Like all good think pieces ‘Leadership for Education in the Future’ raises more questions than it answers!
Here are few!
1.Why will schools (and hence leadership) of the future necessarily have to be ‘different’? Adonis & Brown reassure us the current programme is working and is the future. More, much more , of the same!
2.What current factors (trends, concepts, political imperatives etc) will determine both the context and the parameters of possible future/schools/leadership ?
3.The tools that we have to ‘analayse the fundamental assumptions that determine our thinking about the components of leadership’ have a history and a ‘politics’. Consider these 4 ‘discourses’ that have emerged form the DFES/NCSL roughly in this order in the past 7 years,
Superhead (deliverer of Standards)
Visionary Leader (with the EI skills to deliver staffing reform)
Community leader (in tune with the restructuring of the provision of public services – ECM)
Community coherer (to counter-balance the diversity of provision and forms of selective admission)
“ The legacy of the past must not contaminate the future”. Surely the Future isn’t a blank slate?
4. If it isn’t just about finding a technocratic fix to a current problem (impending lack of school leaders) or an exercise in engaging the current leaders at an emotional level (where is the excitement in being a ‘deliverer’ of more of the same, or a ‘vehicle’ for the latest Downing street initiative? – the ‘tyranny of momentum politics’ as Peter Hyman calls it) at some point don’t we need, if not to start, at least at some point to address ‘Why are these issues (future schooling, new leadership, community cohesion etc) being raised in this form NOW?’ and what reason/motivation is there to get engaged.
Like all good think pieces ‘Leadership for Education in the Future’ raises more questions than it answers!
Here are few!
1.Why will schools (and hence leadership) of the future necessarily have to be ‘different’? Adonis & Brown reassure us the current programme is working and is the future. More, much more , of the same!
2.What current factors (trends, concepts, political imperatives etc) will determine both the context and the parameters of possible future/schools/leadership ?
3.The tools that we have to ‘analayse the fundamental assumptions that determine our thinking about the components of leadership’ have a history and a ‘politics’. Consider these 4 ‘discourses’ that have emerged form the DFES/NCSL roughly in this order in the past 7 years,
Superhead (deliverer of Standards)
Visionary Leader (with the EI skills to deliver staffing reform)
Community leader (in tune with the restructuring of the provision of public services – ECM)
Community coherer (to counter-balance the diversity of provision and forms of selective admission)
“ The legacy of the past must not contaminate the future”. Surely the Future isn’t a blank slate?
4. If it isn’t just about finding a technocratic fix to a current problem (impending lack of school leaders) or an exercise in engaging the current leaders at an emotional level (where is the excitement in being a ‘deliverer’ of more of the same, or a ‘vehicle’ for the latest Downing street initiative? – the ‘tyranny of momentum politics’ as Peter Hyman calls it) at some point don’t we need, if not to start, at least at some point to address ‘Why are these issues (future schooling, new leadership, community cohesion etc) being raised in this form NOW?’ and what reason/motivation is there to get engaged.