Leadership

The skill of leadership is fundamental to pupils’ development, in education and beyond.  It’s key to start building from an early age as global societal and technological trends will continue to shape the future workplace as pupils move through education.  These changes are brought about by AI, automation and as the world looks to reduce the impacts of climate change. Core transferable skills such as Leadership are becoming increasingly valuable to employers and can transfer across different roles and industries. 

Teach your 7- to 11-year-old primary school pupils that leadership, at its core, is about recognising your own strengths to best support, encourage, motivate, and foster collaboration in others to achieve a shared goal. It incorporates other skills like teamwork, clear communication, and taking initiative. 

The activities in this lesson support pupils to understand the importance of leadership and that being a good leader means communicating well, being organised and guiding others to keep projects on track. These skills support pupils’ learning and personal growth, preparing them to succeed in other areas of their lives. 

Teaching Resources:

• Leadership: Lesson plan and presentation slides – for use with a group of pupils in the classroom
• Leadership: Pupil worksheet – a worksheet that allows pupils to reflect on the leadership skills they’ve learned in this lesson
• Primary school: Skills tracker – optional resource to support pupils keep track of the skills they have developed and plan how they can practise them
• Leadership icon: available to download and incorporate in your wider teaching materials to help students recognise other contexts where they are learning and utilising leadership skills. 

Lesson learning outcomes:

By the end of the lesson pupils will be able to: 

• Explain the skill of leadership
• Identify how leadership can help in different environments
• Discuss how they have shown good leadership at school, home or in after school clubs.

Support pupils’ ongoing progression 

This lesson features in the employability skills scheme of learning for 7–11-year-olds. They provide a ready-made sequence of curriculum linked resources to help you build progression in your learners' knowledge over time. Visit the Scheme of learning homepage to support with your planning.