Guest Blog: Coaching equity
How leadership coaching can help teams to navigate and tackle inequality
It’s a privilege to hand over the Substack baton once again!
One of the intentions behind this ‘Poverty Guy’ space is to do more than share my own thinking. I wanted it to help surface some of the work, ideas and people who are sharpening capacity for change. One key thing I’ve learned, working in and alongside complex school contexts, is that inequality and educational disadvantage are far too complex to navigate in isolation. We make better sense of these topics, and respond more effectively, when we learn with and from others.
Across my career, I’ve been fortunate to work alongside individuals who have sharpened not only my thinking, but my practice. As the Biblical proverb reminds, “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Jonathan Ferstenberg is one of those people that I have had the pleasure of having as a colleague and these days as a friend.
I first worked with Jonathan when I was a classroom teacher. His presence, whether in a lesson or a conversation, has a way of deepening your curiosity about your own practice. Even a catch-up coffee with him will have you being more curious about the big topics of life! I remember a particularly duff lesson he observed from the back of my classroom some years ago. What followed wasn’t a checklist of what went wrong, but a thoughtful dialogue that helped me reflect and sharpen my curiosity. I left that conversation not only clearer about my practice, but more curious about how to improve it. Jonathan has a sharp expertise in teaching and learning, but perhaps more importantly, a rare ability to help others grow through that same curiosity.
We’ve stayed in touch over the years, often finding ourselves returning to conversations about coaching, what it is, what it isn’t, and how it might be used more intentionally to understand and tackle inequality in schools and communities. So, I’m delighted that Jonathan has agreed to contribute a guest piece on this very topic!
Take a moment to engage with his thinking. If, like me, you’re interested in growing as a leader, I’d strongly encourage you to connect with him.
If you are like other school leaders I know, there are likely several reasons why you may have found it difficult to create your ideal school strategy for understanding and tackling educational disadvantage.
Children and young people facing multiple inequalities often present with multi-faceted needs, including gaps in foundational knowledge, entrenched mental health concerns, or less parental support for their school work. Sean has written plenty about this on this Substack; if you search his blogs you will find many of the same issues you see in your own school. Addressing these complex issues therefore means that your busy academic, pastoral, and personal development leaders must find the time and headspace to work together. The strategy they make must fit seamlessly within your whole-school strategies, some of which may be new or still embedding.
You may also feel you don’t yet know enough about how to further navigate or tackle complex disadvantage or, more likely, you may have received plenty of CPD but are unsure about what to apply and where. There is also a chance your own desire to support these students, combined with the external accountabilities, can create a lot of pressure for you and your team. I see lots of school leaders, classroom teachers and support staff navigating these pressures in my work with schools everyday. So, know that you are not alone. It might even be why you’re choosing to read this guest blog!
Coaching to lead
Disadvantage is complex and so is leadership. I often find in my work with school leaders and educators that they might already know more than they realise. But this can be hard for them to see when tackling deep-seated inequalities and other complex issues in schools and communities. Sometimes leadership coaching can be an ideal way for you to pull together what you already know, build on the good work you are already doing, and add some manageable improvements that will make the biggest difference.
Leadership coaching is widely used in organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors. There is a plethora of research and evidence written about this, some of which I have signposted at the end of this article. Leadership coaching is largely anchored in the belief that the ‘client’ is resourceful and usually has more answers than they realise. The coach creates thinking space; they listen carefully and uses skilful questioning to help a leader reflect on their vision, consider what is working well and what they want to change, design strategies, identify barriers, and manage risks. Clients often find they achieve more in an hour with a skilled coach than they would have achieved in several hours on their own. Of course, the quality and knowledge of the coach matters here too. This is far from simply a chat or conversation.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to coaching, but a semi-structured session might include some of the following:
Start with what you are doing or trying
I might start by asking you about the strengths and weaknesses of your current strategy for supporting students facing disadvantage and whether there is anything new you are thinking or trying. This can help to ground the discussion in concrete realities, while also showing me how you think.
Identify and discuss barriers, even if they are complex
Your coach would likely ask you about the barriers faced by students experiencing disadvantage and how important each barrier is in your context. For example, if you say that attendance is an issue, a curious coach might ask what information you collect on the reasons for absence, how you triangulate that with pastoral data, what systems are in place to ensure that the right staff are responding to students’ or families’ needs, and whether you can see trends in the data which tell you what parts of the system are having more or less impact. The goal is to find the root cause of the problem and why your systems are not yet addressing it.
Towards testing solutions and next steps
Once you know this and have spent time being more curious about it, your coach can help you generate solutions or actionable next steps. The right questions will help you draw on what you already know. You might, for example, decide to develop a more relational approach to behaviour for all your students or an improved literacy and vocabulary programme so that all your students can enjoy success in school. If a client just needs a bit of prompting to get their ideas out, I might say something like, “There are three options that leaders in your position often consider:….Do you want to explore any of those or do you think there is something else that might be better?” I find that clients often come up with a solution that is better for their context than any of the ideas I suggested. If you are really stuck, your coach might help you consider how you find out precisely what you need to know.
Reality testing
As you develop solutions your coach might do what we refer to as ‘reality testing’.
I often ask, “On a scale of 1-10, how far will that go towards solving the problem?” If you are happy with the solution, your coach should help you design a plan for implementing it, including resources and a timescale. As that takes shape, I’ll often ask,
What are the risks of this strategy?
What can you do now to stop those risks from happening?
What do you expect to happen?
I have found that most leaders do an excellent job of analysing costs, benefits and risks. By the end of this process, you should have devised a clear, evidence-informed, time-bound strategy for supporting your disadvantaged students. Your coach will likely follow up in the next few sessions to see how it is going and to ask whether you need to make adjustments.
This type of leadership coaching is also good for the leaders themselves. Being part of a school leadership team is demanding and the rates of attrition are high, particularly for leaders in areas of disadvantage. Plenty of research indicates that leadership coaching promotes wellbeing and creates reflective, resourceful leaders who have a higher degree of self-confidence and a more embedded leadership identity.
Addressing the impacts of disadvantage on children and young people is a complex problem that requires thoughtful solutions that fit within a whole school development plan. This is something that applies to organisations and sectors beyond education too. While there are ‘no silver bullets’, leadership coaching is a shiny example of how to ensure that leaders and other colleagues can make greater sense of the complexity of inequality in communities and develop actionable strategies for tackling it. Children and young people are worth so much investment, but so are you and your team. A good series of leadership coaching sessions will sharpen your impact and influence.
About the author
Jonathan Ferstenberg is a school improvement partner, trainer and leadership coach and runs Bespoke School and Leadership Development. He is former Director of School Improvement and Headteacher with over 25 years of experience, including supporting improvements and coaching leaders and teachers at school and trust level. He has worked in some of the most disadvantaged areas in the UK
You can also reach Jonathan direct by emailing:
jonathan@bespoke-development.com
Further reading and links
Ciarán Collins, Regina Murphy and Martin Brown, The power of coaching in the professional learning and development of school leaders: an ecological framework and critical insights from a systematic review (Frontiers in Education, July 2025) https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2025.1601455/full.
Bob Garvey and Paul Stokes, Coaching and Mentoring, Theory and Practice (London: Sage, 2022)
Jenny Rogers, Coaching Skills: A Handbook, 2nd ed. (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008)