Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders

What are the Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders?

The Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders (Middle Leader Standards) are a practical guide for teachers who lead others in schools. They help middle leaders understand what good leadership looks like and support them to grow in their role while improving teaching and learning.

Using the Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders

Learn how the Middle Leader Standards are organised across a developmental continuum and the variety of ways they can be used to support your growth.

Start using the Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders today

View the Middle Leader Standards (.pdf)

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Middle leaders play an incredibly important role, making up a large proportion of the leadership workforce in schools.

The Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders:

Define key dispositions, 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.

What is a middle leader?

Middle leaders are qualified teachers who hold recognised management and leadership responsibilities, usually in addition to their teaching responsibilities (Grootenboer et al., 2020). For many, middle leadership is a career goal, for some it is an important step 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

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.

How were the Middle Leader Standards developed?

The development of the Middle Leader Standards involved research, expert advice, broad consultation, a national validation process, a national impact assessment, and a trial of draft Middle Leader Standards across Queensland.

Creating the Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders

Learn how the Middle Leader Standards were created, including the research and professional input that shaped their structure and focus.

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Note: Data referenced from National Trends: Teacher Workforce published June 2025, with data from 2019–2023. For the most recent data, please check the ATWD Reports page.

Literature review

A comprehensive literature review provided a wide research base for the development of these Middle Leader Standards. It gathered information from both academic papers and international and national practice.

Read the Middle-leadership literature review (pdf, 2.8 MB)

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Expert panel

AITSL also drew on the advice of an expert panel and feedback from key stakeholders to refine each version of the standards.

The expert panel members were:

Dr Viviane Robinson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, The University of Auckland
Dr Peter Grootenboer, Professor of Education, Griffith University
Dr Kylie Lipscombe, Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Wollongong
Dr Kerry Elliott, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)

Validation from the profession

The Middle Leader Standards were extensively validated by the profession using a national online process. 940 educators across Australia provided feedback during the psychometric validation. This provided statistically significant, detailed insights which enabled adjustments to the Middle Leader Standards to ensure that they were clear, relevant, useful and fit for purpose.

Implementation trial

An implementation trial was conducted across more than 82 Government, Catholic and Independent schools in Queensland, and an external evaluation of the trial found that nearly all participants considered the Middle Leader Standards to be useful and relevant for developing middle leadership capabilities.

Impact assessment

An impact assessment was commissioned to understand the potential positive impacts and unintended consequences of introducing the Middle Leader Standards. A series of interviews with 23 key stakeholder groups revealed that the positive intention of the Standards aligned with the likely impacts of their introduction. It revealed not only the need for the Middle Leader Standards, but a desire for middle leaders to be acknowledged for the important roles they play in schools.

AITSL would also like to thank approximately 2000 individuals who contributed to the development of the Middle Leader Standards through consultations or who provided feedback through the national validation, the national impact assessment or the Queensland trial.