How to Lead an English Department: Insights from Donal Hale

Learn key strategies for effective English department leadership from Donal Hale, a seasoned educator with extensive experience in curriculum design and teaching. Discover the essential habits, priorities, and approaches that distinguish successful department leads in English education.

Leading an English department can be a daunting task, especially when transitioning from a skilled teacher to a leadership role. In this blog post, we’ll explore insights shared by Donal Hale, a director of literacy and learning, who has navigated these challenges and emerged as a successful leader. You’ll gain valuable strategies on curriculum design, departmental culture, and the importance of consistency in leadership.

About Donal Hale

Donal Hale is an experienced educator with a rich background in English teaching and leadership. Having worked in various educational settings across the UK, he has developed a keen understanding of what makes an effective English curriculum and how to lead a successful department. His expertise lies not only in teaching but also in shaping educational practices that prioritise student learning.

You get a copy of his book from here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leading-Secondary-English-Donal-Hale/dp/1801996857

This episode explores Sarah Seleznyov and Robert Lobatto’s book A Practical Guide to a Big Education, rooted in the idea that schools should offer an education of the “head, heart and hand”: academic knowledge, wellbeing and relationships, and practical skills such as creativity, communication and problem-solving. Sarah and Robert argue that education has become too heavily weighted towards compliance, data and narrow outcomes, and that schools need to recover a more human, agency-rich model for both pupils and teachers.

A key theme is that innovation does not mean chaos or a free-for-all. Instead, the conversation presents strong values, shared expectations and thoughtful structures as the “shell” within which teachers and pupils can exercise freedom, judgement and creativity.

They highlight restorative and relational behaviour cultures, independent inquiry, teacher agency and bottom-up change, ultimately encouraging educators to be bold, context-sensitive and true to their values rather than simply serving the system.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/practical-guide-to-a-big-education-9781801997928/

This episode unpacks the problem with the “vague opener” in coaching conversations—questions like “How do you think the lesson went?” that seem reflective but actually create confusion and anxiety. From the teacher’s perspective, this forces them to scan an entire lesson and guess the coach’s focus, often leading to defensive responses or overemphasis on perceived mistakes.

We show how this approach can quickly become awkward, especially when a teacher identifies something as successful that the coach intends to critique, undermining trust and wasting valuable coaching time.

Instead, the episode advocates for a more purposeful, focused approach: zooming in immediately on a specific moment of the lesson and asking about the teacher’s intended goal for that segment. This removes the guesswork, sharpens reflection, and allows insight to emerge more naturally. By anchoring the conversation in a clear instructional moment and the teacher’s own intentions, coaching becomes more efficient, collaborative, and productive, leading to deeper thinking and more meaningful professional development.