Future Leaders the Way Forward - Article Example

Critique of an article in Educational Leadership - Future High Education Leaders Critique Introduction The article ‘Future Leaders: the way forward?’ deals with the leadership development programmes and successive planning in the backdrop of recruitment and retention crisis of senior school leaders in the United Kingdom. It explains that the crisis emanating from demographic challenges and protracted period of replacing headship calls for the making of more leaders and further approaches to develop them. The crisis is further aggravated by negative perceptions about the type of duties and extent of workload on the school teachers. With reference to educational leadership programme, the Future Leaders programme is analyzed in the following section. The solution to this recruitment crisis as suggested by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) is to identify people with leadership talents so that they could be trained early in the fields of leadership and provide them with a greater number of role models. Hence, Future Leaders leadership is a development programme that works to mitigate such crisis through the process of making high-skilled individuals suitable for headship. Given this background, this article evaluates the Future Leaders leadership development programme through the assessment of case studies and interviews of the participants in the programme. Further the future of the headship and the Future Leaders programme is analyzed with respect to the matters of sustainability, enrollment and retention. Future Leaders Programme The Futures Leaders leadership development programme was introduced to fill in the dearth of school teachers in leading roles especially in the schools located in the urban areas. The objective was to form a genre of leaders who are willing to commit their future professions in the field of leadership in urban schools. The goal was to increase the band containing head teachers so that they can be recruited as and when required in urban complex schools. The programme has been built up in the lines of NLNS (New Leaders for New Schools) programme in New York. The members of the NCSL, ARK (Absolute Return for Kids) and SSAT (Specialist Schools and Academies Trust) developed the Future Leaders vocational programme in 2006. Along with the above mentioned objectives, the Future Leaders programme also aims to recruit individuals from non-traditional fields offer a new mode of recruiting senior staffs in urban schools along with a pioneering approach that would manage risk. It gives the teachers and individuals not attached with schools an alternative approach that would help them attain a fast track in leadership in a comparatively shorter period of time. The Future leaders programme was formulated for a period of two years wherein, in the first year the selected participants underwent a year –long full time residential appointment in the host school. In the host school the head of the school and an external mentor who is a qualified head tutored the trainees. Prior to this mentoring, the participants are selected and trained at the NCSL in Nottingham. At the end of the first term (year), the future leaders start applying for the position of deputy or assistant head in a secondary school as desired by them. Evaluation of the Programme The Future Leaders programme was evaluated by a team from Create Consultants and Institute of Education who were commissioned by the NCSL. The two years of the programme was evaluated in four phases. The programme was started in 2006 with a group of 20 individuals while in 2007 it consisted of 29 participants. The assessment in the first year dealt with the success of the selection process of the participants and the future leaders programme. In the second year, the assessment was mainly based on the way the programme impacted the whole process at the turn of the first year when the participants (FL1) were promoted to secondary schools. The second focus in the second year’s evaluation was to examine the advance of the programme with the next group of participants (FL2). This evaluation was mainly done in four phases. The first phase dealt with recruitment, appraisal and selection; the second with training at the base level as well as ongoing; the third with experience for one year at the host school; and the fourth with employment as a senior head. The assessment apart from evaluating all these phases also included inspections of schools to collect information about the experience of the participants in the future leaders programme in the host schools. The first phase of recruiting, selecting and assessing the participants involved quite an elaborate process. It involved an application form, an article question, online exercises such as an image story exercise and a personal ethics questionnaire, interviews and involvement in an assessment centre. It was followed by a behavioral event interview wherein the participants were given a scope to reveal their capability to head a complex urban school. Even thought the first phase involved a number of activities and steps to shortlist he candidates yet it could have been enhanced by inducing some real interaction with actual students and demonstrating teaching skills. The second phase of foundation and ongoing training comprised of double weekend sessions and a subsequent two-week residential period in the summer vacation. The main objective of the training was to bring the trainees and coaches on a closer level which would strengthen the bond between them. One more positive aspect to this phase was that the training was more practical rather than bookish or theoretical which instilled and encourage the participants towards the career of headship. The third phase of experience in the residential host school showed that almost all the participants were satisfied and happy with their school and environment. The senior staffs and leaders in the school exhibited positive reactions to the efforts of the trainees. Another aspect of the training program was that the future leaders were supposed to be mentored by the head teacher of the secondary school and also by an external tutor on a regular basis. Although, the FLs made positive comments regarding this, yet the fact was that the meeting between head and FLs were not working on a regular basis. In the case of the second cohorts, the extent of satisfaction was limited with complaints stating that the professional tutors invested less time in training the FLs. The fourth phase which reflected the employment of the FLs as senior leaders showed that the nature of headships acquired by them influenced their future plans and prospect of leaderships. The type of headships in both the cohorts varied significantly and individuals in the second cohort were comparatively less capable of acquiring eminent posts following the residential training. The FLS considered that their presence impacted their respective schools in a number of positive ways. They also pointed out the problems that hindered their further impact. These were stated as the absence of enough responsibility given to the FLs, flaws in managerial leadership in delegation, inability of schools to chalk out the roles and responsibilities of FLs and other administrative flaws. On the whole, the future of leadership is still a debatable subject in terms of the time, age and demographic challenges involved with it. The average of a teacher to turn into a head teacher still remains at 43 (Earley et al, 2009, p.304). There has been a lot of development in training of schoolteachers and heads which give a brighter prospect in this arena. The article has a significant contribution to the theory of the future leaders and existing works in this field but it has to widen its analysis and look into all possible aspects of the leadership. Is the ‘future leaders’ the only way forward? This is the question that is yet to be answered. Other studies show that the crisis of retention is more hyped that the usual case. The majority of schools in London have heads who remain appointed till retirement. Also the appointment of new heads in the secondary schools is very rare (Earley and Wending). A recommendation to such stagnated situation is to look for ways to rejuvenate and refresh the heads’ duties and role through training and further professional work. Thus future leadership programs are not the only solution to the crisis. Training and involving the present heads are also a part of the way forward. Further retired heads have other options to work in education related activities among which education consultancy and consultancy leaders are predominant (Earley and Wending, 2006, p. 37). Also the heads in the school straightaway lay an impact on the quality of students’ achievements. Hence, good training and proper development of head teachers are important to make them capable of managing an leading their schools. The article does not describe in detail the actual targets and duties of the heads (Schnur, 2007, p. 2). To make a development programme it is important to chalk out the targets and roles that a head is going to follow. One of the primary targets is to make certain that all the students achieve excellence in their academics. Reference 1. Earley, P et. Al, (2009), “Future leaders: the way forward?”, School Leadership and Management, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 295-306. 2. Earley, P and Weindling, D, (2006), “Consultant leadership- a new role for head teachers”, School Leadership and Management, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 37-53. 3. Schnur, J, (2007), “A clear, powerful insight: great schools are led by great principals the challenge is to translate a simple idea into effective policy and practice at scale”, Available from: http://help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Schnur.pdf- (Accessed on Mar 10, 2010). Read More