Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders

The Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders (Middle Leader Standards) were built in consultation with the profession to guide those teachers who also hold recognised management and leadership responsibilities.

As a nationally endorsed policy, you can explore the Middle Leader Standards to support your middle leadership development.

The Middle Leader Standards have been created to recognise the complexity and importance of the role of middle leaders across Australia.

There are a diverse range of middle leader roles across Australia, and are crucial to the effective functioning of our schools. These Standards identify the key capabilities required to be effective and will form a useful guide for ongoing leadership development.

Middle Leader Standards were developed by AITSL in partnership with the Queensland Department of Education.

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 Professional Standards for Middle Leaders:
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Define key attributes, knowledge, and skills that shape effective middle leaders.

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Speak to current and aspiring middle leaders in schools, preschools and kindergartens and those who work with them.

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Provide a common language for professional dialogue and growth.

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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

Which others can you think of?

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?

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

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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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 Vivine 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)

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.

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.

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.

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