Becoming a Successful School Leader

Developing New Insights

Krishan Sood, Sheine Peart, Malini Mistry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317328575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Becoming a Successful School Leader critically considers what leaders need to help them support their schools and communities with the challenges and demands of learning. It presents readers with opportunities to develop their thinking and to generate personal strategies to manage situations through a series of structured exercises and tasks.

Drawing on a range of accounts from professionals, case studies and reflective questions, this accessible text allows leaders to confidently guide their staff and students through the contested landscape of education. Focusing on key topics, chapters cover:

• education policy and leadership, governance and management of educational settings;

• 
  
  

• changes to the employment market;

• 
  
  

• inclusion in education, emerging moral dilemmas and legislative changes;

• 
  
  

• the structure of education: new frameworks and models;

• 
  
  

• quality assurance: responsibilities, liabilities and consequences;

• 
  
  

• global dimensions and emerging ethical issues.

• 
  
  

This book will be essential reading for both practising and aspiring school leaders who have an interest in the challenges, policies and practices deployed in leading and managing change in a variety of educational settings.

1 Introduction

Leadership for the future

Chapter aims

When you have finished reading this chapter you will be able to:

1. recognise the importance of this text to contemporary education leaders;

2. appreciate the key features of this book and their significance;

3. understand how to use this book for maximum benefit and impact.

Overview of chapter

This book has been written for all staff who work in education as a teacher, trainer, manager or learning support worker based in broad range of different settings, including Early Years, primary, secondary, further education and higher education. In each of these roles in different education settings, all staff, at some stage, will have to make leadership decisions regarding how learning will be managed which will have a direct impact on learners and their learning experience.

The purpose of this chapter is simply to explain how this book is organised and to give you a map to help you use the book efficiently. Although the authors hope you will want to read the entire book and will find it both useful and informative, it is realistically acknowledged you will probably find some chapters and exercises more relevant than others. Accepting everyone who works in education is extremely busy, with many pressing demands placed on their time, this chapter has been provided to help you decide which chapters you feel are immediately relevant to you and you need to read now, and to help you plan the order you will read the remaining chapters in.

Key words: leadership; learners; learning; organisation.

Introduction

‘The dominant understanding of educational equality in contemporary Anglo-American political discourse is meritocratic’ (Brighouse et al., 2010: 27); and these ‘liberal, democratic, meritocratic ideals’ (Wright et al., 2010: 117) demand students’ abilities should dictate individual learning outcomes within education. However, sometimes structures, systems and the environment come together to produce learning outcomes which are not solely based on a student’s ability. Education leaders need to manage history, contemporary demands and events to make decisions to service the needs of learners so all learners can achieve their potential and enjoy a positive experience of education.

This book has been written to help you understand the broad range of leadership issues and to give you an opportunity to work out the challenges and issues you face in your working life. This book cannot give you an answer to every situation you encounter. However, the detailed case studies and reflective questions and discussions which feature in each chapter will support you to consider your personal responses to different situations, help you to plan how you might manage these issues, support you to develop the skills needed to tackle difficult situations, and signpost you to relevant support agencies.

While some of the chapter case studies and tasks take a sector-specific focus, the skills and awareness developed through task completion are transferable to other settings. Further it is necessary to remember that learners will have moved from one setting to another and it is important for leaders to understand learners’ histories so that they can help learners manage their present realities and make plans for their futures.

Structure and organisation of this book

Each chapter in this book is structured in the same way and has the same set of learning features. This is to help you to swiftly become familiar with the book’s organisation and make best use of the information provided. All chapters begin with a set of learning aims. These specify the skills, knowledge and understanding you can expect to develop by reading the chapter and by working through the structured exercises provided. Chapter aims are actively expressed and identify what you will be able to do after reading the chapter. A chapter overview provides detail of the theory covered and gives information about some of the issues and challenges faced by contemporary leaders. The overview provides a synopsis of the chapter and will allow you to decide if reading this chapter is a priority for you. A short list of key words follows the overview and identifies a maximum of six key terms covered in the chapter and supports further literature searches readers may wish to undertake.

In the body of the text, each chapter starts with a short introduction which outlines the main issues covered. The chapter is then subdivided by a series of sub-headings which describe a particular subject, issue or problem supported by the relevant academic literature and theory. Where relevant, tables have been used to either summarise or organise data. Each chapter has a series of case studies, reflective questions and discussions. These are key activities designed to develop your skill set. Case studies are used to illustrate a scenario or event. Each case study is based on a real-life situation and describes actual events. After each case study and in other places in the chapter, reflective questions ask you to consider how you would respond to a particular situation. When responding to the reflective questions, you should reflect on your personal experiences and use the theory provided to help you formulate your answer. The questions are designed to provoke and challenge your thinking and enable you to develop new responses. Although some of the situations provided may not appear immediately relevant to you in your current circumstances, working through the questions will help you to decide on action should you encounter a similar situation. Discussions which follow reflective questions draw together theory and practice to suggest an appropriate leadership response. While the discussions identify a suitable way forward, it is important to remember all responses need to be contextualised and what may be suitable in one situation may not be acceptable in another environment. However, while leaders may make an appropriate localised response, all leaders are obliged to ensure their actions are legislatively compliant.

Each chapter ends with a summary which draws together the main points of the chapter, followed by a reference list of all texts and literature used.

Chapter summaries

Chapter 2 begins by reviewing policy, leadership, governance and management issues for education settings. It considers policy formation and the range of different policy initiatives generated by central government which education leaders are obliged to implement. It reviews the challenges of implementing these different policies in difficult circumstances. The case studies and reflective questions ask readers to critically examine policy implementation in their own settings, to identify local challenges and to explain how these were managed.

Chapter 3 considers one of the major challenges faced by all education leaders: recruiting and maintaining an appropriate staffing team to meet the needs of learners. Using a structural framework for managing education environments developed by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, the chapter explores issues of recruitment, managing staffing shortages and the range of staff contracts available. It reviews the specific obligations placed on leaders when employing international staff and how this particular solution may also create a range of issues which leaders would need to resolve. It reviews the ethical dilemmas leaders need to work through when trying to ensure they have a full, appropriately qualified staff team to drive their organisation forward.

Education is bound by statute. Education leaders must ensure they fully comply with all relevant legislation and cannot choose which parts of legislation they will implement. The 2010 Equality Act and 2015 statutory Code of Practice on Special Educational Needs and Disability reinforced equality legislation and introduced new requirements for education settings. Chapter 4 explores how equality legislation actively supports learners and learning and how ethical working practices support learner achievement. The chapter explores the need for strong, morally driven leadership to enable education settings to accelerate and achieve positive change.

Beginning with a brief historical overview, reflecting a time when local authorities directly controlled schools and their budgets, Chapter 5 examines how successive governments (Conservative, Labour and Coalition alike) have worked to limit centralisation while increasing organisational accountability through various government agencies including Ofsted. The chapter considers how traditional settings such as local authority schools now share the educational landscape with other, newer types of organisation including academies and free schools. As central control and support has reduced, education settings have needed to consider other options to provide essential services. The chapter reviews the new multi-agency partnerships education leaders have had to explore and establish to meet the needs of their learning communities.

Quality and quality assurance are an essential part of education leadership. Leaders need to be confident that learners are benefiting from the best education possible and their staffing teams are providing the highest quality learning experiences. Robust quality-assurance procedures are the mechanism which enable leaders to have this confidence. Chapter 6 reviews how leaders can manage the demands placed on them in implementing quality assurance systems which are both understood and owned by staff teams together with an examination of the boundaries of accountability and responsibility. It considers the tension of how such accountability can be motivational to some staff who may want to achieve new goals while other staff may find such scrutiny threatening and demotivating.

Chapter 7 considers the implications of service-user voice and how education organisations need to positively respond to a much broader range of users including parents, carers and learners themselves. The chapter considers the skill set needed by staff to accurately capture the range of user views and useful structures to establish to support this process. Case studies and reflective questions support readers to critically examine practice in their settings, to recognise areas of best practice and identify areas of improvement.

There is a developing dilemma in education as fewer and fewer staff elect to take on leadership roles. Chapter 8 examines how this issue can be addressed and what preparation is needed to enable new leaders to fully embrace the challenges and responsibilities of leading in education. The chapter considers succession planning and how organisations can work to ensure there is a constant supply of aspirant leaders ready to assume responsibility within the organisation as others leave, for example to take on roles in different settings.

Education settings are not islands. They are connected to and are part of wider networks. With growing technological capability, the level of interconnectivity and mutual reliance has increased and education settings are now part of global education communities. While operating on a world stage confers many advantages, it also produces significant challenges. Using primary education as a case setting and critical race theory as a lens for examination, Chapter 9 explores some of the issues raised by globalisation, what it means to education settings and how leaders can work to develop ethical global practices in their settings for the benefit of all learners.

Chapter 10 discusses the changing role of leaders in Early Years settings. It considers the rapid changes these leaders have had to manage in response to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Statutory Framework supported by the Department for Education (DfE) and scrutinised by Ofsted.

Chapter 11 draws together the key messages from the book, reviews the implications for leaders in different sectors and suggests positive ways forward for leadership within education organisations.

Summary

Education is a vast, heterogeneous community populated by learners of all abilities serviced by an increasingly diverse staff. This book examines the responsibilities of education leaders in meeting the needs of learners in all sectors by working with and through their staff teams to achieve educational excellence.

Education leaders are charged with the weighty responsibility of leading their organisations in a constantly changing turbulent environment. They are ultimately responsible for all of the organisation’s achievements but as the adage reminds us, while ‘success has many parents’ and countless people will want to share such success, when an organisation fails the leader alone is held accountable. This book provides theoretical frameworks and practical suggestions to support leaders to meet structural, academic and other challenges. It is for those leaders ‘who are willing to try new approaches and who want to be part of a change to promote … educational achievement’ (Peart, 2013: 5) for all their learners and the communities they serve.

References

Brighouse, H., Tooley, J. and Howe, K. R. (2010) Educational Equality. London: Continuum.

Peart, S. (2013) Making Education Work: How Black Men and Boys Navigate the Further Education Sector. London: Trentham, Institute of Education Press.

Wright, C., Standen, P. and Patel, T. (2010) Black Youth Matters. Abingdon: Routledge.