Second-level schools crying out for leaders

The system by which second-level principals are appointed is defective and needs urgent reform. We need leaders, not people motivated by money, writes Pat O’Mahony

SCHOOLS face enormous challenges in cultivating a citizenry capable of responding to the challenges of modern living and to be able to deliver the outcomes demanded of them they must be well-led and managed.

In Ireland, however, school leadership is in the midst of a deepening malaise that demands radical surgery.

The players in post-primary education (principals, deputy principals, teachers, board of management members and students) feel disempowered. Everybody owns second-level education (the media, IBEC and even the ubiquitous professor Ed Walsh) except those most intimately involved with it.

If the sector is to deliver critical thinkers and lifelong self-directed learners, all players must be empowered to contribute. And making these contributions must be both energising and rewarding.

This requires serious reform.

It is not those who lead that are the problem, it is the system that is defective.

Principalship has lost its savour and teachers suited to leadership roles are discouraged from applying by the overwhelming demands of modern principalship. We risk attracting the wrong people to the job — those influenced by the salary and status.

There is no clear understanding between management and unions about what leadership and management entails in the school context. This means that far too much responsibility is placed on the principal. At every level of the 21st-century school we need both leadership and management, even in the individual classroom.

The notion of the single omnipotent, heroic leader is redundant. Dispersed leadership and management is critical to schools both defining and achieving their macro and micro goals. Nowadays, all must lead, all must manage, and all must be agreeable to being led and managed.

The stark reality is that the in-school management system is not fit-for-purpose. Schools can only advertise a post if all eligible to apply can undertake the associated duties. Consequently, posts such as ICT or science co-ordinator can only be advertised if it is demonstrable that the post’s duties can be undertaken by those without a qualification in either science or computing.

A fit-for-purpose middle management system is also crucial to developing future school leaders. We have no option but to appoint to leadership positions those we feel have the potential to be good leaders rather than those who have already demonstrated they can fill these posts effectively.

Post holders can effectively lead learning, pastoral care and so on, provided they have the necessary competencies and authority and are held accountable for carrying out the duties allocated to them. This way schools would have an effective middle management system and aspirant school leaders would be able both to acquire the competencies essential to assuming such roles and to demonstrating their capacity for such roles.

While acknowledging the work of the Leadership Development for Schools programme (regrettably being downsized) in preparing future school leaders, many principals and deputy principals only acquire the knowledge, skills and competencies for management following their appointment.

In post-primary schools, principals and deputy principals need to be more than leaders; they need to be competent managers and, often, they need to carry out functions that in larger institutions could be delegated.

Of course, they must lead their organisations and facilitate new directions and goals. But from their very first day in the job, they must be able to manage their schools and have to carry out or show others how to carry out a wide range of new functions for which they have had no preparation.

There is no system in place to identify those teachers with the capacity for leadership and scarce resources are expended on training many unsuited to providing effective leadership.

Currently, teachers who excel in the classroom and wish to advance their careers have no option but to forsake their teaching and move in to administration, regardless of whether they are suited or not. We need a career structure for teachers which allows the best practitioners to get promotion while remaining in the classroom. Here, there is merit in establishing the post of chartered teacher, similar to what operates in Scotland.

Clearly, principals have responsibility for leading teaching and learning but to assign them principal responsibility for this is to burden them with a workload beyond their capacity. It also militates against the dispersal of leadership and the development of future school leaders.

Today, good school leaders are at a premium and they are free agents. The expectation that a good deputy will eventually replace the principal, though seductive, is not well-founded. It is imperative that the whole post-primary sector develops better leaders.

To those who consider this analysis overly pessimistic ask yourself this: If your school had to recruit a principal or deputy principal next week, would you be confident you could appoint a suitable person — a person who could hit the ground running?

- Pat O’Mahony is a former second-level principal and is the education research officer with the Irish Vocational Education Association, the representative body of Vocational Education Committees, whose annual congress took place in Cork this week.