15 top tips from IB Coordinators: Less managing, more leading

1. Ask “why?” before “how?” Before changing a curriculum, assessment or teaching strategy, identify the learning problem you are trying to solve. Use student work, assessment results and feedback to establish what needs to improve.

2. Know what is fixed and what is open to change. Distinguish IB requirements from established school practices. Challenge “we’ve always done it this way” by asking whether the current approach is effective and what alternatives might work better.

3. Protect the principles; be flexible about the practice. Establish shared expectations for learning, assessment and programme standards, while giving teachers professional freedom to adapt their approaches to their students’ needs.

4. Give colleagues genuine ownership. Involve teachers in identifying problems, generating ideas and making decisions from the outset. Collaboration is not presenting a finished plan and asking colleagues to agree with it.

5. Ask before you advise. Use coaching questions such as “What are you trying to achieve?”, “What have you tried?” and “What options might you consider?” Help colleagues develop their own solutions rather than immediately offering yours.

6. Make it safe to disagree, experiment and learn. Encourage colleagues to question established practices, offer alternative perspectives and try new approaches. Treat unsuccessful experiments as opportunities to learn, reflect and improve rather than reasons to avoid taking risks.

7. Start small; learn quickly. Pilot a new approach with one unit, assessment task or teaching team. Gather evidence, refine the approach and share what you learn before deciding whether to extend it across the programme or cohort.

8. Share leadership, not just workload. Give colleagues meaningful responsibility for curriculum development, assessment design or improving departmental practice. Match opportunities to their interests and expertise, and provide the support they need to succeed.

9. Turn meetings into opportunities for professional learning. Replace lengthy updates with collaborative planning, analysis of student work, demonstrations of effective practice and coaching conversations. Protect time for teachers to think, experiment and reflect together.

10. Balance consistency with professional autonomy. Establish common learning expectations and equitable assessment practices without requiring every teacher to teach in exactly the same way. Agree what needs to be consistent and where teachers can adapt their practice.

11. Listen to students as well as teachers. Ask students about their learning experiences, assessment tasks, barriers to participation and opportunities to apply their understanding. Their perspectives may reveal problems that curriculum plans and assessment data alone cannot identify.

12. Make inclusion a shared responsibility. Identify the practical conditions teachers need to support diverse learners, including collaborative planning time, appropriate resources, specialist support and manageable workloads. Do not leave inclusion dependent on individual teachers’ goodwill alone.

13. Adapt your leadership to the cultural context. Consider how colleagues understand authority, feedback, disagreement and change. Build relationships, listen carefully and communicate expectations sensitively, while maintaining a clear commitment to equitable opportunities and high-quality learning.

14. Close the feedback loop and evaluate impact. When colleagues suggest improvements, explain what happens next and why. After implementing a change, ask: “What difference has this made to students’ learning? What should we keep, change or stop?” Use the evidence to inform the next steps.

15. Keep the purpose of change in view. Innovation is not an end in itself. Before introducing another initiative, consider its likely impact on students, the time and capacity required, and how it connects with existing priorities. Ask: “Will this genuinely improve learning, and can we implement it well?”