Distributed leadership: Involving the whole pedagogical community in the administration and management of schools

1. Distributed leadership: Involving the whole pedagogical community in the administration and management of schools Jerry Bartlett Deputy General Secretary NASUWT

2. Modern School Leadership This presentation will: • Set out two different models of pedagogical leadership in schools • Explore the implications of these models using the context of the experience in England over the past two decades • Set out models for the future – ‘distributed leadership’ • Invite comparisons with systems in other countries

3. School Leaders: Lead Practitioners or Chief Executives? School leadership requires the demonstration of a complex and wide-ranging set of skills, knowledge and experiences Attributes of effective leadership can vary according to different contextual aspects including: - school size - models of leadership organisation established within particular education systems - cultural and social expectations

4. School Leaders: Lead Practitioners or Chief Executives cont.? • However, can conceive of models of school leadership as a continuum with ‘chief executive’ model at one end and lead practitioner at the other. • Inevitably, school leadership will involve elements of both conceptualisations depending on circumstances but distinction between the two models is useful for analysis

5. School Leaders: Lead Practitioners or Chief Executives cont.? • Chief Executive model – key features include: - hierarchical organisational structure - activities focused on creation of systems and structures - emphasis on managerial discretion rather than participative decision making - detachment from ‘front-line’ activity

6. School Leaders: Lead Practitioners or Chief Executives cont.? • Lead practitioner model – key features include: - relatively flat organisational structure - activity more focused on practice and pedagogy - strong emphasis on professional ‘team’ decision making - frequent engagement in teaching and learning activities

7. The rise of managerialism and the chief executive model in the school system in England • Broader policy context very important to concept of school leadership in England from late 1980s/early 1990s • Schools faced tough new accountability regime, chiefly: - punitive school inspection regime - publication of tables of school performance

8. School leaders’ personal accountability • Part of drive to raise standards involved increasing competition between individual schools and making school leaders personally responsible for school performance • Accompanied by more decision making at school-level over budgets and personnel issues – school leaders held accountable for the way in which these were used

9. School leaders’ role changes • Powerful pressures on school leaders to enforce government diktat in schools – principally, needed to ensure classroom compliance with governmental expectations • Became front-line enforcers of a ‘culture of compliance’ – previous notions of school leaders respecting the independent professionalism of teachers was undermined • Model of leadership promoted took school leaders further away from professional practice – more about supervision and control.

10. Impact of these trends on school leaders • For many school leaders, these changes were highly unwelcome • Most had entered into school leadership with more of a ‘lead practitioner’ conceptualisation of their role – pressure to become ‘chief executives’ • Many uncomfortable with apparent distance the developed between themselves and teachers

11. Impact of these trends on teachers • Restrictions on professional autonomy and discretion – approaches to teaching and learning imposed and monitored from above • Decline in professional dialogue and exchange • Performance managed by school leaders with less recent experience of classroom practice. • Extent to which this occurred varied between schools but NASUWT members reported this as an increasing trend

12. Changing attitudes • Growing realisation that the relationship between schools and local and national government was impacting on relationships within school as well • In terms of teacher autonomy, Government expresses awareness that teachers need to be given more scope to make appropriate use of their professional skills and expertise • But depends critically on model of leadership adopted – reduced Government prescription must be accompanied by new ways of managing teachers

13. Ways forward – distributed leadership? • Key point is that management and leadership structures within schools should work to support the use by teachers of their expertise in all areas of their professional activity • School leadership should act to support the development of the skills and talents of school teachers • Critically, the management of teacher performance can only be undertaken meaningfully by school leaders still in touch with the reality of life in the classroom.

14. Ways forward – distributed leadership? • What vision of distributed leadership? • Positive – decision making becomes less stratified and more democratic at school-level – all staff, whether teaching or non-teaching feel they have a much greater voice in the way their school is run • Negative – distributed leadership seen as a school leader passing responsibilities down to a small management team rather than more broadly to staff as a whole – managerialism persists in a different guise

15. Questions based on your experience • To what extent does the experience of the change in leadership style reflect development in your country? • To what extent to classroom teachers in your country feel they have a legitimate stake in the running of their schools • What policies are promoted in your country to enhance the ways in which schools are led? How successful do you think these will be?