Leading Improving Primary Schools

The Work of Heads and Deputies

Geoff Southworth

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781135709044
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Didattica
• Categoría: Didattica generale

Focuses on leadership for school improvement, looking at how heads and deputies lead, or might lead, their school's improvment efforts. This concise book, with practical illustrations, is relevant to Teacher Training Agency courses for the National Professional Qualification for headteachers, and draws upon the principles and frameworks the TTA has introduced for its headteacher programmes.

Part 1

Leadership

Chapter 1

The Importance of Leadership in Schools

The importance of leadership in primary schools has long been recognized. In this chapter I will draw upon research evidence and the views of Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) and the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) to substantiate this claim. However, the importance of leadership is most tellingly appreciated by teachers. Informal conversations with teachers, the remarks they make on courses, as well as more formal research interviews with staff about leadership in school, all show that primary teachers are keenly aware of the significance of the work of their heads and deputies. Teachers are quick to complain about heads they perceive as failing to provide the necessary leadership. Headteachers are equally critical of deputy heads who do not exercise leadership in the school, while deputies are often vocal about headteachers who do not offer them opportunities to lead. Likewise, all three groups value those individuals who do give a lead and make things happen in the school. In short, the value of leadership is appreciated inside and outside schools. Yet while there is an apparently broad consensus about the need for leadership, there is surprisingly little depth to this outlook. Although leadership is a much vaunted concept today, its precise meaning is rather unclear. Hence a specific question needs to be asked: What exactly is leadership? In this chapter and the next I will address this question.

While the question is a seemingly straightforward one to ask, it is rather more difficult to answer. Therefore, I will respond to the question in two ways. First, I shall draw upon a range of ideas and insights from research and practice in schools. Second, I will use this material to construct a picture of what primary school leadership involves for heads and deputy headteachers today. In a sense I will attempt to identify and then discuss some of the component parts of primary school leadership.

What Is Leadership?

There are hundreds of definitions of leadership. Some commentators see leadership as to do with organizational change, making progress and movingforward and regard leadership in an active sense as in the verb ‘to lead’. I tend to favour these definitions since from my own experience, research and visits to schools I see heads and deputies trying to make things happen. Leadership in this sense is about behaviour; it is action oriented, and it is about improving the quality of what we do.

Many definitions strive to differentiate between management and leadership. For some, management is about planning, coordinating and organizing. I tend to think that management is largely to do with ensuring that a school runs reasonably smoothly on a day-to-day, or week by week basis. Management in this sense is to do with keeping the organization going. Leadership though is about ensuring the organization—the school—is going somewhere.

Both management and leadership involve working with people. Schools are social institutions and systems; their purposes, processes and ‘products’ are human and, hopefully, humane. These processes and purposes apply as much to leading staff as to managing the children. Schools are educative organizations for adults and children alike. For the children education includes learning to be a person and schools are increasingly significant places in terms of enabling them to live in social settings and relate positively in social situations. Along with playgroups and nursery schools, primary schools clearly play a major part in socializing children into the world which exists beyond their families. Schools are also workplaces where adults interact and socialize. For many teachers and headteachers they may be the major setting where they work with other adults in groups and teams. Leadership is thus both a social medium and involves social messages.

If the humanity of schools is to be valued and our schools seen as social communities, whose members are relating and working together productively, then the exercise of leadership has to be understood both as a social medium and message because the way leaders behave is as important as what they are trying to accomplish. While leadership involves moving schools forward and getting things done, the way these goals are accomplished is also important. Leaders are moral actors and need to behave in socially just and fair ways.

The idea that leadership is social action introduces the fact that it involves not just working with colleagues but striving to accomplish common goals. As others have noted leadership is the activity of ‘influencing people to strive willingly for group goals’ (Terry, cited in Smith and Piele, 1996, p. 2). If this definition reinforces many of the previous points it also extends them by highlighting that leaders influence others. Leadership is not just activity by an individual in a social setting, it is a social act with others who the leader is trying to influence. Leaders exercise influence and inprimary schools this is most obvious in the case of headteachers. Primary headteachers have considerable influence and authority as many studies have acknowledged (Coulson, 1976a; Alexander, 1984; Southworth, 1995c) and as heads, deputies and staff alike are keenly aware.

All of these points begin to trace an outline of school leadership. They suggest that leadership is concerned with achieving goals, working with people, in a social organization, being ethical and exercising power. There is nothing very startling about these points at this stage. They are all rather obvious aspects of leadership. However, it is what they imply which is of interest. Three implications can be highlighted. First, leadership is multidimensional:

Good leaders operate out of a clear understanding of their values, goals and beliefs and also those of their followers. Leaders both influence and are constrained by the organisational context. Leaders may, with good results, use any of a variety of styles and strategies of leadership including hierarchical, transformational and participative, depending on their reading of themselves, their followers and the organisational context. (Smith and Piele, 1996, p. 3)

In other words, leaders know themselves, the colleagues they are working with and understand the school in which they are working. They also use a variety of ways of working in the light of their perceptions of these three sets of variables (self, colleagues and context), and how they interrelate. Leadership is thus not only an active role, it is a dynamic one.

Second, schools need to be both managed and led. Although I will emphasize throughout this chapter, and the book, the importance of leadership, this is not to deny that management is important. Nevertheless, what I am saying is that there is no substitute for leadership. I do not doubt that over the past 20 years or so schools have become better managed places. One of the findings which emerges from reviews of samples of OFSTED primary school inspection reports is that the schools are generally well managed. However, there is a sense in which many schools may be better managed than they are led. There may, for a variety of reasons, be too much management and not enough leadership. Heads and deputies, alongside and with other colleagues in the school need to play a part in leading the school and improving the quality of the teaching and learning.

Third, one of the reasons for claiming that there is no substitute for leadership is that there is a substantial body of evidence and professional awareness that school leaders make a difference. I touched upon this point at the start of this chapter, but I now want to examine in some detail what it is that those who claim leaders play a significant role in schools have to say. I shall draw upon three perspectives: the findings from effective schools research; the ‘official’ views of inspectors and central government agencies; and insights from school improvement studies. From a review of all three sets of sources I shall then summarize the emerging key points and relate them to those already raised in this section.

Findings from Effective Schools Research

In England and Wales research into effective primary schools is rather thin on the ground. Only Mortimore and his associates (Mortimore et al., 1988) have conducted an investigation into effective junior schools and departments in the then Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). This study showed that two of the 12 key factors they associated with more effective schools were purposeful leadership of the staff by the head and the involvement of the deputy head.

Although this study was an important enquiry and yielded many insights, it is today rather dated since it reports on a time when there was no National Curriculum, no local management of schools (LMS) and no inspection of schools by OFSTED, to name but three of the changes which have occurred in education since Mortimore and his team of researchers published their findings. Moreover, while this study is now dated, it throws into relief the fact that there have been no comparable studies of infant schools and departments, nor of nursery schools and units nor of primary schools and the 4–11 age range. In terms of school effects we only have a partial view of the primary sector in England. For these reasons then there is a need to be rather cautious about reading too much into the findings of this research. While the effective schools research has proved influential with policy makers it is less illuminative for practitioners because it is limited in scope. The studies are also rather shallow because there has not been much follow up research exploring what effective school leaders actually do in their schools.

In 1994 OFSTED commissioned a review of school effectiveness research. The aim of this review was to provide an analysis of the key determinants of school effectiveness in secondary and primary schools. This review has been published (Sammons et al., 1995) and from a synthesis of international studies 11 key factors for effective schools are listed (p. 8) and discussed (see Table 1.1):

Table 1.1: Eleven factors of effective schools

Eleven Factors of Effective Schools
1 Professional leadership	• Firm and purposeful • A participative approach • The leading professional
2 Shared vision and goals	• Unity of purpose • Consistency of practice • Collegiality and collaboration
3 A learning environment	• An orderly atmosphere • An attractive working environment
4 Concentration on teaching and learning	• Maximization of learning time • Academic emphasis • Focus on achievement
5 Purposeful teaching	• Efficient organization • Clarity of purpose • Structured lessons • Adaptive practice
6 High expectations	• High expectations all round • Communicating expectations • Providing intellectual challenge
7 Positive reinforcement	• Clear and fair discipline • Feedback
8 Monitoring progress	• Monitoring pupil performance • Evaluating school performance
9 Pupil rights and responsibilities	• Raising pupil self-esteem • Positions of responsibility • Control of work
10 Home–school partnership	• Parental involvement in their children’s learning
11 A learning organization	• School-based staff development

Source: from Sammons, Mortimore and Hillman, 1995, p. 8

As can be seen, the first of the 11 factors is ‘professional leadership’. Sammons et al. state that ‘almost every single study of school effectiveness has shown both primary and secondary leadership to be a key factor’ (p. 8). They cite Gray’s (1990) assertion that ‘the importance of the headteacher’s leadership is one of the clearest of the messages from school effectiveness research’ and draw attention to the finding that there is no evidence of effective schools with weak leadership. They also state:

Leadership is not simply about the quality of individual leaders, although this is, of course, important. It is also about the role that leaders play, their style of management, their relationship to the vision, values and goals of the school and their approach to change.
Looking at the research literature as a whole, it would appear that different styles of leadership can be associated with effective schools and a very wide range of aspects of the roles of leaders in schools have been highlighted. As Bossert et al. (1982) concluded ‘no simple style of management seems appropriate for all schools…principals must find the style and structures most suited to their own local situation’ (p. 38). However, a study of the literature reveals that three characteristics have frequently been found to be associated with successful leadership: strength of purpose, involving other staff in decision-making and professional authority in the processes of teaching and learning. (Sammons et al., 1995, p. 9)

Before looking at these three characteristics there are two points I want to pick up and highlight from this quote. First, much of what is said here not only supports the claim that leadership is multidimensional, but also that it is complex. Leadership is clearly not a simple matter. Second, successful leadership looks to be differentiated. There is no single best way to be successful; rather there are many ways of being an effective school leader. However, what this may imply is not so much a matter of individual preference and disposition as finding an appropriate fit with the school’s circumstances and context.

Turning to the three characteristics commonly associated with successful school leaders, Sammons et al. report the first being that effective leaders are firm and purposeful. Effective leaders tend to be proactive figures, especially so in recruiting staff and in seeking unity of purpose amongst staff, particularly within the senior management team. Other aspects of purposeful leadership are that these individuals tend to be successful in obtaining additional resources for the school, using external reforms for internal developments and in initiating and sustaining school improvement efforts.

A second feature of effective leadership is the sharing of responsibilities with senior colleagues and generally involving teachers in decision-making. Sammons et al. emphasize the need for deputy heads to participate in policy decisions and for teachers to be involved in management and curriculum planning, as well as being consulted on spending plans. These are also seen as related to creating a collaborative culture in which there is a shared vision and unity of purpose. There is also some speculation, especially in the context of larger primary schools of the need for greater delegation of leadership. What is signalled here is the idea that while involvement and consultation are necessary, they may not be sufficient in terms of enhancing the effectiveness of the school. Heads need to actively encourage other senior staff to lead.

Third, effective leaders do manage but they also provide professional leadership. This means involvement in the curriculum, knowing what goes on in classrooms and being involved in classroom activities. Leaders should establish a ‘variety of forms of support to teachers, including both encouragement and practical assistance’ (p. 10). Leaders need to visit classrooms, talk informally with staff and assess the way teachers function.

There is one further point to highlight from Sammons et al.’s review. It is that all the other factors of effectiveness listed in their review have implications for leaders and their exercise of leadership. Effective leaders do not simply deploy the three sets of actions described here, they do them in conjunction with many of the other factors and tasks which then makes the leadership actions more powerful. Sammons et al.’s review begins to develop what effective leaders do. W...