Effective School Management

PART III
MANAGING CHANGE
Organizations are dynamically conservative: that is to say, they fight
like mad to remain the same. Only when an organization cannot repel,
ignore, contain or transform the threat, it responds to it. But the
characteristic is that of least change: nominal or token change.
(Donald Schon, 1971 Reith Lecture)

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CHANGE DESCRIBED
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Change Described
THE NATURE OF CHANGE
How often we are aware that something is crying out to be changed, yet
somehow the sheer inertia of ‘the system’ proves too great to overcome. Since
managers are there to get things to happen, how is it that they so often fail to
achieve significant, timely or orderly change?
Industry, like education, has faced this problem for many years, and not
only is it now more clearly understood but it is also one that has become the
focus of a good deal of management training, with considerable success. In
the past, most training has been aimed at helping managers to manage the
status quo more efficiently but, as the environment becomes more turbulent,
so it becomes more important to develop their skill in coping with change,
and indeed in steering it. The Education Reform Act and subsequent
legislation have put change at the top of the agenda in schools.
The main thrust in raising managers’ capacity to manage change has
come from a set of behavioural science theories and approaches called
‘organization development’, usually abbreviated to ‘OD’. Schmuck et al.
(1977) are one of its leading proponents in the context of education. Fullan et
al. (1980), also proponents, have defined it thus:
OD in school districts is a coherent, systematically planned, sustained effort at
system self-study and improvement, focusing explicitly on change in formal
and informal procedures, processes, norms or structures, using behavioural
science concepts. The goals of OD include improving both the quality of life of
individuals as well as organizational functioning and performance, with a
direct or indirect focus on educational issues.
The meaning of the phrase has been changing somewhat over the years
(Everard, 1989b), and the corpus of knowledge is now more popularly
described as ‘the management of change’ or, outside the UK, ‘school
improvement’ (Weindling, 1989).
Unsuccessful attempts to change organizations have been made
throughout history: Caius Petronius, for example, a Roman consul, recorded
his experience thus:

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up
into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to
meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for
creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and
demoralization.
(Peter, 1996)
What are among the causes of success? Do the same factors account for success
in educational change? Is it possible to make useful generalizations about
effecting major change which can be applied to any new situation, and thus
produce a ‘tool-kit’ for managers in schools to carry around with them?
Unfortunately the subject is more complex than it might appear (Stoll, 2003;
Fullan, 2003). In any case there is no way of learning how to manage change
solely from a book: real proficiency comes from practical experience
accompanied by reflective learning. Nevertheless, we can set out the important
principles, offer useful techniques and give some practical guidance on
systematic approaches to change.
Since one of the main difficulties in managing change is conceptualizing
the process, we need to start by asking what we mean by ‘change’ and by
related words such as ‘innovation’ and ‘development’. For practical purposes
we can ignore the semantic differences between these words.
Let us take some concrete examples of recent changes in many schools:
(1)
Introducing local management (LMS).
(2)
Improving the quality of school management or leadership.
(3)
Setting and implementing educational objectives for the school.
(4)
Developing a whole-school policy.
(5)
Introducing a formal system of staff appraisal and development.
(6)
Amalgamating two schools.
(7)
Opting out.
(8)
Building closer links with the community.
(9)
Bringing new information technology into school administration and
the curriculum.
(10)
Implementing the National Curriculum and subsequent changes.
Why are such changes apt to be so fraught, and only rarely turn out to surpass
our reasonable expectations of the benefits to result from them? The problem
with change is that it is far more difficult to manage than people with limited
experience of managing organizations think it should be. Those with