Leaders of our urban schools are stimulated by the opportunity to have a significant impact on the lives of children and young people. They relish the creativity, the energy and the resilience and exuberance of the children, but they also experience relentless pressures. This lively and accessible book describes the experiences of 18 headteachers and school principals from London, Liverpool and Belfast, involved in the first phase of the project, 'Leadership on the Front-line'. What are the school and community challenges they face? How do they make sense of the complexity? How do they know what to do on a day-to-day basis? Is there something distinctive about being an urban school leader? What do they have to teach us about some of the changes that are reshaping our society? 'Leadership on the Front-line' offers answers to those questions. It raises many policy issues and offers practical tools which can support school leaders in making greater sense of their community context, and of some of the practical challenges they face. As Professor Tim Brighouse concludes in his foreword, the approach the headteachers have hammered out as a group will 'help parents and future leaders inch forward in the long and often painful but sometimes exhilarating and rewarding process of making schools places where pupils have better chances of successful futures'.