Towards a Better Future

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Chapter Six: Educational Leadership and Governance These measures promoted a light but capable central administration and a strong local leadership that was well-resourced and professionally supported (Aho et al, 2006, p.118ff). The kinds of powers given to patrons in the Irish legislation make Finnish-type reforms to governance difficult to accomplish here. Nevertheless, while working within the current statutory governance framework, it is still possible for gains of the kind mentioned above to be made in sectors other than the ETBs. For instance, clustering of small and medium-size schools could enable many leadership responsibilities, that are currently daunting, to be carried out with less difficulty, including the probation of newly-qualified teachers and the sharing of expertise in school self-evaluation and in professional development. Where the heavy burden of administration on individual schools is concerned, moreover, there is much to recommend co-operative efforts by boards of management to explore how and where joint efforts might help to lessen that burden. In any event, to continue with a situation where very many schools – often quite small schools – have to work alone on resourcing and administration is to curtail the growth of a strong leadership capacity within the schools. EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND THE NOTION OF PARTNERSHIP We all recall the era of social partnership - between 1997 and 2007 - that brought major advances in Ireland’s economic development. During that period,the notion of partnership was not just that of a formal agreement to be negotiated and renewed between the government and the main social partners. It was also an idea that became influential outside of such formal agreements. Within the field of education, it was a notion that found a new realisation during the deliberations of the National Education Convention of 1993-94. The Convention was itself a major educational leadership initiative. The degree of shared understanding it accomplished made possible the publication of the 1995 White Paper Charting Our Education Future. This landmark policy document was accepted by all of the main interested parties – a marked contrast to the 1992 Green Paper, Education for a Changing World. The five underlying principles of Charting our Education Future provided the rationale for the 1998 Education Act, and are included in the preamble to that Act: partnership, plurality, quality, equality, and accountability. Although overshadowed by acrimonies stoked by the recent recession, these five principles, together with the provisions of the 1998 Act, still provide the foundations for educational policy-making in Ireland. The experience of the Convention and its aftermath reveals the kind of strength-in-unity that becomes possible when partnership is taken seriously enough to enable the more sectional concerns of different groups to be lowered in the order of priority. This brings home the need for a vision of educational effort, and more particularly of educational leadership, that can be shared among the different parties. Moreover, it underlines the importance of a clear and succinct concept of educational leadership such as that offered at the beginning of the chapter: discovering and pursuing initiatives that enhance the quality of learning and teaching in the school. — 109 —
Towards a Better Future: A Review of the Irish School System School principals and deputy principals have a central role to play in building such partnerships anew, and sustaining them. This is the real significance of ‘taking the moral imperative on the road.’ The work involves sustaining a dialogue with a range of bodies that have themselves a proper role to play in educational leadership, but who are often preoccupied by other concerns, normally administrative and managerial ones. Partners to such a leadership dialogue would include: the DES, particularly the Inspectorate and the Teacher Education Section; national support agencies like PDST, JCT; the Teaching Council; the NCCA; Education Centres; parents’ bodies; student representative bodies; teacher educators and educational researchers in higher education. The educational leadership voice of bodies like IPPN and NAPD has a particularly valuable contribution to make here. Where such a dialogue on educational leadership becomes a lively and central part of a country’s educational life, the balance of influence in policy-making shifts dramatically. In an inclusive and energetic to-and-fro such as this, the initiative comes to the hands of those who move to take it when the right opportunity arises, and who use it well. It may move over, back and around, as the lead does in an accomplished set-dance. One of the main positive consequences of such a dialogue is that the discourse of educational policy-making now tends to become marked more by fertile ideas with a research-informed backing than by bureaucratic ideas or ideologically inspired ones. This allows a ‘virtuous circle’ to arise (viz. the reverse of a vicious circle) and enables educational leadership voices to come to the fore. Where our own country is concerned, this wouldn’t mark the end of acrimony in debates on educational policy-making and implementation, but it could do much to promote a more promising vista and to redress the negative and frequently misinformed character of much that has passed for debate in educational reform in recent years. It might even cultivate the conditions that would make the exploration of a new and necessary contractual deal for teachers possible. The fact that such a new deal for teachers has yet to appear on the horizon illustrates that a clear and convincing vision of educational leadership urgently needs to be taken on the road in Ireland. — 110 —
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Towards a Better Future

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