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Women Leading in Education: Volunteer to Coach

If you’re a leader and want to help more women to become leaders in education, pledge to coach. Coaching has the potential to transform the leadership journey of women teachers. To do so you need to fill out this short online form - it will take up to 20 minutes and creates a coach profile for you.

Coaching has the power to increase confidence, unlock potential and build resilience. It is flexible, bespoke and specific to need.

This is a great opportunity to help more women progress into leadership roles. Volunteer to coach is one of the measures announced by government to support women in teaching.

What’s involved

After you’ve submitted your coach profile:

  • we’ll review your profile and may contact you if we require further clarification
  • once approved, we’ll add your coach profile to our coaching directory
  • you’ll need to update us termly on your availability so we can update the directory.
  • If you are a coach wishing to view your profile, email WLEcoaching@tscouncil.org.uk for a password to view your published information
  • you’ll work with one teacher at any given time, although you can work with more if you feel you have the capacity and would like to do so
  • women teachers will search the directory and contact you directly by email (you should aim to respond to them within 10 working days to discuss their requirements and agree whether you wish to work together)
  • you may want to use a coaching agreement Coaching_agreement (MS Word Document) to agree coaching session format and frequency (face-to-face, email, telephone, video-based, digital or a mixture of these)

Benefits

As a coach, you will:

  • play an important role to increase the number of women leaders in education
  • potentially transform the leadership journey of women teachers
  • have the opportunity to further develop your own leadership skills
  • support women teachers to overcome barriers to their success and achieve their potential

Evaluation

Once the coaching is complete, we suggest you and your participant complete an Evaluation (MS Word Document) . This is confidential between you and your participant.

You’ll also need to complete our termly feedback survey. This will help us to demonstrate that the coaching pledge is making a difference, meeting the needs of women teachers and increasing the number of women leaders in education.

Principles of good coaching practice

Good coaches listen and facilitate objectively, without solving people’s problems for them. The most important skill in coaching is asking questions within a coaching conversation. It is important that you have relevant competence or experience to support the coaching process. You should:

  • provide a clear outline of the coaching you offer and the extent of your professional expertise
  • explain the nature and limits of confidentiality surrounding the coaching you provide
  • agree the number and length of sessions with participants to achieve their goals
  • work with participants to review progress, achieve/refine goals and conclude coaching at the right time
  • provide clear expectations about the review and exit process, so participants are able to conclude their coaching appropriately
  • ensure participants are satisfied with their coaching by monitoring the effectiveness of the coaching process as well as the achievement of agreed outcomes
  • believe in the potential for others to grow and develop
  • focus on achieving positive action and outcomes (either long or short term)
  • be self-aware, confident and have personal presence
  • be competent at working with different attitudes, beliefs and behaviours

We have some FAQS addressed for both coaches and participants below - click here to download or explore the questions via the navigation bar below the image.

Training for coaches

The following training modules are provided free of charge by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) to support your coaching practice:

Mentoring and coaching: core skills course: If you have limited experience of coaching and mentoring, or wish to refresh your skills, this module will give you the knowledge, understanding and skills of mentoring and coaching in an educational context.

Other resources

FREE Coaching Workshops