Agile Leadership

Dr Simon Breakspear is a researcher, policy advisor and speaker on education policy, practice and change. Simon develops frameworks, tools and programs that make evidence-based ideas easy to understand and apply. Simon and his team partner with schools and systems around the world. Over the last decade he has worked with over 100,000 educators across 10 countries, and is known for his engaging, practical and evidence-informed approach. Simon is the founder of Agile School Leadership, a program and community of committed leaders that are harnessing research evidence and agile improvement methods to create sustainable change within their schools despite growing complexity and uncertainty. Simon is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, an advisor to the NSW Department of Education School Leadership Institute, and serves on the Australia Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) Expert Standing Committee. He has been a Fellow of WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education). Simon is the co-author of the book Teaching Sprints: How overloaded educators can keep getting better (Corwin Press, 2021) and creator of the Teaching Sprints approach to professional learning. Teaching Sprints is used by thousands of educators across the planet to engage with relevant research evidence and enhance their adaptive expertise. Simon received his BPsych (Hons) from UNSW, his MSc in Comparative and International Education from the University of Oxford and his PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge. He was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford and a Gates Scholar at Cambridge. Simon began his work in education as a high school teacher and lives in Sydney with his wife and 3 children.