Educational Management Administration and Leadership

A study of the introduction of the block grant in England in 1981 and concerns over increases in government control of education found little direct intervention in educational concerns but shifts in overall Local Educational Authority funding. (MD)

This article seeks to clarify the place of policy studies in education in the meta-field that it terms LAMPS. It is argued that this canon of work has undervalued the merits of a humanistic approach and in doing so has tended to minimize the part played by people. To illustrate what might be possible, it reports on aspects of a longitudinal study, the first of its kind, that set out to examine, evaluate and categorize to what extent, and how, permanent secretaries influence policy. Based on recorded interviews with those who held this office at the DES between 1976 and 2002 and others (senior cabinet members, secretaries of state, junior ministers, special advisers) it argues that while the role of such senior civil servants can be described as ‘meta-political’ they do nevertheless influence policy in significant ways. As such it suggests that their praxis may be located on a continuum of ‘centrism’, five forms of which are identified. From this standpoint, much of the text represents a search for the architect/s of the Education Reform Act 1988 and in doing so focuses on the thinking and contribution of Sir David Hancock – its ‘principal project manager’.

This article analyses the continuities and changes in principal development in mainland China over the past two decades by assessing the role of the state in shaping principal development over this period. The article outlines and analyses the 14 key policies that have shaped the practice of principal development. The main changes identified include formal recognition of the need for and potential of principal development to effect change in schools; growth in the number and background of training providers; and shifts in the stated purpose, content, curriculum and pedagogy of principal development programmes. The ‘continuities’ are the enduring power of the state in shaping the ideology that dominates principal development, such as framing it as both a national obligation and a right. We argue that the state has maintained a strong role in shaping principal development in mainland China over the last two decades, but at the same time, has (at least rhetorically) sought to promote increased school autonomy and build more effective schools. This indicates that principal development stands at an important juncture in China.

Headship is widely acknowledged to be a crucial variable in determining the nature and quality of schools. As might be expected, there are numerous studies of headship. In this article Peter Ribbins, Reader in Educational Management at the University of Birmingham, and Brian Sherratt, Head of Great Barr Comprehensive School in Birmingham, report on a new approach to the study of headship in which they have been involved together; an approach which they describe as a dialectic of biography and autobiography.

This article reports on outcomes from a study funded by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) designed to explore leadership talent identification, development, succession and retention in contextually different primary and secondary schools in England. Focus groups and a questionnaire were used to secure perceptions of heads, middle leaders and classroom teachers about leadership talent identification and development. Twenty characteristics indicative of leadership talent were identified. Agreement and disjuncture were recorded concerning the importance of characteristics among respondent groups. The implications of these findings for leadership development and succession, in the face of a potential leadership crisis in the UK and internationally, are discussed. The longer-term career planning of staff, the place of needs analysis, self-disclosure and senior leadership decision-making are examined with respect to leadership talent identification and development. The article offers a basis upon which schools can reflect on their role in providing a good training ground for future leaders. School-based changes are recommended so that individual school's longer-term leadership requirements may be better addressed.

In about a decade the theory of distributed leadership has moved from a tool to better understand the ecology of leadership to a widely prescribed practice. This article considers how to account for its spread and dominance and what purpose it serves. The concept offers an enticing suggestion of including more in leadership, and even sometimes including staff members equally. The resulting issues around distribution of power are largely ignored or referred to in passing; a kind of inclusivity lite, which does not engage with, for example, issues of gender or ethnicity. Using a range of concepts of power, the article explores the ways power is enacted in how distributed leadership is theorized and how it has been promoted. It is suggested that opportunities to contribute to leadership are not equal and that distributed leadership remains silent on persistent structural barriers. The theory's confusions, contradictions and utopian depictions are argued to be a profoundly political phenomenon, replete with the uses and abuses of power. The conclusion suggests that the effect of distributed leadership theory is to maintain the power status quo.

Historically, higher educational institutions (HEIs) have been independent institutions, backed by an ideology that led staff to expect and enjoy high levels of independence and autonomy, relatively free from any sense of management, commercial responsibility and accountability. However, in recent times, the education sector has been subject to increasing levels of scrutiny and regulation spurred on by central government initiatives related to standards and quality, and ever increasing expectations from students and other customers. These developments have heralded changes in human resources policy reflected in staff appraisal systems. The article describes the management challenges that established educational institutions now face under six key headings, with issues that range from the ‘hard’ (agreement on targets, clarification of structures) to the ‘soft’ (clash of ideologies and cultures). Proposals for improved implementation are given and, drawing heavily on Contingency Theory, two ‘new models’ are presented to help support the analysis.

This paper describes results from an online survey of 26 women from 8 universities, describing times when work and non-work situations have helped or hindered their advancement in university leadership roles. From the 110 reported incidents, 5 categories of factors that make a difference to advancement as leaders have been identified. This research is part of the L-SHIP (Leadership- Supporting Higher Intent & Practice) project and has two main aims. First, to identify factors in universities that help and hinder women’s advancement as leaders, as reported by women; second, to produce practical programmes for aspiring leaders and tertiary institutions on how to identify what helps and hinders advancement in university leadership roles, and how to develop effective programmes to harness strengths and address barriers. This research is a first step to the L-SHIP Toolkit for good practice in leadership development in higher education.

The Education Reform Act 1988 increased the scope of headteachers' work and led to an emphasis on ‘management', often interpreted as the implementation of government policies, checked through the Ofsted inspection regime. Following the election of a Labour government in 1997, the discourse changed to ‘leadership'. Leadership development in England is dominated by the National College for School Leadership, which was opened in 2000, a product of New Labour's stress on ‘education, education, education'. The College offers a raft of provision for leaders at all levels, including the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH), which was introduced in 1997. As the title implies, the NPQH is seen as a professional qualification and focuses more on what heads can ‘do' than what they know. The NPQH become mandatory for new heads in 2009 but reverted to optional status in 2012. This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of the NPQH and considers how it could be developed to blend leadership learning with leadership practice.

A number of recent studies in the UK have developed academic staffing formulae on the basis of the institution's teaching commitment rather than its recruitment of students. We review these formulaea and examine their uses and limitations and conclude that they are useful more as situation analysis tools than as resource allocation devices.

Most research and scholarship in the field of educational leadership and management seems focused on leaders and managers and their perspectives, while the perspective of an entire constituency – ‘the led’ – is generally overlooked and neglected. This article contributes towards redressing this imbalance. Located within the context of the higher education sector, it presents findings from one phase of a funded study whose purpose was to examine what non-professorial academics, researchers and teachers employed in British universities think of the academic leadership provided by their professorial colleagues. From data generated by over 1200 questionnaire responses, a wide range of views emerged on what professors should be doing in order to fulfil their leadership roles, and how effectively they are doing it. A key finding was that, whilst most respondents agreed that professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues – typically, as mentors or advisors – more than half of the sample reported that they were not receiving the help and advice that they wanted or needed.

In 1975, the fourth Annual Conference of the British Educational Administration Society (BEAS, now BELMAS) had as its theme ‘Autonomy and Accountability in Educational Administration'. In their concluding comments, the editors of the published Proceedings wrote: ‘Our concern has been with accountability and autonomy, not as alternatives, but as significant and meaningful concepts which need to be better understood in relation to each other, having regard to specific organisational settings.’ This is the same connection that the then newly installed coalition government made 35 years later in their 2010 schools White Paper, a major policy document. The emphasis on this theme had persisted and indeed grown sharply during the intervening period. This trajectory is outlined in the article but its main purpose is to analyse the forces underlying what has become a preoccupation in English schools policy, making some reference to international evidence and practice. It is argued that the last six words of the quotation above from the 1975 editors' conclusion, ‘having regard to specific organisational settings’, were particularly significant and are highly relevant to an explanation of the staying power of these concepts.

Incl. bibl., abstract 'School-based management' (SBM) rose to become a prominent trend in educational reform in Western countries during the last few decades of the 20th century and has likewise been introduced into a number of Asian and African nations. A key component of SBM is the increase of internal accountability within the school with the aim of improving academic outcomes. This research initially questions whether the social/cultural context of traditional Bedouin society in Israel influences the implementation of SBM in the community's schools, and then discusses the ramifications of this influence. The research findings point to a lack of educational accountability in Bedouin schools in Israel, while concomitantly identifying two omnipresent forms of traditional cultural accountability within this sector-tribal and religious. Moreover, the research contends that these forms of accountability conflict with individual educational accountability among Bedouin school principals and teachers, and thus contribute to poor academic outcomes. Being a member of this community-with intimate knowledge of and sensitivity to its culture-the researcher concludes with specific suggestions for enhancing accountability implementation that will lead to improvement in the academic level of Israeli Bedouin schools.

Discusses definitions of accountability; examines why accountability has become such an issue; examines the levels of accountability that exist and affect teachers, administrators, and administrative bodies; and points out the measures that might need to be taken if a system of accountability is to be developed. (Author/IRT)

The last decade or so has seen an emerging literature supporting the position that school leaders and school leadership are important. This article argues, however, that recent developments in the area of school leadership have led to an orthodoxy that needs to be challenged and tested. It is an orthodoxy that has been driven essentially by those outside the school leadership profession and is one constrained by external accountability demands. The arguments here are that school leaders should be the ones driving a critical examination of their profession whereby the shackles of accountability on them are replaced by a new liberating professionalism for school leaders framed around notions of professional responsibility. To this end, three propositions are considered to stimulate debate among the school leadership profession. The first is that we need to frame school leadership by critically examining the question: school leadership for what and about what? Second, we need to shift the debate about school leadership from one dominated by accountability to one grounded in notions of professional responsibility. And finally, that the profession needs to be leading the debates and setting the agendas about school leadership, not simply responding and reacting to externally determined agendas.

The author reviews literature on "participation" as a movement in educational administration. He points out that, despite recent setbacks, it may offer a key dimension in developing schools of the future. (MD)

The Achievement for All (AfA) pilot initiative, delivered in partnership by the Department for Education (DfE), (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF]), National Strategies and the National College (NCSL), aims to increase the attainment and progress of children in schools with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND); improve the engagement of their parents with the school and improve wider outcomes for this group of children. Introduced in September 2009 as a two year pilot in 454 primary, secondary and special schools and Pupil Referral Units across 10 Local Authorities in England, AfA, with a particular focus on inclusive leadership practice, takes a whole school approach to school improvement. The population included pupils in Years 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 identified with SEND on School Action, School Action Plus or holding Statements; 85 per cent of the participating schools are primary. Guided by government documentation (DCSF, 2009a) and local authority advisers, schools have implemented the initiative around three distinct but integrated strands: assessment, tracking and interventions; structured conversations with parents and provision for developing wider outcomes. By considering focus group data evidence from headteachers/school project leaders across the participating local authorities, this article will explore the impact of AfA on inclusive leadership practices in schools. Findings suggest that although vision, commitment, collaboration and communication remain self evident for the majority of leaders, within the context of AfA, these characteristics of effective inclusive leadership along with pupil learning have been enhanced.

Incl. abstract, bibl. Is it possible for principals/heads to be effective educational leaders? In this study, we compared the work of principals/heads in two policy contexts. In Policy Context 1, standards for student performance were common and well-established, and authority was devolved to the school level for reshaping the school to meet those standards. In contrast, Policy Context 2 involved attention to more locally defined standards, and authority was more rule-driven rather than directed by local self-management. Policy Context 1 provided several advantages for educational leaders. Principals/heads were able to use the formal leadership structure of the school and to be more focused on actually achieving student results as measured against standards. In contrast, principals in Policy Context 2 often had to spend considerable personal energy helping the school define its purpose/mission, and could not hold the collaborative focus tightly on a specific set of student standards or results. Implications for job structuring, principal development, and connections between policy and practice are discussed.

Implementing educational reform requires partnerships, and university-school collaborations in the form of investigative and experimental projects can aim to determine the practicalities of reform. However, there are funded projects that do not achieve intended outcomes. In the context of a new reform initiative in education, namely, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, this article explores the management of a government-funded project. In a university-school partnership for STEM education, how can leadership be distributed for achieving project outcomes? Participants included university personnel from different STEM areas, school teachers and school executives. Data collected included observations, interviews, resource materials, and video and photographic images. Findings indicated that leadership roles were distributed and self-activated by project partners according to their areas of expertise and proximal activeness to the project phases, that is: (1) establishing partnerships; (2) planning and collaboration; (3) project implementation; and (4) project evaluation and further initiatives. Leadership can be intentional and unintentional within project phases, and understanding how leadership can be distributed and self-activated more purposefully may aid in generating more expedient project outcomes.

This article seeks to demonstrate the possibilities of the dramatic scenario as an approach to the examination of fundamental educational administration concepts with graduate students. It draws upon a piece of theatre as representation (TAR)—‘The Icarus Selection Committee’—a scenario which was written specifically by the author to enable the examination of conflicts related to internal power and control issues of a school principal-selection committee. Students who participated in this exercise reflected afterwards on the complexity of administration and their affective response to this teaching tool.

An understanding of the organization called "school" is dependent not primarily on "scientific" constructs, but on sets of values and other phenomena that elude precise measurement and yet influence people's behavior. These phenomena have been largely ignored by researchers in educational administration. The social sciences have tended to dominate research into educational administration. However, the generally accepted "ideal" scientific approach provides only a partial explanation of the behavior of participants. Definitions of the word "theory" have tended to be based on the hypothetico-deductive approach; we have tended to ignore the argument that science also progresses by the contribution of courageous individuals who put forward irreverent, unorthodox ideas. (Author/JG)

Inquiry in a field like educational administration draws on philosophy and science, since it deals with both moral and empirical issues. As an applied field of study, educational administration is highly complex. It is concerned with what educational organizations and settings ought to be, how they work and what can be done to make them better. The nature of the field and of the times creates pitfalls for inquiry. In this paper a number of these pitfalls are considered. It is argued that when pitfalls are avoided, new possibilities are opened up. Every pitfall has its reciprocal possibility. Those examined represent the author's thinking as a longtime student of the field.

Argues that the paradigm presently used in educational administration is neither useful nor appropriate because it is no longer fruitful in generating powerful concepts and hypotheses, does not allow description of modern organizations or the people in them, and, as a result, is not helpful to administrators. (Author/IRT)

Incl. bibl., abstract The purpose of this article is to present and investigate the current situation in Greece regarding the management of primary schools and to underline the need for reforms in the field of school administration. The coordination of the relationship between the state and schools is an issue vital for both: primarily for schools, as they require a degree of independence to do their work on behalf of society, justly and properly; and for the state, which wishes to assure itself that the schools are adequately serving the needs of society and providing an efficient and comprehensive system of education. This article assesses the Greek primary school system in terms of avoidable bureaucratic processes and recommends strategies for improving the efficiency of school administration.

This paper offers a critique of Evers' and Lakomski's 1991 book, "Knowing Educational Administration," and their discussion of neo-Marxist and critical theory. This paper argues that the science of educational administration is a historically contingent product of particular social forces and interests at a particular time. The kind of educational administration that was dominant during the 1960s and 70s separated educational from administrative concerns and privileged the latter. This paper describes how the Evers and Lakomski misinterpret Habermas and dismiss critical theory as subjectivist and examines problems with their choice of two major cultural theorists--Geertz and Sergiovanni. In conclusion, it offers an analysis of neo-Marxist organizational theory that has not been fundamental to the emergence of critical theories of educational administration. Second, their analysis of Habermas's early work is wrongly claimed as the basis of Bates's early work, as well as that of Giroux and Apple. Third, they fail to deal with Marxist/critical theories' political, social, and historical aspects. Philosophers who undertake analysis of educational administration should demonstrate care in the treatment of the arguments under examination, show proper reticence in representing social arguments, and avoid taking single instances as representative of the field under examination. (LMI)

A rethinking of the nature of the differences between three theories of educational administration (Greenfield, Griffiths, and Willower) serves as a departure point for considering a redirection of research into administrators and their work using concepts from the psychology of leadership. (Author/PGD)

Incl. bibl.

Athletic administrators and decision makers within interscholastic athletics are expected to embrace a code of ethics that serves as a set of rules to guide their professional behavior. Included within this code are areas of controversy that present gender-related ethical dilemmas for administrators. Three specific ethical dilemmas involve (1) providing equitable participation opportunities for students, (2) instituting ethical hiring practices for coaches, athletic administrators and educational leaders and (3) creating an environment and organizational culture that embraces fairness. This article examines these three critical dilemmas. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

This concept article discusses the importance of developing psychic income as an administrative strategy to enhance the context of school environments and to curb high teacher turnover. The hope is to promote further debate and research in order to establish the extent to which psychic income influences retention rates in hard-to-staff schools. Psychic income refers to the satisfaction and benefits derived from intangibles that have non-monetary value in the workplace. We argue that principals have little control over teachers’ salaries, but have significant influence in developing psychic income thresholds that can curb high teacher turnover in struggling schools. Discussed are strategies that principals can use to build psychic income for their schools, realizing that success and sustainability of the strategies are dependent on leadership style and tenure of the principal. Through engaged leadership strategies, principals have the capacity to promote psychic income in order to build satisfying school environments.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and forms of ritual and ceremonial behaviour in the social life of organizations, in order to suggest how administration can be conceptualized systematically in ritual terms. Proposed is a cultural studies intepretive approach to organizational structure, functions and behaviour as ritual systems, derived in part from Max Weber's theory of social action. This involves examining organization through developmental and functional aspects of ritual systems as they apply to organizational reality in both constitutive and punitive form.

Since the 1980s, confidence in the government's ability to govern has in the Netherlands been under fire from many directions. This has resulted in an educational policy which favours deregulation and increasing levels of autonomy for school boards and their schools. This paper demonstrates that, despite the pursuit of administrative reform, an intermediary administrative tier has come into being between the central government and schools, which further complicates the relationship between these two levels. One effect of such a buffer zone could be that, while schools and school boards continue to feel the sense of powerlessness and lack of autonomy characteristic of earlier times, the government's sense of central responsibility is weakened.

The professional-as-administrator construct has relevance to many positions in the administration of education. Reports selected aspects of recent research in which the construct was applied to the role of the secondary school head. (Author)

In the highly centralised, state system of public schooling in Australia there has traditionally been little opportunity for members of the community to participate in educational decision making at the state, regional or school level. Educational governance has been the responsibility of professional educators having no direct accountability to the public.

The aim of this article is to contribute to an improved comprehension of the relations between administrators and teachers. The main argument is that mutual dependency is an operational feature of a school organization. I analyse a school case that shows essential features of the interconnections between the parties. An extensive commitment to ICT combined with a commitment to free work forms created a vulnerable situation. The teachers' loss of control influenced the relationship between teachers and the administrators that after a while developed into tug-of-war bargaining. I employ a model of rational interaction in order to enlarge the repertoire of explanation that is an analytical tool that is little used in the literature about educational management. I conclude that the theory can indeed be a tool of analysis for understanding mutual dependencies, but that the rational reconstruction must include the importance that trust can have for management and leadership. Successful exertion of power requires relational trust.

Incl. abstract, bibl. This paper reports upon the perceptions of 23 senior women in Education Queensland on the impact of School-Based Management (SBM) on their ways of leading and their career opportunities. The women interviewed were all graduates of a Women in Management course run by the Queensland University of Technology. Those women working in primary schools and in secondary schools trialling SBM felt that SBM would legitimize the way they led their schools and provide them with further opportunities to challenge the accepted discourse of educational administration. The women working in secondary schools were sceptical about its introduction. However, almost all the women felt that it would not enhance their future career prospects as the culture and make-up of the central bureaucracy remains masculinized. [BEMAS]

This paper examines reforms to secondary school admissions in England since 1997. In particular, it focuses on the new ‘quasi-regulation’ that has been introduced to make the process of admissions fairer and more transparent. Our analysis reveals that the quasi-regulation has had some impact on the process of admissions to secondary schools. In a number of authorities with highly developed secondary school quasi-markets, the policy changes have resulted in some inequitable admissions criteria being removed. However, there are still problems with school admissions and policy recommendations about how the system can be made fairer are presented.

This article reviews the literature on adolescent leadership development and connects the concept of leadership authenticity as a way to influence anti-social adolescent behavior for pro-social outcomes. Because adolescent leaders develop from both pro-social and anti-social constructs, educators must recognize the unique power of both leadership funnels. Pro-social leaders are inclusive and build affiliation, while anti-social leaders are exclusive and rely on power. Leadership studies overly focus on adult-level leadership development. This article centers on the idea that leadership development is essential at the adolescent level, and opportunities for productive adolescent leadership development research, though difficult, do exist. In this article a functional definition for authentic leadership is developed along with a proposed research framework with researchable variables for studying leadership authenticity in adolescents. A case for using an authentic leadership paradigm for helping adolescents build their own leadership attitudes, skills, and experiences is advanced. Finally a review of the processes whereby adolescent leaders are selected, and the existing leadership development solutions existing in the American high school setting are discussed.

This research investigated the female adolescent view of leadership by giving voice to student leaders through focus group discussions. The questions: What is leadership? Where/how was leadership taught?, and How was leadership practised? were explored within the context of girls’ schools located in Australia, with one school located in South Africa. The findings of this research indicated that girls not only had an understanding of leadership, they also actively performed it. Students viewed leadership as the active process of working with others in a positive way. Leadership was mostly taught through specific programmes and activities and practised both formally and informally by students. It was also acknowledged that leadership was often learnt through experience. Further exploration of this concept is needed in order to ascertain the ways in which these understandings of leadership can be better utilized in order to develop the leadership potential of girls when they enter adulthood.

Principals play key roles in creating the conditions in which teachers can teach effectively and students can learn. Principals are increasingly being held accountable both for teacher quality and for student learning and development so that young people can become ‘successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens’. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) was established by the Australian Government in 2010 to provide national leadership for the Commonwealth, state and territory governments in promoting excellence in the profession of teaching and school leadership. Reporting to all state and territory ministers responsible for education, AITSL is charged with driving transformational change and creating new levels of teacher professionalism. In its first year the Institute developed a new National Professional Standard for Principals.1 This article outlines the origins and development of this standard. Development was a collaborative process including key stakeholders from across Australia with international expert input. Following national piloting of the standard, refinements to the standard were made and mechanisms to support the use of the standard have been put in place.

Incl. bibl., abstract The article identifies key dimensions of effective leadership for change in historically disadvantaged, township and rural schools in South Africa. It is based on original case study research in 13 schools in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Although the sample included mainly township and rural primary and secondary schools it also included a smaller sample of historically advantaged formerly White, Indian and "Coloured" schools. All schools were selected on the basis of high academic achievement and success in implementing change. Effective leadership styles were found to be contingent on context. Rather than providing a fixed set of characteristics the dimensions provide a framework against which the nature of effective leadership in the sample schools is analysed and compared. It is argued that although many aspects of effective leadership are similar to those reported in the wider international literature, they assume a specific form and emphasis related to contexts of disadvantage in South Africa.

Incl. bibl., abstract As globalization of the world economy continues unabated, a parallel growth of globalization of knowledge is also taking place. This latter trend is little affected by the boundaries between developed and less developed countries and is having a particular impact on trends in education. This article looks at the impact of globalization within the context of education in South Africa. It focuses on different perspectives of globalization and identifies key factors that may have an impact on education in South Africa. Finally, it argues that in order to respond to the dangers of marginalization posed by globalization it will be crucial to form, and be part of, new alliances and networks. These will both provide opportunities for sharing knowledge and skills and also build economic strength.

Incl.bibl., abstract The article posits a paradigm for school development (SD) in the context of a developing country, which is somewhat different from the dominant SD and school improvement (SI) paradigm in the West. Within this paradigm the norm of a school-parent engagement over pedagogical issues as in the West is replaced by imperatives based on full community involvement in the school on the local community's own terms. This article uses evidence collected from a case study of 96 schools in Soshanguve township outside Pretoria. The Soshanguve School Development Project (SSDP), a partnership between the local education district office and a non-government organization (Link Community Development), aimed to implement a school development planning process in all the schools in the township. Over the course of the project, the school development approach used led to a novel, highly contextualized response to the needs of the local communities and schools and ultimately to full community participation in most of the schools-and so to real school development within a developing world context.

Incl. abstract, bibl. This article reports on data from a larger scale study exploring female principals' experiences of their career route to the principalship of secondary schools in South Africa. To understand these experiences, the study used an analytical framework that identifies three phases principals go through on their career route, namely: anticipation, acquisition and performance. The framework suggests that women experience more obstacles than men on their career route and their experiences are influenced by personal, organizational and social factors. These factors manifest in social practices within and outside schools and affect women across the three phases of the career route. Central to these experiences, is the underlying male norm of who is more appropriate for secondary school principalship.

Incl. abstract, bibl. The Headteacher Leadership and Management Programme (HEADLAMP) was introduced by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) in 1995, providing access to an open market of induction and management development opportunities for newly appointed headteachers who would each have an entitlement of £2500 for the purchase of training within two years of their appointment. This paper reviews HEADLAMP provision from the headteachers' perspective based on a cohort study that investigated attitudes towards issues such as management of the programme, sources of needs assessment, role of LEAs, funding and quality. There was a positive response to HEADLAMP, but questions raised regarding management of the programme. Recommendations for the future development of HEADLAMP are offered. [BEMAS]

Notes towards the twenty-first century For its fifteenth anniversary EMA invited contributors to consider the agendafor the next fifteen years.

Traces the history of how Mid-Kent College of Higher and Further Education (England) reacted to the Manpower Services Commission "TRIST" (Technical and Vocational Education Initiative-related Inservice Training) arrangements letter. The college provided a program designed and negotiated with the local education authority before it created new attitudes, skills, and motivating behaviors. (MLH)

The principal aim of this article is to describe and document a comparison of public and private school effectiveness in the marginalized (often referred to as slum) district of Aguablanca, in the city of Cali, Colombia. The data suggest that teachers and parents are largely satisfied with the current status of education provision in Aguablanca. However in terms of ‘statistically significant’ differences, stakeholder perception of the private sector exceeds that of the public sector for every given indicator. The research suggests that the authorities reconsider their education strategy in light of the positive perceptions associated with the existing system of provision. While it may be necessary to increase system capacity in order to meet the demand, great care should be taken to protect (and even extend) provision for the poor through the existing programme of private school subsidies.

Studies on principal ship the world over have largely failed to keep pace with the changing contexts in which principals now operate. This paper advocates an edited topical life history approach to bridge this gap. This claim is illustrated using research conducted within Western Australia which sought to understand why certain school principals are more successful than others in guiding restructuring initiatives designed to improve teaching and learning. It is suggested that as a body of such studies builds up it will be possible to develop nomothetic explanations of the role which principals can play in enabling such restructuring.

The purpose of this paper is to apply standard normative criteria for judging public sector resource allocation decisions to the rules for determining the distribution by LEAs of budget shares to schools and colleges and for regulating the spending of these budgets by governing bodies. A crucial preliminary issue is the selection of criteria — the criteria used for making such judgements are efficiency, effectiveness, equity, accountability and choice.

In this article an alternative interpretation of the functions of decision-making and the inherent activities at teachers' meetings at schools are presented. The metaphor of `play' is introduced in order to make the teachers' actions during decision-making comprehensible, not only for outsiders, but more importantly for `involved insiders', such as school leaders. The metaphor of decision-making as a play relies on different theoretical perspectives, mainly on the micropolitical perspective on and dramaturgical approach to schools as organizations. The idea of alternative rationalities is chiefly brought forward in order to understand the behaviour of the teachers involved in decision-making in staff meetings in a more comprehensive manner.