Product reviews for Leadership for Sustainability

Who is this book for? At one level, David Dixon has produced a highly practical guide for any head teacher who wants to create a sustainable school. It is full of advice and guidance based on the author’s own long experience as a primary school teacher and head teacher. He takes the reader on a clearly structured journey through all the key elements of school leadership and concludes with appendices which provide eleven policy statements covering the curriculum, energy policy (he could not have known how topical this would be!), fair trade, design technology and much more.

These features alone would ensure that this work merits attention from educational professionals – heads, teachers and school administrators – as well as informed, interested parents. Yet Leadership for Sustainability goes way beyond a head teacher’s guide. It is a manifesto for a radical reformation of our education system. David Dixon does not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Rather, he shows how we might change our schools so that the curriculum and all aspects of school life focus on educating young people so that they can play a practical role in building a sustainable world.

David Dixon’s book, therefore, deserves a readership which extends far beyond the world of primary education on which it is so firmly based. There are many challenges confronting society today and only a fool could fail to recognise the importance of education in finding solutions. Sustainability is vital and our young people will only understand its crucial importance if we have more leaders like David Dixon at all levels.

Leadership for Sustainability draws on impressive research, deeply thoughtful analysis, wide reading and unwavering commitment allied to a mature understanding of how to lead a school community. David Dixon is an idealist but he recognises that leadership – or captaincy, as he calls it – requires a multi-faceted approach. He recognises that green leaders might show ‘great faith in people’ and appreciate the importance of distributed leadership but there will surely be barriers to their goals and they will have to confront negative voices. In such circumstances, they realise the value of ‘selective coercion.’ Dixon describes them as ‘green Machiavellians’, knowing that this charming phrase does not hide the drive and subtlety required of such educational captains. 

The chapter on how sustainability can be built into the curriculum is especially inspiring. Dixon shows, for example, how the study of bread can be used to teach children about a range of national curriculum subjects but in a way which keeps the focus firmly on sustainability. The combination of idealism and practical policy is evident, too, in a fascinating chapter dealing with school campuses. I was a head for 19 years and I know how attractive it could be to leave the detail regarding buildings, catering, transport and energy use to bursars and finance managers. For David Dixon, however, it is vital to manage all these aspects of school policy through the lens of sustainability. The quotation from Winston Churchill with which Dixon opens the chapter – ‘We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us’ – is all the more relevant once you have read what he achieved in schools in Nottinghamshire and London.

The author is unquestionably an optimist and nowhere is this more evident than in his final chapter dealing with community. For him, community goes well beyond the normal school community definition which encompasses staff, children and parents. It includes its locality and all the different businesses, faith groups and other organisations which contribute to its wider civic life. He shows how sustainable schools can contribute to that life and influence it positively. 

This book is about the beneficial links between leadership and sustainability which can be established by thoughtful, courageous head teachers. In his final lines, David Dixon quotes Satish Kumar defining leadership as the commitment ‘to live and act with integrity and without fear.’ This book reveals Dixon to be such a leader and I am sure it must have been fulfilling and great fun to work under him. His book is a must-read for everyone who wants to see improvement in our schools and the education of a younger generation committed to a sustainable future for our planet.