Managing Complex Educational Change

Large Scale Reorganisation of Schools

Keith Pocklington, Michael Wallace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317835240
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Why is educational change becoming more complex? Are there patterns in this complexity? How may managers cope effectively with complex educational change?
This book investigates initiatives to reorganise school systems, involving highly emotive closures and mergers. It reveals how reorganisation was a complex change to manage because it was large-scale, componential, systematic, differentially impacting and context dependent. These characteristics affected management tasks, generating ambiguity in the change process that limited managers' capacity to control it. The authors offer four management themes as realistic strategies for coping with complex educational change:
*orchestration
*flexible planning and coordination
*culture building and communication
*differentiated support
Managing Complex Educational Change is essential reading for all concerned with educational change - managers in schools and colleges, students on advanced courses, trainers, local and regional administrators, academics and policy makers. The research has general implications for the theory and practice of managing complex change.

1 Change gets complicated

This book makes a start on addressing three questions with great significance for the future of education. Why is educational change becoming increasingly complex? Are there patterns in this complexity? How may managers cope effectively with complex educational change? As a basis for seeking some preliminary answers to these general questions, we will focus on the specific complex educational change represented by large-scale initiatives in England to reorganise schools during the last decade.

There can be little question that processes of social change are becoming more complex. For change is not what it used to be, whether in education or other areas of the public sector. And these days, there is a lot more of it about. Take educational provision in Britain. Time was when publicly funded education here amounted to a ‘national service, locally administered’ and Griffiths (1971: 7) could comment that ‘the English educational system is decentralised, untidy and, compared with European [sic] systems, unique in its relative freedom from control by the central government’.

In the domain of compulsory schooling, most planned change originated with professional staff (faculty) in organisations at the periphery of the education system. They were empowered to try out their own ideas; to choose from a menu of curriculum innovations developed by specialists whose publications were marketed in schools and colleges; and to pick from a range of in-service training courses run by professional advisers employed by the local education authority (LEA – the intermediate, district administrative level of the education system between central government and individual institutions). Although staff were technically accountable to the school governing body responsible for oversight of their work, most governors simply ‘rubber stamped’ their decisions. A career in teaching was a safe bet with prospects of job security for professional life, considerable autonomy over what went on inside the classroom and long holidays.

Occasionally the customary stability of schoolteachers’ working life could be rudely interrupted by LEA initiatives to reorganise educational provision in the area, with central government backing as required in law. The postwar selective system for older students consisted of grammar schools for the academically most able and secondary modern schools for the rest. From the 1960s comprehensive schools serving the full ability range largely replaced this system. LEA officials were invited by central government ministers (DES 1965) to indicate their plans for comprehensivisation. The ‘light touch’ ministerial approach reflected the tradition of LEA control over state schooling (Griffiths 1971: 73):

There was a permissiveness and conciliatory air about the whole thing; the Secretary of State ‘requests’ local authorities to prepare and submit their plans; he ‘urges’ them to consult him and ‘hopes’ or ‘expects’ that certain developments will occur. Part of this was a sort of ministerial badinage, but it also suggested that the delicate partnership between central and local government must be decorously maintained, and that the facts of the situation prohibited any quick or easy adoption of reorganisation schemes.

Accretion of reorganisation arrangements based on individual LEA preferences led to ‘the most extraordinary melanges’ of schools within an LEA with different ages of student transfer between schools, giving rise to a ‘growing need for the eventual rationalisation of the entire system of secondary education’ (Griffiths 1971: 98). The longstanding two-tier arrangement of primary and secondary schools where students transferred at the age of 11 was replaced in some LEAs by three-tier systems with middle schools for students aged 8–12 or 9–13. They were in part a pragmatic solution to the problem of maximising the use of existing buildings between a neighbouring grammar and secondary modern school, neither being large enough to cater for the full ability range of students. A grammar school often became a comprehensive high school while the neighbouring secondary modern school became a middle school. Central government stipulations precluded new building where existing buildings of sound quality were available (Hargreaves 1983).

Demographic changes led to the creation of new schools, especially in expanding towns and cities, alongside closure of rural schools in areas of population decline. The 1960s ‘baby boom’, together with a national policy in 1972 to raise students’ school leaving age, brought rapid expansion of the education system followed by contraction when the birth rate fell away in the 1970s (Briault and Smith 1980). The resultant excess capacity was unevenly distributed in schools, soon becoming a target for local and central government policymakers. Maintaining the surplus student capacity imposed a significant burden on local and national taxation. Since taxes are perennially unpopular with voters, politicians in local and central government stood to favour their electoral chances if they could reduce this expenditure or use the savings to improve education services. But the attraction for taxpayers of receiving better value for their money was more than offset by the principle of ‘nimbyism’ (not in my back yard) for those whose community’s school came under threat of the LEA axe. Parents from communities affected frequently resisted LEA initiatives to close or to merge schools. Firm proposals had to be published locally and submitted to central government. Many were rejected, leaving LEA officials with the task of seeking a new solution to their surplus capacity problem (Ranson 1990).

It was never straightforward to manage sporadic major changes such as comprehensivisation or contraction initiated by national and local policymakers for implementation in schools. This was and is a sizeable education system, with authority distributed unequally between a variety of stakeholders at central government, LEA and school levels. Its history stretches back into the nineteenth century, so traditions dating back many years might easily be transgressed by contemporary changes in new structural arrangements and educational practices.

Reorganising schools in a complex education system

The pattern of governance for most publicly funded schools determines stakeholders’ involvement across the three main administrative levels of the English education system (Table 1.1). By the 1990s, the period covered by our study, cumulative changes in democratic government nationally and locally and in the administration of state education had brought about the following arrangement. At central government level, ministers from the elected majority political party regulated the nature, overall resourcing, and governance of the national system of state-funded education. They could legislate to create parameters for reorganisation. Professional civil servants acted as their executives, based in the central government department responsible for education. (The brief and the name of this department changed twice during the period covered by our research and has changed once since, but its involvement with reorganisation was unaffected. To avoid confusion, we have referred to it throughout as the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE), its name from 1995 to 2001.) Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) acted as ministers’ ‘eyes and ears’, providing independent advice based on their monitoring of educational provision across the country. Legislation in 1992 led to the establishment of a new central government agency for inspection of schools, the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED). The agency continued to be administered by a core group of HMI, but most school inspections were now contracted to inspection teams whose members had received OFSTED training.

Ministers were drawn from the ranks of Members of Parliament (MPs), which included their colleagues in government and members of other political parties in opposition. All MPs represented a constituency (most LEAs contained several). They provided a direct link between national government and school communities, being in a position to bring concerns arising at that level to ministers’ attention.

Table 1.1 Structure of the English education system relevant to school reorganisation (mid-1990s)

Main stakeholders	Source of authority	Contribution to operation of the education system
Central government (national) level
Secretary of State and other ministers in the Department for Education and Employment (DFEE)	Members of Parliament from the political party gaining a majority of seats in Parliament at the last general election	Determining the nature and resourcing of state educational provision on behalf of central government
ministers in the Department of the Environment (DoE)	Members of Parliament from the political party gaining a majority of seats in Parliament at the last general election	Regulating the level of local government taxation, so affecting LEA expenditure on school provision
Civil servants	Central government employees	Acting for ministers in developing and implementing central government policies (the DFEE territorial team had a regional brief)
Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMIs)	Central government employees	Monitoring the quality of educational provision and advising central government ministers (district HMIs had a regional brief) administering the national system of school inspection within The Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), a central government agency
Constituency Members of Parliament (MPs)	One representative for each constituency who gained a majority of votes at the last general election, a member of the political party in government or one in opposition	Responding to concerns expressed by voters in their constituency, lobbying local councillors and central government ministers on their behalf
LEA (local government) level
Local councillors in the ruling group of the local council	Members of the political party gaining a majority of local council seats at the last local election	Developing and implementing local government policies within central government parameters
Local (borough or county) council	One representative for each ward within the borough or county who gained a majority of votes at the last local election, a member of the political party of the ruling group or one in opposition, diocesan representatives	Local government body whose responsibilities included local taxation and educational provision within central government parameters
Education committee of the local council	Members of the local council and diocesan representatives	Developing and implementing local government policies relating to educational provision
LEA officials (officers and inspectors)	Local council employees	Acting for the local council in developing and implementing local government policies relating to educational provision
Local school staff union representatives	Representatives of union members (e.g. teachers, headteachers) in schools	Representing the interests of union members in negotiation with LEA officials and local councillors
School level
Governing body	Representatives of stakeholder groups connected with each school (LEA, staff, parents, local community)	Overseeing the management of each school, including the operating budget and staff selection
Headteacher	LEA employee	Managing the school within the oversight of the governing body, some teaching
Other teaching and support staff	LEA employees	Teaching and learning, managing and providing ancillary support under the leadership of the headteacher
Regional diocesan authority for church schools operating at LEA level (CE, RC)
Diocesan board of education	Representatives of stakeholder groups connected with the religious character of church schools	Responsibilities include church school provision, religious education in church schools
Diocesan representatives	Employees of the diocesan board	Acting for the diocesan board in managing church school provision

At local government level, councillors or ‘elected members’ in the majority political party formed the ruling group of each local council, with jurisdiction over a borough or county district. The leader of the council (a member of the ruling group) chaired council meetings. Each borough or county council was responsible for local taxation which part-funded schooling through its LEA. The council had an education committee chaired by a councillor from the ruling group, with membership drawn from all councillors. Members of the education committee could make recommendations to be ratified by the full council. LEA officials were professionals acting as executives for the council. They consisted of officers with responsibility for administering educational provision led by the chief education officer (CEO) and LEA inspectors concerned with monitoring and improving its quality. One duty of LEAs was to regulate the supply of student places, extending to reorganisation initiatives if deemed necessary. Formal links were established with school staff unions. Many staff were members of trade unions or professional associations, some of whi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• 1 Change gets complicated
• 2 Unpacking complexity
• 3 Complex change in perspective: a free for all (within limits)
• 4 Reorganisation initiatives: origins and outline
• 5 Everything to play for: managing initiation
• 6 Working to a deadline: managing implementation
• 7 Establishing the new order: managing institutionalisation
• 8 Get real! Coping with complex educational change
• References
• Index