The new context of school leadership
"The days of the individual school are over" and "Collaborate or die!"
These are two of the bolder statements made by school principals interviewed by us during our research into the nature of leadership of schools now that the vast majority of them operate as part of some form of collaborative system. Whether in partnerships, federations (‘soft’ or ‘hard’), multi-academy trusts, teaching school alliances, academy chains, school leaders find themselves having to learn to lead and manage within and across a range of such collaborative structures in the UK. Other terms we met at a local level included ‘families’, ‘clusters’ and ‘triads’, used to describe various formal structures for schools working together. Key questions we wanted to try to find answers to included:
- What essential differences in leadership exist between leading an individual and several schools?
- What are the factors involved in being an effective leader in this new context?
- What are the main concerns and problems that such leaders have?
- What are the main challenges that lie ahead in this field?
Whilst most of our research was in England, the concept of schools working together with leaders collaborating is by no means a UK phenomenon, and some of our work has included studying developments in United States and South Africa (where we visited schools) in particular, as well as evidence from Tanzania, Pakistan and Tanzania (The overseas research is included in the book we have written, referenced at the end of this article; this article is confined to the research in England). Our research took the form of interviews with a large number of school leaders, including school principals and headteachers, assistant principals and deputy heads, as well as some Local Authority officers, National Leaders of Education (NLEs), and Specialist Leaders of Education (SLEs). Whilst the term ‘system leadership’ occurred often during discussions, the focus of our inquiries was on the practical side of school leadership in terms of the questions noted above. As can already be seen, a plethora of terms exist for both the collaborative structures involved and for the personnel also!
What’s different in the leadership involved?
One unsurprising difference noted by nearly everyone was the difference in scale. After all, leading and managing four or five schools is clearly a much bigger task than leading and managing one! This difference in scale was most often mentioned with regard to resources to be managed, financial, physical and human. Increased administration was therefore inevitable for leaders and a corresponding increase in administrative staff. Whilst it was easy to become immersed in such bureaucracy, important as it is, some school leaders felt they had to constantly remind themselves and others that their key role related to learning and pupil achievement, otherwise the paperwork might overwhelm them.
Linked to this, many leaders noted the balance that needed to be struck between maintaining the individual school’s autonomy and the requirements of the collaborative structure of which the school was part. Some Trusts and Alliances were seen as more relaxed than others about the amount of individual autonomy given to individual schools in the group.