Leadership Lab is a carefully structured, research-informed student leadership workbook designed to help schools intentionally develop leadership skills, character, confidence, and service-mindedness in their students. 

Leadership Lab provides a clear framework that moves students beyond badges and titles into measurable leadership growth. It gives students the language, structure and confidence to lead well, at school and in their future careers.

Leadership Lab is primarily intended for secondary-aged students who are being prepared for or in leadership positions, including:

• Prefect bodies

• House monitor teams

• Student councils

• Peer mentors

• Wellbeing champions

• Young Enterprise companies

• Sports team captains

• Other vertical or horizontal leadership positions

We would also strongly encourage senior school students to use Leadership Lab to mentor junior school leadership teams: a great opportunity for partnership, collaboration and leadership in practice.

To deliver every exercise takes around seven hours. We are happy for licensed schools to pick and choose the elements they wish to focus upon. To provide full training on the 4 Vs, with an introduction to leadership prefacing this, takes around five hours i.e. a one-day training session. With additional time for discussion and reflection, Leadership Lab can form the spine of a one-term co-curricular programme.

Yes, absolutely. We are always excited to talk to any international schools or colleges interested in working with us.

Yes, it can. Each activity is introduced by a quotation which is accessible to younger students, and can be used to prompt discussion. Activities include exploring role models, identifying personal values, setting team values, deciding on a team vision and putting oneself in others’ schools. These all translate very well into a primary or prep context. Schools are welcome to make reasonable adaptations to activities (within the terms of the licence) to suit younger learners.

Yes. The workbook has been designed with a SEND-friendly font, palette and layout. Schools are welcome to make reasonable modification to activities (within the terms of the licence) to meet their SEND students’ needs.

We have developed Leadership Lab with flexible implementation in mind. Options include:

• Stand-alone leadership training workshops

• Structured leadership development programmes

• Embedding Leadership Lab within co-curricular options

We are always happy to talk to you about implementation to ensure that Leadership Lab aligns with your context.

The workbook structure and activities draw upon research from leadership theory, coaching pedagogy, organisational psychology and character education.

Absolutely! Although the workbook is written from the perspective of student leadership, the structure and activities are deliberately aligned with programmes used by blue-chip organisations to train their teams and can be used by anyone from SLT teams to schools wanting to provide middle management training.

This is really important to us, as Character Compass was founded by a teacher with experience of several ISI and Ofsted inspections. We know how valuable it is to have co-curricular programmes that evidence that the inspection standard has been met.

Using the Leadership Lab workbook supports schools to meet several of the criteria within the Ofsted ‘Personal Development and Wellbeing’ evaluation area, ISI’s Section 4 criteria and BSO’s SMSC requirements.

Measuring the success of your student leadership team is likely to be via subtle shifts rather than obvious changes. We suggest that impact assessment centres around both human skill development and concrete outcomes. Here are a few suggestions:

• Leadership participation rates

• New initiative outcomes

• Self-reflection/student voice feedback

• Staff observation feedback

• Confidence tracking

The workbook has been carefully developed to be used autonomously by educational establishment/students. It is possible for students to work their way through the sections on their own, with minimal intervention or additional instruction: staff do not need any formal training to use Leadership Lab. We are also creating short training videos of how we run each activity to support schools/colleges and all licensed schools are welcome to contact us at any time for further advice and support.

Yes, we can deliver your student leadership training for you. We currently provide stand-alone workshops for a number of schools and colleges, which also includes an annual Leadership Lab workbook licence. Please get in touch (hyperlinked to Leadership Lab form) to discuss your needs further with us.

Pricing is based upon a tiered annual licence, depending on how many students with whom you would like to use it. For MAT licensing options, please contact us [hyperlink to Leadership Lab form].

Schools/colleges purchase an annual license granting:

• Reproducible student workbook access

• Teacher/facilitator support

• Implementation support resources

For more information on the licence, click here