Following our meeting this afternoon with AHDS I had a thought about the relationship between leadership and management.
The current emphasis is – quite rightly – upon leadership. However, it is apparent that some headteacher’s ability to lead is severely compromised by workload issues that might be reduced by the development of systems which would enable them to tackle the more mundane management tasks.
One of the suggestions which caught my imagination was the need to remove the stigma which prevents people from admitting that they have problems managing admin’ tasks. This leads them to try to keep their head’s (excuse the pun) above water when they are in danger of going under.
If we really want to help our leaders to develop we need to develop the skills and systems which will enable them to manage their workload – and not just leave them to get on with it.
It was interesting over the years I spent in industry to view the move away from managers towards leaders and the skills subset that each class were supposed to be proficient in. In my experience it was those who had a broad cross-section of both sets of skills that made the most of their positions of responsibility.
I suspect it will prove the same for education as it did for industry.