting

On Thursday 11^th July 2024, a group of leaders across our regional schools attended our inaugural Professional Development (PD) Leader Collaborative Network Meeting.

As can be seen in the photos, one of the key purposes of this meeting was to get to know each other. All of those who attended have some degree of PD leadership responsibility within and across their schools, and so to break the ice, we discussed the following questions:

1. What is the best PD you have attended and/or delivered, and why?
2. What are you hoping to get from this network?
3. What can you give to this network?

Collaboratively, we then established our aims and ways of working for the network, and discussed the needs across our region, as we plan for the new upcoming academic year ahead.

One of the key take-aways from this meeting was realising the potential to harness and share our collective expertise and co-design ways to meet the identified needs, for effective future PD design and delivery. We are extremely excited to take this forward and realise this potential.

If you would like to be part of this network, please contact us at elcoffice@newcastle.ac.uk.

ELC representation at BELMAS and the annual University Council of Lifelong Learning conferences

The first week of July 2024 was a rather exciting and busy conference week for us here at the Educational Leadership Centre. After a five-year break (for various reasons, including the pandemic), we have set it our mission to get more actively involved in BELMAS, one of the learned societies for educational leadership, management, and administration in this country.

Our director of the Educational Leadership Centre, Professor René Koglbauer, was able to reflect on three proud moments during this conference:

• Dr Janet Armstrong, an alumna of Newcastle University's EdD programme presenting her research on policy, practice and effectiveness in one of the parallel sessions.

• Dr Abdullah Albalwi, who successfully defended his PhD thesis in 2023 was awarded the Doctoral Thesis Awards for his thesis: Investigating the influence of learning-centred leadership on authentic instruction and the contribution to enhancing the learning culture: a case study of four Saudi Arabian primary schools.

• Dr Lisa Ramshaw, Lecturer and co-Degree Programme Director of our MA Education International Perspectives delivered a conference paper on her Trianalagous Leadership concept.

A couple of days ahead of the BELMAS conference, our director contributed to the annual conference of the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning with a strategic showcase on Newcastle University’s collaborative place-based approach to addressing the skills challenges in the North East.

All contributions led to a flurry of engaging discussions and contributed to growing our academic and practitioner network across higher and further education as well as schools.

Leadership in Maths Professional Development Programme 2024

Over a course of 6 sessions between February and July 2024, a group of regional Maths leaders attended the Leadership in Maths Professional Development Programme, held at Newcastle University. The group were dedicated and engaging throughout, sharing their expertise with colleagues working in both Secondary and Primary contexts.

The programme was created and facilitated by Stephanie Bingham at the Educational Leadership Centre and leaders of the northeast's maths hubs, Lindsey Fagan and Rose-Marie Rochester. A range of topics were covered across the programme, including: leadership versus management; Goleman’s leadership styles; coaching and mentoring; leadership through a Maths lens; leading implementation within your Maths subject; practitioner enquiry; and sustaining impact.

Participants shared the following about the programme:

“This has been a great course to be on. It has made me consider the type of leader I want to be.”

“The whole course was very informative, engaging and supportive. I have enjoyed every session.”

“As maths leader, I developed my coaching style. I am now aware of the different leadership styles and am more aware of which ones suit different situations.”

If you are interested in the above course, you can learn more about the next one here, or email us at elcoffice@newcastle.ac.uk.

Click this link here if images below are not viewable - PGCert Advert - NPQ Credits

T:  0191 208 8455

E:  ELCoffice@newcastle.ac.uk  

W:  https://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/study-with-us/lifelong-learning/elc/

IN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/educationalleadershipcentre/

X:  NU_ELC

The Educational Leadership Centre is also home to the Network for Languages North East and we are delighted that we once again can support the European Day of Languages competition for learners of any languages in schools across the United Kingdom.

The European Day of Languages is celebrated annually on 26^th September and aims to promote language learning and linguistic diversity, both vitally important in our richly diverse and multi-cultural society.

More details about the competition can be found here! 

Happy European Day of Languages 2023!