Developing Effective School Management

Jack Dunham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134848362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2004. It is increasingly being recognised within the profession that those taking on the management of curricular or pastoral teams need specific training in the skills of management in order to tackle the complex responsibilities of the middle management role. However, this is an area in which there has tended to be a training gap. In this book, Jack Dunham makes a significant contribution towards redressing the balance and helps teachers to identify and develop the knowledge and skills needed to become effective middle managers in primary or secondary schools. He focuses on four main areas: staff management, management skills, professional development and change, and stress management. This book will be invaluable to all those seeking or already acting in the crucial middle management role in schools.

Chapter 1
The importance of whole school management

THE URGENT NEED FOR MIDDLE MANAGEMENT TRAINING

The need for greater involvement in school management of those in middle management posts has been strongly recommended in a School Teachers’ Review Body Report. It argues that ‘substantial improvements’ are needed in several aspects of school management (School Teachers’ Review Body 1993:6). It is particularly critical of those heads, deputies and senior teachers who are:

• failing to focus on pupil achievement;
• making policy decisions but failing to implement them;
• failing to make full use of those in middle management positions;
• showing themselves to be concerned with efficient administration at the expense of ‘good strategic management’;
• failing to motivate or set clear targets.

The report sensibly identifies some barriers to good practice in school management (ibid.). It is critical of a number of factors, which include:

• the lack of support available to senior management teams because of the dwindling role of local education authorities and the sharp reduction in their advisory services;
• the lack of ‘shorter more practically oriented courses’ for management training;
• the large number of curricular and organisational reforms being introduced into schools without the improvements in management skills which are needed to implement them effectively;
• the mainly administrative role which too many deputy heads have in too many schools which caused the Review Body to conclude: ‘This is not a cost-effective use of a relatively expensive resource’ (TES 1993:6). The teachers in one secondary school put their conclusion more directly during a staff meeting to discuss the school’s budget: ‘Why don’t we get rid of a deputy?’
• the low level of non-contact time for primary teachers. In my experience, this is a very important factor in the constraints on those teachers with coordinators’ responsibilities, which have been greatly increased by the demands of the National Curriculum.

These problems identified by the School Teachers’ Review Body seem to indicate that the changes required by the Education Reform Act of 1988, which have been introduced in rapid succession since then, cannot be carried out effectively without substantial improvements in management policies and practices, and a much more widespread use and appreciation of management skills. This means a whole school model of management, in which members of staff, both teaching and non-teaching, governors, parents and pupils are all actively involved in all relevant activities concerned with the effective use and development of the school’s resources, such as people, buildings, equipment, money, space and time.

THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY MANAGERS’ LACK OF TRAINING

The need for the improvement of management skills throughout the school can also be expressed from a perspective rather different to that of the School Teachers’ Review Body. This alternative viewpoint is concerned with the implications for teachers of the problems caused by poor management and the problems experienced by managers. Of particular concern are the great demands made on those members of staff holding middle management positions, demands which may be unrecognised by colleagues because of their lack of experience of leading a team, chairing a meeting, motivating a member of the team to meet a deadline and all the other aspects of middle managers’ roles.

Problems caused by poor management can be recognised in the following three reports from experienced teachers on my Bristol University courses. The first is from a secondary head of year:

It is part of the government’s stated aim to reveal those schools whose attendance figures are poor. Truancy is a problem for many schools and each school has no doubt devised its own strategies for recording the figures and dealing with the problem. However, in order to publish figures which are meaningful in any way, it is necessary to standardise the way in which registers are kept. The proposal in my school was to create three categories: presence, authorised absence and unauthorised absence. Whilst this may seem to have simplified the system, there were two main problems that arose. First was the fact that the categories did not fully define what counted as authorised or unauthorised absence, and secondly the new system was to be introduced half-way through a term when the old system had been used up until that time.

In my school, registers are taken by tutors under a house system led by five heads of house. The new system was passed to the heads of house by the deputy head of administration with no further instructions. The result was confusion. Tutors did not know what counted as an authorised absence and when they asked the heads of house for guidance, they did not know either. Decisions obviously needed to be made quickly, but the deputy head of administration was reluctant to make decisions without reference to the LEA which wanted to wait until a meeting was convened. Moreover, because there had been no instructions as to when the new system was to be introduced, the various heads of house introduced it at different points. Some introduced it immediately, others waited until the half term break and others still were wanting to wait until the end of the term. Tutors in some houses were aware that other tutors were not implementing the new system and were thus annoyed that they were having to do it and suffer the confusion.

The consequence was twofold. First of all, at the end of the year, by which time the process had been agreed by all those involved, the figures obtained were not standardised even wi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Training materials
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The importance of whole school management
• Chapter 2: Effective management styles
• Chapter 3: A framework of management theories
• Chapter 4: The management of teams and meetings
• Chapter 5: Three key management skills
• Chapter 6: Continuing professional development: selection and induction
• Chapter 7: Continuing professional development: appraisal and training
• Chapter 8: Effective time management
• Chapter 9: The skills of change management
• Chapter 10: Stress management
• Chapter 11: Conclusion
• Appendix: An inventory for the identification of roles and skills in teamwork
• References