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Toby Greany, The University of Nottingham The role of school leaders in reform

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Abstract School leaders sit at the fulcrum of educational reform initiatives. This is particularly the case in decentralised school systems in which schools have relatively high levels of autonomy, or decision-making rights, in relation to operational and instructional matters. However, even in less decentralised systems, school-level leaders must work in concert with district supervisors and teachers if desired reforms are to lead to changes in classroom practices and improvements in outcomes for children and young people. This observation raises important questions around how school leaders understand and engage with centrally-defined reforms and how they work with staff and wider stakeholders to achieve change. This paper explores these questions by focusing on two areas: Firstly, it explores system governance and the ways in which reforms are developed and enacted, since this will influence how school leaders respond and the kinds of support and incentives that influence their behaviour. Many systems have sought to strengthen accountability pressures and incentives for school-level leaders, which can potentially secure improvements in test scores but can also lead to unintended consequences, such as increasing stratification between schools and gaming behaviours. In response, policy makers have sought to mix and match a wider range of governance mechanisms and to acknowledge the complexities involved in system change. Secondly, it explores the nature of leadership and the leadership of change within schools. Drawing on these insights, the paper concludes by drawing out implications for policy makers and designers of leadership development programmes as well as front-line leaders.

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Overview This paper has been prepared for the RCEP UNSECO seminar ‘Education reform: from the system to the school’, being held online on 23rd September 2020. It addresses the seminar themes, which relate to the overarching trends in and consequences of educational reform, but broadly addresses three questions posed by the seminar organisers:

• What are common challenges faced by leadership during periods of reform? • How can school leaders manage, implement, and evaluate reform? • What qualifications or trainings are beneficial to school leaders during periods of

reform? The paper is informed by a comparative literature review as well as the author’s own work and experience in this area - as a former policy maker and Senior Civil Servant, a former Executive Director: Leadership Development at the National College for School Leadership in England, and as an academic who has advised on and evaluated school leadership initiatives in multiple countries around the world. It concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at policy makers and designers of leadership development programmes.

School leadership: a key ingredient for school quality and system reform School leadership and leadership development have become a central focus for policy makers, researchers and practitioners in schools systems around the world in recent decades (Pont et al, 2008; Barber et al, 2010; Breakspear et al, 2017; Jensen et al, 2017). This focus derives from a range of related developments in school system governance and reform, including the move towards greater school-level autonomy, but the core rationale is that high quality leadership is an essential ingredient for high quality schools (Leithwood et al, 2006).

School leadership may be a key ingredient for school quality, but the impact of leadership on pupil outcomes is largely indirect. For example, Day et al (2009:2) found that school leaders ‘improve teaching and learning and thus pupil outcomes indirectly and most powerfully through their influence on staff motivation, commitment, teaching practices and through developing teachers’ capacities for leadership’. Day et al’s quote highlights four important aspects of leadership. Firstly, it operates as a process of influence, rather than relying on positional power, and so is critically dependent on relational trust, which can be developed through a combination of personal integrity and competence (Bryk and Schneider, 2002; Daly and Chrispeels, 2008). Secondly, it impacts on staff motivation by working to generate a shared vision and set of values across the organisation – sometimes described in terms of ‘setting direction’ or transformational leadership. Thirdly, it is focussed on improving the quality of teaching and learning, a process of learning centred (or

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instructional) leadership which Southworth (2009) characterises in terms of modelling, monitoring and dialogue. Fourthly, leadership in these schools is shared and distributed, with a collective focus on improving the quality of learning for all students.

While these four features are particularly important in making a difference to pupil outcomes, leaders must not neglect the wider aspects of organisational management, such as resourcing strategically and creating an orderly and supportive environment (Robinson et al, 2009). Equally, leadership is contingent on context - what works in one school may not work in another - and so leaders must know how to read their context and to adapt their leadership accordingly, including by engaging productively with parents and wider local communities (Riley, 2017; Gronn, 2003). Finally, globalisation, technological developments, policy-driven changes and the constant evolution of research into aspects of pupil learning and pedagogy all require that leaders must be effective in responding to and leading innovation and evidence-informed change (Greany and Maxwell, 2018), especially in the context of the current Covid-19 pandemic and associated school closures.

High quality school leadership has also been shown to be a key ingredient in the implementation of centrally defined reforms. For example, Tichnor-Wagner’s (2019) recent review of evidence on curriculum reform implementation found that school leaders (both principals and heads of department) were key for successful change programmes. These leaders allocate time and resources for teaching, planning, materials and appropriate professional development and also create a vision and culture that prioritises and supports the changes. By the same token, leaders who lack commitment and/or the knowledge and skills required to lead reforms can act as a barrier to successful implementation.

These points support a straight-forward, if simplistic, rationale for focussing on the supply and quality of school leadership as part of wider reform efforts – i.e. because it is essential for high quality schools and for successful reform implementation. However, in practice, the role of school leaders in enacting reforms is rarely straight-forward or simple and there is a wealth of evidence that many reforms fail to achieve their objectives (Pritchett, 2015; Hall, 2013; Glennan et al, 2004; Elmore, 1996).

This paper explores these issues and addresses the three questions posed above, by adopting the following structure. The following section outlines why school-level leadership has become more important but also more complex and demanding in recent decades. The next section sets these developments in the context of debates on school system governance and reform, helping to show how certain types of reform can lead to gaming behaviours or surface enactment by leaders. The paper then reviews evidence on how different school systems approach the challenge of improving school leadership quality. The final section discusses the implications and sets out recommendations.

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New adaptive challenges for school-level leaders School leadership roles have become more demanding in most school systems around the world in recent decades as a result of two linked sets of drivers.

Firstly, education has become more important to policy makers, in particular as globalisation has led to a view of skills and productivity as a key driver of national economic competitiveness (Hanushek and Woessmann, 2008), leading to hierarchical pressures on schools to raise performance in terms of pupil outcomes. At the same time, the rise of international benchmarking studies, such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS, has raised awareness of differences in outcomes across different education systems. This has increased transparency in relation to educational outcomes and equity issues and has encouraged policy makers to engage in a process of continual policy borrowing and reform (Mullis, Martin and Loveless, 2016).

Secondly, the challenges facing education are becoming more complex, for example as communities become more culturally and linguistically diverse and, often, more socio-economically stratified, and as new technologies open up new, disruptive opportunities and challenges for learning and living. These changes lead to new demands on schools, either directly or indirectly. For example, in most countries, schools are now expected to be inclusive and to enhance equity by accelerating progress for the most disadvantaged children (Jerrim et al, 2018; OECD, 2012). Schools are also being asked to address new challenges, for example to develop citizenship skills (Alexander, 2013), to identify and protect children at risk of radicalisation (Riley, 2017), or to become more sustainable (Birney and Reed, 2009). In many school systems, schools are also being asked to adapt their curricula and pedagogies to reflect the need for new ‘21st Century’ skills and competencies, such as creativity, team work and problem solving (Pellegrino and Hilton, 2012).

New forms of governance in complex education systems In order to address these challenges, policy makers around the world have sought ways to achieve greater flexibility, innovation and responsiveness as well as improved overall quality and equity in school systems.

How these efforts are interpreted often depends on the standpoint of the observer. Policy debates tend to focus on practical ‘what works’ questions, such as how to secure consistent school improvement at scale and what can be learned from high performing school systems (Barber and Mourshed, 2007). Critical observers highlight the rise of market models in public education, which require schools to compete for students and resources and encourage school leaders to act like private sector entrepreneurs (Ball, 2011). Applied researchers highlight the flaws in the Global Education Reform Movement (Sahlberg, 2011) where it focusses on the ‘wrong drivers’, such as an over-reliance on high stakes accountability which can encourage gaming behaviours by schools, such as narrowing of the curriculum or ‘teaching to the test’ (Fullan, 2011).

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Governance theory offers a way to reframe these debates and to understand how policy structures and leadership agency interact in complex education systems (Greany, 2020; Greany and Higham, 2018; Bevir, 2011). One interpretation is that governments have shifted their approach over time, moving from hierarchical coordination through statutory and bureaucratic control as well as vertical accountability mechanisms, to market models that rely on parental choice and competition to drive improvement, and then, most recently, to network governance models which emphasise lateral collaboration and ‘joined up’ partnerships (Exworthy et al, 1999). However, the reality is actually more complex, with the state working to retain overarching control – ‘steering at a distance’ (Hudson, 2007) - by mixing and managing combinations of hierarchy, markets and networks to achieve its goals (Jessop, 2011; Rhodes, 1997). For example, while many school systems have increased school autonomy and parental choice and have reduced the role of local bureaucracies, these systems have simultaneously balanced these market mechanisms with new forms of hierarchical governance, such as new national curricula, tests and inspection regimes.

Three implications flow from this analysis: Firstly, many systems have adopted what Greany and Waterhouse (2017) call a ‘high

autonomy-high accountability’ model (Suggett, 2015; OECD, 2011). In these systems, reduced local bureaucratic control of schools (e.g. by districts and local authorities) is combined with increased school-level autonomy over operational matters (e.g. finance, HR, pedagogy) coupled with more demanding forms of vertical accountability and performance management. This approach reflects evidence that school autonomy, in particular over the curriculum and pedagogy, is associated improvements in outcomes when coupled with clear accountability frameworks and high levels of professional capacity and leadership (Hanushek et al., 2012). For school leaders, however, this can be experienced as an intensification of their role, coupled with a loss of support from the ‘middle tier’, and increased pressure to perform against measured targets - a model that Greany and Higham (2018) dub ‘coercive autonomy’.

Secondly, the mixing and matching of different forms of governance (e.g. hierarchy, markets and networks) has made the job of policy makers in these systems more complex, because they can no longer rely on traditional forms of hierarchical control (Theisens, 2016). This move away from bureaucratic control can have benefits, because it can be clumsy and ill-suited to the range of contexts that schools must work across. However, the hybrid alternatives can feel messy and ad hoc, with new policies and initiatives layered on top of each other in disconnected ways and with curricula that quickly become overloaded (Greany and Earley, 2017). In these contexts, the role of the school leader can be to triage new policies, working out which ones to grab and make work (especially if there is money attached) and which ones to fend off or adopt in a cursory fashion.

Thirdly, the mixing and matching of different forms of governance can create tensions and ethical dilemmas for school leaders as they seek to respond to and navigate different incentives and priorities (Newman and Clarke, 2009). For example, Greany and

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Higham (2018) highlight the pressure on leaders in England to prioritise their school’s organisational interests and performance within a competitive framework, even if this is at the expense of particular groups of children – usually the most disadvantaged.

Greany and Earley (2017) refer to the paradox of policy and the quest for leadership. The paradox arises because policy makers want things that, if not inherently at odds, are nevertheless in tension – freedom and control; tightly defined national standards and a broad and balanced curriculum; choice and diversity and equity; academic stretch for the most able children and a closing of the gap between high and low performers and so on. Because they cannot resolve these tensions centrally, policy makers encourage front-line practitioners to resolve them on the ground, thus explaining the quest for leadership.

Successful leadership and reform in an era of complex change So we see that school autonomy policies have placed huge power in the hands of, and pressure on the shoulders of, school leaders. They sit at the fulcrum of high-autonomy-high-accountability systems and are expected to resolve the policy tensions and paradoxes that result. The challenge is to understand how leaders can lead in such systems in ways which recognize and resolve, or at least mitigate, the tensions that they face. What seems clear is that this is not about simply acquiescing in the performativity game; delivering on externally prescribed targets at the expense of children’s learning and staff’s well-being, although there some who do adopt such toxic leadership approaches (Craig, 2017). Yet the opposite of toxic leadership is far from clear-cut, so it is important to really understand what ‘successful’ leadership in these contexts looks like. One reason that it can be hard to distinguish ‘toxic’ from ‘successful’ leaders is that, on the surface at least, they both want to secure the highest possible standards of progress and attainment for all children. But whereas the ‘toxic’ leader may be doing this because they are fearful of the consequences of failure or because they want the personal, ego-boosting, credit that comes with success, the ‘successful’ leader is working within an ethical and intellectual framework that grounds their actions in a deeper moral purpose.1 Understanding the nature of ‘successful’ leadership will help us to assess how these leaders engage and enact new reforms and requirements. Much of the classic literature on policy implementation and the scale-up of reforms in education sees school leaders as relatively ‘empty vessels’, who must be incentivised (or simply instructed) to adopt the new way, sometimes with the help of training and resources (Hall, 2013; Glennan et al, 2004). School leaders are then expected to implement these reforms, unquestioningly and with fidelity, usually by adopting the same kinds of ‘roll out’ and change management processes as the national approach. These approaches commonly fail or lead to surface implementation, because school leaders and teachers are not given opportunities to question, shape, understand and own the changes. Instead, as Coburn has argued, scale-up requires depth, sustainability, spread, and a shift in reform ownership, meaning that school

1 Space here does not allow for a detailed exploration of ‘successful’ leadership, although the points made in the opening section provide an overview. See Greany and Earley, 2017, for a fuller discussion.

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leaders and teachers are given genuine opportunities to co-design and adapt an approach that fits with their own and their school’s values, priorities and contexts (Greany, 2019; Robinson 2018; Coburn, 2003). Improvement Science offers one way to achieve this level of local ownership and contextually-appropriate improvement (Bryk, 2015; Resnick, 2010). Rather than starting with a centrally defined approach, Improvement Science focuses on locally defined problems and improvement priorities and seeks to learn from variations in performance, so that everyone involved can learn together how to improve at scale. It encourages school leaders to define and measure progress and to engage in disciplined inquiry aimed at understanding how changes impact and any unintended consequences. Finally, it encourages leaders to learn from each other, in networked communities.

Developing ‘successful’ leadership across systems This final section asks how school systems can develop ‘successful’ leadership at scale.

What seems clear is that ‘successful’ leadership is not something that some people are born with, existing in finite quantity. Rather, it seems that leadership agency can be shaped and grown – or diminished - by the wider context. Leaders will quickly learn from their role models and peers whether to collaborate or compete and will respond to whether the wider framework they operate within is enabling or punitive. In systems where trust is high, where schools collaborate and share their expertise and capacity so that effective practice spreads, where leadership development and capacity building are prioritised, and where leaders have a voice in shaping policy so that they are committed to achieving shared goals, then leadership agency will be increased. The opposite is also true; where leaders, teachers and schools are criticised and assumed to be under-performing, where they risk dismissal if the results in any given year are poor, and where they can see that the way to get on in a politicised environment is to game the system, then leadership agency will be diminished.

Turning to how school systems work to develop leadership capacity, Pont et al (2008:126-7) describe the range of different arrangements in place, indicating that there is no one ‘right’ approach:

Across OECD countries, provision of preparation, induction and development programmes (for school leaders) is managed at different levels of government and by a variety of organisations. Some countries and regions… determine the need for training at state level and establish state-level programmes for its provision. England and Slovenia fund non-departmental public bodies… Ireland and Northern Ireland have departmental bodies… Austria funds independent universities to develop and deliver mandated programmes… In Finland, there are several in-service training providers… Provincial and municipal levels are free to determine leadership training policy in some countries.

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In terms of the design of leadership development programmes, a number of studies analyse the features of such provision (Breakspear et al, 2017; Jensen et al, 2017; DeRue and Myers, 2014; Barber et al, 2010; Glatter, 2008; Darling Hammond et al, 2007). Firstly, programmes should be ‘philosophically and theoretically attuned to individual and system needs’ (Fluckiger et al, 2014). Secondly, leadership development opportunities must be embedded within the day to day context of schools, so that leaders are engaged in and reflecting on their contextual challenges and, in the process, are also working to change and improve their organisations. Thirdly, programmes should be purpose designed for different career stages, highlighting the need to see professional development as a career-long continuum and to design programmes differently to meet the needs of different groups: for example, while early career leaders might benefit from content and training on specific aspects of management and leadership, more experienced leaders arguably require structured but open ended opportunities to reflect on their existing experience and to collaborate with peers on developmental projects. While this evidence is helpful, it is far from ‘gold standard’ in terms of its quality, and some studies have found negative impacts from leadership development interventions (Grissom, Mitani and Blissett, 2017; Corcoran, 2017), so there is a need for caution in considering how best to design such initiatives.

In addition to debates about the design of leadership programmes, there are also discussions around the most appropriate content and knowledge areas that programmes for school leaders should address. For example, Hallinger and Lu (2013) argue that school leadership programmes could usefully include areas covered in most non-educational leadership programmes, such as project management, data-based decision making, customer orientation, and strategic management and strategic planning.

The key point though, given the argument above that ‘successful’ leaders are not ‘empty vessels’, is that leadership development cannot adopt a standard template that expects all leaders to conform to narrow standards and competency frameworks (Harris and Jones, 2015). This is not to say that school systems will not benefit from clearly articulated frameworks and thoughtfully constructed programmes for developing leaders and leadership, they will – but they must develop and enact these in consultation with the profession and must be careful to avoid cookie-cutter ‘designer leadership’ (Gronn, 2003) models that fail to respect and celebrate individual agency and diverse ways of leading successful schools in a fast changing world (Greany, 2018; Munby, 2020).

Recommendations These recommendations are deliberately high-level, seeking to define an overarching culture and way of working, rather than specific measures. One reason for this is that overly specific recommendations will not necessarily translate or apply across different national contexts.

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Rather than the kinds of ‘high-autonomy-high-accountability’ frameworks described above, the aim should be to develop four highs: high agency, high collaboration, high support and high challenge. High agency means that school-level leaders feel trusted and equipped to take the actions that they deem necessary to improve outcomes for the children in their care, with an accountability framework that expects and acknowledges this. High collaboration means that schools and teachers operate in networks, within and beyond their own school, allowing for ideas and expertise to be shared, critiqued and enhanced. High support and high challenge exist together – the ‘middle tier’ that sits above schools (e.g. in districts and local authorities) requires investment and support, so that key system leaders have the skills and capacity required to engage schools in a continual dialogue around where and how they need to improve. Developing these four highs argue for a focus on four areas:

1. Living vision, trust and legitimacy: System leaders need the skills and credibility required to engage stakeholders, including schools, in developing shared, meaningful priorities that enhance equity. The emphasis should be on invitational leadership and co-design (Munby, 2019).

2. Developing as a learning system: There is a need to invest in the capacity and skills of leaders at the centre and ‘middle tier’ levels, as well as in schools. The focus must be on individual, organisational and system-level learning and improvement, including through the kinds of Improvement Science approaches outlined above.

3. A theory of action for change and improvement: Clarity on where and how the system as a whole, and individual schools within it, need to improve – and the kinds of actions required to achieve this - is key. The focus on schools does not preclude a parallel focus on place-based outcomes, for example to ensure that no children are left out or left behind. In some places there may be a need to overcome inertia, by introducing new leadership or by sponsoring and evaluating disruptive innovations that exemplify what is possible.

4. Success through people: This is key. System-wide success will depend on how you grow and mobilise knowledge and expertise, not through templates and centrally designed training, but through well facilitated networks and mechanisms for spotting and developing talent at all levels.

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