Effective School Management

Figure 9. 1
The organizational dimension
Individual
Group
Organization
Network of
Government
Organizations
deputy
classes
schools
LEA
DfES
teacher
sets
community colleges
NAHT
SEED
pupil
depts
sixth form colleges
SHA
etc.
caretaker
years
etc.
Headmasters’
secretary
houses
Conference
technician
committees
etc.
etc.
working parties
etc.
V
V
V
V

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ORGANIZATIONS
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– the departments, the teams, the committees. Their aims should be kept
aligned with those of the school. The setting of organizational and
departmental aims should normally involve the people in them, together
with other stakeholders (see next section), but it is ultimately for the manager
to decide what these should be. This is laid down as the first professional
duty of headteachers under their conditions of employment (DfES, 2002):
‘formulating the overall aims and objectives of the school’. Peters and
Waterman (1995, p. 85) state: ‘The in-building of purpose is a challenge to
creativity because it involves transforming men and groups from neutral,
technical units into participants who have a particular stamp, sensitivity and
commitment.’
Organizations usually have more than one objective: it is a fallacy, for
example, to suppose that business organizations only exist to make the
maximum profit. Study of the published objectives of such companies as
Shell, Astrazeneca and Securicor show that they pursue social as well as
economic objectives, which it is the task of management to keep in balance.
Similarly, those schools that make their aims explicit often find that they are
having to harmonize different though compatible aims.
STAKEHOLDERS
Take, for example, the set of aims of a comprehensive school, reproduced in
Figure 9.2. Not only does the school aim to serve the needs of the individual
pupil but it also seeks to respond to the legitimate demands of employers,
colleges, universities, examining bodies and society as a whole. There are
different  ‘stakeholders’ in all organizations: businesses need to serve
customers, offer a market to suppliers, reward shareholders, look after
employees and be good corporate citizens in society; likewise schools have as
stakeholders pupils, parents, LEAs, governors, teachers, feeder schools, higher
education, employers and the local community.
The management’s task is to look after the interests of all the stakeholders
and keep some sort of balance between them. An industrial manager is no
more the paid lackey of the shareholders (or expected by them to be so) than
a headteacher is of the LEA or DfES. Both have a right and duty to resist
demands that seriously upset the balance and health of the organization. Not
all organizational aims are perfectly aligned, and the manager has to resolve
conflicts of interest, some of which are more apparent than real. It is a help
when the different stakeholders recognize and respect each other’s legitimate
aims for the organization, and can see that its best interests are served when
any conflict is resolved by consensus: hence the importance of the last
objective in the list in Figure 9.2.
Another objective in the list mentions the concept of ‘reciprocal responsi-
bility’. Organizations have to strike deals with their stakeholders whereby, in
return for certain advantages flowing one way, other advantages will flow
the other way. The head may well have to supervise unwritten contracts of
this kind.

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
Aims are ideals and they are like stars in that though we may not reach them, we use
them to guide us. If we do not know where we are going, it is likely that we will end
up somewhere else!
• To recognize the individual’s talents of all kinds and degrees and to develop this
intellectual, physical and creative capacity.
• To ensure that the curriculum serves the individual’s needs.
• To develop a curriculum which is flexible enough to respond to the sensible needs of
students at different ages and stages.
• To recognize the legitimate demands of employers, colleges, universities, and
examining bodies.
• To recognize the legitimate demands of society as a whole with respect to adequate
numeracy, literacy and other fundamental skills relating to the processes of
communication; oral, written and visual.
• To enable students to acquire the required education relating to the necessity to earn a
living and, when appropriate, to enter into skilled occupations and professions.
• To seek to measure the extent to which an individual is being successful in making the
maximum use of natural gifts and opportunities.
• To be rigorously selective in the material presented to students, bearing in mind the
above aims and having particular regard to the following aims:
– The instilling of an attitude to learning that shows it to be a life-long process.
– The stimulation of intellectual curiosity.
– The direction and exercising of the emotions.
– The encouragement of discrimination.
– The development of the art of learning.
– The fostering of a capacity to tackle unfamiliar problems.
– The emphasizing of the need to differentiate between truth and lies and between
fact and feeling with the associated understanding of the nature of evidence.
– The growth of understanding of the nature and importance of knowledge plus
the involvement with the processes and resources of learning.
• To recognize and accept differences in natural endowment and environment and to
hold every individual in esteem as of right.
• To accept responsibility for identifying the physical, aesthetic, creative, emotional
and social needs of each individual student as a necessary starting point to satisfy
these needs.
• To maintain the school as a caring community emphasizing the central importance of
good human relationships based upon sensitivity, tolerance, good will and a sense of
humour.
• To promote the understanding of the fact that the individual and the community have
a reciprocal responsibility and that individual needs must at times be secondary to
the greater need of a large group; that collaboration and co-operation are a two-way
activity.
• To foster habits of responsibility, self-discipline, initiative, endeavour and individual
judgment.
• To obtain a positive response to the needs of a changing society whilst emphasizing
established fundamental values and standards.
• To promote the idea that the school is the servant of the community in both local and
national terms and to accept the responsibilities which flow from this understanding.
• To secure the active involvement of all people concerned with the school’s welfare,
staff, students, governors, parents and the authority, in the continuous reassessment
of the aims and objectives of the school.