Discover the new Professional Standards for Middle Leaders, developed by AITSL in partnership with the Queensland Department of Education. Grounded in research and informed by practice, the Middle Leader Standards were built in consultation with the profession. While not a nationally endorsed policy, you can explore the Middle Leader Standards here to support your middle leadership development.
Middle leaders play an incredibly important role, making up a large proportion of the leadership workforce in schools.
The Professional Standards for Middle Leaders:
Define key attributes, knowledge, and skills that shape effective middle leaders.
Speak to current and aspiring middle leaders in schools, preschools and kindergartens and those who work with them.
Provide a common language for professional dialogue and growth.
Provide the missing link in a leadership developmental continuum for teachers, extending from early career teaching to senior leadership.
Middle leaders usually hold classroom teaching responsibilities alongside their leadership roles. For many it is a career goal, for some it is a pathway towards becoming a school principal. Some examples of middle leaders include:
Heads of department
Year level coordinator
Stage coordinator
Head of curriculum
Head of student welfare
Pastoral care leader
Learning area leader
Which others can you think of?
These professional standards are a developmental tool to provide clarity about effective leadership to help middle leaders improve their impact by developing their leadership capabilities.
Development of the Middle Leader Standards involved research, expert advice, broad consultation, a national validation process, national impact assessment, and a trial of draft Standards across Queensland.
AITSL also drew on the advice of an expert panel and feedback from key stakeholders to refine each version of the standards.
We aim to provide documents in an accessible format. If you're having problems accessing a document, please contact us for help.