Bernard Barker

Do Leaders Matter

Based on field research at a number of comprehensive schools, this paper explores how secondary headteachers contribute to the effectiveness of their schools. Although recent studies indicate that heads exercise only a small, indirect effect on performance, there is a widespread belief, shared by the government, OfSTED, governors and parents that leadership is a vital ingredient for success. Evidence about leadership is used to compare and contrast successful and less successful headteachers. Despite the complications of social context, internal politics and external pressure, strong heads seem to adopt similar, well-balanced leadership styles and strategies that correlate with well-motivated students and staff. In contrast, poor performers operate a limited range of styles and strategies and elicit a negative response from their colleagues. These findings match predictions arising from a classic experiment at Harvard Business School (Litwin & Stringer, 1966), on which the DfEEs Leadership Programme for Serving Heads is based. The paper describes how effective leaders motivate staff and students and indicates problematical influences limiting or constraining the performance of headteachers.

The leadership paradox: Can school leaders transform student outcomes?

This qualitative case study of an exceptional school in the south of England challenges the hypothesis that transformational leaders significantly impact on student outcomes. Interviews with staff and students, together with classroom observation, confirm that the head, appointed in 1995, has played an important role in transforming internal processes and in changing the context of the school. Although the observed and reported behaviour of leaders, teachers, and students matches expectations from the literature, the consequences for student achievement are unclear. Background variables seem to explain most of the apparent improvement in student outcomes. An effectiveness framework that assigns disproportionate value to examination results seems to have created a leadership paradox, where heads reported to be transformational produce only limited gains in performance. The study concludes that the governments determination to assume a strongly positive relationship between leaders and outcomes has compromised the principle of evidence-informed policy-making and that we need a different approach based on a broadly defined, qualitative conception of student success.

Girls’ World or Anxious Times: what's really happening at school in the gender war?

Abstract This paper investigates relatively poor male GCSE scores at Stanground College, Peterborough. By 1995 girls outperformed boys by an average half grade across all subjects, although NFER cognitive ability tests showed no significant differences between the sexes. Staff interviews, a student questionnaire and lesson observation identified a male agenda ill adapted to public examinations and yielded ideas to help boys connect with academic success. Also examined is the contrast between the account of female disadvantage offered by much of the literature on gender and current worries about an unskilled male underclass. Perceptions of gender‐related behaviour may be shaped by hidden social and political anxieties.

The Crux of Leadership: Shaping School Culture by Contesting the Policy Contexts and Practices of Teaching and Learning.

The three successful headteachers at a school in England managed policy, i.e. applied power effectively, in three distinct but interacting arenas: the micro level within the school and its departments; the meso level with local government and communities; and the macro level of central government and its agencies. They influenced these arenas by persuading school members to support their vision of a successful school through creating a culture that made staff and students feel valued but responsible members of the school community. This was achieved through the public sharing of knowledge of how to act effectively within school, e.g. in lessons or break times; to be connoisseurs of external policy contexts at meso and macro level; to understand how staff, students, and parents might perceive their actions; to assert their views and values effectively within the common interests of the school community. These leaders also created relationships with the school’s local authority and residential communities that made their members feel welcome partners with the school.

School reform policy in England since 1988: relentless pursuit of the unattainable

There is growing concern that almost 20 years after the 1988 Education Act, top‐down, large‐scale reform has stalled. The policy mix of choice, competition, markets, regulation, accountability and leadership seems not to have closed the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged areas and individuals, while most variations in school performance can be explained in terms of intake differences. This paper reviews policy and progress since 1988 and assesses the extent to which central government has achieved its educational aims. Unacknowledged tensions and contradictions are identified in structures and practices that are supposed to constitute a reliable framework for sustainable improvement. The conclusion is drawn that since 1988 the national government apparatus has itself become an important obstacle to further progress. An independent review of policy‐making and implementation is recommended so that schools and colleges are enabled to contribute more effectively to improvements in the quality of education.

Rethinking leadership and change: a case study in leadership succession and its impact on school transformation

This qualitative, historical study, based on interviews with participants and archive data, reconstructs the extended process through which three successive heads contributed to the transformation of the Felix Holt School. Over a 10‐year period the roll rose from 560 to 1109, while the percentage of pupils achieving 5 GCSE higher grades increased from a low point of 13% to 57% in 2002. Unlike the majority of schools nationally, Felix Holt moved definitively from one level of effectiveness to another. Concepts from the leadership literature frame an analysis of how three contrasting leaders influenced organizational characteristics. Despite disruption and turbulence as the heads adopted discontinuous strategies and contrasting styles, their respective contributions broke the mould and built the capacity of the school. Successful transition from one leader to another seems to be a critical but neglected dimension of sustainable improvement. All those concerned with the appointment of school leaders are recommended to give more care to managing their arrival, induction and departure.

Can high-performing academies overcome family background and improve social mobility?

This article investigates whether schools that match Coalition Government criteria for excellence can enable hardworking students, regardless of background, to achieve good examination results and improved chances of social mobility. Students at two case-study academies were interviewed about family influences on their development and choice of education and employment pathways. In a ‘best case’ scenario, where prototype academies have rigorously implemented government policy, are students less reliant than before on family resources, influences and dispositions? Our data suggest that family background continues to be an important influence on participants’ attitudes, values, occupational interests and preferences. There are few signs that the new academy regime is creating improved opportunities for social mobility.

Aspirations And Young People’s Constructions Of Their Futures: Investigating Social Mobility And Social Reproduction

ABSTRACT The United Kingdom’s Coalition government has introduced an education policy that is focused on increasing the opportunities to promote and advance social mobility for all children within state education. Raising young people’s aspirations through school-based initiatives is a prominent theme within recent policy texts, which are focused on improving educational outcomes and thus advancing social mobility. This article draws on qualitative data from paired interviews with 32 students in two academies to first investigate if our participants’ aspirations indicate a desire for intragenerational social mobility and second, to explore our participants’ perceptions of the influences of their family background on their aspirations for the future. Analysis of our data highlights the mismatch between our participants’ aspirations for the future and the government’s constructions of what they should aspire to, as articulated in policy texts. By investigating aspirations, as part of a wider project to understand social mobility qualitatively, our data shows the important role of family in shaping our participants’ varied and diverse aspirations that are frequently at variance with government policy.

Values and Practice: History teaching 1971-2001

From the biographical perspective of his own career as a history teacher and trainer, the author explores how the ideological ferment of the last 30 years has shaped the values and principles that have informed classroom practice in the period. The paper contrasts the tolerant, progressive humanism of the post-war era with the intense political controversies of the 1970s and explains how history teachers who recognised the post-modern dilemma and responded with new approaches and methods found themselves blamed for moral decline and falling standards. The arguments of Thomas Greenfield and Alasdair MacIntyre, with their frank acknowledgement of the contested nature of truth and knowledge, are compared with the certainties of Rhodes Boyson, Sheila Lawlor and Melanie Phillips. The History National Curriculum, with its apparatus of objectives and levels, is criticised as an incoherent set of bureaucratic procedures designed to close down classroom debate that appeared to threaten the established order. Research from Texas is cited as evidence that this standardised method may hinder teaching and learning, inducing compliance rather than understanding. In conclusion, a visit to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre provides an example of how effective history teaching engages with inescapable controversy and is trivialised by an excessive concern with objectives, tests and examinations.

Who Killed the Local Education Authority‐‐Cambridgeshire 1974‐1998?

Abstract Local government finance has been the Conservatives’ defining preoccupation and the focus of their least successful reform (the poll tax). Central governments effort to modernise local administration, control public spending and eliminate rival centres of power has created tension within the Conservative party and the country at large. Traditional shire counties have suffered as much as urban authorities and Conservative councillors have struggled with capping and the poll tax almost as much as their political opponents. This study examines, particularly in relation to education policy, how these conflicts have unfolded in Cambridgeshire. The authority has been a crucible for radical Tory ideas about the management of public services, but has lost a third of its secondary schools (to grant maintained status), a third of its territory (Peterborough becomes a unitary council on 1 April 1998) and most of its power.