Understanding the Professional Standards: CEOs/Principals

CEO and principal roles

As a CEO or principal in the FE and Training sector, you will be developing and honing your skills in the leadership of complex organisations with multiple teams and functions. Your role will need a clear focus on strategy and the ability to drive the vision for your organisation, working with your board and other governance professionals.

The Professional Standards for CEOs and principals will help you to gain this broad-based perspective and appreciate the values, knowledge and skills which may be expected at this level.

Case studies

The Standards should be self-explanatory, but it is helpful to have illustrations of what success looks like. With this in mind, you can access case studies below which show examples of how senior leaders in the sector have adopted the Professional Standards for their own and their organisation’s benefit.

Case studies will be coming soon.

Skills analysis tool

Assessing your current skills and knowledge can help inform your future development and training. A skills analysis tool based on the National Framework for Leadership Excellence has been developed to help you with this process of reflection.

The Framework is composed of two parts. The first part sets out the Professional Standards for CEOs and principals in Further Education and Training. The skills analysis tool will ask you an initial set of questions based on these Standards to provide you with an indication of your strengths and areas for future development.

The second part is focused on ‘Developing Excellence’, which identifies eight key dimensions for further professional development as part of the journey to excellent practice. The skills analysis tool for CEOs/principals links these two levels by providing you with feedback which aligns with the eight dimensions. You will choose which are your key priorities and can access supporting resources to enable you to achieve the required Standard. You can also identify areas for further development towards excellence.

Access the skills analysis tool on the ETF’s Professional Development Platform.


This section is part of Professional Standards