School Leadership for the Challenges Ahead

A discussion paper from the NSW Teachers Federation

School Leadership for the Challenges Ahead

A discussion paper from the NSW Teachers Federation

At the NSW Teachers Federation’s 2010 Principals Conference, former President and current Vice President DENIS FITZGERALD presented a well-received speech on school leadership in the current political, industrial and educational context. At Federation’s request, Denis subsequently developed his presentation into this discussion paper for statewide distribution to NSW public school principals, Federation Representatives and interested colleagues.

Denis has taught extensively in public schools across NSW, is a member of the NSW Board of Studies, has been a Director in the NSW DET and has held a range of senior promotions positions in schools.

Federation welcomes responses to this paper, which may be forwarded to principals@nswtf.org.au.

ISBN 978-1-875699-70-411102Authorised by Jenny Diamond, General Secretary, NSW Teachers Federation, 23-33 Mary Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010

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Leadership and principalship theory has been undergoing significant discussion in recent times. There has been a contemporary orthodoxy

emerge of late which could almost be a recitation. Principals, we are told, “Should be solely in charge of their school, with the power to do as they see fit; in the unique circumstances that arise; determining how resources should be used; chasing up their own staffing; setting their priorities; determining how their school speaks to and relates to its community; a school sailing on its own sea with its own captain.”

The language describing this development has changed a little over time but essentially the notions of autonomy and devolution have persisted.

At one reading this all sounds good, natural and reasonable. Common sense, really.

It might reward us a little to examine the provenance of these ideas at the outset however, as history and context might have something to teach us.

The stand alone school with the all powerful principal is scarcely a new idea. In fact such a de-scription matches closely what schools used to look like for most of the past up until the nineteenth century. Of course such schools were all private schools where the student body was almost always the offspring of the relatively privileged and the role of the school was to replicate the social order of the times. One can still hear echoes of this distant past when certain headmasters of current private schools, who much enjoy the sound of their own voices on the radio, treat us to their wisdom on an all too regular basis.

It was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century when mass systems of public education were being formed that such schools ceased to be the norm and where the nature of schooling and students was transformed. In NSW for example, the Public Instruction Act of 1880 was part of that revolutionary transformation and the notion that schooling was an entitlement for all became widespread. Still, education levels were not always of the highest order in the teaching service and for decades the concept of a head “master” being aided by “assistant” teachers of modest qualifica-tion remained. In such a context where the head was the qualified teacher and the assistant might have a primary school graduation the power rela-tionships were necessarily clear, hierarchical and traditional.

The modern thrust for devolution and autonomy became resurgent in the early 1970s in England un-

der the guidance of Mrs Thatcher who as Education Secretary became enamoured of the views of a group of policy thinkers with a nostalgia for the good old days. Foremost among these “thinkers” were the Black Papers group, a private school inspired coterie who were resistant to much of the progressivist change of the 1960s and 1970s. Later on the managerial theories of the Greiner Government and the gentle ministra-tions of Education Minister Terry Metherell brought us the concept of NSW Inc where the central meta-phors of the market and private enterprise concepts of business leadership became modish. This added another layer to the depiction of what principalship should look like.

To “move forward” to the current age, it was inter-esting to note the most recent federal election with the two contenders for national leadership working from a very similar running sheet.

Julia Gillard used the election campaign to declare that: “I think that schools run best when school prin-cipals have the power and the responsibility to make the decisions that shape their schools for the future….If re-elected as Prime Minister, I want to make sure that power is in the hands of school principals.”

At a later press conference Gillard was to expand on her plan and intentions: “Now this is freeing school principals from bureaucracy and making them into CEOs and leaders of their schools in a real sense….We will start with a focus on state schools that need to be freed from school bureau-cracies….I as Education Minister embarked on a set of reforms to empower school principals and already more has been done by this government than has ever been done before in the history of the Commonwealth.”

Tony Abbott was not to be outdone, however, and his platform was replete with promises for “greater public school and principal autonomy”. Amidst other announcements the Coalition’s take on the issue was to declare: “Our plan is simple: We want to give public schools the same independence currently enjoyed by the non-government sector, empowering school principals and school councils to make the decisions currently being made by state governments.”

Mr Abbott reckoned: “The basic problem in Aus-tralia’s schools and hospitals, particularly public ones, is not lack of money but lack of the institutional free-dom that would allow them to respond effectively to people’s most important needs.”

(It is fair and timely to observe that whilst the elec-tion campaign promised public schools “empowered

School Leadership for the Challenges Aheadby Denis Fitzgerald

“…the managerial theories of the Greiner Government... brought us the concept of NSW Inc where the central metaphors of the market and private enterprise concepts of business leadership became modish.”

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principals” and “institutional freedom”, it was private schools that were guaranteed pots of money by both sides and spared them any restrictions or comment as to how they might be led.)

What is also noteworthy about the loudly pro-claimed consanguinity between the major political parties on the issue of principalship is that it ran completely counter to what their other policies and previous actions had indicated. There were some profound inconsistencies that became apparent.

Indeed, it was the same Julia Gillard who:• hadbeeninvitingparentstouseMySchoolto,“pro-

voke frank and robust discussions between parents, their child’s teachers and school principals”;

• hadbeenscornfulinherdismissaloftheviewsofprincipals’ organisations with their concern around the misuse of student data;

• hadsuggestedthatthenextphaseoftheMySchoolconcept could well extend to My Teacher where principals and teachers could be individually rated, ranked and scrutinised on the internet and in the media;

• oversawtheuseoffederalindustrialrelationslawswhereby principals and teachers were threatened with daily fines of thousands of dollars for wanting to resist the misuse of data on the children in their care during the NAPLAN dispute;

• launchedtheimportantnationalcurriculumdiscus-sion with the usual philistine criticisms of modern education as being replete with falling standards, children being denied basic grammar, history being neglected, schools failing their students because of indifferent teachers, indifferent leadership or trendy, neglectful curriculum;

• continuedtheattempttocompelprincipalsandteachers to use the “one size fits all” A–E reporting system and to thereby pressure principals to place their names on reports to parents that they might have a huge philosophical and professional objec-tion to;

• laudedherMySchoolprojectasbeingtheverymeans whereby parents and the community should gain their understanding about how their child’s school was performing and which has radically narrowed what is seen as valued and valuable at their local school.

To be fair and balanced, Mr Abbott offered nothing better.

Indeed, what we are seeing nationally is a political consensus that is leading to a centralising and politicis-ing role in education. Whilst the national curriculum is an important professional consideration, the way it was launched and the reckless haste that accompanied it and some of the ill-considered elements it contained revealed that it was being unfolded to meet political timetables and needs rather than the educational requirements of children in the modern age.

The initial national curriculum rollout was more reminiscent of the actions of Napoleon and his edu-cational “reforms”. It was the French Emperor’s desire to have every child in every school learning exactly the same thing across the nation at exactly the same time

from a centrally determined, politicised curriculum. And Napoleon did like to get things done quickly and without undue or excessive consultation. He, too, had a band of curriculum experts who could whip up a national curriculum. The role of schools was simply to deliver it.1

These deep inconsistencies, some might say ram-pant hypocrisies, have not dampened the energy of those who see some political capital in persisting with talk around principal autonomy. Most com-monly, it is senior education bureaucrats who take up the mantra but they too spoil their copybook by displaying actions wantonly out of kilter with their pronouncements.

Of late, state bureaucrats have talked of “freeing up principals” and then telling them that their school reports must follow a rigid

pattern. Every child in every school reported on in the same way. It reached the absurd depths when school principals were instructed to use five uniform adjectives (out of an English lexicon of approximately a million words) to categorise the performance of their students.

The same state bureaucrats who sing the autonomy song recently took to threatening school principals with a loss of funding to their school for being resistant to imposed changes which the principal regarded as contrary to the interests of their students and their community.

Delicacy prevents a full discussion of the actions of the Department of Education and Training (DET) and its senior officials in the most recent NAPLAN dispute but the recruitment of backpackers and other external forces to take over the conduct of critical school business is not exactly the music of autonomy or principals’ discretion. Along the path of this contretemps, principals also found themselves to be intimidated, threatened with dismissal and treated to the Keystone Kops farce of the confiscation of the NAPLAN boxes.

In less dramatic circumstances, the heavy handed role of the DET has lessened the capacity of principals to be the key educational leader at their school by the extraordinary layers of paper accountability which can dominate a principal’s working day. The Principal Assessment Review Schedule (PARS) process is but one of these as a recent Secondary Principals’ Council paper identifies 80 different areas in which a principal has to be accountable.

The inconsistencies were also manifest during the recent Building the Education Revolution rollout where principals were given almost no say in how their school would be able to use this government funding. The NSW department, it now seems, was the least inclined to give their principals any real determin-ing voice in how their school was to be remodelled and resources deployed. Those principals who did insist on actively directing building projects at their school were informed by the DET that such a course of action could lead to them being personally liable and in danger of losing their own house. Again, not much autonomy there.

“…the recruitment of

backpackers and other external forces to take

over the conduct of critical school

business is not exactly the music

of autonomy or principals’

discretion.”

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The most persistent cause of discussion and friction around principal autonomy in recent years, however, has been around the question

of school staffing.For a quarter of a century this debate has circu-

lated. Under the rubric of principal power, leaders of schools have been encouraged to forage for their own staffing. Bureaucrats and politicians have now for a very long time posited “local” or “merit” based staffing as a panacea for some of the difficulties that might exist at any given school. And given the increased demands and local pressures placed on public school principals it is understandable that it can seem to be an attractive proposition. The debate has changed considerably over time and the NSW Teachers Federation has modified its position signifi-cantly in response to advice that it has received from principals. The union has maintained its principle of support, however, for a statewide staffing system to guarantee students’ and teachers rights’ to equality of provision and equality of opportunity.

What has consistently characterised this debate is that it has been an asymmetrical discussion look-ing at a stand-alone school seeking to generate a demand for quality teachers to come to their school. The theory has been that if schools and principals are able to advertise and choose, then standards will thereby improve as the market mechanism will naturally provide them with high standard teachers and leaders. What such a market device can never do, however, is increase the amount or number of high quality candidates. Such a process can only ever affect the distribution of the candidates.

It is therefore a demand side theory only. It ne-glects the more important supply side consideration. If we as a profession of public educators want to lift overall standards, the question of the supply of high quality teachers is the essential one. As schools we can only generate specific demand. We cannot have an impact on the quality of supply. And here the role of policymakers and bureaucrats is vital. It is crucial that those in corridors of power address their own actions in terms of entry level quality of teachers and the performance of teachers already in the profession. There are issues about the quality of some teachers in the service. Some people are allowed to join the profession without adequate preparation or personal capacity. Others remain in the profession who should not be allowed to. Most disturbingly, there is more than anecdotal evidence to suggest that the distribution of these ill-equipped or underperforming teachers is inequitable and that the application of free market mechanisms has further intensified educational inequality. The kids most in need do not always get the teachers they most need.

Hence, we have been lured into a distracting debate about staffing procedures by the very policymakers who have failed to address their own responsibility to ensure that there is an adequate supply of great teachers for great schools for children in particular with greatest need. There has also been a failure on the

part of those in real power to make sure that revised staffing procedures do not accentuate disadvantage. Every so often, political or bureaucratic leaders have talked of establishing real incentives to teach in difficult areas, to get experience into schools most in need of it, retention bonuses, major mentoring schemes, guaranteeing high level teacher numbers across the curriculum, lifting the standard of all teachers enter-ing the profession and of being vigilant in relation to overseas qualifications. That is, they have talked the talk of directing their gaze to policy issues of teacher supply.

Nothing of substance has come of it.Instead we get suckered into a divisive internal,

demand side debate about local staffing procedures and equating principal power with allowing them merely to hunt for their own staffing.

Taken all together then, principals can have their leadership and autonomy except that you have and had no other choice other than to:

• besubjecttopublicnamingandshaming;• beingtoldhowyouwillreportonyourstudents

to your parents;• beingtoldhowyourschoolwillberepresentedto

the public and the media;• beinginvitedtouselocalselectionprocessesbut

not necessarily being provided with a range of high quality candidates across the curriculum or the range of incentives for them to seek out your school and remain there;

• beingtoldhowbuildingandotherbettermentswill be delivered to your school;

• beingtoldhownationalcurriculumchangewilloccur and what you will be teaching;

• beingsubjecttoirregularcampaignsofintimidationby bureaucracies and government authorities if you choose to exercise your professional judgement and leadership in ways that might not be identical to the political whims of the day.

So you are as free and autonomous as you would like to be except in the areas of facilities, resources, curriculum, access to quality staffing, assessment, reporting and community relations.

The freedom of the principal under the current dispensation is the freedom to comply and obey.

And the architects of your lack of freedom are the very people who preach to you of autonomy and local leadership.

In simple terms, the current acolytes of principal power and devolution are peddling a giant con. They are also the people who assert that the language and mechanisms of the market will somehow deliver solutions to school leaders in challenging times and challenging places. The fact that the top of the DET, in very recent times, has been occupied by characters who lacked significant experience or understanding of NSW public education and the realities of the classroom and the principal’s office becomes ever more ironic and tragic.

This last development comes almost as a climax of the changed nature of the administration of public edu-cation and the public sector in NSW and Australia.

“Current acolytes of principal power and devolution are peddling a giant con.”

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Over the course of recent decades, since the time of the Greiner Government in NSW, the role of the public sector has altered completely. In

education what has been seen is a withering of the role of the DET, in its various names and manifestations.

The most obvious shift has been the decline in its function as a support for teaching and learning in schools and classrooms. The DET used to be a major supplier of good quality inservice training, teaching resources, an invigilator of professional standards and activity, a source of curriculum materials and profes-sional connection. Naturally, this was its central purpose and activity. That time is no more. Its curriculum role is minimal. Its support services are patchy. When courses are offered, often schools have to pay considerably for them. These trends seem to be inexorable. At present, its Curriculum Directorate is being subject to further cutbacks. The DET meanwhile has effectively outsourced much of its standards control to the NSW Institute of Teachers.

The publications of the DET are increasingly politi-cised in nature and often merely proclaim the glories and success of the latest government initiative. Side by Side and the DET website can sometimes read as party political propaganda. DET newsletters can be flimsy and perfunctory. When a political initiative such as mandated A–E reporting was being pushed, DET officials (some of whom were indeed erstwhile educators) were sent to schools to push the line. And when major disagreements occur the School Education Directors (SEDs) know what is expected of them.

The DET is in very low standing with the profession. The amateurisation and politicisation of the upper levels of the DET have been well known for some time. There are some remarkable exceptions to this pattern but generally the profession holds much of the DET in muted scorn.

The DET is in a permanent retreat from its historic role of supporting principals and schooling. At the very peak the DET acts as a praetorian guard for the political figures that they mind and seek to promote and protect. The 2002 amendments to the Public Sector Management Act were perhaps the final nail in the coffin of an independent leadership which could and would give frank and fearless advice to politicians. These amendments meant that all members of the Senior Executive Service can be sacked, “for any or no reason” and at any time. Thus, the senior people in the DET that principals have most regular contact with, the SEDs and beyond, live precarious lives with careers that can be snuffed out with an hour’s notice. (The former DET Director-General, Jan McClelland, was sacked exactly in these terms.)

It is in this context of a DET that has abandoned its historic function of supporting teaching and leader-ship, which has an explicitly politicised leadership, which lacks knowledge, experience or engagement in school-based issues and the principles of NSW public education that the present push for autonomy is set.

In short what principals are being offered is a low level administrative devolution, quite often of

the responsibilities that the Department itself has abandoned in order to free itself up to perform its own political, ideological and economic functions. Meanwhile, politicians have deepened their own highly centralised command and control model of education which has placed principals in a position of enforced compliance.

The current, rather vague proposals about princi-pal autonomy and devolution are therefore quite a fundamental distraction from developing a modern agreement about how we might enhance principal authority.

For it is essential that we do indeed develop a shared and modern understanding about the role of principals, given the changes that have taken place in public sector administration and politics in Australia. It is also essential that the union continues to modify and modernise its appreciation of the questions before us. We cannot return to some mythical Golden Age. There are many matters that are best decided upon and organised at the local level.

Perhaps then it is timely to develop this new ap-proach based on two elementary assumptions.1. That a principal in negotiation with staff and com-munity should be able to make all decisions affecting their school except those that might harm the interests of a child or a teacher at another school.2. A different approach to leadership is required: one which goes to what really matters in our system of interconnected public schools; where leadership is based in curriculum; in real educational opportunity for all of our young; that focuses on quality outcomes stemming from professional satisfaction; about learn-ing from the best of the rest of the world and where that might guide us; and finally, to base leadership around what the most telling and relevant research might suggest in relation to school effectiveness.The overarching goal then is to place principals in a position of real leadership in the things that most matter in schools. It then would provide for a system which prides itself on achievement, discipline and values.

This proposal begins with an understanding of cur-riculum as experienced through the eyes of a child and thus, curriculum is conceived as everything a student experiences from the time they enter the school gate to the time they leave including each interaction, each value made manifest, every part of knowledge with its skills and content which they come to.

Stemming from this focus schools need to:• placelearningoutcomesasthecentreofalloftheir

endeavour;• recognisethatthegiftofknowledgeisthefunda-

mental value we seek to impart;• knowthatpubliceducationisnotaformofpallia-

tive care;• developallprogramsandprocedureswithapublic

educator’s belief in human equality and the right of all to access quality education;

• operateontheprinciplethatexcellenceandequityare not dichotomous and recognise that one cannot operate without the other.

“The current, rather vague

proposals about principal autonomy and devolution are therefore quite a fundamental

distraction from developing

a modern agreement

about how we might enhance

principal authority.”

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Public schools and their leaders also need to work to accept that unlike any other profession our standards can never be fully achieved as educational standards are like a holy grail — when one benchmark is achieved a new and more challenging one is set. In medicine, diseases can be eradicated forever. In the law, final verdicts are arrived at, cases are closed, resolution found. Standards in education are never fixed. It is both the curse and the paradox of educational standards. When one is set and achieved, new ones take their place.

However, public educators can take great heart from what has been achieved. It is the lingering reality of decades of research, for example, that graduates of public schools do better at university than graduates of all other types of school system.

Research has shown an unyielding pattern of evidence that public education has superior educational standards. The federal education

department commissioned research in the mid-1990s which reinforced this point. This followed on from similar results being found by the Batten Report conducted for the Australian Council for Educational Research and a Melbourne University study by John and Jill Anwyl. A separate study by Professor Paige Porter from Queensland University sought to find a cause for this superiority and it concluded that it was likely to be found in the superior methodology employed in public school classrooms which values individual discovery and deeper learning. Rosalind Murray-Harvey developed this idea further and con-cluded that, “Academic achievement is the outcome of a complex system of learning and teaching relation-ships.” She went on to observe that, “There appears to be a learning style profile that differentiates more successful from less successful students. Successful students are motivated, persistent, responsible learn-ers…who can readily cope in varied instructional settings.” In short, she describes, in general terms, public education methodology.2

A further precondition of powerful leadership might also emanate from what we know about aligning enhanced educational outcomes with the sources of teacher satisfaction. Last decade, Steve Dinham and Catherine Scott, then from the University of Western Sydney, conducted a major analysis of how teachers derived satisfaction from their work. Their conclusions were overwhelming. They found that the six key ele-ments of teacher satisfaction were:• pupilachievement;• gainingasenseofpersonalaccomplishmentasa

teacher;• changingpupils’attitudesandbehaviour;• recognitionfromothers,includingprincipals,col-

leagues, parents and the community;• havingasenseofprofessionalself-growth;• professionalmastery.For school leaders the consequences of this research are direct. School organisation, practices and culture that enhance any or all of these elements will make their schools both a better place to learn and work and also a better place to be. This research draws

together some of the essential ethical components of leadership in public education. Whilst private schools might continue to work on a much more authoritarian model with the headmaster/mistress dominating the scene and drawing a culture of followers, modern public education requires something more sophis-ticated — the bringing together of positive values and a culture of valuing. It also works.

And in terms of what works we can now examine what some of the most significant research might teach us about the most successful school systems across the globe. Whilst we have latterly been politically encouraged, cajoled or forced to copy what some of the most conspicuously unsuccessful systems have tried we might glance at how a nation such as Finland has achieved what it has in recent global assessment programs. This is done bearing in mind of course the determination of Australian educational policy makers to seek to ape those international policies which have led to mediocrity and to eschew those approaches that have driven other nations towards excellence.

Professor Bob Lingard and Professor David Reynolds found the following patterns underlying Finland’s educational success:• respectforteaching;• highlevelsofteacherqualifications;• anearuniversalsystemofpubliceducation;• schoolsthataretrulycomprehensive;• anationalfundingcommitmenttothelessprivi-

leged;• highratesofremuneration,appreciationandtrust

being experienced by teachers;• highlevelsofin-schoolassessmentandconstant,

high quality feedback to students;• nohighstakesexternaltestingorranking;• principalsbeingconspicuouslyhonouredbypoli-

ticians.3

Whilst it is clear that much of what a country like Finland has achieved as a nation cannot be delivered within a school without system-wide support there is still a strong correlation with the research on teacher satisfaction that might take school-based leadership in the direction of the Finns.

The third layer of research that might give some useful guidance is that conducted by Richard Teese and John Polesel of Melbourne University. Teese and Polesel4 concentrated their work on analysing what the existing global research was saying about school effectiveness. These two academics developed a compendium of conclusions drawing together the patterns that emerged from the mountain of work that has been done into school effectiveness worldwide. They discovered a consistent pattern of findings as to what makes a school most effective and these were:• strongleadership;• positive academic expectations and require-

ments;• highlevelsofpupilandparentalinvolvement;• structuredteachingprograms;• lowlevelsofcoercion;• anorderlylearningandteachingenvironment;

“A further precondition of powerful leadership might also emanate from what we know about aligning enhanced educational outcomes with the sources of teacher satisfaction.”

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• asharedsenseofmission;• highteacher-pupilratios;• smallschoolsize.Once again, the school effectiveness research shows us a number of things that are already widespread in good public education leadership at the school level and much of it is agreeably unsurprising.

What this guides us to is a set of internal consider-ations that school leaders might ponder. These include: How much of my time at school is spent facilitating processes that enhance school effectiveness along these lines? How much of my leadership capacity is freed up to drive the things that really matter in my school? How much support do I receive to allow me to be the type of school leader I wanted to become when I first took on the job of school principal? How much of the existing debate about principal autonomy and devolution is pure distraction?

Within these questions resides the essence of what is desirable principal authority.

Another way of positing this question is to ask what conditions best allow for principals to collabora-tively exercise their skills, qualities and intelligences to achieve what is best for their students. In the UK, the National College for School Leadership commissioned research by Denis Morgan and Christopher Chapman to ascertain what qualities of principals led to success, especially in the most challenging communities. Morgan and Chapman found that the common characteristics of the most successful principals were contextual intelligence, professional intelligence and social intelligence. In terms of personality type, the highest achieving principals manifested self-belief, conscientiousness, rapport and consistently took per-sonal responsibility.5 Principals can infer from this what processes and styles of leadership at their own school might best achieve the highest possible outcomes. It is highly unlikely that authoritarian, command driven, nineteenth century, private school models are likely to prove to be the most effective.

The welcome fact is that public education in this country has welcomed a different approach to school management and the exercise of school

based authority. Leadership in Australian public educa-tion has celebrated heterodoxy amongst our students and our colleagues. Ours is not a system that has sought to clone. Rather our educational and social goals have been around the inculcation of mature belief based on knowledge and reason. Since the 1880 Act gave us the soundtrack of an education system that was to be “free, secular and compulsory” we have been different and ethically superior.

It is one of the reasons that we embrace the secular tradition because of its intrinsic attachment to the belief in reason and inclusion. As Justice Lionel Murphy stated in his High Court judgment on the issue, secular schools provide freedom of religion by ensuring that there is freedom from dogma within public school curriculum and administration.

In our ever more fearful globe, where our own student body is made up increasingly of students who have fled war and intolerance, the nature of this

ethical underpinning of public education is more important than ever. Indeed, if one were develop-ing an education system to prepare children for their globalised future one would design a network of interconnected and inter-reliant schools where all children were welcome; all cultures celebrated; wherein ignorance and division were not allowed; where children of all groups, classes, beliefs and backgrounds worked, studied and played together and where opportunity was equal. To best prepare a youngster for success in the global future one would have to invent something that looked remarkably like the current public education system.

As the former Director-General Ken Boston ob-served, public education is about building bridges between children and communities. Private education is merely about the construction of bonds between youngsters of the same type, class, background or belief system. One prepares a child for the reality of the future; the other seeks to perpetuate elites or cliques reminiscent of a fading past.

Still, these old elites are resilient and can influence policymakers of the present. We still hear political leaders and archaic headmasters, seeking to justify the billions of dollars going to exclusive schools, chant paeans of praise on their privileged parents who are alleged to engage in “heroic sacrifice” to send their children to their schools. Whilst delaying the tune-up on the Lexus may constitute sacrifice in their eyes there is scarcely a public school principal who does not have the most telling tales of human endurance to describe what parents at their school have done to get their kids an education. The public school reality is reminiscent of Brecht’s verse:

“I have seen peopleWho are remarkable

Highly deserving of your admirationFor the fact that they are alive at all”

What public school leadership might direct its atten-tion to is the contemporary reality of childhood. We have a young generation, impressive and educated to a standard far surpassing any previous generation. Yet there is evidence that there is a lack of collective belief systems and values amongst a considerable proportion of our young. The old and traditional forms of comfort and certainty are in decline or disarray. Play is increasingly indoors, sedentary, electronic and insular. Popular culture provides mass entertainment based on individualism and competition. The televi-sion provides a new confection of “reality” where we are nightly treated to survival shows, freak shows, cooking shows, fat shows, skinny shows, crawl to the boss to get a job shows, and of course melodramas masquerading as current affairs that encourage us all to be fearful of our globe, our country, our street and our neighbours or anyone that might be different.

It is an age of resurgent anti-intellectualism where our bookshops have shrinking sections of non-fiction or history and where every Westfield seems to have those magic mystic shops where one can buy potions or crystals or other medieval hocus-pocus. And try to make a shopping trip and not hear a child badger

“It is highly unlikely that

authoritarian, command

driven, nineteenth

century, private school models

are likely to prove to be the

most effective.”

11

their parent to buy some logo clothing or product through which the child is seeking to establish a sense of identity.

Thus, in an Australia and a world that is more divided, in a more fearful globe and in an era of philistinism, leadership in public education is about much more than being allowed to decide what colour the toilets should be painted; it is about something larger than getting you to hunt down resources and staffing.

It is about aligning your work with civilised values and about building the preconditions for hope and possibility for all of our young.

And which are the values we might be displaying, nurturing and encouraging as public educators? A latter-day ideology of dumb managerialism full of metaphors from free market theory seems to be the least appropriate. Indeed, managerialism is not simply a competitor to substantial educational leadership. In fact, it is the most profound of distractions, the antithesis of leading for learning.

If we seek a coherent and profound value system to inform leadership in public education we might reflect upon the principles of the Enlightenment which were the ethical and intellectual precursors to the thinking that established mass systems of public education.

The Enlightenment principles might briefly be summarised as:• aninsistenceonintellectualautonomy;• therejectionoftraditionandestablishedauthority

as the essential source of infallible truth;• aloathingofbigotryandpersecution;• thecommitmenttofreeinquiry;• abeliefthatknowledgeispower;• anassaultonsuperstitionandabsolutism;• thoroughbeliefinseculardemocracy;• thedeterminationtoprogressthroughreason.These serve also as practical mainstays of modern leadership and principals should be given the author-ity to exercise them at the school level.

This also advances the debate by moving away from the politicised, ideological concepts of “autonomy” and “devolution” which have been shown to be partisan, diverting, professionally divisive, managerial constructs fitfully used by politicians and bureaucrats who lack an understanding of the role and responsibility of the principal as the chief educational leader of a school. In reality it has distracted principals from dealing with

teaching matters and led them to deal more with school plumbing and paving.

Principal authority has never been more impor-tant. Because of the retreat of the Department from its historic role in educational leadership

and support, principals now occupy the most senior level of our system which is devoted solely to provid-ing the highest possible quality of public education. Principals seek to do that unfettered by political con-siderations and by putting the educational wellbeing of children at the centre of their endeavours.

More than ever, principals are needed to lead in the things that truly matter. Principals are needed to have school based distributive authority to build hu-man growth and possibility. There is no point looking any higher in the system. They are attending to other things. Principals are it.

Research and experience show us how that au-thority might be exercised. It is timely also to observe something about the nature of authority in public education. Unlike in many private schools authority tends not to be achieved merely ex officio, simply because of where one sits in a hierarchy. Classroom teachers and those along the promotion chain gain respect because of their capacities as teachers. It is part of our professional culture. Principals gain and enhance their authority by their understanding of their school, their staff, their students and their community. As in medicine and the law, principals grow to further authority through being seen as a natural leader in the professional sense. It cannot be legislated for. It can never be merely imposed.

The union must also be increasingly aware and understanding of the changed nature of principalship and extend its capacity to support principals in that extraordinarily demanding and important role. In times past there has been a falsely dichotomous depiction of the issue suggesting that there was an intrinsic divide between teachers and principals around these questions. Indeed, as this paper has sought to establish, the great foes of principal authority have been the very bureaucrats and politicians who have somewhat cynically used the concept to their own ends.

The discussion will continue. The times demand it. The resolution will be found somewhere deep inside that realisation that public education has a profound value system inspired by a belief in human equality and the commitment to build futures for our students and a better world in the process.

Notes1 See for example Alistair Horne The Age of Napoleon Phoenix London 20042 For further detail on this research see Denis Fitzgerald in Principia Journal of Queensland Principals May, 20013 See Bob Lingard “Testing Times” QTU Professional Magazine November 2009 and Jon Slater “Cultures in a class of their

own” Times Educational Supplement 14 December 20014 Richard Teese and John Polesel Undemocratic Schooling Melbourne University Press Melbourne 20035 See “Class Acts — breaking the achievement barrier” Education Review Volume 22 Number 1 Autumn 2009

“…leadership in public education is about much more than being allowed to decide what colour the toilets should be painted; it is about something larger than getting you to hunt down resources and staffing.”

Cover photo by Jaypee