Embedding Leadership in the Curriculum: Why and How It Should Be Assessed

Leadership as a Curriculum Imperative

Leadership is not an abstract ideal or a trait of a select few. It is a combination of behaviours and dispositions that can be developed through intentional teaching and practice. This includes learning how to navigate complexity, work constructively with others, manage setbacks, and act ethically in situations where the right decision is not always obvious.

In practice, this can be structured around three progressive domains:

• Self-leadership – goal-setting, emotional regulation, reflection, and resilience.
• Leading others – collaboration, perspective-taking, listening, and ethical reasoning.
• Leading in context – initiating projects, managing accountability, and responding to real-world constraints, with an emphasis on entrepreneurial and design thinking.

These are not ‘soft’ skills. They are foundational to effectiveness in nearly every walk of life. And they are teachable. But if schools are serious about developing these capacities, they must also be serious about how they are embedded, measured, and reported.

Why Integration Is Necessary

Embedding leadership education into all aspects of the curriculum and across school life ensures that students engage with leadership concepts as part of their core learning, not in isolation. More importantly, it makes leadership accessible to all students, not just to those who are confident or outgoing.

Students should encounter leadership not as a fixed identity (‘I am a leader’) but as a dynamic process that evolves through experience, feedback and reflection. That means it must be woven into diverse learning experiences – collaborative projects, problem-solving tasks, performances, debates, service initiatives, and practical challenges. Whether students are exploring ethical dilemmas, managing responsibilities in group settings, or navigating unfamiliar tasks, opportunities to lead – explicit or emergent – should be present across all subjects and co-curricular activities. Leadership development, in this way, becomes not an occasional feature but a continuous thread running through the student journey.

Assessment: From Static Measurement to Developmental Feedback

A significant barrier to embedding leadership in the curriculum has been uncertainty around how to assess it. Traditional models of assessment – based on right/wrong answers and standardised testing – are poorly suited to evaluating behaviours like judgment, initiative, or ethical thinking.

Ruminating on this challenge prompted me to author a white paper titled Assessment 3.0 – Aligning K–12 Education with Life Beyond School, which has been published by COBIS. It advocates a shift from static, retrospective models of assessment to ones that are developmental, future-facing, and grounded in real-world relevance. This includes:

• Competency frameworks – clear, developmental rubrics that define what effective leadership looks like at different ages and stages. These must be observable, evidence-based, and embedded in real tasks.
• Multi-source feedback – incorporating peer, teacher, and self-assessment allows for richer, more nuanced insight into how leadership is expressed and perceived across contexts.
• Portfolio-based evidence – a curated record of experiences – such as leading a project, resolving conflict, or adapting after failure – can demonstrate progress in leadership in ways that conventional testing cannot.
• Reflective practice – self-awareness and metacognition are essential to leadership. Embedding guided reflection into learning tasks helps students internalise lessons and take responsibility for their growth.

As the white paper argues, these methods better align with the demands of life beyond school, where complex skills are demonstrated not in isolation but through praxis – sustained, context-rich application over time.

Building a Culture that Sustains Leadership Development

Developing leadership in young people cannot be outsourced to individual departments or left to chance. It requires a coordinated approach across the curriculum and a shift in how schools define excellence. This includes:

• Training staff to recognise, coach and model leadership behaviours in their subject contexts.
• Embedding leadership outcomes in planning documents, success criteria, and reporting systems.
• Valuing personal development alongside academic achievement in school culture and communication with parents.
• Using technology to support feedback, reflection and evidence collection across the school journey.

Done well, this approach moves leadership from being aspirational to in situ – practised, visible, and progressively refined. It also enables more equitable access to leadership development – particularly for students who may not naturally seek out leadership roles, but who nonetheless demonstrate emerging capabilities.

A Whole-School Commitment from the Earliest Years

At Misk Schools, we advocate for teaching leadership across all year groups, starting in Kindergarten, with a model based on three dimensions:

1. Leadership as a Skill – explicitly trained and practised during play in KG and Lower Primary, in entrepreneurship activities from Upper Primary through Grade 8, and in preparation for and during internships which take place in Grade 11.

2. Leadership as an Academic Discipline – Delivered both within and beyond the curriculum, including through Chartered Management Institute (CMI) qualifications, leadership is recognised as an evolving concept shaped by history and social change. What defines effective leadership today differs greatly from the 1960s.

3. Leadership as a Behaviour Type – Like all behaviours, leadership must be embedded over time; it cannot be acquired through a single course or workshop. Leadership behaviours are instilled continuously from KG to Grade 12, integrated into every academic subject through activities specifically designed to develop these behaviours alongside subject content. This model – developed in collaboration with Cambridge University Press & Assessment – is sui generis in the global educational landscape.

Final Thought

The question is no longer whether we should teach leadership in schools, but how to do so responsibly and credibly. Embedding it within the curriculum, and assessing it through robust, future-facing models, is now essential. At Misk Schools, we have introduced the Misk Schools Diploma, a leaving certificate validated by Cambridge University Press & Assessment, designed precisely for this purpose.

Leadership is not an add-on. It is a suite of capabilities that shapes how knowledge is applied, how communities function, and how individuals effect meaningful change. If education is to remain fit for purpose in a complex world, leadership must not only be taught – it must be cultivated, evaluated, and made central to how we define success.

About the author - Dr Steffen Sommer, Director General, Misk Schools

Polyglot and High Performance Learning expert, Dr Sommer has over 25 years’ school leadership experience across Europe and the Middle East. He joined Misk Schools in 2022 from Doha College, where he was Principal for seven years. He has led top international schools in The Hague, Paris, and Lausanne, and was Head of Languages at Rugby School, one of the UK’s top independent boarding schools. Dr Sommer is active on the world education stage, is Vice Chair, COBIS and was named one of The PIE’s 50 Voices 2025 – International Schools Edition. He holds a PhD in Translation Studies.