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The Leadership Standards Framework (LSF) has been developed to guide the professional learning and development of aspiring leaders and to encourage teachers to move into leadership positions.

The Leadership Standards Framework (LSF) emphasises the connections between the work of leaders and the core functions of schooling. It draws these connections in the context of the values and beliefs of the Catholic Church. It encapsulates the relationship between five guiding conceptions of leadership and areas of leadership action.

The concept of leadership within the Leadership Standards Framework is not viewed as being conferred or bound by role, rather it promotes leadership as being accessible to any individual within a school. Accordingly the LSF has been developed with two main purposes in mind.

• The first is to guide the professional learning and development of aspiring leaders and to encourage teachers to consider movement into leadership positions.
• The second is to unite Catholic schools around a vision of agreed leadership practices and provide a foundation for formalised assessment against these practices.

The LSF has two facets:

1. A guiding conception of leadership. 
2. Areas of leadership action.

At the centre of the framework are the five ‘guiding conceptions’ of leadership drawn from the work of Richard Elmore (2000) and Michael Fullan (2000, 2004) (as shown in the diagram at right. Ideally these should infuse every leadership action within those areas of school life where leaders can initiate efforts to improve school functioning and student learning opportunities.

Effective school principals provide many opportunities for teachers to take up leadership roles and to learn from the experience. They provide their staff with stepping stones from the classroom to wider professional responsibilities and eventually, perhaps, to school principalship. The LSF aims to provide school leaders and teachers with examples of school life where teachers may lead and manage change.

Visit the Leadership Standards Framework website.