Until comparatively recently, the notion of leadership within schools, and particularly primary schools, was undeveloped. Of course, schools had leaders but they were called ‘Head Teachers’ and they had ‘Deputy Head Teachers’ who took over when they weren’t there – and often did the boring bits.
The implication of the title was that their role was to lead teaching, and I can recall passionately defending this position as a head in the early nineties, when Local Management of Schools was introduced, giving schools more autonomy over their budgets, leaving me resenting the amount of time I hade to devote to grounds maintenance contracts and utilities.
Headteachers were provided with no training beyond an apprenticeship model of being a deputy to someone else. Exceptional Heads were often charismatic and individualistic, making their approach hard to replicate. When I became a head, my knowledge of leadership was underpinned by a list of things I shouldn’t do – not all of these were helpful, and many were based on very negative experiences – one even warned, “don’t buy a school cat”.
If you had responsibilities for a subject or aspect of provision you were called a coordinator and your role was to ensure that appropriate resources were available and where applicable you wrote a policy – or adapted someone else’s. You might even have belonged to a local network group where you went to share ideas and good practice. You became a coordinator because you had been at your school for a long time or had particular enthusiasm for a subject or sometimes because there was no one else – or you went to the loo at the wrong time in a staff meeting and returned to find yourself with a new role. You were not trained and were given minimal support in school.
The change of culture has happened slowly and incrementally with the professionalisation of headship through NPQH and, for those who had been in the profession for some time, LPSH. Suddenly the language and skills of leadership became part of the culture of schools but only at the highest levels. Over time, these professionally trained heads began to disseminate their knowledge and skills and set out expectations for those they led. They exemplified a new type of school leader who sought to drive the improvement agenda, not though charisma or passion, but through the knowledge and skills of leadership.