Paul Armstrong

Facilitating primary head teacher succession in England: The role of the School Business Manager

School leadership is significant for student learning, but increased workload and complexity are believed to be in part responsible for the difficulties internationally in managing succession, with experienced leaders leaving the profession prematurely and potential future leaders reluctant to take on the role. This article draws on a national government-funded programme of inter-school collaborations in England. Focusing on data from four primary clusters, it explores head teacher perspectives on the ways in which the expertise of a senior School Business Manager was seen to be supportive of head teacher succession within these partnerships through its impacts on the working life of the head teacher at different career stages.

Perfect Partners or Uneasy Bedfellows? Competing Understandings of the Place of Business Management within Contemporary Education Partnerships

This article examines illustrative cases of partnerships from a government-funded programme of experimental projects in England designed to test out the potential of senior business managers to provide leadership across a group of schools. The article places the programme within the context of international public service reforms and, more specifically, the re-culturation of schools along business lines. The study data are then presented and analysed in relation to the pro-collaboration and pro-business biases in evidence in contemporary thinking about public service delivery. This analysis raises serious questions about how competing education and business values and agendas play out in schools, and their implications for roles and practices within the schools workforce. The article concludes with calls for field members to address this important but neglected area of leadership.

England: School Leadership Research in England

The literature discussed within this chapter concerns school leadership research undertaken in England over the last 20 years. We have chosen this chronological period for historical reasons given the emergence of leadership as the dominant discourse within the English school context during the mid-1990s. The first strand of leadership research grew as a result of Government interventions in the early years of the new millennium to promote school improvement through, for example, increasing training and development opportunities for school leaders and beginning to differentiate between conditions for learning in schools serving more advantaged communities and those serving socioeconomical disadvantaged communities. A second strand of research on school leadership in England concerns the definition, identification and elaboration of the characteristics and behaviours of successful head teachers. A third strand of research has been the development of theories of distributed leadership, a concept that implies the involvement of the many rather than the few in leadership tasks and is premised on ‘a collective approach to capacity building in schools’ (Harris A. Crossing boundaries and breaking barriers: Distributing leadership in schools. Specialist Schools Trust. Available at: http://www.sst-inet.net, p. 7, 2005). A fourth strand of leadership research is undertaken largely by educational sociologists who position themselves as critics, both of the effects of government policy upon schools, teachers and head teachers and fellow researchers who, in their view, do not distance themselves sufficiently from government policy in their work and, therefore, are accused of colluding with it (Thrupp M. Schools making a difference: Let’s be realistic! School mix, school effectiveness and the social limits of reform. Open University Press, Buckingham, 1999). The fifth and final strand of research deals with the notion of leadership across multiple schools and agencies that has emerged in the English school context alongside the increase in interschool collaboration as a means of school improvement.

School Business Management

The role of school business managers (SBMs) in the English state school system has grown exponentially over the past decade. The roots of the SBM can be traced to its forerunner, the school bursar, and private schools where the role had been long established before a period of large-scale educational reform provided the catalyst for its growth within the state school sector. In 2002, a national government initiative launched the inaugural program of training and certification for school bursars in a bid to dramatically increase their numbers in schools in England. Since then the role has evolved into the SBM, a post that encompasses a range of responsibilities far greater in scope and diversity than those of their bursarial predecessors. Research evidence suggests that while SBMs are making a positive impact in English schools there remain cultural barriers from some educational stakeholders who have yet to fully embrace the profession and its potential. Looking forward, indications suggest that SBMs will have a central role to play in the modern day educational setting.

School to school support within a competitive education system: Views from the inside

ABSTRACT This paper draws on evidence from a study carried out in England to explore how schools can support one another’s improvement within a policy context that emphasises competition. The findings offer some reasons to be optimistic, and are suggestive of the capacity and potential of the school system in England to “self-improve” through collaborative means. However, light is also thrown on a number of barriers that need to be overcome to make such an approach work. The paper argues that developing a greater understanding of the social complexities involved in school-to-school support requires research that takes account of the views of those involved. With this in mind, the paper reflects on the experiences of a group of school leaders in England, leading to lessons that are likely to be relevant to those in other national contexts where competition is seen as a driver for school improvement.

Values-Driven Leadership Through Institutional Structures and Practices: How Successful Schools in England and Hong Kong “Absorb” Policy

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how principals of high-performing secondary schools in England and Hong Kong establish structural arrangements aligned to their core values as educators. Such values-driven structures provide a platform by which principals create the conditions in which policy and reform can be managed and absorbed without compromising the core purpose and contextual priorities of these schools. The findings reveal how the participating school principals have carefully embedded and institutionalized these structures within the cultures of their organizations as part of a multilayered approach to leadership.

Successful school leadership: international perspectives. Edited By Petros

This book offers a fascinating collection of accounts of school leadership development and practice from a range of contexts that, importantly, are not limited to the western understandings that have historically dominated this area of the field. In doing so, the book encompasses perspectives from regions that have received less scholarly attention in relation to school leadership including Africa, South Asia, South America and the Caribbean. As such, the book provides the reader with a genuinely global view of the landscape of successful and effective school leadership. In the introductory chapter, the editors engage in an interesting discussion around notions of success and effectiveness recognising the contestable and somewhat problematic nature of these terms in respect of schools and school leadership.