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PROFESSOR BRENT DAVIES & MS LINDA ELLISON
Hull, United Kingdom & Nottingham, United Kingdom
MANY COUNTRIES and states have introduced (and, in some cases, withdrawn to a greater or lesser extent) systems of school self management (also known as school or site-based management, Local Management of Schools, grant-maintained status, school-based decision-making, etc). According to Gamage (1996, p. 7), such a system:
'... empowers the school community to perform most of the functions earlier performed by the centre, region, or the district and take responsibility and be accountable for those particular functions.'
While such systems give greater decision-making power to the school site and, whilst they have the potential to offer a wide range of benefits to the school, they are perceived (by different stakeholders) to have been introduced for a number of different reasons, not all of which are necessarily beneficial to the school or the students.
Gamage (1996) points out that decentralisation and delegation could occur for philosophical reasons (i.e., a belief that stakeholders should be involved in decisions which affect them) or for pragmatic reasons (e.g., because an organisation is too big to be run effectively from the centre). In the education sector, there have been other views.
Cynics and the Cost-Cutting Motive
Cynics believe that one of the main reasons that central bodies have delegated decision-making in education (especially the power to make resource decisions) is to allow costs to be cut. This view is reinforced by the fact that such delegation to the school level is often accompanied by the de-zoning of students to create a quasi-market (Levacic, 1995) and also by a system of formula funding based on student numbers, so that the student choice factor can act as a means of forcing the closure of 'less successful' schools.
On the positive side, it has been suggested that self management allows for the more effective targeting of resources and brings about school improvement. There is little reliable evidence to date of the latter, although the work of Caldwell (1998) and Cheng (1996) suggests that there are perceptions, especially amongst principals, that schools have become more effective.
Most systems of school self management require the creation of some form of School Council or Governing Body to ensure stakeholder representation. This (alongside more centralised systems of audit and inspection) helps to overcome the concern of some that decentralisation of decision-making 'could not guarantee that schools would use power effectively to enhance education quality' (Cheng, 1996, p. 43). Such Councils or Bodies would typically include teaching and support staff, parents, community representatives and, in some cases, students. The balance in representation of the stakeholders varies between systems and between sub-sets of the same system (see, for example, the differing composition of community and foundation schools in England, as set up by the School Standards and Framework Act (DfEE, 1998)) can cause problems. Examples of the serious detrimental effect on the school when relationships are wrong can be seen in the cases of Seaford Carrum School in Victoria, Australia (Badcock, 1998) and Stratford School in London.
One of the significant differences across national or state systems is the extent of delegation of decision-making power to the school site. Davies and Hentschke (1994) examined the dimensions of autonomy and proposed a taxonomy of managerial decisions, which they used to analyse a number of schools in the UK and the US in relation to their degree of autonomy. The investigation centred around the freedom of the school to make decisions about:
- the business to be in;
- how to organise and operate the production process or service delivery of the organisation;
- the kinds of labour to employ and how that labour is compensated;
- the customers or clients to be served; and,
- the categories of revenues to pursue in order to operate the business.
The research sought to place schools in a broader context of management decisions and management rights in all organisations. Davies and Hentschke did this by placing schools on a continuum of organisational autonomy. At one extreme was the dependent organisation, i.e., one in which all the major management decisions resided with the 'parent organisation' and, at the other extreme, was the autonomous organisation, i.e., one in which all of the major managerial decisions were made within the unit.
This research project revisits and utilises this taxonomy to investigate the current levels of autonomy in schools in a number of systems. The online discussion will provide perspectives and will assist with refining the work in the later stages.
Online Conference Discussion Points
For the purposes of this discussion, we would like to focus on decisions about the types of labour and its compensation. The whole area of staffing and remuneration is particularly significant in England as a result of the implementation of the proposals in the Green Paper, Teachers: meeting the challenge of change, (DfEE, 1998) including the following:
- schools will, from September 2000, have extended powers in relation to teacher performance, and it will be linked to pay;
- governing bodies must now link the remuneration of principals to their performance;
- the concept of 'fast track' entrants to teaching is being introduced and it is proposed that there will be some form of central dispersion (Times Educational Supplement, 14th January 2000), in contrast to the situation which has existed since soon after the 1988 Education Act, i.e., schools could have a free choice about recruits;
- In addition, school control of spending on staffing is affected by the requirement to have class sizes in Key Stage 1 (up to the age of 7) of 30 pupils or fewer. The 'privatisation' of state schools (such as King's College in Guildford) and the development of City Academies (announced by the Minister of Education on 15th March 2000) means that alternative conditions of service may emerge.
As well as these developments in England, we are aware of changing situations in other countries, sometimes linked to changes in central politics. This seems, therefore, a good time to carry out our further investigations on autonomy.
Some Further Areas for Discussion
FOCUS: The kinds of labour to employ and how that labour is compensated. Who decides, and who should decide, the number and proportions of staff employed for:
- teaching;
- secretarial;
- classroom support;
- catering; and,
- maintenance.
Who decides, and who should decide, the nature of the contract of a member of staff who is:
- permanent
- temporary;
- agency-employed (especially temporary teachers, contract cleaners, caterers,
- grounds staff, but also some 'trouble-shooters', such as heads).
Such decisions will include:
- whether a contract is full-time or part-time;
- whether a contract is year-round or term-time only; and,
- the types of work to be carried out (e.g., for teaching staff, the proportions of time for teaching, class size, preparation, pastoral care, administration, management and leadership).
Who decides, and who should decide, the remuneration of staff:
- salary spine (there are national spines in England);
- number of promoted posts/position on salary spine;
- promotion up the spine - increments and criteria; and,
- bonuses if the organisation is successful.
Who decides, and who should decide, the qualifications needed:
- all teachers need QTS in English state schools, or to be training for that via a school-based route.
- in England there are central government proposals that all newly-appointed principals will have the National Professional Qualification for Headship by 2002 but there is no national requirement that principals should have a masters degree.
- who makes these decisions?
An important aspect of autonomy lies in the location of responsibility for decision-making and the nature of that individual or group, for example, a Governing Body/School Council and the existence (and proximity) of any other layers of the system with power such as LEAs and School Districts. In England, responsibility lies with the Governing Body but the national employment laws, e.g., in relation to fairness of selection and redundancy processes, rights to maternity and paternity leave, etc., must be followed.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Professor Brent Davies is Professor of Leadership Development and Director of the International Leadership Centre at the University of Hull. He spent the first ten years of his career working as a teacher in South London and then moved into higher education. Brent Davies now works exclusively on headteacher and senior staff development programs. He is a prolific author and his latest book is ' Strategic Direction and Development of the School', published by Routledge.
Brent is the instigator of the Global Alliance for School Leadership, which links the International Leadership Centre at the University of Hull with the London Leadership Centre (University of London) the School of Education (Nottingham University) with the Universities of Toronto (Canada), Claremont (California) and Melbourne (Australia).
Brent Davies can be contacted by email at:
brent@brenty.freeserve.co.uk
Ms Linda Ellison is based at the Centre for Teacher and School Development, School of Education, University of Nottingham, in the UK.
Linda Ellison can be contacted by email at:
linda.ellison@nottingham.ac.uk
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REFERENCES
Badcock A. M. (1988) Devolution at a Price, Blackburn, Aus.: Acacia Press.
Caldwell, B. J. and Spinks, J. M. (1998) Beyond the Self-Managing School, London: Falmer Press.
Cheng, Y. C. (1996) School Effectiveness and School-based management, London: Falmer Press.
Davies, B. and Hentschke, G. (1994) 'School Autonomy: Myth or Reality - Developing an Analytical Taxonomy', Educational Management and Administration Vol. 22 No. 2 April,
DfEE (1998) School Standards and Framework Act, London: HMSO.
DfEE (1998) Teachers: Meeting the Challenge of Change, London: HMSO.
Gamage, D. (1996) School-based Management, Colombo: Karunaratne.
Levacic, R. (1995) Local Management of school: Analysis and Practice, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Times Educational Supplement (2000) 'Ministers to control elite new teachers' 14/1/00.
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APPENDIX 1
The categories of decisions according to Davies and Hentschke (1994)
1. Decisions about the businesses to be in.
This starts with determining the basic mission of the organisation: who sets the overall mission of the organisation; who can change it; who can decide to go out of business; who (if anyone) assumes the risk of the failure of the organisation and captures the residual benefits of success (if any)?
2. Decisions about how to organise and operate the production process or service delivery of the organisation.
This is the embodiment of the mission in real life. Who determines how the organisation will function, including who in the organisation will decide which parts of how the organisation will function? Who determines whether these separate parts fit well or need to be changed? More than who is the set of issues about how much leeway do individuals have in making these decisions? What are the natural boundaries?
3. Decisions about the kinds of labour to employ and how that labour is compensated
This includes determining the labour force: who determines the qualifications of employees to be hired (i.e., who determines who is eligible to apply for a position); who determines the actual employees to be hired; who terminates employees, and on what grounds? There are a wide range of decisions to be made around compensation/benefits/salary: who determines the compensation levels of the unit's employees; who determines the changes in levels (merit raises); who determines the benefits components of compensation; who determines the impact on compensation of personnel in the organisation when the organisation succeeds beyond or falls below revenue expectations (bonuses/cuts in pay)?
4. Decisions about the customers or clients to be served.
Not only what types of clients but also the share of client markets: who determines the pricing structures for the services provided; who determines the categories of the clients served; who determines the actual clients served; who determines the quantity of clients served; who determines when to stop serving a particular client; to what extent is the price of the service subsidised by third parties?
5. Decisions about the categories of revenues to pursue in order to operate the business.
Financial markets: who provides the financial capital for the operation of the organisation; to what extent are operating revenues associated with access to clients; what factors affect changes in the access to revenues? Who has the right to redeploy tangible assets as a consequence of changes in the mission of the organisation, including acquiring and disposing of assets?
There followed a chapter examining decisions about the power of the sub-units, especially in education.
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FOORNOTES
There is some connection with aspect 2 in the taxonomy because that would be the location of an analysis of decisions about how much would be spent on each budget heading and, therefore, how much would be available for staffing. 'Decisions about how to organise and operate the production process or service delivery of the organisation' would also include making decisions about the use of the school day and the school year which would have implications for staffing.
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