Why Every School Leader Needs a Reading Practice
The best school leaders I know share one habit. It's not a management technique or a leadership framework — it's a reading practice. Here's why it matters, and how to build one.
There's a question I ask every school leader I meet: what are you reading right now?
The answers tell me everything. Not because the specific book matters — though it often does — but because the habit of reading reveals something about how a leader thinks. The best school leaders I know are readers. Not occasional readers. Consistent, intentional readers who treat books and essays the way athletes treat training: as the work that makes the real work possible.
Reading is thinking made visible
When you read, you encounter ideas that challenge your assumptions. You meet people — through their words — who have solved problems you haven't faced yet. You develop a vocabulary for things you've felt but couldn't name. Over time, reading doesn't just inform your decisions. It changes the quality of your thinking.
For school leaders, this matters enormously. You are making dozens of decisions a day — about people, about culture, about learning. The quality of those decisions depends on the quality of your mental models. And mental models are built, slowly, through reading.
The compounding effect
One book doesn't change a leader. But a book a month, read with intention and discussed with peers, compounds over years into something remarkable. I've seen it happen. Leaders who commit to a reading practice become more patient, more curious, more willing to sit with complexity before reaching for a solution.
They also become better communicators. Reading good writing teaches you how to write and speak clearly. That clarity — in a staff meeting, in a parent conversation, in a vision document — is one of the most underrated leadership skills in education.
What gets in the way
The most common objection I hear is time. "I'd love to read more, but I don't have the time." I understand this. School leadership is relentless. The diary is always full.
But I've noticed that the leaders who say they don't have time to read are often the ones who most need to. The busyness is a symptom. The reading is part of the cure. A leader who reads is a leader who thinks more clearly, delegates more confidently, and leads more sustainably.
The second objection is knowing what to read. There is so much out there — education research, leadership books, biography, fiction, philosophy. Where do you start? This is where a curated practice helps. You don't need to read everything. You need to read the right things, at the right time, with the right questions in mind.
Building the practice
A reading practice doesn't have to be ambitious to be effective. Here's what I recommend:
Start small. Thirty minutes a day, or even twenty, is enough. The consistency matters more than the volume.
Read with a question. Before you open a book, ask yourself what you're trying to understand. This turns passive reading into active thinking.
Write as you read. A sentence or two in the margin, or in a notebook. What surprised you? What challenged you? What will you try?
Discuss what you read. Ideas deepen when you share them. Find a colleague, a mentor, or a community of readers who will push your thinking.
Return to what matters. Some books deserve to be read twice. Some passages deserve to be read every year. Don't treat reading as a race to finish — treat it as a relationship with ideas.
An invitation
This is exactly what my Masterclass is built around. Each week, I send a curated reading — a book, an essay, a passage — chosen for school leaders at this moment in education. With it comes a reflection prompt and an invitation to discuss.
It takes less than an hour a week. The effect, over months, is significant.
If you're a school leader who wants to build a reading practice — or deepen the one you already have — I'd love to have you in the next cohort.
Enrol in the Masterclass — places are limited
Sandeep Dutt is a School Improvement Coach with over 40 years of experience transforming schools across India and Singapore. He is the author of My Good School: Where Passion Meets Education and founder of the Good Schools Alliance. He runs the Good Schools Masterclass for school leaders, principals, and educators.