Leading a boarding team
🏷️ From £175
🎧 All boarding staff
📍 Online
Course outline:
Leading in Boarding: Skills for Aspiring and New Boarding Leaders
Building confident, reflective, and effective leadership for the boarding community.
This virtual day seminar is designed for those aspiring to, or recently appointed in, leadership roles within boarding. Whether you’re a new Houseparent, Head of Boarding, Deputy Head (Pastoral), or overseeing a boarding team, this training will help you reflect on your personal leadership style and build the skills needed to lead with confidence and clarity.
While classroom leadership often takes the spotlight, pastoral leadership requires a unique and wide-ranging skill set—often subtle but profoundly impactful. Strong leadership in boarding cultivates effective teams, enhances boarders’ wellbeing, and shapes the overall tone and culture of the boarding community.
This interactive session offers opportunities to share experiences and challenges with fellow practitioners and benefit from peer support and expert guidance.
Training topics will include:
- Leadership Styles
Exploring the demands of leadership and identifying various recognised leadership approaches - Building an Effective Team
Communication, collaboration, shared vision, and appreciating individual strengths within the team - Effective Leadership in Practice
Time management, resource deployment, prioritising pupil outcomes, and managing competing demands - Putting Leadership into Action
Embedding learning into day-to-day practice through self-reflection, feedback, and ongoing development
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the session, participants will:
- Gain a deeper understanding of different leadership styles and how to apply them in a boarding context
- Learn strategies for building and sustaining a high-performing, cohesive boarding team
- Enhance their ability to manage time and resources with a focus on student wellbeing and outcomes
- Develop their skills as reflective practitioners, capable of leading with empathy, clarity, and impact
Speaker:
Mark Robinson, BSA Senior Consultant
Mark has a Product Design Degree from Brunel University and a PGCE. His first post in independent education was as Assistant Master at Christ’s Hospital in Horsham where he held several positions including Assistant Housemaster to a junior boy’s boarding house. After five years he moved on to Ardingly College in West Sussex as a Head of Department and Housemaster to a joint day and boarding house. Mark has been an inspector on boarding inspections, an Assistant Housemaster to a girls’ boarding house and fully involved in teaching up to ‘A‘ Level.
In 2002 Mark gave up teaching to set up Mentor Education Services Ltd, a business offering education-related consultancy services to the independent sector, initially training, interview coaching and professional development but also marketing and pre-inspection to schools both in the independent and maintained sector.
Mark was appointed as Assistant Director of Training for the Boarding Schools’ Association in 2010, where he continued offering training and consultancy to independent and state schools both in the UK and around the world. In 2017 he was appointed as Deputy Head Pastoral at Collège du Léman in Switzerland, a large international boarding and day school. After gaining some further, valuable international experience, Mark returned to the UK to continue his training and consultancy in the Independent and state school sectors.
