Effective School Management

particularly commercial) organizations, so that successful management
practice and organizational design can be transferred to and fro. However,
because industry has a longer tradition of management and leadership
development, and spends more on it than does education, most of the traffic
across the bridge is towards education. We believe that only some of the
available know-how should cross the bridge, and even that may need
translating or adapting before it can be put to beneficial use.
It is our contention that those who do not believe that schools can learn
from industry base their case on false premisses and lack of first-hand
knowledge of industrial management. They have a concept of industrial
organizations and managers which we scarcely recognize as real – or, if real,
as effective. We know of the charges of exploitation and the supposed taint of
the profit motive, but we do not accept that the ethics of most businesses are
malign. Our proposition is this:
Some firms are effective, ethical and successful, partly because they are well led
and organized, which is partly because their managers have learned manage-
ment systematically.
Equally, some schools and colleges are effective and successful, partly
because they are well led and organized, which is partly because their heads
and senior staff have learned management systematically.
Therefore heads and senior staff in schools and colleges can learn to manage
better by studying what their counterparts do in successful firms and schools
and across national boundaries such as the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
Such learning takes time. We think nothing of investing four to six years in
the training of a doctor, lawyer, chemist or vet, but how many managers get
even as many weeks’ training? Yet management can be just as complex and
demanding as these other professions.
Just as doctors’ and vets’ mistakes may die, managers can kill their
organizations. We can learn from others’ mistakes, and industry has made
many (as has education). So we need to be discriminating about what we
allow to cross the learning bridges. Industry has had to be discriminating in
the same way, for many of the new ideas about organization and
management stem from institutions of higher education. Some work and
some don’t. This book is about those that work, and it warns the reader of
some of the traps for the unwary.
For too long books and courses on education management have been
considered by students as too ‘theoretical’, ‘academic’, ‘impractical’ or even
‘irrelevant’; they do not deal with the real condition of the manager, but with
some kind of idealized role. Since 1988 the concept of competence-based
learning and criterion-referenced qualifications has proved to be a powerful
countervailing force, stimulated by the former Employment Department’s
Standards Initiative and by the National Council for Vocational
Qualifications (SCOTVEC in Scotland) – now superseded by the

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CONTENTS
xi
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. This development is probably the
biggest single reform in vocational education and training since the Statute of
Artificers was enacted in 1543. It is just as revolutionary as the introduction of
the National Curriculum. Schools have already felt the impact with the
arrival of GNVQs as alternative qualifications to GCSE and ‘A’ levels.
The CNAA used to adopt the following principle in assessing polytechnic
courses (author’s italics):
The direction of the students’ studies must be towards greater understanding
and competence. Thus, while it may be appropriate for a programme to include
the acquisition of techniques or skills, or the learning of data, these must lead to
a higher level of intellectual and creative performance than that intrinsic in the
learning of skills, techniques or facts themselves.
We subscribe wholeheartedly to this principle, and the whole thrust of the
book is aimed at improving competence and performance. We do not disparage
theory; Lewin’s aphorism that there is nothing so practical as a good theory
rings true for us, but we believe that too many books on education
management are written from a theoretician’s point of view. Our aim has been
to redress this balance and to complement with something more practical the
texts written by those academics who simply study management without
practising it (excellent though many are).
Perhaps a clue to the different approaches lies in the words used to
describe ‘management’. It is different from ‘administration’ (though in North
America this word comes nearer to what we mean by ‘management’) and
‘leadership’, but includes both. Consequently, we see a manager as someone
who
(1) Knows what he or she wants to happen and causes it to happen;
(2) Is responsible for controlling resources and ensuring that they are put to
good use;
(3) Promotes effectiveness in work done, and a search for continual
improvement;
(4) Is accountable for the performance of the unit he or she is managing, of
which he or she is a part;
(5) Sets a climate or tone conducive to enabling people to give of their best.
(Everard, 1984)
Since our third edition was published in 1996, there has been a gradual shift
of emphasis from ‘management’ towards ‘leadership’. This is exemplified by
the creation of the National College of School Leadership (www.ncsl.org.uk)
and by the rebranding of the MCI management standards as ‘management
and leadership’ standards (www.management-standards.org.uk); Figure 1 is
the new functional map on which these standards are based, and the latest
key purpose is defined as:
Provide direction, gain commitment, facilitate change and achieve results
through the efficient, creative and responsible deployment of people and other
resources.
PREFACE

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xii
EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
Most of our readers will recognize  both definitions as describing the role of
heads, principals, rectors and leaders in schools and colleges. Some will aspire
to such posts or to the next rung down: deputies, assistant headteachers, heads
of lower school, heads of faculties, principal teachers.
What we have to say is directed at primary, secondary and special schools,
as well as early years education centres (though the parts that deal with the
interdepartmental problems of large institutions will scarcely apply to a
small village primary school); and it is as relevant to the independent as to the
state sector.