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Dr John Dunford Secondary Heads AssociationEngland, United Kingdom
This paper recognises the broader role played by school leaders in a networked school system and offers a model for future school leadership in which principals assume wider responsibilities than the leadership of a single school. Expectations of multi-faceted system-wide leadership by school principals create the need for a map of the roles undertaken by them.
Networking between schools is increasing, both nationally and internationally, and the focus of school improvement is shifting from the individual school to the system as a whole. There is growing recognition of the benefits of collaboration and partnership. This has considerable implications for school leadership and an overview is required in order to balance the demands of system leadership with those of leading an individual school.
The role of school principal has always been very clear, both to the principal and also to teachers, students and parents of the school. The principal is appointed by the local school board or governing body to lead the school and to be ultimately responsible for everything that takes place at the school. When things go well, the principal receives the plaudits and basks in the reflected glory of the achievements of the school ' s students. When the school ' s reputation is high, the principal is given the credit. The other side of that coin, of course, is that, when the school is doing badly, the principal is in the front line of criticism. As the accountability stakes grow higher, the likelihood of sustained criticism leading to dismissal becomes stronger. There is plenty of evidence of this trend in the UK in recent years.
It is expected by teachers, students and parents that school principals will be visible at all times (in several places at once), that they will personally deal with every serious situation that arises (and many that are much less serious), that they will know by name most of the students and their parents, attend all school sports matches, concerts and drama productions, and that they will be the public faces of their schools with the rest of the world - central government, the local authority or district, local businesses, the media and all others who increasingly demand a stake in schools. The principal is also expected to be a pillar of the local community ( ' a local worthy ' , as I was once referred to!) and, in faith-based schools, of the local church, as well.
Principals used to try to do all this themselves - and usually (with a few noble exceptions) failed, generally losing their sense of priorities along the way. Distributed leadership has not only enabled schools to function more effectively, but it has also enabled principals to concentrate on the essential tasks of principalship. In a life-changing moment on a school leadership course many years ago, I was asked to write down the minimum job description of a school principal - the tasks that only a principal can perform. It was a very short list and caused me to re-think the way in which leadership can be distributed in a school. Except in the smallest schools (and even then, probably not), principals should not try to be chief executive, finance manager, human resources manager, behaviour manager and a dozen other things, including assistant school caretaker. (Who has never re-arranged the chairs in the school hall before an open evening for parents?) Teachers and students see distributed leadership in action daily and parents will begin to understand that they do not need to take everything to the principal, on whose behalf parents can be referred to the most appropriate person - ' Mrs Smith, the learning support manager for Year 10, is the person who knows Stephen best. She is in the best position to help you with this problem. '
With a good structure of distributed leadership in place, a principal can consider the balance between different responsibilities and between the time that can be allocated within school and outside. In modern school leadership, that includes networking with other schools. Not least through the work of Professor David Hargreaves, it is now widely recognised that school improvement is accelerated through active participation in networks with other schools.
Governments, which want to demonstrate to voters rising school achievement in exchange for increased investment of public money, have a strong interest in improvement across the school system. Governments that give a high priority to education policy do not want to see rising achievement in some places and falling results in others. The government in London has recognised that promoting networks between schools offers the best prospect of a high return on its investment. System-wide improvement is demanded of the leaders of schools.
For the first time in my 30 years experience of school leadership, the government in London has recognised that the leadership of the secondary school system has to be devolved as far as possible to school principals (1). Central controls on secondary schools are being replaced by a ' new relationship ' between government and school principals, in which accountability is channelled through a ' single conversation ' with a ' credible, experienced practitioner ' . These ' school improvement partners ' will be serving, or recently retired, principals. In this new relationship, greater emphasis is placed on school self-evaluation and the main role of external inspectors is to validate the process of self-evaluation.
The opportunity is being offered to principals to create improvement partnerships, working together in mutually supportive (and usually, but not necessarily, local) partnerships. In this situation, principals assume responsibility not only for the success of their own school, but for the success of all the schools in the partnership. School leaders of the future, therefore, when appointed to the principalship of a single school, also take on the wider responsibilities of system leadership. They are, in effect, being appointed to the joint leadership of a group of schools. In partnership with other principals, they work towards joint objectives and targets. They share school improvement initiatives. They use their school ' s strengths to support the weak areas of other schools in the partnership and vice-versa.
At some point, principals may also act as consultants to other schools, either within their partnership or elsewhere. They will certainly broker consultancies within their partnership. They may work occasionally for a commercial company or a professional association, providing leadership training to other schools. They may act as ' school improvement partners ' , holding one or more other principals to account through the ' single conversation ' . They may work part-time, or have a year ' s secondment, in the school improvement team of the local authority or on a project at the National College for School Leadership. They may become part-time inspectors within the national inspection agency, Ofsted. Nobody is likely to do all these things while leading a school, but some people will do several of them during their school leadership career. System leadership cannot be carried out from an office in your own school and, in any case, school leaders can derive great benefit from seeing and evaluating what happens elsewhere.
Nevertheless, this proliferation of roles for school leaders, which is the inevitable consequence of system leadership, requires a role map if the principals and the system are to derive maximum benefit and keep in the right balance the leadership of their own school and the responsibilities they are taking on outside. This role map must describe not only the many ways in which system leadership can be exercised, but also the time commitment that each entails. There has to be a clear understanding of the maximum demand that can be made on a school principal. System leadership, like school leadership, has to be distributed among many people.
The knowledge required for these roles may be similar to those needed for school leadership, but the skills may well be different. An important part of the role map is therefore an audit of the skills required in each role. Appropriate training must be available.
The delegation of system leadership to school principals offers unrivalled opportunities for networking, but its success is dependent on principals having distributed leadership in their own schools and finding the right balance between the potentially conflicting demands of their school and of their wider roles. A role map can be helpful in identifying the nature of these roles and the skills and training to carry them out successfully.
System leadership offers both an opportunity and a challenge to school leaders. It is a challenge that we should readily accept.
Questions for school leaders to consider in the context of their own countries
1. As school leaders, are we prepared to accept the consequences of assuming system leadership?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this?
3. Through what roles can system leadership by principals be exercised?
4. Can these roles be in conflict with the demands of leadership of one ' s own school?
Notes
1. Education policy in Wales and Scotland is devolved to the governments in Cardiff and Edinburgh respectively. The education ministers in these countries, where local education authorities are much stronger than in England, have not put the same trust in secondary school leaders.
Dr John Dunford has been General Secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, in the UK, since 1998. Prior to that, he was Head of Durham Johnston Comprehensive School, a 1,500-student school in Durham City a position he held for 16 years.
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