Principal & CEO Mentoring

Are you an experienced college leader embarking on a new strategic journey?

Are you a newly appointed principal seeking suitable guidance in your senior executive role?

Are you on the path to becoming a CEO?

College leaders play a pivotal role in shaping the lives of countless individuals, and the position of college principal or MAT CEO is both uniquely gratifying yet filled with distinctive challenges. Principals and Chief Executives regularly encounter novel situations and relationships, devise strategies, and make complex decisions, often navigating uncharted territory, but the arrival at the top of the organisation suddenly narrows the available and appropriate options for leadership development.

Mentoring for Principals and CEOs

SFCA’s mentoring programme aims to address this gap by providing access to seasoned mentors who can provide timely, context-specific counsel drawn from experience, understanding and networks that are highly relevant to the problem to be solved or strategy to be developed.

The link is designed for impact, is short-term and highly tailored to the needs of the individual leader, their strategic challenge and/or organisational priority.  

Mentors and mentees build a relationship over a series of meetings both in person and online.  Meetings are highly focussed and planned jointly by the mentor and mentee to achieve the desired outcome. 

How does it work?

SFCA will provide a matching service between an accredited SFCA mentor and you as mentee, you may even wish to suggest a preferred link based upon mentors profiles.  Mentoring is informed by a mentor framework, but there is no set programme.  It is goal orientated and purposely flexible to the mentee's needs. 

The relationship between the mentor and mentee is clearly defined and agreed by both parties via a mentoring agreement which is delivered over a pre-agreed period of time (eg 5 days) over the course of a 12 month period. 

You can register your interest now by emailing: deborah.perry@sixthformcolleges.org 

Places are limited and will be scheduled on a first come first served basis.  

Testimonials

“I’ve been Principal of The College of Richard Collyer since 2020 and in 2023 we decided to look to form a new multi-academy trust with one of our 11-16 partner schools. Once our application had been submitted, I was keen to work with an experienced Principal who had moved into a CEO role in a MAT and was introduced to Jayne Clarke of Pinnacle Learning Trust which includes Oldham Sixth Form College. Jayne and I have been meeting every half term and she has been an incredibly helpful mentor in what has been a very complicated and, to me, completely unknown journey. Without question her advice has strengthened our application to the RDfE and steered us through the path to conversion, covering both practical and structural matters to do with academisation as well as thoughts on leadership and change management. Our new trust, the Horsham Learning Alliance, has hugely benefited from this supportive guidance.”  Dan Lodge, Principal

'It has been a really enjoyable and worthwhile experience acting as a mentor to Dan this year, and having an opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with him as he and his colleagues go through the process of academisation and establishing a trust that will be very similar to ours in terms of school membership alongside a SFC.  In addition to being able to talk through what worked for me/our trust, and things we'd do differently, I've also learned a lot from Dan along the way, so it's definitely been a mutually beneficial process. In my view, having the opportunity to work with someone in a similar context enables a broader range of issues to be considered when taking key decisions, and exploration of some of the challenges that are common along with potentially complex and confidential issues."  Jayne Clarke, CEO Pinnacle Learning Trust