Blog post

What schools want: Recruiting senior leaders in England

In an increasingly fragmented and competitive education system, recruiting the ‘best’ school leaders is based on fabricated notions of leadership. A recent job advert earned derision for being off-putting rather than inspiring. However, we argue here that what was shocking was that the advert left out the fabrications and said the quiet part out loud. To succeed, school leaders indeed have to deal with contradictions; not allow ‘under-achievers’ onto the bus; challenge, not please, their customers; work too hard and support the vision. We argue that these recruiters are not to blame; their requirements are a logical response to a damaging policy landscape.

‘There are no contradictions. Everything is aligned’

School leadership is contradictory, which this advert accurately reflects. We point out these contradictions not as a ‘gotcha’ to the school, but to note that school leadership has long been used to suture together contradicting elements in public-services provision. Consequently, the ideal assistant headteacher here will ‘display candour’ unless disagreeing with the school vision, which must be enacted. The school offers ‘a strong commitment to reducing workload’, yet requires candidates to ‘work ridiculously hard’. Applicants must evidence ‘innovation and creativity’ while ‘ensur[ing] the effective operation of quality control systems in … teaching, learning, behaviour and achievement’. The clashing elements are located in different educational paradigms, that is, welfarist versus corporatised/managerialist; they cannot align. The issue is structural, not individual to this school.

‘We cannot carry anyone’

The education profession has been constructed as deficient since the 1992 Ofsted framework. Headteachers have been schooled in Collins’ mantra of getting the right people on the bus in the right seats and getting the wrong people off the bus. Hence the (assistant) headteacher’s task is to ‘make people better at the job’ through using metrics to determine contract renewal or termination. Professional knowledge no longer focuses on educational values, research, debate and judgement about the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, but concerns process and outcome delivery. Senior staff make people better at the job as organisational ‘henchmen’ who use normative seduction (vision and mission) and realistic fears (the data show you are failing, which endangers us all). Education reform is based on Jurassic management that has turned schools into corporatised theme parks.

‘Professional knowledge no longer focuses on educational values, research, debate and judgement about the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, but concerns process and outcome delivery.’

Beyond customer focused

To compete, schools must recruit leaders who keep consumers happy. For decades, powerful voices have lobbied for education in England to embrace free-market principles. Standards will be driven up, these voices argue, if parents can choose between academies, free schools, grammar schools, technical colleges, and so on. School choice positions parents as customers and schools as businesses. And in business, the customer is always right.

But this market is really only a ‘quasi market’ and only certain parents have the right currency to spend. What’s more, the advert notes that some parents/customers are not always right. Where parents obstruct improvement, they become objects of the required ‘relentless’ focus on standards. Such parents must be challenged ‘to ensure they meet [the school’s] expectations’. This is totalising, but not surprising.

‘Unrivalled work ethic’

Contemporary policy conditions have created a high-pressure environment where school leaders’ work is intensified and extended (including expectations of 24/7 availability through emails and social media). Such overwork has serious consequences for leaders’ health, wellbeing and their intention (or ability) to remain within the profession, identified as a driver of leadership attrition. Overwork is privileged in policy implicitly and explicitly (for example, by seeking ‘relentless’ improvement) and through unrealistic job descriptions which negatively affect future leaders’ aspirations to take on the top job. To lead means to adhere to this impossible work ethic.

‘Not a maverick – we row together’

This subheading is one of several essential requirements in the job advert’s person specification that reveal an institutionalised preference for compelled thought and actions, as well as for total adherence to the headteacher’s vision. This is only a particularly unmediated reflection of what education policy demands. For example, the current headteachers’ standards privilege solo, heroic actions over within-school relationship-building, shared decision-making and policy consultations. Consequently, merely articulating a vision in the continuing era of high accountability constitutes school leadership. Therefore, visions cannot be meaningfully delegated for all that their standards-agenda orientation could be predicted. Disagreement with the vision may prompt dismissal. Despite the rise of distributed leadership in policy, and despite discourse reproducing notions of collaboration, this school exemplifies how power is maintained with the headteacher precisely because delegation is dangerous in a high-stakes accountability culture.

In conclusion, this school advert is honest to a fault about the demands of school leadership. Its leaders have suffered, but we implore commentators to direct their critique instead towards the conditions that made this advert possible.

Belinda (Bee) Hughes, Dr

Lecturer at University of Manchester

Dr Belinda (Bee) Hughes is a lecturer at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, lecturing in contemporary issues of educational leadership. Her work focuses on policy studies, educational leadership (specifically leadership of multi-academy trusts) and the thinking of Hannah Arendt. Recent research projects include working with university colleagues on area-based school partnerships where findings were published by the Staff College in the Turning the Tide report (2023). Belinda was the recipient of the BELMAS doctoral thesis of the year award in 2020, and she has many years’ experience as a senior leader teaching in Hong Kong and the UK.

Steven J. Courtney, Professor

Professor of Sociology of Education Leadership at University of Manchester

Steven J. Courtney is Professor in the Sociology of Educational Leadership in the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE), University of Manchester. Steven co-leads the MIE research group, Critical Education Leadership and Policy. He uses critical sociological approaches to explore the interplay between agency and structure in education policy and leadership.

Paul Armstrong, Dr

Reader at University of Manchester

Paul Armstrong is a senior lecturer in education in the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. His research interests concern contemporary forms of educational leadership and management, and professional collaboration between educators. Paul has over 17 years’ experience in education research, leading on national and international projects and publishing across a number of areas, including educational improvement, networking, leadership, management and policy.

Helen Gunter, Professor

Professor Emerita at University of Manchester

Helen M. Gunter is Professor Emerita in the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and recipient of the BELMAS Distinguished Service Award 2016. Her research focuses on the political sociology of knowledge production in the field of education policy. Her most recent book is A Political Sociology of Education Policy (Policy Press, 2023), and her research has been the focus of a festschrift: Fitzgerald, T. and Courtney, S. J. (Eds.) (2023) Critical Education Policy and Leadership Studies: The Intellectual Contributions of Helen M. Gunter. Springer.

Alexander Gardner-McTaggart, Dr

Senior Lecturer at University of Manchester

Alexander Gardner-McTaggart is a senior lecturer in educational leadership at the Manchester Institute of Education as well as academic lead for transnational flexible learning for the University of Manchester. His scholarship, research and teaching seek to better understand and articulate globalising pressures on education and its leadership through the lens of equity, distinction and power. His research interests are in educational leadership, international education, and global citizenship education.

Amanda Heffernan, Dr

Senior Lecturer at University of Manchester

Amanda Heffernan is a senior lecturer in educational leadership at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. A former school principal, Amanda’s research focuses on the day-to-day work of school leaders, their careers, and their identities. She is particularly interested in issues associated with attraction, support and retention of leaders within the profession.

Mark Innes, Mr

Lecturer in Education at University of Manchester

Mark Innes is a lecturer in the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, where he is also working towards a professional doctorate in education. His research focuses on the enactment of policy in schools and multi-academy trusts in England. Before joining the university in 2017, Mark taught English for more than 10 years.