Dr Catherine O’Farrell is the Founding Partner of Incluzun, a Dubai-based consultancy supporting schools, education groups, corporate and government organisations across the MENA region to strengthen inclusive practice, wellbeing and organisational readiness. With a background as a corporate leader and psychotherapist, she combines systems thinking, psychology and educational leadership to help organisations identify targeted, strategic…
Dr Ghadeer Abu-Shamat is an experienced international education leader with extensive expertise across educational leadership, school improvement, teacher development and strategic educational management. She currently serves as Executive Vice President at GEMS Education and recently completed her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the UCL Institute of Education, further strengthening her commitment to advancing educational excellence…
School crises rarely appear overnight. While some events are sudden and unavoidable, many school crises develop gradually over months or even years. The warning signs are often visible long before the situation reaches a critical point. The challenge is that these indicators are frequently dismissed as temporary issues, isolated incidents, or part of the normal…
Article #14 – Dr Ellen Heyting Dr Ellen Heyting is the International Networks Lead at Melbourne Metrics in the Faculty of Education at The University of Melbourne. A Senior Research Fellow and experienced educator, she has over a decade of teaching and leadership experience across IB World Schools in Melbourne, Beijing, Singapore and Helsinki, and…
Dr Helen Chatburn-Ojehomon is Deputy Head of School at Ibadan International School, Nigeria, and an experienced international educational leader, researcher and systems thinker. Holding a Doctorate in Education, Helen is passionate about educational leadership, teacher agency, student wellbeing and building inclusive school communities where every learner experiences belonging and opportunity. Through her leadership and research,…
Too many organisations still approach recruitment like a transaction. A role becomes vacant. An ad goes live. Applications come in. Interviews happen. A placement is made. Then everyone hopes for the best. But leadership recruitment, particularly in education, has never really been that simple. The problem with transactional recruitment is that it often focuses on…
Article #13 – Angela Fubler Angela Fubler is an experienced international education leader with more than three decades in the sector. She is the Founder of Chatmore British International School and a Member of the Board of Directors at COBIS, contributing to the Membership and Professional Learning Committees. Angela is passionate about strengthening international education…
School leaders make dozens of consequential decisions every week. Most of them are made quickly, under pressure, with incomplete information and competing concerns. A staffing issue before first period. A parent escalation at morning tea. A welfare concern that needs a response before the end of the day. And yet we rarely talk about school…
An extract from Steven Trotter’s book Stretch, publishing with Amba Press July/Aug 2026 “No leader you will ever follow is more important than the one you choose to become” In my soon-to-be-published book, Stretch: A Middle Leader’s Guide to Navigating Impact Under Pressure, I explore the idea of the Stretch: the space in which a…
That might sound simple, but it’s something that is not always done well across the sector. On paper, the role appears clear: A defined position description A set of responsibilities A list of capabilities But when you look more closely, something doesn’t quite hold. Because many roles have been shaped by: Competing expectations Historical structures…