Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

THE NATIONAL COLLEGE FOR SCHOOL LEADERSHIP83• Only modest demands are made of programme participants.• Its emphasis on practice is at the expense of theory and research.• Its reliance on practitioners to lead programmes limits innovation.• Its dominance of school leadership development is unhealthy.• It is unduly influenced by the government.Its demands are too modestInstead of the sustained engagement with research and literature, expected inthe best university courses, the College’s expectations of participants aremodest. Even the NPQH, the mandatory qualification for principalship, can beachieved by taking a 48-hours residential programme followed by a skillsassessment, although this is set to change in 2008. The decision to requireheadteachers to acquire a specialist leadership qualification has been widelyapplauded but there are criticisms of the scope and nature of the NPQH. It isunambitious in that it requires limited engagement with theory and researchand is focused primarily on applicants’ perceived ability to do the job. It isevident that it is below the intellectual level regarded as necessary in NorthAmerica (Bush 2004). The new model NPQH seems likely to provide a widerrange of learning opportunities for ‘trainee heads’ but the nature of thecontent remains unclear. Other college offerings are not formally assessed sothere is no straightforward way to judge the effectiveness of leadershiplearning despite the external evaluation programme (Bush et al. 2007b).Brundrett et al.’s (2006: 101) comment about the basic nature of NCSLprovision requires serious attention:Questions remain as to how far the governmentally inspired leadershipprogrammes have moved beyond the more reductivist elements of thecompetence paradigm towards educational programmes that develop thekind of reflective knowing and higher order cognitive abilities that willundoubtedly be required by leaders in the complex world of educationalleadership in the 21st century.The emphasis on practice is at the expense of theory and researchLevine (2005: 56) notes that the NCSL ‘acts as a bridge between scholarshipand practice, believing that research should drive practice and practice shouldfuel research’. However, the main emphasis is on participants’ experience andNCSL programmes have been criticised for neglecting theory and research.University courses, in contrast, continue to be targeted at leaders at all levels