Carolyn Roberts is chair of ASCL’s Ethical Leadership Commission which was launched at ASCL Annual Conference 2017. In the last of her series of blogs on the development of ELC, Carolyn explores some of the principles and virtues which feature in the Commission’s Framework for Ethical Leadership.

OPTIMISM

How’s it going? How’s the year for you now we’re in its second half? What are the exam classes looking like?  How’s recruitment? Admissions? How is your budget holding up? Is your building falling down? Have you got enough governors?

Are parents in good spirits or are they super-critical? Are the children happy and settled, or revolting? Are there any CAMHS appointments? Has Ofsted been? What are you doing about the EBacc? What did you do about the snow?  

I hope you’ll be able to haul yourself away from all of this so you can come to ASCL Annual Conference and take part in our Ethical Leadership debate. There’ll be information, a panel discussion, a workshop and a few questions on the conference app to gather your thoughts. We’ll talk about the next part of the plan.

One of the most important jobs for us next weekend is to canvass views on the language we want to introduce into daily leadership life through the Framework for Ethical Leadership. If you’ve been patient enough to stagger through the blogs heretofore you’ll be unavoidably familiar with them. If you're just reading this one, here they are below. Our report will also be readily available at Conference for slightly longer reading.

We’ve aligned ourselves with the seven principles of public life:

• Selflessness
• Integrity
• Objectivity
• Accountability
• Openness
• Honesty
• Leadership

And for us, we’ve expanded leadership because as public servants and role models for the young, how we behave is as important as what we do. We think leaders should demonstrate:

• Trust
• Wisdom
• Kindness
• Justice
• Service
• Courage
• Optimism

We originally had six virtues, but optimism crept in at the end. Despite everything - the pressures of our daily lives and the challenges of our leadership - it always does. That’s why we do the job and serve the children.