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This article investigates goal pursuit practices in a sample of 31 New Zealand high schools. It examines goal knowledge of middle and senior leaders, the alignment of this knowledge and factors related to improvement.

Goals from schools' annual improvement plans were identified and counted at the beginning of the academic year. Senior and middle leaders were asked to recall their school's academic goals from memory. Responses were scored against the goals in the schools' plans to produce an accuracy score for each leader and for each middle and senior leadership team (SLT). At the end of the academic year, leaders recounted their goals and rated and commented on their SLT’s goal focus. Data analysis examined goal knowledge, alignment of middle and senior leaders' goal knowledge and SLT's goal focus. Comments were analyzed thematically in regard to the number and clarity of the goals and how goals were communicated, enacted and monitored.

Our findings show a lack of goal clarity, persistence across the year and effective strategy hampered the majority of schools in their goal pursuit. Only a few schools had a strong and aligned goal focus. Factors influencing perceived improvement included: fewer and greater clarity of goals, engagement of middle leaders in setting goals, establishing sound supporting structures and regular monitoring of progress.

While annual improvement plans outlining multiple goals are often compulsory for schools, little is known about their impact on practice. This research clarifies the state of goal pursuit in a sample of high schools.

The purpose of this research is to use a collective responsibility theoretical lens to examine the work of three school principals as they focussed on school-wide goal-setting processes to achieve valued student achievement goals. The tensions principals face in creating collective responsibility are examined so that these might be intentionally navigated.

Qualitative case studies of three New Zealand schools include data from interviews with principals, middle leaders and teachers. An inductive and deductive thematic analysis approach was employed.

Principals face four key tensions: (1) whether to promote self or centrally directed and voluntary or mandatory professional learning; (2) how to balance a top-down versus a middle-up process for accountability; (3) ways to integrate both educator and student voice and (4) the complexity of both challenging teachers' beliefs and providing support. These challenges seemed inherent in the work of developing collective responsibility and leaders tended to move along response continuum.

This research highlights the importance of being intentional and transparent with staff members about both the nature of these tensions and their navigation, and opens up further questions in relation to leader, and teacher perceptions of tensions in creating collective responsibility for achieving school-improvement goals.

An understanding of the tensions that need to be navigated can help leaders and other educators to take effective action, scrutinize the reasoning behind decisions, and understand the inherent challenges faced.

Leadership tensions in creating collective responsibility are explored and implications for leadership practice and learning considered.

One of the features of the New Zealand secondary schools system is that achievement closely reflects the taught curriculum. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) directly assesses student achievement on the secondary school curriculum through a combination of criterion‐based internal and external assessments. The nature of NCEA means school‐level results not only reflect student achievement but also the ability of leaders to organise, deliver, and monitor a relevant curriculum for students. This paper aims to describe how NCEA data were used to develop a simple but fair system to assess the relative performance of secondary schools.

No standardised measures of performance prior to Year 11 are available in New Zealand. Nor are student‐level data available. In the absence of these, multiple indicators of gross performance, added value and improvement over time were analysed using a schools‐of‐similar‐type methodology.

Results indicated that schools in the low and middle SES communities were more likely to be improving than others, but these improving schools were also more likely to be already high‐ or mid‐performing. Low‐performing schools were least likely to be improving.

Some advantages of this methodology are its ability to be utilised with any publicly available standards‐based achievement data, its validity as an indicator of leadership and organisational performance, and its ability to track school performance trends over time.