Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

74LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONThe next section examines the historical background to the opening of theNCSL.Leadership development in England before the NCSLBolam (2004: 251) says that the NCSL should be treated as ‘the lateststage of an evolving policy innovation’. He attributes the evolving interest inschool management to the introduction of comprehensive schools in the1960s and 1970s. These were larger and more complex than the previousgrammar and secondary modern schools, leading to an expansion of leadershiproles and consideration of how schools should be managed. During the1970s and 1980s, and very much on an ad hoc basis, courses were offeredby local education authorities (LEAs), universities, and Her Majesty’sInspectorate (HMI). In 1983, the then Department of Education and Science(DES) established the National Development Centre for School ManagementTraining (NDC) at the University of Bristol. University courses on schooland college management became increasingly popular (Gunter 1997; Hugheset al. 1981).The 1988 Education Reform Act located many more responsibilities at schoollevel and greatly expanded the management role of headteachers and their seniorcolleagues. The government appointed a School Management Task Force (SMTF)in 1989 and its influential report (SMTF 1990) set the agenda for school managementdevelopment for the next few years (Bush 2004). Probably its most importantlegacy was the establishment of mentoring schemes for new headteachers(Bolam et al. 1995; Bush and Coleman 1995; Southworth 1995).The next major development was the establishment of the Teacher TrainingAgency (TTA), now the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA).The TTA took an interest in leadership and management development as wellas the pre-service education of teachers. The TTA set up the National ProfessionalQualification for Headship (NPQH), the first national qualification foraspiring heads, in 1997. It also developed the HEADLAMP programme for newheads and the Leadership Programme for Serving Heads (LPSH), for experiencedleaders (Bolam 2004; Bush 2004).Bolam (2004) notes that the idea of a national college was discussed as earlyas the mid 1980s, but was rejected because it was felt that a residential collegecould not cope with the scale of need, with some 25,000 heads and up to70,000 senior and middle managers. He argues that it returned to politicalprominence in the late 1990s, for three main reasons:• It fitted the new Labour government’s plans to raise standards in education.• Developments in ICT meant that the residential dimension became less significant.