John West-Burnham Legacy Trust

Membership is open to individual members who wish to come together to build on the legacy of Professor John West-Burnham and who support the aims and activities of the Legacy Trust.

Members will pay an annual membership fee of £25 initially with subsequent changes agreed by at the Annual General Meeting (AGM).  This fee will be used to support the events and activities listed on this website.  All Management Committee members are volunteers.  

Members can attend the AGM and meetings of the Management Committee if they wish.

Members must agree to be bound by the Constitution of the Legacy Trust which can be read here. 

The Management Committee may refuse an application for membership, or remove a member, if it is in the best interests of the Association.

Click here to apply to be a member.  

If you wish to talk to someone about membership, please reach out to any of the Management Committee by email (see Contact us)

John was an independent writer, researcher and consultant in education leadership.  He had been a schoolteacher, teacher trainer and education officer,  held posts in six universities and worked in twenty-seven countries from Iceland to New Zealand and Thailand to the USA. 

John was the author, co-author or editor of thirty-one books including Understanding Leadership, Leadership for Tomorrow, Flipping Schools and So What Now? 

He served as a Trustee in four multi-academy trusts and was Chair of Trustees at ASSET Education until 2022 when he died.  His links with Suffolk began when he was a young person and although he was educated and lived across the world, he contributed his thinking and wisdom as Visiting Professor at the University of Suffolk in the last decade of his life.  

His particular interests included developing learning-centred schools, leadership learning and development, and education and the community.  He saw the leadership of learning as a moral issue, focused on excellence, equity and effectiveness and talked about the importance of learning communities being rooted in trust and high quality personal relationships.  He was central to the thinking around developing system leadership and the leadership training materials that came from the National College for School Leadership.

John was always ahead of his time, thinking beyond the horizons of others and his work will continue to resonate for school leaders now and into the future.