Modern Headship For The Rationally

Modern Headship for the Rationally Managed School: Combining Cerebral and Insightful Approaches
ROSALIND LEVACIC, DEREK GLOVER, NIGEL BENNETT

AND MEGAN CRAWFORD
INTRODUCTION
This chapter is concerned with the increased range and complexity of the management skills required of
the headteachers of locally managed schools operating within an increasingly tight accountability
framework set by central government. In particular, the chapter focuses on the external pressures for
schools to be managed rationally, as effective and efficient organisations which achieve a tight coupling
between inputs, processes and outputs, while at the same time being underpinned by values and a
common educational purpose reflected in a shared organisational culture. In examining how schools
combine both approaches, the chapter draws in particular upon a set of studies done at the Open
University within a project on Managing for Effectiveness and Efficiency in Schools.
CEREBRAL AND INSIGHTFUL APPROACHES TO MANAGEMENT

BACKGROUND:
A major development in educational management in the last decade has been much greater emphasis :
1. on defining effective leadership by individuals in management posts in terms of the effectiveness
of their organisation,
a. HOW IT IS JUDGED:
i. which is increasingly judged in relation to measurable learning outcomes for
students.
b. DRIVING FACTORS: (MORE OF EXTERNAL PRESSURES)
i. In the UK both major political parties have pursued educational policies which
seek to diminish the traditional ambiguity and lack of coupling (Weick, 1976)
between inputs, processes and outcomes in educational organisations.
c. WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?
i. This is argued to require a rational-technicist approach to the structuring of
decision-making.
2. At the same time, increased emphasis is also being given to the importance in educational
leadership of values and institutional vision.
a. WHAT’S THE SOLUTION:
i. The OFSTED inspection framework, with its emphasis on effective leadership
based upon a vision for the school translated into a school ethos focused on pupil
behaviour and learning and continuous improvement, attempts to weld the two
management traditions.
b. CONFLICT:
i. Despite the rationality of official guidance, there is strong emphasis in training
programmes for headteachers on the need for leadership and management styles
which enhance the human side of headship, as in Section 5 of Teacher Training
Agency National Standards for Headteachers (Teacher Training Agency, 1997).
From this perspective, the prime role of educational leadership is to create and
maintain an integrated organisational culture (Meyerson and Martin, 1997) of
shared values and purpose.
In all of this, it is possible to discern a tension between two approaches to management theory
(Bennett, 1995).
1. The first approach, often known as scientific management or Taylorism, is steeped in the view
that human being have to be driven to meet objectives and that they will only be efficient in their
work if they are managed, controlled and supervised in a way which secures the required output
for the organisation. As Bennett, (1997) notes, in modern versions of scientific management,
managers can direct and control through the construction of self-regulating organisational
systems rather than direct supervision.
a. KEY FEATURE:
i. A key feature of scientific management is rationality. 'From a technical rational
perspective, organizations exist to attain specific, predetermined goals: .. . they
develop technologies to attain goals . . . and generate structures to enhance
efficiency' (Ogawa and Bossert, 1997).
2. The contrasting approach, referred to by Bennett (1997) as non-rational, emphasises the
arationality of organisations and draws strongly from the humanist approach based on the view
that individuals are more strongly motivated to work by affective factors rather than by fear of
sanctions and direct monetary reward. This approach stresses the importance of socially
constructed meanings in influencing how people work and hence the importance from a
management perspective of creating an organisational culture within which people are motivated
and enabled to work effectively.
Mintzberg (1990) argues that, rather than there being an irreconcilable tension between these two
approaches, the work of organisational leaders draws upon elements of both rationality and culture: some
of the work of leaders involves the application of rationality - which he calls the 'cerebral' aspects - and
part on the development of vision and encouragement of others - which he refers to as the 'insightful'
aspect. In this chapter we use the terms 'cerebral' and 'insightful' as a shorthand way of referring to these
two traditions in management theory and practice. Our focus is on how school leaderships blend the
cerebral and the insightful in responding to external pressures to manage schools rationally.
THE RATIONAL-TECHNICIST MODEL
WHAT IS A RATIONALLY MANAGED ORGANIZATION?

1. A rationally managed organisation is one which has explicit goals against which it measures
performance.
2. It uses a rational planning process.
a. This is sequential. Objectives are agreed,
b. and then information is obtained on all the alternative means by which the objectives
might be attained.
c. The selection of the most appropriate course of action then depends upon knowledge of
its projected costs balanced against expected benefits. Thus ends and means are clearly
linked.
3. Example
a. The budgetary planning process, because it identifies costs and relates them to anticipated
benefits, is an essential part of rational planning. The establishment of cyclic systems of
audit, planning, prioritising, implementing and evaluating are advocated by the Audit
Commission (1993) and the National Audit Office (1996). For example the Audit
Commission (1993) states that:
The school should have a medium term educational and budget plan (covering at least three
years) indicating the intended use of resources in achieving its educational goals. Even though the
funding available to each school will change annually, the school development plan should
outline which areas are the priority for spending, and why. (para 2.2)
The importance of planning to identify organisational development priorities was evident in the 'advisory'
literature of the immediate post-1988 Education Reform Act era (Hargreaves et al., 1989; Hargreaves and
Hopkins, 1991). Building upon the earlier model to offer a process by which schools can apply rational
planning, Hopkins (1994) outlines the detail of action plans with targets and tasks, a time frame and
evaluation checks. Later literature has made the link between rational approaches and school
improvement more explicit (Stoll and Fink, 1996; Hopkins et al., 1997).
An example of the official view of how cerebral and insightful approaches should be combined is
given in OFSTED, 1995:
strong leadership provides clear educational direction . . . the school has aims, values and policies
which are reflected through all its work . . . the school through its development planning,
identifies relevant priorities and targets, takes the necessary action, and monitors and evaluates its
progress towards them . . . there is a positive ethos, which reflect the school's commitment to high
achievement, an effective learning environment, good relationships, and equality of opportunity
for all pupils. (OFSTED, 1995, p. 100)
The technicist approach has been developed further by the Labour Government with the requirement for
schools to set quantitative targets at Key Stages 2 and 4 (DfEE, 1998) and School Standards and
Framework Act 1998, under which LEAs must submit to the DfEE educational development plans for
actions to meet performance targets.
THE ADOPTION OF THE RATIONAL-TECHNICIST APPROACH IN SCHOOLS
Our research over the past four years has been concerned with the extent to which schools have
adopted the rational-technicist approach to management. We have used OFSTED inspection reports as a
main source of evidence, examining four samples of reports: 66 secondary reports done in 1993; 117
secondary reports from 1994; 120 primary reports produced in 1994/95; and a follow up of 30 primary
and 20 secondary reports in 1997/98. The schools were from LEA areas which varied in social
composition and geography. Content analyses of the inspection report and case studies of four secondary
and nine primary schools were undertaken.
The comments made by inspectors which related to management of the school were first
categorised in relation to the constituent elements of the rational-technicist model (Glover et al., 1997;
Levacic and Glover, 1997; Levacic and Glover, 1998). Examples of these elements include:
planning processes:
quality of development planning (prioritisation for planned activities, identification and rationale
for curriculum planning links);
use of development plan objectives as a planning framework;
use of staff costing, e.g. INSET related to planned developments:
use of resource costing, e.g. new materials for planned development;
use of accommodation costing, e.g. re-grouping of rooms;
monitoring and evaluation:

use of educational outcomes;
consistency of practice across departments;
involvement of senior and middle management and governors.
Inspectors' comments were then graded by the researchers on a three-point scale: category 3
indicates commendations of good practice; category 2 contains satisfactory comments with suggestions
for refinements; category 1 indicates critical comments. Examples of critical and commendatory
comments for two primary schools are given on page 19.
Analysis of this material gathered over a period of time must be treated with some caution.
During the period under consideration there was a change in the procedures for reporting by OFSTED.
We also recognise that our later analysis has been of a smaller sample of schools, and that our method
hinges on subjective assessment of comments which themselves have a degree of subjectivity. That said,
this analysis offers evidence of progressive improvement in resource management. Overall the tendency
in our samples is for the percentage of adverse comments on management to decline over time and for
there to be an increase in commended practice. In the primary sector planning, resource allocation,
financial management and evaluation processes are judged to have improved over time. Lack of progress
has been where headteachers and governors have remained closely tied to historic budgeting processes
and have, for example, maintained high-cost staffing levels without investigating alternatives
In the secondary sector schools have increasingly adopted all aspects of the rational model except
in some cases where schools:
 have been slow to develop refined management information systems; do not plan the
teaching force and its deployment in relation to curriculum, but are excessively
constrained by staff's existing expertise;
 have inadequate accommodation as a result of a priority being given to funding staff
during a period of declining real resources.
Further evidence of the extent to which heads have developed the rationalist model is given in the
annual reports of the Chief Inspector for OFSTED These provide a general summary of the progress of
schools inspected in any one year towards the official model. Consideration of comments on aspects of
development planning as the basis for financial management shows progress towards more sophisticated
expectations of headteachers as illustrated in this comparison of comments in the Annual Reports for
1992/3 and 996/7 (OFSTED, 1993; OFSTED, 1998).
MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS: EVIDENCE FROM CASE STUDIES

A key assumption underlying the official rational-technicist model is that efficient resource management
is required for schools to be educationally effective. In order to investigate how links between resource
management and educational effectiveness are made in schools, we undertook detailed case studies of
four secondary schools and nine primary schools judged by OFSTED to be offering good value for
money.
Conceptual frameworks
Of particular interest for the issues addressed in this chapter is the extent to which management practice
relies on rational systems (the cerebral) or school culture (the insightful) as means of securing
organisational control. Organisational control in this context refers to 'assuring that desired results are
obtained' (Antony and Herzlinger, 1989). The means for securing organisational control do not only
include supervision of subordinates by line managers and accounting systems, but also embrace the
creation and management of an 'integrated' organisational culture whereby normative power is used to
secure organisational members' commitment to organisational goals through the sharing of common
norms, values and meanings. The concept of an 'inte-

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Modern Headship for the Rationally Managed School: Combining Cerebral and Insightful Approaches

ROSALIND LEVACIC, DEREK GLOVER, NIGEL BENNETT

CEREBRAL AND INSIGHTFUL APPROACHES TO MANAGEMENT

THE RATIONAL-TECHNICIST MODEL

WHAT IS A RATIONALLY MANAGED ORGANIZATION?

monitoring and evaluation:

MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS: EVIDENCE FROM CASE STUDIES

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