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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?