The theme of this year’s CST Annual Conference is flourishing.
School and trust leaders play a vital role in helping their communities to flourish, including the staff across their schools.
This poses three important questions:
- What actions can school and trust leaders take that support those around them to flourish?
- Why should leaders prioritise these actions?
- How do we balance a focus on this with the other educationally important outcomes we’re responsible for?
A framework to inform leaders’ actions
School leaders are constantly balancing competing demands on time and resources. Having robust evidence about effective practice is key to navigating difficult decisions.
Self-determination theory offers a well-established evidence base for understanding what helps adults thrive at work. It identifies three basic psychological needs:
- Competence: Feeling effective and capable in your role
- Relatedness: Feeling connected, valued, and part of a community
- Autonomy: Having a sense of ownership and agency
Leaders play a crucial role in meeting these needs, and we see some great examples of this across the sector.
For example, some schools and trusts offer tailored coaching to support colleagues whatever their job role – classroom teachers, pastoral support, or school leader. Building in this kind of support can help their whole school team develop their competence and confidence, and how well-equipped they feel to carry out their roles.
Many trusts also work hard to co-create new initiatives with their staff, incorporating their input into the design. This feedback makes these initiatives stronger and helps staff to understand them and take ownership over them.
And, of course, there are many great interactions between leaders and their teams that are harder to quantify. Day-to-day, this looks like investing the time to build strong relationships with people, understanding their motivations, and building a sense of collegiality and teamwork.
Why we should prioritise flourishing
We mustn’t underestimate these everyday acts of leadership. People want and need leaders who create opportunities for them to grow and learn; appreciate others’ work; build trust with the individuals they work with; and support others’ mental health, wellbeing, and work-life balance.
The Education Endowment Foundation highlights how supportive working environments, opportunities for professional development, and strong leadership all contribute to staff wellbeing and retention.
Similarly, the Teacher Wellbeing Index created by the charity Education Support shines a light on the stress that staff in school often feel – and how crucial good leadership is for positive changes to staff mental health and wellbeing.
We recently published research exploring which attributes influence people’s decisions to enter and remain in teaching. Alongside other considerations like salary, flexibility, and working hours, the study demonstrated the importance of elements from self-determination theory in these decisions.
When adults thrive at work, the benefits ripple across the school community. Flourishing staff are more likely to stay in the profession, they contribute positively to their school community, and they provide an education that helps pupils thrive.
Flourishing for pupils
Evidence suggests that where teachers’ psychological needs are met, they are better able to meet the same needs in their pupils.
Where pupils’ needs are met in this way, studies have shown positive effects on pupils’ wellbeing, engagement, outcomes, attendance and behaviour.
We explore these ideas in more detail in our research-based guide to pupil motivation and engagement, authored by Steve Farndon.
What this means is that it isn't a trade-off between supporting the flourishing of staff and enhancing pupil outcomes – they complement each other well, and are mutually reinforcing.
Leadership as a catalyst for flourishing
Leadership shapes the culture that enables both adults and pupils to flourish.
By investing in professional development, fostering inclusive environments, and applying evidence-informed practice such as self-determination theory, trusts create schools where everyone feels they belong, and where everyone can keep getting better.
As we prepare for this year’s CST conference, we look forward to sharing stories of success, hearing new ideas, and learning together about how we can support every adult and every pupil in our communities.
- Hilary Spencer is CEO of Ambition Institute, a SEND and inclusion professional community supporter and lanyard sponsor at CST Annual Conference 2025
We welcome perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.
