This article will critique and discuss the possibilities and limitations of educational leadership in relation to improving and developing education with the UK national Further Education (FE) context.
According to The National Archives,1896 was when the first grant was awarded for the first design school. By the turn of the century a number of institutions provided continuing education in various forms including evening classes, polytechnics and working men’s courses and colleges. These later went on to become what we now call Further Education (FE). FE is often referred to as a middle child who is often neglected (Foster, 2005) and in 2019, not much has changed. FE still looks at post compulsory education up to level 4, not branching into Higher education (Gov.uk, 2019). However, since the introduction of Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) and Princes Trust courses, FE can take students as young as 14, if their school grants permission (Doughty, 2015). FE also includes adult education and special educational needs (SEN). However, FE is treated as the poor relation compared to the rest of the sector. For example, a full time, fully qualified FE teacher in an inner-city college has the minimum earnings of 23k to a max 35k (TES, 2019). They do have the opportunity to earn up to 39k if they are willing to take on extra responsibilities. Compared to a fully qualified, full time primary school teacher who starts on 23k but can earn a over 40k without taking extra responsibilities. If they do wish to take on extra, can earn in excess of 48k (Get into Teaching, 2019) – making nearly 9k more than an FE teacher doing the same job. However, one of the major differences is in funding. The model for FE shows that funding is directly linked to qualifications being achieved. This means that enormous amounts of positive performance data needs to be gathered meaning colleges are less focused on the whole student development and experience. In secondary school, as education is compulsory, children are likely to stay and complete their exams, thus schools can access the funding for these students. However approximately 40% of school children do not achieve the higher grades (A*-C or 9-4 with the new system) and the government do not ask for the funding back like they do with FE (Transforming Lives, 2016).
FE currently covers ages 14-90 (Doughty, 2015) where the younger students may not get on within a school environment (14-16) or are now taking A-Levels or BTEC/NVQs (16+) in order to progress onto higher education. The other end of the age spectrum could be because they wish to increase their work prospects or because to pursue an interest. Doughty also outlines that the FE sector is not contained to four walls but is also available in prisons, charities, adult community education centres and workplace environments.
Russell (2016) refers to FE being the ‘last chance saloon’ for many people due to its emphasis on adult education, training and retraining. In todays society, FE is no longer confined to one type of institution as it is available in prisons, workplaces, and community centres, (Doughty, 2016).
On a more positive note, FE has always been an attractive to international students who wish to study in the UK. As a result, FE tends to, and is encouraged to, have a more ‘global outlook and mindset’, (Blum et al, 2010)
In the broader context, educational leadership refers to the responsibilities of school senior leadership team and principal, according to Learn.org (2019). This team then try to create positive change in education policy and processes by guiding teachers, parents, students, policy makers and the public, according to Top Education Degrees, (2017). However, it is also pointed out by Top Education Degrees that educational leadership is a form or control, academically management and quality control wise, from a business perspective. Bush (2008) summarises it well when he states three elements of leadership as: 1. The key feature is to influence rather than exert authority or power. The latter tends to be linked with formal positions, such as head or principal, but the former could take place with and by anyone in the institution. In this manner, leadership is independent of a formal role whereas management is linked to it; 2. Whilst influencing, it is done for a purpose to achieve something rather than for the sake of it and is intentional; and finally 3. Where the influence can be exercised by groups rather than solely individuals. Bush (2008) goes on to explain that influence is the central theme with authority only existing within formal organisations or hierarchies. This has been a source of tension within education in terms of what they share with other organisations and what makes then unique.
In recent time, education has been going down the same model route of that of a business and can be seen in the similarities which lie in the hierarchal structure. There is always someone at the top (CEO/Headteacher/hospital trust/board of governors for the charity) middle management and workers. Clients are the shoppers/students/patients/people in need of help.
However, the difference should be between clear cut. Private organisations such as HSBC are clearly about making money. They make no secret of this. However, schools, hospitals and charities should be about helping people first and foremost. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case at this present time. School funding is based on KPI’s set from government, hence students become pound sign. Gerwitz and Ball (2000), reported that since the New Labour government of 1997, who formally committed to the policies designed to increase democratic accountability, education institutions are having to be run as businesses who are in direct competition with each other, particularly for student recruitment.
According to Savours and Keohane (2019), the structure in an FE institution can vary widely and even more so due to the number of mergers in recent years. What does remain is that the overall responsibility of the institution lies with the CEO or Principal. The traditional structure is the one outlined above with the principal at the helm with a team of senior leaders covering areas such as finance, operations curriculum and external relations. The important finding from Savours and Keohane was that those who became principals or leaders, did not always come from a teaching or even an education background. This reinforces the education has become a business argument, especially when you consider some leaders are actually from the public sector. For example, local government, military or civil servants or were in the private sector before moving into FE leadership. The Department for Education (DfE, 2018) found that the top 3 industries which leaders came from are firstly, finance followed by engineering and manufacturing followed by business and administration. Those becoming leaders from an educational background came in at joint sixth. This worries me greatly as the assumption is that education should primarily be about educating the population and increasing their skills and knowledge rather than making the most profit. However, the DfE (2018) also reported that those who had the education experience, did not always have the experience of running a large organisation but also those who could run them lacked the experience in education. Yet, this is the opposite of why FE institutions came about in the first place, for the community rather than profit purposes, but this is where we now find the FE sector. Currently, FE funding streams are becoming increasingly complex and institutions are being reduces but expanding in size due to a number of merges mainly due to financial reasons. For these reasons it is vitally important to have a person in place who possesses the relevant skills and knowledge or can surround themselves with people who possess these skills, in a leadership role in FE.
However, it is important that we look at the differences between the notion of leadership and what is meant by management. According to Surbhi (2018) leadership refers to the ability to influence people so objectives can be met willingly and enthusiastically. To be a leader means to you are able to impart a vision and inspire people whilst being able to be both formal and informal when appropriate and proactive when approaching a task or issue. Contrastingly, management is the skill of being able to manage issues in the most appropriate manner. Management is more formal and includes getting the work done through yourself and others. Management tends to be more reactive and based in exerting control and order into matters in order to successfully get from point A to point B. Where Leadership looks at an issue and the long-term impact through foresight, management looks at short term goals with maximum impact. It is management that we usually recognise most in educational institutions, Surbhi (2018). However, as much as it they may seem opposing, the two concepts do go hand in hand with each other – they are inseparable in nature. Managerial qualities are needed in order to inspire staff, so the two terms go side by side and compliment each other (Surbhi, 2018). In order for an organisation to develop and grow, it must have both. Those in senior positions are needed to be able to inspire staff whilst ensuring they maintain control over target achievement in order to draw an increase in government funding by hitting or exceeding the targets set.
According to Kelly (2019), the leadership structure of an organisation determines the workflow, authority and accountability. Hierarchical leadership is where power belongs to the position rather than the person with power stemming from the top, trickling down in the shape of a pyramid. Hierarchical leadership can be either functional or divisional. Functional hierarchies tend to be used for businesses, whereas divisional tends to be used if areas can function as a separate entity. For example, different faculties, broken down further into departments who can run autonomously. When talking of educational leadership, it is easy to assume that leaders have control or influence over their institutions. It could be natural to assume they can exert control over setting the vision and ethos of the institution. The actual basis of managerial leadership is that many of the major issues are predetermined, usually by external agencies such as examining bodies. This means that the actual focus is on managing existing activities to the best of their abilities. However, this also means that there is a hierarchal structure where power and authority are given to the position held within the institution but the only control these positions can fully explore autonomously is who is accepted to be part of the institution as either a student of member of staff, how they perform, how can the desired behaviour be controlled and how can their performance be measured. These are all very quantifiable measures but do not take into account the distance travelled in other area by students such as personal development or the ability to achieve due to extreme personal issues, such as homelessness. Ulster university (2019) found that this new managerialism drive towards target achievement has only succeeded in increasing the mental distress of teachers and students alike, with some turning to suicide attempts. Ulster university also found that new managerialism has actually harmed the student-teacher relationship. With the focus on targets and quantitative data, many teachers believe that learning opportunities are harmed along with being able to meet the psychological needs of students (Ulster University, 2019). It was also found that job satisfaction has diminished greatly by administrative demands, with excessive paperwork and pressure to improve results on top of teachers’ already heavy workloads. It could be argued that this is out of the control of senior leaders/managers as these pressures come from government. Managerialism centres around the ideology that the only way an organisation can be successful is by the way it is managed. This is not the same as being a managerialist as managers are required to take on the viewpoints of others an put their interests above the manager’s. However, it is very difficult to distinguish this within education due to the focus shift to target achievement. Meaning that leaders are often left to try and manage staff into achieving government set targets which then starts the cycle off again over teacher’s workloads.
Exactly how far can the government go when it comes to control over the running of educational institutions? Should they be allowed to dictate or tightly control the work in educational institutions? Should they be allowed to apply varying degrees of pressure or just outright control the running of an educational institution? These are all questions that we should be able to answer with a firm NO. But it is not as simple as that. Although the notion of education being controlled by government is very new in developing nations, in the UK this is not the case. However, in other nations, the education system can be controlled by religion, philanthropy or charities. Education as a government focus only arose because institutions started to provide education for those other than the elite. As a result of this, the debate over whether government should be involved is still active among the minority of radicals. However, the government’s involvement has resulted in standardisation and accountability within the education sector. For example, with legislation over what age it is appropriate for a child to start school, when they can leave and at what age it is appropriate to study certain subjects. The counter argument to this could be to ask how is this beneficial for the more advanced or weaker student, regardless of their age? Funding is an area that government is able to help with, particularly with certain groups of educational organisations. However, government is also able to retract funding from an institution if it is not meeting government set targets. One final area is planning in terms of recruitment of teachers or supply teachers and in terms of student recruitment. However, do we want to risk non education or non-teachers telling educational institutions who they should be hiring to teach?
Hall and Gunter (2016) outlined policy levers which governments use in education. This consisted of: Use of markets. Where institutions are encouraged to compete against each other; Services Users As Customers. This is treating students and/or parents as consumers rather than service users, the product being a qualification. This is dangerous as it lends itself to the interpretation that the consumer has ‘bought’ their qualification rather than actually earned it. However, it does allow the consumer to choose where they wish to study based on how well an institution is performing against its competitors; Market Mechanisms. This includes national and local school league tables, performance-related pay and competitive tendering. This could be interpreted as a way of controlling and encouraging desired target driven behaviours from education staff and students, rather than looking out for a student’s physical and mental well-being; Institutional ‘Performance’. This is about how an institution is performing and how its students measuring up against national standardised tests. Hatcher (2005) best describes the relationship between government and educational leaderships as the government saying that leaders can have more autonomy as long as government can decide on which issues to lead on and how leaders should address these issues.
There is a constant battle between educational leaders and government policy makers. Educational leaders wish to work more autonomously, being allowed perform their roles and carry out their work independently. However, government policy makers wish to encourage accountability of the quality of provision for the institution, if they are using tax to aid the institution’s funding. Naturally, there are times when educational leaders are supportive of government policies. However, for educational leaders who like autonomy, it is unlikely they will be able to consistently marry their interpretation of what their institution needs versus what government tells via the top down policy of traditional government. As a result, there are two ways they could choose to go: implement and follow government policy or not. However, there is the ‘strategic compliance’ route which appears to be a compromise of the two. This is a part accept/part reject and try to implement parts of policy with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
In conclusion, it is clear with the state of the education system and the shortage of teachers due to workload and stress, something needs to change. Here are many government-led initiatives which are the primary source of distress which educational leaders can try to minimise as much as they can, but it is often out of their control. At best, they can try to inspire and manage staff in order to achieve these targets. However, it would be worth looking into collegial leadership to try and reduce the stress on leaders and their staff. Collegial leadership places emphasis on wide range of staff within the organisation in terms of decision making. Collegial leadership encourages the distribution of leadership throughout the institution, spreading the responsibility. Miller and Rowan (2006) describes collegial leadership as a move away from established hierarchical patterns of bureaucratic control and towards a model where staff are involved in the decision making for the institution. Meaning the focus is placed on the participation and engagement of those working in the institution. This would then have the potential to increase staff’s self-value and could potentially reduce some administrative workload, reducing stress levels in the process. This style of leadership has proved popular within the education sector, particularly in schools and university, so should translate well to the FE sector. This style could help to combat low morale experienced by long-term staff members and middle management and should re-engage and motivate them.
There is a worry that with new managerialism, we may be left with a population able to achieve targets but have no social or communicative skills, in short, leadership skills. That the education system as it stands would have produced a population of people who are only able to ‘manage’ by data and target setting/achieving rather than ‘lead’ through inspiring and looking at long term solutions rather than short term goals with immediate impact.
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