Professional Leadership in Schools

Effective Middle Management and Subject Leadership

Dr James Williams, James Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138158030
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134986446
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Middle managers in secondary schools are being asked to develop and display first class management skills. This text seeks to meet the needs of those who need to develop and update skills for their present job, or who are preparing for the next step into more senior management.

1
What is Management?

’“Management” means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of co-operation for force

Peter F. Drucker

This introductory chapter will look at the concept of management and briefly outline the development of management theory in general and look at the influences that have led to the introduction of management theory into the school setting. It will then consider the concept of the four spheres of management, determining, planning, organizing and measuring, before looking at management styles and addressing management principles as applied to individuals. The chapter ends with an attitude survey

An Introduction to Management Theory

Once upon a time a zookeeper built a cage for five monkeys. In the cage the keeper hung a banana on a string just out of reach and put some steps underneath the banana. As soon as the keeper left the cage the five monkeys looked at the banana and began to jump up to get it. They couldn’t reach the banana, but didn’t give up. Soon, one of the monkeys went to the steps, intending to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touched the steps, the keeper sprayed all of the monkeys with ice-cold water. After a while, another monkey tried to climb the steps. The keeper again sprayed all the monkeys with ice-cold water. This happened several more times.

After some time, when a monkey tried to climb the steps, the other monkeys all tried to prevent him. Once this happened, the keeper turned the hose off and stopped spraying the monkeys. The next day the keeper removed one monkey from the cage and replaced it with a new one. The new monkey saw the banana and wanted to climb the steps. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attacked him. After another attempt and attack, he knew that if he tried to climb the steps, he would be assaulted.

Next, the keeper removed another of the original five monkeys and replaced it with a new one. The newcomer went to the steps and was attacked. The previous newcomer took part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, the keeper replaced a third original monkey with a new one. The new one made it to the steps and was attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him had no idea why they were not permitted to climb the steps, or why they were participating in the beating of the newest monkey, but they still took part anyway.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys that had been sprayed with ice-cold water had been replaced by the keeper. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approached the steps. Why not? Because that’s the way they’ve always done it and that’s the way it’s always been around here.

The moral of this story is that offering a banana, no matter how tempting, won’t be enough if there is fear of the unknown. In many cases of school-based management, this story will be familiar. Performance pay may be the banana and the subtle replacement of middle managers by the head-teacher who only appoints people who will attack on command, even if they don’t know why they are attacking, will be familiar to some of those reading this book. The art and science of good management is relatively simple to master. It is based on respect, for yourself, for others and for those over whom you have authority.

The word manager is variously defined as

• a person controlling or administering a business or part of a business;
• a person controlling the affairs, training etc of a person or team in sports;
• a person regarded in terms of skill in management.

The concept of manager seems rooted either in a sporting or business context. Education is neither sport nor business, yet managers are seen to be crucial elements in raising standards of teaching and learning. So, let us begin by stripping away the pretensions of the title and see what management is about and, more crucially, why it is important to us as teachers.

Today, a teacher is not just responsible for teaching children. We talk of classroom management and the need to manage our time. Teachers who aspire to true management roles in schools are often not well versed in the science of business management. We are, after all, subject specialists in the secondary sector and polymaths in the primary sector. The rise of management in education was highlighted by the introduction of Local Management for Schools (LMS) and the need to be accountable for a range of things from examination results to finance. The first question to ask is: do you

Table 1.1 Teacher or manager?

TEACHER	MANAGER
I teach children	I manage my pupils’ learning
I control my class	I manage my class
I do what I can when I can	I plan and manage my time as best I can
I have colleagues, not managers	I understand the line management hierarchy in my school

consider yourself a teacher or a manager? Consider the responses in Table 1.1 from educators and their view of their role. Which do you subscribe to? Can you place yourself directly into the manager column or the teacher column? Or are you really a mixture of both?

Management is an overused term. More precisely, manager is overused. In the commercial world it seems that entry level is a manager level, or if not entry level then just after it. A well-known store offered me the services of a ‘packing manager’ – not her official title, but one referred to by the ‘checkout manager’. If I had a complaint I could see one of the ‘customer service managers’. The problem with overuse is that it disguises the function of the manager. Schools can sometimes adopt similar strategies and the current vogue is ‘Co-ordinator’, perhaps moving towards ‘facilitator’, though as yet we have not moved towards the title of ‘manager’ for all but the newest recruits. For some people titles are important and they believe that what they do will be regarded as more important if they have a title. Some see the title, not the person, and, in other cases, the title may obscure the role, sometimes the crucial role, that the person may have. Regardless of our views on managers and management there is no doubt that in the schools of today management theory has its place, albeit somewhat modified from the world of business.

What is The Driving Force for Management in Schools?

A brief historical overview

The concept of management has not been accepted in education without its detractors and objectors. Gray (1984) describes an observed ‘non effect’ of management training skills in schools:

In over 13 years’ work in this area I have come to the conclusion that, in broad terms at least, nothing is actually achieved by teaching management skills; schools just go on as they always have.

This must be seen in the context of what was happening in schools in 1984. There was no national curriculum and the notion of formal, regular inspection was not common. School management was a result of historical precedence. There was little to no training for departmental managers and it was exclusively learning on the job. All that was to change in the late 1980s with the advent of firstly GCSE and then the National Curriculum. The days of entering teaching, being thrown a well-worn copy of the syllabus and told to ‘get on with it’ were over. The notion of ‘what happened behind the classroom door was the business of the teacher and no one else’ was fast coming to an end. With increasing change came a need to manage that change. Head teachers and middle managers needed a strategic plan to implement the changes that were revolutionizing education in the late 1980s.

Table 1.2 briefly looks at the impact of three major changes to the education system in the 1980s and 90s. There is no doubt that the restructuring of education has increased the need for well-trained managers and the proposals of the recent government Green Paper Teachers: Meeting the Challenge of Change’ (DfEE, 1998) will add another strand to the role of management in education.

There are many references to management issues in the DfEE’s Green Paper Teachers: Meeting the Challenge of Change (DfEE, 1998). Paragraph 34 sets out the government’s intentions in modernizing the teaching profession. In relation to management they state that they intend 1) to recognize the role of teachers in raising standards, and 2) to create a culture in which all staff benefit from good quality training and development throughout their careers so that they can adopt proven best practice, develop innovative ideas and manage constant change.

Clearly an important focus here is about the management of change. Section 2 of the Green Paper addresses the issues of leadership and is concerned principally with the issue of whole school leadership, in particular that of the role of the headteacher. From now on, heads will have the responsibility for implementing the new performance management and pay system. Heads will not, however, be able to accomplish this in isolation from the other management levels within the school system. Here the departmental or subject leaders will have a role to play in appraisal, monitoring, review and the gathering of evidence for those teachers in their department or subject area who wish to break through the performance thresholds for main scale teachers and those set for the new Advanced Skills

Table 1.2 The forces for change in schools

LOCAL MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOLS (LMS)	THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM	INSPECTION
The changing role of the governing body	Managing introduction of NC and subsequent revisions (current revision 2000)	Assuming accountability for the curriculum and its effects on pupils’ learning
Managing budgets	Fitting the NC to the school curriculum	Defining effectiveness
Staffing (full responsibility)	Deploying staffing	Responsibility for the standards of teaching and learning
Curriculum management	Cross-curricular themes	Individual teachers’ accountability
School administration	Reporting NC outcomes	Assuming responsibility for ‘value added’
Marketing of the school	Managing NC information (eg end of key stage tests)	Increasing public access to information
Managing parental choice and admissions procedures	Managing associated resources	Strategic deployment of resources
Autonomy in management of all budgets	Use of NC data to monitor effectiveness of teaching and learning	R...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• 1 What is management?
• 2 Leadership and decision making
• 3 Time management
• 4 Developing action plans
• 5 Team building and motivating
• 6 Effective communication
• 7 Managing meetings
• 8 The role of the mentor
• 9 Managing staff performance
• 10 Staff selection and interviewing
• 11 Managing change and dealing with conflict
• 12 Legal aspects of running a department
• 13 Financial management
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• References and bibliography
• Index