Why have an ethical leadership commission?

Schools are where society looks after its young until they can become adult citizens. Emerging adults in the UK will have had up to 14 years of schooling, perhaps just in two institutions. In that time, they’ll not only have learned something of the knowledge valued by society but also the personal attitudes or characteristics valued by society. Headteachers, school leaders, are traditionally understood to provide both of those.

The chair of the ethical leadership commission, set up by the Association of School and College Leaders and which we reported on last week, writes about it for Education Uncovered

But to society, education looks pretty complicated now. Do parents really understand what an executive head is?  Or a CEO? Or a MAT?  This transformation agenda has run parallel with vicissitudes in performance and accountability measurement, the dramatic aspirations of governments and the deconstruction of the public sector with its assumed norms and utilitarian practices. As the Head’s role has changed from trusted local professional through standardised functionary to heroic multi-school innovator the ethical foundations, never clearly expressed, are hard to see.  The role of the headteacher as a highly trusted public servant is set alongside the reporting of frequent scandals about money, leadership, oscillating fortunes and expensive new structures.  In all this structural change, what might parents and taxpayers expect from a headteacher or a collective of headteachers? What behaviour sets the right example for those in loco parentis to our children?

Education’s recent obsession with leadership style is soundbite-ready but not guaranteed to build up a stable system.  Developments are troubling: is financial incentive a proxy for professional pride? Schools readily adopted the inhumane language of ‘relentless’, ‘laser-sharp’ and ‘zero-tolerance’ but who decided that this was the right language to talk about children? Initially lauded ‘aspirational’ and ‘innovative’ headteachers have not always continued to succeed, so what are the values upon which personalities of all shades can build sustainably good schools? How can we limit the effect that prizes of status, recognition and money have on the way we understand ourselves?   How do school leaders act as both model and focus for the communities of large and small humans with whom we work? 

Headteachers are not entirely clueless on this matter.  We largely run happy and safe communities and must get our inspiration from somewhere.  However, when asked about values, we shy away from first-order virtues and clutch onto outcomes or products such as leadership and integrity, or adjectival abstractions like excellence.  This may be a very British embarrassment about claiming too much, appearing to take oneself too seriously or sounding religious.

But we should be more confident in our own judgement. As adults we know what makes for a good society and what we want for our own families. At home most of us try to model honesty, love, wit, good temper, accountability, justice, magnanimity, reciprocity, duty, service, hope and all the virtues of a good life, tricky as it might be. We know that wealth and status don’t amount to strength of character and that kindness is more important than dominance. Right ambition is – well – right, and better than the other kind.