Anatomy of a Professionalization Project: The Making of the Modern School Business Manager 9781780935904, 9781472593276, 9781780937939

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Anatomy of a Professionalization Project

Also available from Bloomsbury Exploring the School Leadership Landscape, Peter Earley Leading Schools in Challenging Circumstances, Philip Smith and Les Bell The Reality of School Leadership, Richard Parker with David Middlewood Evidence Informed Leadership in Education, Alison Taysum State and Education Policy, edited by Helen M. Gunter

Anatomy of a Professionalization Project The Making of the Modern School Business Manager Charlotte Woods

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Charlotte Woods, 2014 Charlotte Woods has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3590-4 PB: 978-1-4742-8253-6 ePDF: 978-1-7809-3793-9 ePub: 978-1-7809-3782-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Woods, Charlotte, author. The anatomy of a professionalization project: the making of the modern school business manager / Charlotte Woods. pages cm ISBN 978-1-78093-590-4 (hardback) 1. School business administrators–Great Britain. 2. Public schools– Great Britain–Business administration. 3. School management and organization– Great Britain. I. Title. LB2823.5.W66 2014 353.8’24–dc23 2014017697 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

To my parents, Leslie and Hazel Woods, with love and gratitude

Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Foreword

1 The Making of a New Profession: The Case Explained

ix x xi 1

Part 1 Politics and the Professional Project

2 The School Business Manager Project in the Context of Public Sector Reform 3 The Public Sector Professional

19 35

Part 2 School Business Manager Professionalization

4 The School Business Manager Professionalization Programme 5 Professional Knowledge and Skill 6 Credentials and Careers

51 69 85

Part 3 Professional Knowledge Applied

7 Individual Perspectives on Professional Practice 8 Applying Expertise Inter-professionally 9 Institutional Arrangements and Knowledge Application

107 120 136

Part 4 Politics and the Professional Project

10 Professionalism as Personal Project 11 Professionalism as Political Project 12 Professionalization Revisited

157 178 196

Appendices Appendix I: Overview of School Business Manager Research Projects and Data

213

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Contents

Appendix II: Illustrative Interview Questions (All Categories of Respondent) Appendix III: National College Chronology of Project ‘Milestones and Achievements’ April 2007–July 2010 Appendix IV: Excerpt from the School Business Manager Competency Framework: Facilitating Change References Index

216 220 225 230 237

List of Figures and Tables Figure 3.1

Conceptualization of the ideal-typical profession (after Freidson 2001) Figure 12.1 Anatomy of a professional project Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3

Certificate of School Business Management Modules Phases of the Advanced Diploma in School Business Management Estimated savings in 123 demonstration project schools SBM competency framework overview Overview of NPQH competencies reflecting three key dimensions Head teacher competencies in operational management

46 197 56 63 66 74 76 78

Acknowledgements I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the large number of respondents over the years, both named and anonymous, from whose experiences and perspectives this book is largely derived. People have shown enthusiasm for the research and have been generous with their time. I am particularly grateful to those whose testimony I have quoted at length, such as those featured in Chapters 10 and 11, and to Graham Butt for his Foreword. Sincere thanks are also due to Trevor Summerson and to other members of the National College’s SBM team for their cooperation and contributions. I gratefully acknowledge the support of my colleagues at the University of Manchester, UK, including the contributions of my main co-researchers on various SBM projects over the years: Diana Pearson, Joanna Bragg and Paul Armstrong. In addition, I am truly indebted to Helen Gunter for her encouragement and inspiration and to Sarah Irving for her secretarial skills. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their patience and support, especially my husband, Derek Davies.

Foreword Charlotte Wood’s book on the professionalization of School Business Managers (SBMs) offers a valuable insight into the role of a group of education support workers who have, until now, remained largely ignored by education researchers. The importance of the contribution of this professional cadre to the efficient functioning of schools is undeniable; indeed their work has taken on a greater urgency in recent austerity times. The experience of SBMs is arguably typical of other support and administrative staff in schools, including teaching assistants, whose work has traditionally been regarded as rather low status. Indeed, it has seemed secondary to the ‘front line’ educational work of schools, lacking relevance to the immediacy of the common and urgent problems that have to be addressed during each school day. The efforts of SBMs have therefore largely remained unseen and unacknowledged. As such, this book recognizes and celebrates the contribution of a group of education employees who have previously been marginalized in schools and have stayed invisible within the published outputs of researchers in education. The SBM professionalization project was launched in England by New Labour in 2001, at a time when similar schemes were being devised and introduced across the public sector (not least within health and the police force, which provide us with interesting points of comparison). The conversion of bursars into SBMs was part of a ‘restructuring and reculturing’ (Butt and Gunter 2007) of the state education workforce, with principles of modernization at the heart of the process. The then Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris, visualized the training of 1,000 bursars in 5 years in a series of programmes that paralleled other workforce reforms in schools and saw the eventual launch of the National Agreement on Raising Standards and Tackling Workloads in 2003 (DfES 2003b). Here we see the impact of a growing neoliberal agenda – reconfigured by New Labour as a ‘Third Way’ approach, which attempted to straddle the state-market binary – which sought to draw back the role of the state and place greater responsibility on public sector institutions to become entrepreneurial. As Charlotte rightly observes, drawing on the work of Hartley and Skelcher (2008): following a period of criticism, devaluing, privatization and disinvestment generated by the rise in neoliberal ideologies in the 1980s and 1990s, a more

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Foreword refined version of neoliberalism has emerged that recognises the importance of state services in ensuring social and economic stability but which relies on a new coalition between business and public sector actors (p. 18).

Faith was increasingly being placed in markets and their ability to regulate many aspects of society, through the application of business assumptions and corporate modes of thinking. This shift was played out in terms of workforce reform, with concepts such as ‘remodelling’, ‘modernization’ and ‘civilianization’ being applied to the roles previously held by public sector workers. Reform occurred against a backdrop of the public’s apparent loss of confidence in staterun bodies following various scandals – including instances of mismanagement and financial impropriety within public sector institutions (although, of course, similar problems also occur within the private sector). The call for rethinking regulation, reshaping codes of conduct and reforming public sector management – with the aim of increasing efficiency, achieving greater economies, being less bureaucratic and offering more open accountability – was heard from politicians across the political spectrum. However, such reforms are never clear cut. The issues that arise are well rehearsed: the public and private sectors are very different, with contrasting aims, values and conceptualizations of goods; this makes the wholesale application of principles from one to the other both questionable and often impractical. Public money is at stake (controlled by politicians, not shareholders) the use of which should be publicly accountable and agreed. As Charlotte points out, the public sector is also called upon to operate in areas of market failure (such as addressing aspects of extreme poor health, social deprivation, environmental problems, ageing) where the tensions between social imperatives and economic considerations are complex and value-laden. The role of the SBM was visualized as representing a departure from that of the traditional conception of school bursars (although this term remained persistent in many schools), who were about to experience a drive to increase their professional training and status. The expectations placed on SBMs in most schools has now advanced significantly from the previous job descriptions of finance managers, bursars and other secretarial or administrative staff who carried out elements of school financial management in the past. The origins of reform lie back in a previous political era, back to the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act with its reassessment of how schools should be administered and run. Subsequent legislation forced a shift of power from local authorities to heads and governors, increasing their responsibility to bid

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for money and manage their own financial affairs. The ongoing privatization of school services is witnessed currently in the accelerating growth of academies and free schools, which are rapidly taking over from traditional state-run comprehensives. Charlotte’s comment on this is pertinent: The Academies programme embodied key aspects of New Labour thinking and the role of privatisation in their reform agenda: social responsibility, new forms of leadership and governance, innovation and technology, tackling social disadvantage and exclusion and importing business language and practices. Exempt from many of the normal restrictions of state education, such as following the national curriculum and national agreements over employee pay and teacher education, academies were expected to employ technical and market solutions to educational problems (p. 104).

The political drive for educational reform, initiated by New Labour and partly delivered through training and professional development programmes provided by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (previously the National College for School Leadership), is a constant theme. The need for greater professionalization was clear – in the modern era of enhanced business management in education (and elsewhere) senior managers and leaders no longer held the requisite knowledge, skills, technical expertise, abilities and reserves of time necessary to ensure the sound financial management of their schools. The requirement for SBMs to fill this gap was championed, but their enhanced status in schools has often been hard won – in many schools the role of the SBM has been questioned by other professionals, or treated with a degree of scepticism or outright prejudice. The lack of previous research into the contribution of SBMs to the management of schools is perhaps surprising – schools are undeniably ‘big businesses’, with a significant proportion of the public purse allocated to state education being managed by SBMs. Indeed, since the turn of the century, each new government in the United Kingdom has sought to increase the managerial responsibilities of state schools in this area, shifting the onus for financial management away from local authorities and into the hands of head teachers, Senior Leadership Teams (SLTs) and governing bodies. The importance of employing well trained, dedicated and professional SBMs has therefore increased as heads have sought to employ skilled staff capable of managing increasingly complex budget arrangements – something which many heads had previously managed (or overseen) with only limited training. During this transition the research focus has largely been elsewhere – driven by agendas to pursue greater understanding

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of educational leadership and management, or drawn to research aspects of ‘what works’ in classrooms. In this book, the nature of professionalism, and its acquisition through ‘professionalization’, assumes centre stage drawing on the work of other commentators in this area (such as Freidson 2001). The qualities that constitute a professional body – its values, knowledge sets and working practices – and the use of competencies or standards to codify and accredit these qualities, are all explored. We learn much about schools as organizations by exploring how they are managed and led. We know that government policy, from both New Labour and the Coalition, has attempted to embed greater organizational responsibilities on state schools – not least in the ways in which they handle their finances and how they are conceived as businesses – introducing reforms which have been met with equivocal responses from educationists. What Charlotte attempts here is to explore, on the basis of findings gleaned from empirical data, the impacts of such policy shifts on those who are at the sharp end of change: the students, teachers, senior managers, head teachers, governors and, importantly, the SBMs themselves. This endeavour is facilitated by her decade-long work with the National College involving the evaluation of survey data and research projects, many of which were directly linked to the SBM professionalization project. The testimony of a number of agents has been sought through one-to-one interviews – with politicians, policymakers, education leaders and business managers each offering their perspectives on professionalization. How the SBM role was achieved forms a central spine of this book. Around this the neoliberal reforms that affected the public sector (and which saw public institutions being driven towards businessorientated management and being encouraged to compete for ‘customers’ and ‘clients’) are clearly drawn. Here themes of privatization, decentralization, accountability and increasing organizational autonomy are evident, witnessed at the micro scale in individual schools but also clearly influenced by forces that play out on a national and international scale. Charlotte has chosen to structure her book in four sections – in turn considering the role of politics in establishing the professional training of SBMs, the project itself, the application of professional knowledge, and an overview of the interplay between politics and project. There is much here of interest to the reader who is keen to understand the ways in which (education) policies are devised, implemented and supported – not least in the ways in which a political imperative to deliver a particular project can result in the application of ‘aggressive timescales’ that may neither support the practitioners involved,

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nor guarantee the project’s ultimate success. The scope of enquiry is spread widely – there is reference to global forces and the impacts of globalization on policy-making in general and on the nature of business managers’ work in particular. Parallel projects initiated across the public sector, with particular mention of health and policing, are also referenced. The training courses, professional development activities, certification and awarding of qualifications associated with the professionalization project are well documented – starting with the Certificate of School Business Management (CSBM) in 2002, followed by the Diploma in School Business Management (DSBM) (2003), Advanced Diploma in School Business Management (ADSBM 2008) and School Business Director (2009), all designed and delivered by the National College. The development of these courses indicate an expected ‘direction of travel’ for SBMs, with the most advanced diplomas being targeted towards staff who would assume increasingly complex workloads, often managing financial affairs across consortia of schools. Charlotte has gathered a wealth of empirical evidence, mostly from interviewing those who are stakeholders in the professionalization project, eschewing a narrow line of enquiry driven primarily along theoretical or ideological axes. The importance of this approach is clear, for there are inherent dangers of recourse to partiality, polemicism and bias in researching such matters – which the methodology employed tries hard to avoid. The later chapters (Chapter 10 onwards) are constructed around interviews held with six stakeholders who were either instrumental to the success of the SBM professionalization project, or who can offer insightful comments on its impact. These include Estelle Morris, a previous Secretary of State for Education and Employment, and Trevor Summerson, who was the civil servant seconded to the National College to oversee the project. Accounts from SBMs from national jurisdiction where the National College’s work has been influential – Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – give the book an international flavour. We are also offered, in Figure 12.1 – ‘Anatomy of a professional project’ – a conceptualization of the processes of professionalization that have been in play, drawing together the interconnectedness of elements in what has been a complex, long-term project. This model attempts to offer a lens for the consideration of the project’s impacts and processes at different spatial scales (or ‘layers’) – from that of the individual actor, to considerations of the interplay of international factors. These are offered within three segments (on developing, promoting and applying expertise). What results is a conceptualization of professional development in the form of a helpful model, which can be referred

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Foreword

to both for the purpose of explanation and for the promotion of further questions. In conclusion, this book seeks to provide an original conceptualization of the professional role of SBMs, based on research into the processes by which SBMs are trained, the roles they adopt and the results they achieve. It seeks to offer a commentary on policy and practice, at the same time serving as an encouragement to further research in this area. The professional lives of SBMs, who often experienced uneasy shifts from a business to an education environment, are laid out for consideration – accompanied by a commentary on the nature of their professional training, their career prospects, issues of job security and their loyalty, motivation, commitment and longevity within their particular posts. Comments about the day-to-day challenges and opportunities provided within schools, whose cultures are often very different to those of the business sector, are pertinent. A fascinating substratum within these accounts is the retelling of the SBMs’ relationships with their head teachers, senior management teams and teachers in schools. Their experiences vary from being viewed as financial saviours, to being dismissed on ideological grounds – with concomitant effects on their working relationships with staff. The leadership style of head teachers, and whether they are capable of ‘letting go’ of areas of financial management which they previously controlled, also attracts comment. This all speaks to aspects of trust, raises questions about the parameters set for SBMs’ work, and of their ability to enter into a ‘negotiation of jurisdictions’ (p. 99). In her consideration of professionalism in education, Helen Gunter rightly observes that ‘each generation inherits, reworks and leaves legacies . . . inside and outside schools there are contested notions, practices and expectations about traits and behaviours’ (Gunter and Butt 2007, p. 225). Charlotte’s exploration of the SBM project illustrates these points well, taking us beyond Gunter’s immediate focus on teachers and teaching to allow a closer consideration of the professionalization of SBMs in schools. Graham Butt Professor in Education Oxford Brookes University

1

The Making of a New Profession: The Case Explained

This book concerns the professional journey of one occupational grouping. The word ‘professional’ is a tricky one. It is not at all easy to pin down and comes laden with baggage around what being ‘professional’, or, perish the thought, ‘unprofessional’ means. One thing is beyond question, however. The working lives of professionals have changed irrevocably in many countries. But as the established professions have been grappling with the impacts of public sector reforms during this period, new occupational groupings have been taking advantage of opportunities, or have been ‘groomed’, to take on more prominent roles within their organizations. It is within this context that the research reported here was born. It examines questions around what being a ‘professional’ means, what building the reputation and status of an occupational grouping entails, and what the experiences of those targeted by such activities might be. The book documents and analyses the professional project of one up-andcoming occupational grouping. In examining this single case from multiple perspectives, it captures the particularities of the professional project under investigation and records a slice of history. Further, through this process it develops a comprehensive, empirically derived framework for understanding professional projects in general. In this way it is hoped that this account of the research will provide conceptual clarity and indicate important lessons for those working or researching in other professional realms. The book charts, analyses and discusses a systematic attempt by the government in England to place on a firm professional footing a poorly understood but increasingly influential member of the school community: the site-based school business manager (SBM). The SBM professional project is a particularly interesting one in bringing into stark relief many of the tensions inherent in the business-led reforms that have altered professional work so profoundly in recent history. The work of school business managers, and employees with financial and

2

Anatomy of a Professionalization Project

administrative responsibilities in other public services, has become absolutely crucial in recent decades as public sector institutions have simultaneously been required to adopt the practices of business and become responsible for managing their own financial affairs. What the research shows is that school business managers’ (SBMs’) work is deeply enmeshed in every aspect of school life, often requiring them to work very closely with the lead professional, the head teacher. Despite the entanglement of business thinking and practices in the functioning of modern public sector organizations and in the work of lead professionals, the perspectives of business management colleagues have been largely excised from academic research and debate. In examining the SBM professional project, the book reveals a novel perspective from that of more established occupational groupings, such as teachers, doctors, lawyers and police officers, whose experiences of public sector reform have been extensively researched and widely reported. However, though their professional concerns appear very different on the surface, the study data indicate that the viewpoints of SBMs have more in common with those of educators than might be supposed. Theoretically the research rests mainly on the scholarship of professionalism, and particularly with reference to education and health. However, though theoretically informed, the work is empirically driven. It stays close to the standpoints of individual practitioners, drawing on the first-hand accounts of SBMs at different career stages, lead professionals internationally and those who have been active in the policy and politics of the professional project at the national level in England. In essence, it employs individual perspectives on the realities of professional life to examine and extend theory. Original data and analysis are used to illuminate questions around what being a professional means, what constitutes professional knowledge and how sociopolitical, institutional, interpersonal and individual factors can influence the ability to apply such knowledge effectively. The book also offers a new, holistic conceptualization of professional projects as complex, multifaceted processes, and offers suggestions of how this conceptualization might be used to inform policy, practice and research in professionalism in education and other areas of public service. In these ways it is hoped that the book will serve not only as a resource for those with an interest in school leadership, schools as organizations or school business management specifically, but also as a means of developing systematic understanding of the many factors involved in shaping the collective fates of occupational groupings more generally.

The Making of a New Profession: The Case Explained

3

Why the SBM case? The unit of analysis for the research is the professional project of school business managers (SBMs) in England since 2001, when an initiative was launched by the national government to put this occupational grouping on a firmer professional footing. Much of the data comes from SBMs and head teachers working in the primary phase of schooling where the deployment of specialist SBM expertise is much newer and less widespread than in secondary schools. The case stands as an example of a policy-supported professional project targeting associate staff in the public sector, of the kind that are currently underway across a range of public service areas and in different national contexts. The SBM project offers a unique opportunity to develop understanding of the progress of a professional project. First, it commenced within recent memory, so the perspectives of key participants in the project could be captured via interview. Second, the imposition of punishing policy timescales meant that many of the processes involved in achieving occupational recognition were evident in microcosm within a relatively short timeframe, rather than lost or diluted with the passage of time. Third, it is increasingly acknowledged that the processes of globalization mean that government policy can only really be understood from an international perspective. The international reach of the professionalization project described here make it a particularly worthy candidate for study. Fourth, policies in one area of public service are everywhere mirrored in other branches of the sector, and it is expected that the insights developed will have strong resonances with parallel projects in other areas of provision, such as health and policing. Though the focus of this book is on the period since 2001, it should be acknowledged that schools, especially in the secondary phase, have long employed staff to deal with administrative and financial work. However, there are significant challenges in tracing the development of the SBM function in England. The first is the fact that the ‘modern-day’ SBM, and their predecessors, in common with other education administrative and support staff remain almost entirely absent from academic accounts of school life (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a). Second, the SBM function is highly variable and difficult to describe or study in a systematic way. Yet schools are increasingly run along business lines, with very significant sums of money to manage as autonomous entities. The sums involved are staggering, with Starr (2012a) estimating that ‘education takes approximately one third of government budgets in most advanced societies’ (p. 14). Every educational decision has financial implications and the amount schools spend

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on each of their pupils varies widely. In a bid by ministers to encourage efficiency and wider scrutiny, details of individual school expenditure per pupil were made public for the first time in England in 2011, alongside school league tables. In these circumstances, and in the context of recession, the business management function in schools is of singular significance. It is possible to propose various reasons why SBMs have occasioned so little scholarly interest. First, conversations with SBMs internationally, and the evidence presented in this book, suggest that politicians have not fully understood the implications for school business management practice of the relentless drive towards school autonomy. Given the speed at which policy is implemented, research inevitably lags behind. Under the circumstances, it is unsurprising that the academic community perhaps have not fully grasped the significance of what is taking place either. Second, research has identified leadership and teaching and learning as being fundamental in ensuring high-quality educational outcomes. It is therefore entirely appropriate that both policy and research attention should focus primarily on these two areas. Nonetheless, regardless of the educational expertise available, schools, as any organizations, will only be maximally effective if resources are well managed. As schools become ever more autonomous in managing their own affairs, the way in which educational and business thinking integrate in delivering state schooling is therefore of fundamental significance. Third, it is highly probable that many people, academics included, see SBMs as form-fillers, who undertake work which is dull and largely irrelevant to the main purpose of schools. This picture is a very far cry from the one that emerges in the chapters that follow. Many of the SBMs interviewed were passionate about their work, enjoying its frenetic pace, extraordinary variety, and the strong sense of satisfaction in contributing to the education of children, much as a teacher would. Fourth, it is perhaps possible that, because of the words ‘business’ and ‘management’ in their job title, the SBM role will forever be tainted by association with ‘everything that is wrong with education’ in the minds of some among the academic community. Whatever the reasons, the academy’s focus on lead professionals to the exclusion of others seems at the very least inconsistent with its role in giving voice to marginalized groups. At worst, it indicates a lack of awareness of the realities of modern schooling that reduces the potential value of the contribution of education research and scholarship in shaping its future. A further serious consequence is that it reinforces the idea that lead professionals alone carry responsibility for the quality of public service provision, piling yet more pressure onto what can already be challenging working lives.

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5

This book will attempt to demonstrate that the SBM role, and by implication the role of the support staff in schools and other public service institutions, has been marginalized and rendered invisible in education scholarship long enough. The evidence presented in this book indicates that SBMs are, by and large, a group with a strong commitment to education and who possess expertise that is essential to the functioning of the contemporary school. Further, in contrast to their education colleagues, SBMs are typically socialized to ‘speak the language’ of business and policy and are therefore able to make proposals and voice arguments in ways that policy actors find persuasive. Their actual and potential contribution to schooling is immense but largely unacknowledged by the academic community. Education professionals have had limited success in countering the damaging effects of education reforms in recent decades. However, the policy drive towards autonomy may yet provide an opportunity. As academy chains, school clusters and other kinds of school grouping become increasingly widespread, working together and pooling their complimentary expertise, educational leaders and SBMs speaking with one voice could be a real force to be reckoned with in resisting and influencing future policy developments. Rather than continuing to place a narrow focus on educators as the lead professionals in schools, what are urgently required are new, more inclusive and more interdependent versions of what professionalism in the service of the public means today.

A few words on terminology In this introductory chapter, it is necessary to clarify the use of certain words and phrases. First, this section provides a brief gloss of the terms used in the book’s title to establish some of the key ideas and assumptions that underpin the work. Second, it identifies the labels to be adopted throughout to denote roles and entities that have either changed their names over the course of the project, or those that differ with national context. The title begins with the word ‘anatomy’, here understood as ‘the dissection or dividing up of anything . . . for the purpose of examining its parts; detailed examination, analysis’ (OED 2013). Based on a theoretical model of what a professional project consists of, and through examining evidence from key actors in that project, the book offers an in-depth and original analysis of one instance of the phenomenon. The second phrase in the title, ‘professionalization project’, conveys the common idea in the professionalism literature of an occupation

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engaged in a process over time, a project whereby members strive for a position of respect and influence and to be seen as worthy of the label ‘professional’. The next term, ‘making’, emphasizes the idea of ‘creation’. Unlike longestablished occupations, which are assumed to have been in the driving seat on their journeys towards professional recognition, the professional status achieved to date by those working in school business management in England was spearheaded by the state. Though undoubtedly accomplished through the collective efforts of individual practitioners, the SBM profession as it exists today was, in this sense, ‘made’ or ‘created’ by government. As the next term in the title suggests, professional projects are essentially ‘modernizing’, pertaining to the ‘progressive differentiation and rationalization of the division of labour in industrial societies’ with the progress of science and technology (Larson 1977, p. xiii). The SBM project is no exception, being born of sweeping reforms of the education workforce set in train under New Labour (Butt and Gunter 2007; Woods 2009) and part of a trajectory of ‘high modernism’ or ‘hyperinnovation’ throughout the Thatcher-Major-Blair administrations (Pollit 2007). The SBM role as characterized by the New Labour project is a distinct departure from its progenitors (finance officer, bursar, administrative assistant, secretary and so on), and is one tailor-made for the ‘modern’ school context in all its multifarious guises. As the main focus of the book, the next phrase of the title, ‘School Business Manager’, will not be explained at length here. However, one aspect of the role that is important to emphasize at this point is that it involves applying knowledge in public service and thus has something in common with employees with business management functions in other public institutions. As distinctions between public and private become ever less clear cut, the idea of ‘publicness’ becomes increasingly hard to define. It can also sit uneasily with discussion of business management for some within the education community. Nonetheless, ‘publicness’ and ‘public service’ are central themes throughout the book. ‘Publicness’ is here understood as a commodity that must be guarded vigilantly and reinforced as a first line of defence against the worst excesses of businessoriented changes to the objectives, structures and norms traditionally associated with public service (Haque 2001). There has been an explosion of management knowledge since the late 1970s, and the swelling ranks of ‘the management reform community’ may in large part explain the pace and reach of management-oriented changes within the public sector internationally (Pollit 2007). It is interesting that education is ahead of the game in England in turning attention to the professionalization of its managers

The Making of a New Profession: The Case Explained

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at the organizational level. As signalled in the next chapter, the need for action on the professional development of hospital managers became a matter of policy concern only in 2013. The same year also saw the launch of National Police College, though their immediate focus is on the training and accreditation of police officers. Given this burgeoning policy interest in professionalization, this study may offer a useful point of comparison for the professional projects of management colleagues in other public service areas. Because the names of entities and preferred labels for concepts and groupings change routinely in academic and policy circles, it is useful to clarify some of the terms to be used in the remainder of the book. First, the titles of individuals executing business management functions within schools vary enormously with national context and have evolved over time. The term School Business Manager (SBM) is therefore adopted for the sake of simplicity unless a specific title is required. The title held by the lead educator in schools also varies. Though ‘principal’ is becoming more common, ‘headteacher’ is still the most usual title in England. ‘Headteacher’ is also the term that most commonly appears in quotations from interviewees, and is therefore the one adopted here. The government department responsible for schools has changed several times since 2001. For the sake of convenience ‘the Department’ will be employed throughout as shorthand, unless the full name is required. Second, The National College was launched under New Labour as the National College for School Leadership with, according to their website at the time, ‘the aim of delivering leadership development programmes for school personnel, providing support and resources for school leaders and acting as a stimulus for research, innovation and debate’. It has undergone several changes in terms of title and remit since then and under the current administration it has been formally recognized as the training arm of the Department. For the interested reader, details of its origins and early history can be found in a dedicated issue of the journal Educational Management Administration and Leadership (Bush 2004). The College was merged with the Teaching Agency in April 2013 to become the National College for Teaching and Leadership. Henceforth, it will be referred to as the National College or simply the College. This chapter continues with brief background on the origins of the Government’s SBM professionalization initiatives, which lay in the significant sociopolitical changes that preceded its launch. It then outlines the understanding of professionalism that underpins the research, sets out the book’s purposes and ends by charting the structure of the remainder of the book.

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Anatomy of a Professionalization Project

Origins of the SBM project Since 2001 the English government has invested significantly in a systematic national programme of ‘professionalization’ of school business management staff coordinated by the National College. Prior to this, the label ‘school business manager’ was rarely used, with very different duties being carried out by colleagues in different schools, with a variety of titles (bursar, administrative officer, finance officer, school secretary, etc.) and highly variable levels of responsibility and remuneration (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a; Woods 2009). But this begs the question of what lay behind this major policy initiative. Changes in the public sector internationally over the last three decades or so have sharpened the need for business acumen in public sector organizations. The economic reforms that came to prominence in the Reagan-Thatcher era of the 1980s embedded within the public realm practices formerly associated with for-profit organizations. Increasingly schools, hospitals and other public organizations were required to behave more like businesses and to compete with one another for ‘customers’. This trend, alongside increased public expectations about service quality, advances in technology and the tendency for responsibility for decision-making in key areas to rest with individual organizations rather than regional authorities, has had very dramatic impacts on the type of work that goes on in these organizations and on the professional lives of those involved in it. The purpose of this book is not to debate impact of neoliberal reforms on established professions. That territory has already been extensively explored in education scholarship and in other public services (Dent 2006; Farrell and Morris 2003; Gray 1991; W. M. Sullivan 2005). Rather, it seeks (i) to reveal what is involved in developing new kinds of professionals to help meet the multiple challenges faced by public sector institutions, and, from these, (ii) to develop empirically, and theoretically derived understandings of professional projects more broadly. A report by management consultants in 2001 indicated a lack of administrative and financial support for head teachers endeavouring to run schools along business lines, which required skills and knowledge that fell outside the professional roles for which they were originally trained (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001). Just as with physicians, poor recruitment and retention rates for teachers and head teachers became a matter of concern. In 2001, the then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, Estelle Morris, announced a commitment by central government to train a thousand experts in finance and administration

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to support head teachers, and so the SBM professionalization process was born. There is now a clear professional development framework in place for SBMs, with accredited training programmes at three levels offered nationally, and the title of ‘SBM’ is much more commonly in use. More than a decade on, the time is right to examine this professionalization process from the perspectives of those most close to it – school business managers themselves, their colleagues and the policymakers leading the project – and to draw lessons for other public sector professional groupings internationally facing similar challenges.

The public sector professional As public services have been re-imagined along business lines, so have the working lives of professionals working within them. There has therefore been a growth in scholarship in the area of professionalism during this period. Theorists define and analyse the construct in different ways but common elements in traditional conceptualizations of professionalism include the ideas that (i) professionalism implies mastery of a specific body of specialist knowledge and skill, which is applied in ways that involve high levels of discretion, (ii) practice serves the common good, rather than narrow personal or group interests and (iii) the profession itself regulates and controls accreditation and entry with the support of the state. Yet authors argue that this nostalgic view of professionalism no longer pertains and have adopted various prefixes to describe and analyse the kinds of change that have taken place in the working lives of professionals, such as de- and re-professionalization, and have proposed new versions of professionalism to replace traditional understandings of the term: (e.g. post-, entrepreneurial- and activist- professionalism) (Castellani and Hafferty 2006; Hargreaves 2000, 2013; Seddon, Ozga and Levin 2013; Whitty 2008). Authors writing within the sociology of the profession have distinguished professionalism from bureaucracy and the market as a distinct way of viewing how work is organized (Fournier 2000; Freidson 2001; Larson 1977). Freidson (2001) sees these three as distinct ‘logics’ that are in competition with one another. ‘Logics’ refer to belief systems and related practices and are important because they are the taken-for-granted rules that guide behaviour. Competing logics can create countervailing determinants of power and bring rivalry to the fore (Reay and Hinings 2009). The logic guiding the behaviour of the ‘ideal’ professional means that they work as much for the satisfaction of doing their work well as

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for earning a good living, and are keen to extend their knowledge both for its intrinsic value and to enhance their ability to serve the needs of others. The logic of consumerism implies that workers wish to maximize their income, with satisfaction coming mainly from consumption of goods and commodities in leisure time. The bureaucratic logic assumes the worker desires to keep their job, or enhance their prospects, and will deploy their knowledge and skill flexibly to further organizational goals to these ends. In order to be successful in shaping the way work is organized and conducted, Freidson argues, professionalism must compete with the two alternative logics. These three logics are, of course, intellectual constructs for thinking about ideological positions, rather than reflections of real people working in real organizations. Nonetheless, they are useful analytic tools for thinking about competing values and understandings that can be highly significant for professional life. The evidence presented in the chapters that follow leads me to conclude that, far from becoming irrelevant, the public service orientation underpinning traditional views of professionalism need to be reinforced vigorously. Soul-searching and re-examination of professional ethics has been a feature of medical professionalism in recent times (W. M. Sullivan 2005; Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008). As schools function increasingly autonomously, high-profile cases of financial impropriety or mismanagement, and other lapses in school leadership, indicate the dangers of schools functioning as individual legal entities. The rules of the marketplace, or an overstretched group of bureaucrats in Whitehall, cannot be relied on to ensure propriety and educational quality. The public service orientation and commitment that are hallmarks of professionalism are needed more than ever.

Aims and scope The aims of the book are fourfold, the first purpose being an empirical one. Work on professionalism is frequently theoretically derived, rather than drawing on original data. Further, some of the literature on professionalism in general, or on the professional lives of particular occupational groupings, appears to be somewhat ideologically driven, rather than proffered in the spirit of balanced analysis. For example, much of the available literature relevant to recent changes in the working lives of education professionals has either been produced by policymakers, or those who work closely with them, or has been the work of authors who are avowedly critical of government and the ‘neoliberal turn’ in

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public sector policy-making. In contrast, this book attempts to stand back and consider the evidence from a less partial perspective, where possible relying on the testimony of those speaking from recent professional experience. Social institutions, such as professional groups, are in a sense, illusory. What is real within them are the people, their relationships with one another and the tasks they perform on a day-to-day basis in discharging their duties (Crook 2008; Leach 2006). Interview data are therefore of prime importance in the study, and these are sometimes quoted at length to better capture the perspectives of key actors in their own words. The unit of analysis in the research is the policy-led professional project of SBMs in England from its commencement following the announcement by the Secretary of State to the present. As the data presented illustrate, this project represents a significant investment by government at an important moment in the Globalised Education Reform Movement (GERM) (Hargreaves 2013), and therefore captures something of historical significance. Though people with a wide range of experience and qualifications have long been supporting the financial and administrative aspects of schooling, the focus here is on the activities coordinated by the National College as the entity charged with leading the project when initiated by Government. Thinking has been informed by original data collected via a series of research projects conducted since the earliest days of the National College’s SBM work. However, direct quotations are drawn primarily from recent interview testimony. This includes significant contributions from Trevor Summerson, the civil servant who directed the SBM project at the College, and from Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State responsible for its launch. A substantial proportion of verbatim quotations are from outstanding leaders and networkers internationally who act as advocates for their profession. Their testimony was particularly valuable in revealing recent historical developments, current factors influencing the professional project and capturing insights about future priorities. Interviewees were not uncritical of the education policy but the nature of their concerns was different from those of educators and provides valuable insights from those living and working with the consequences of reform on a day-to-day basis. They are people who know the realities inside out. The bulk of the data concerns the SBM professional project in England. However, the international reach of the College’s work allowed for conversations with leading SBMs that they have worked with in other countries: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. Interviews were also conducted with expert informants to provide a background on recent and forthcoming

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professionalization initiatives targeted at public sector employees in health and law enforcement. The principal sources drawn on are explained chapter by chapter but an overview of the evidence the book is built upon is provided in Appendix I. This book enters highly politicized territory, and it is therefore important to acknowledge my own stance in relation to the SBM project in the hope that my purpose will not be misconstrued. I have acted as lead researcher on a number of projects to evaluate the National College’s SBM programmes and have analysed data from a very large number of SBMs, head teachers and others with an interest in the project over the years. It is also the case, as indicated above, that the testimony of those who have led or who are at least supportive of the project has been significant in shaping my thinking. It is therefore fair to say that I have some sympathy with the SBM perspective. However, having no direct professional experience of state schooling my position is different than that of Starr, a former school principal and as a self-confessed ‘fan’ of SBMs (Starr 2012a, p. vi); or of Keating and Moorcroft (2006) and O’Sullivan et al. (2000), whose combined professional backgrounds include both direct experience of SBM practice and of SBM professional development. In collecting and analysing the data in this book, I have sought to maintain a detached stance and to distance myself both from uncritical, policy-oriented, promotional discourse and from ideologically driven anti-business polemic. That is not to say that the book does not take a critical approach. Questions of power and status are everpresent in the data. These include questions about the political forces that shape the professional project; the types of knowledge and skill deemed appropriate for SBMs in training; about disparities in pay and status between SBMs; and about boundaries between the work of SBMs and the teaching professionals in their schools. The second purpose of the book is conceptual. A common complaint among authors writing about policy implementation or enactment is that any such work is typically almost out of date before it is published due to the rapidity with which policy change happens (Ball 2012; Flood 2003). A theoretically based analysis, rather than one aimed merely at providing a record of events, was considered essential in enabling this work to make a more lasting contribution. The book adopts a broad perspective on the professional project that is distinctive in a number of respects. First, the increasingly global flavour of policy-making underscored the importance of going beyond the nation state in researching this book (Ball 2012). An international dimension was therefore included both in conducting the research and in developing new conceptualizations. Second,

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much published work on professionalism tends to appear in specialist journals, meaning that viewpoints from different professions are rarely juxtaposed (Connell et al. 2009). To counter this, ideas on professionalism within health and policing were also accessed. Third, the interest of sociologists lies mainly with society and institutions. What is distinctive about the conceptualization of the professional project arising from this research is the significant focus on the key role played by individuals, both members of the profession and political and policy actors, in the project’s progress. The third purpose is a practical one arising from the theoretical contribution. It is hoped that in presenting a broad conceptualization of a professional project, the book may bring the field of education to the attention of sociologists working in other areas of public sector professionalism. Meanwhile, for those whose primary concern is education, adopting professionalism as the theoretical standpoint provides an alternative perspective to those most commonly in use in academic examinations of schooling. In scholarship on how schools function as organizations, the first two of Freidson’s logics reign supreme in academic thinking: leadership and management (i.e. bureaucracy) or, in the case of critiques of business and market-led reforms, consumerism. Taking professionalism as the starting point, especially when applied to a grouping that tend to be excluded from the professional club by virtue of their techno-bureaucratic role, I hope will enable education scholars to think about professionalism in schools with new eyes and in ways that are fresh, more inclusive and perhaps are more reflective of the realities of schooling. The fourth purpose of the book links strongly to the others and is, in essence, exhortatory. School support colleagues, and their counterparts in other public sector organizations, have grown in number very significantly in recent decades, with support staff outnumbering teaching colleagues in some contexts. Yet the part they play in public service outcomes tends to pass largely unremarked by the media, the general public and the academy. Within reportage of public services in the news media, celebration and condemnation alike have typically been reserved for members of more established occupational groupings, such as teachers, physicians and police officers, who are also everywhere depicted in the popular iconography of heroes and villains on both the large and small screen. Protagonists in these screen dramas, whether lawyers saving the world from corporate corruption, police officers working tirelessly and heroically to keep the civilian population safe, or teachers reigniting a love of learning among their students through inspirational educational experiences, appear largely unimpeded by paperwork, or the constraints of budgetary or health and safety

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considerations. Granted, form filling does not have strong dramatic potential, but it has long been part and parcel of professional life. The fixation of the academic community on more established, lead professions helps perpetuate a skewed picture of working life in the public sector. It also does a disservice to the army of other types of workers involved in delivering public services. While those professionals who might genuinely be considered to occupy an elite status have become fewer and fewer, and the nature of professional work has become increasingly routinized and proscribed, the role of other kinds of workers has become ever more significant in the provision of public services. In contrast, despite the ‘Cinderella’ status often afforded support staff elsewhere, policy attention in this area has been little short of feverish in some contexts. In the United Kingdom alone, recent developments include professionalization programmes for nine groups of health, with others on the way (Timmons 2010), and formalized training for support colleagues in education and community care (Dalli et al. 2012; Malin 2000; Whitty 2008). It might be argued that the academic community has a responsibility to give voice to those occupational groupings whose perspective is seldom heard. Further, in focusing attention almost exclusively on just one portion of the workforce, research becomes increasingly remote from the realities of working life in public sector institutions and therefore less relevant to it. In this sense, scholarship is lagging behind. The activities of other kinds of workers in supporting the whole edifice of the public sector have taken place outside the sphere of mainstream academic attention for too long. In the interests of developing world-class public services, new ways of thinking are needed that better reflect how such services are provided in practice.

Map of the book To follow this introductory chapter, Part 1 provides a sketch of the historical and conceptual territory for the project. Chapter 2 responds to the question of what brought about the government-led SBM professionalization activity. It sets the project within the context of the global economy and international public sector reforms, identifying characteristics of such reforms with particular relevance to the SBM professional project: transnationalism; privatization and the profit motive; decentralization and control; accountability and audit; and workforce reform. Chapter 3 asks what conceptual underpinnings seem

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most relevant to the SBM professional project. It presents theory from the sociology of professionalism, such as the nature of professional knowledge and expertise, credentialism and the negotiation of jurisdiction. It draws especially the work of Freidson in juxtaposing the logic of professionalism against those of managerialism and consumerism in understanding how work is organized. Part 2 is the first of three empirical sections and provides data that paint a picture of the National College’s SBM professionalization activity from various perspectives. Employing mainly documentary sources, Chapter 4 seeks to reveal what the professionalization project involved in practice and offers an overview of the professionalization initiatives co-ordinated by the National College. It illustrates the scale of what was involved, the types of activities undertaken and what can be achieved when political will is galvanized. Chapter 5, addresses the question of what characterizes SBM specialist expertise. First it distinguishes different kinds of knowledge and skill and then uses published matrices of professional competencies to examine the nature of the professional expertise of the SBM envisaged within the project, contrasting it with that of the lead educational professional in schools: the head teacher. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Chapter 6 considers how the professionalization process has shaped SBMs’ career attitudes and prospects. It discusses the SBM career as the concrete realization of the professional project, and the role of professional credentials within this. The third part of the book deals with the way professional expertise is applied in the workplace. Chapter 7 examines what lessons can be learnt from the perspectives of individual SBMs on their professional role, their attitudes to working life and the personal qualities, orientations and commitments they bring to bear in applying their specialist knowledge and skill. Chapter 8 examines how SBMs’ working relationships with the lead professionals in their schools shape their ability to apply their specialist knowledge effectively. Head teacher understandings of and support for the SBM role; how jurisdiction is negotiated day to day; and the degree of discretion SBMs are allowed to exercise, are all revealed to be highly variable and fundamental to SBM effectiveness, with major implications for how the two complimentary roles might be conceived. Chapter 9 explores the relevance of institutional arrangements for the SBM professional project. Specifically, it discusses data in relation to two organizational forms that have been strongly promoted by the English government, and the implications of which have been particularly significant for SBM practice: academies and primary partnerships.

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Part 4 is the final empirical section and deals with professionalism as a political process. Chapter 10 presents testimony from six actors who have played leading roles in the SBM professional project in different national contexts where the National College’s SBM activity has been influential: Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State responsible for the announcement that launched the SBM project; Trevor Summerson, who directed SBM work for the College; Linda Lee and Mary Monaghan in Australia, Val Wenham in New Zealand and David Ginsberg in South Africa. Chapter 11 looks at the centrality of the art of politics and the significance of political support for the fortunes of occupational groupings, and identifies future political priorities for the SBM project as evidenced in the testimony of its political and professional leaders in England and the United States. The final chapter offers an original, multidimensional conceptualization of a professional project derived from the research findings, and maps out implications for those with an interest in the public sector professionalism, from a research, policy or practice perspective.

Part One

Politics and the Professional Project This section locates the SBM professional project, and the research reported in this book, within the recent historical context of public sector reforms internationally, and within conceptual work around the idea of professionalism and what being a ‘professional’ means. Chapter 2 offers a brief, critical overview of the reform of public services within Western-style democracies over the last two to three decades, outlining key ideas such as globalization, neoliberalism and marketization. It identifies central themes that are particularly relevant to the development of the School Business Manager professional project, and to parallel projects in other public services: transnationalism; privatization; decentralization and autonomy; accountability and audit; and workforce reform. Chapter 3 draws principally on sociological work on professionalism in presenting ideas that will be used in the book to examine the case of the SBM project, and to enable links to be made to the projects of other occupational groupings. The notion of the professional project adopted is that of an ongoing, inherently political process, the fortunes of which will wax and wane over time with shifting ‘ideological winds’ (Freidson 2001). Common understandings of professional work in the service of the public are presented and discussed. Concepts central to the research are identified and explained, such as the nature of professional knowledge; the place of professional credentials in the labour market; discretionary judgement and the negotiation of professional jurisdictions.

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The School Business Manager Project in the Context of Public Sector Reform

This chapter employs academic literature to explain how the origins of the policy-led SBM professional project, and the professionalization of other kinds of public sector associate staff, can be traced to international reforms of public services in recent decades. The chapter does not attempt to offer comprehensive coverage of what is a very extensive literature. Instead, it tries to ensure relevance to a readership with a variety of backgrounds and interests by drawing on selected texts on public service policy and management in general, and from literature in education, health and policing reforms viewed internationally. The upheavals that have shaken public sector institutions, and brought to prominence SBMs and their counterparts in other public services, cannot be understood without reference to the global forces that have brought these changes about. As the chapter illustrates, political ideology is never far from the surface in thinking about professionalism. Also central to discussions of professionalism, is the idea of ‘publicness’, or what distinguishes public institutions from private enterprise, a theme introduced in this chapter and returned to frequently in those that follow. The chapter begins with a brief background on ‘neoliberalism’, defined as ‘a theory of political economic practices’ Harvey (2005, p. 2), that is widely understood to have shaped government thinking internationally since the late 1970s. It will then identify concepts and themes in contemporary public management literature relevant to public sector organizations, including the widespread adoption of practices previously associated with the commercial sector within public services, and the shifting balance of funding and control from public to private institutions. The themes presented are: trans-nationalism; privatization; decentralization and autonomy; accountability and audit; and workforce reform.

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Going global Trade liberalization since World War II and technological developments, especially the digital revolution that began towards the end of the twentieth century, have enabled the flowering of interrelationships internationally in ways that have transformed human existence. Our collective fates are interconnected as never before, with political, social, economic, environmental and cultural changes with origins in one country typically being felt well beyond national borders, and crises increasingly being viewed in international terms. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as ‘globalization’, can be defined and understood in different ways but Eliassen and Sitter (2008) capture its essence as ‘a process driven by technology and ideology in which geographical distance becomes irrelevant for cultural and economic relations’ (p. 17). This chapter will attempt to explain how, as it gathered speed in the 1980s and 1990s, the globalization process had far-reaching consequences for public services internationally, and for those who work within them. According to Eliassen and Sitter (2008), the expanding welfare states of the liberal democracies in the 1970s, alongside a global economic downturn, posed challenges that stimulated international reforms with the aim of reducing the reach of the state and at making it function better. In parallel, a more liberal economic stance was emerging internationally. Initiated in the United Kingdom and the United States early in the 1980s, it was soon in evidence in the (then) European Economic Community in Western Europe and was adopted by the former communist parties in East Central Europe after the collapse of communism in 1989. In developing public services, nation states must wrestle with two highly contested questions: (i) How far should the state go in providing public infrastructure and services? and (ii) What legitimates state intervention in the market? In balancing these two questions, Western liberal democracies fall at different points on a continuum between, on the left, the Keynesian argument for significant state intervention and welfare and, on the right, Hayak’s idea that state intervention in the market poses limits to individual freedom. Thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s, referred to as the New Right, challenged traditional models of ‘big government’, by drawing on public choice theories within which individuals are seen as rational actors pursuing their own interests. Consistent with the New Right’s way of thinking, one market-led set of principles guiding political and economic thought – ‘neoliberalism’ – was a hallmark of political activity in the early stages of globalization and is a term often employed in discussion of economic and public sector reform. According

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to Harvey (2005) neoliberalism rests on the assumption that human flourishing will be furthered where individuals are at liberty to exercise their talents and entrepreneurial flair with minimal state intervention. From this standpoint, the role of government is to develop structures that allow free trade and the market to function untrammelled, where necessary creating markets where none exist. Harvey identifies the period 1978–80 as the turning point in the social and economic history of the world when neoliberalism was born as a global force. It began in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping’s first steps in transforming the most populous nation on earth from communist economy to a powerhouse of capitalism and economic growth. Elected in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Paul Volker as head of the US Federal Reserve both adopted the obscure doctrine of neoliberalism as a guide in managing the economy, proposals supported by Ronald Reagan when elected president in 1980. Harvey (2005) catalogues neoliberalism’s pervasive effects on public sector institutions and human relationships internationally. In valuing market exchange as a guide to human action, neoliberalism ‘emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in the marketplace’ and ‘holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions’, seeking ‘to bring all human action into the domain of the market’ (p. 3). Harvey’s work underlines the significant role of academics and government advisors as spokespeople for neoliberal ways of thinking. In occupying positions of power in key national and international organizations (e.g. the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), these individuals have helped to cement neoliberal language firmly within global discourse about the economy. In Harvey’s analysis, the consequences of the global dominance of this way of talking about how economics works, have been far-reaching and include ‘creative destruction’ of institutional structures and powers ‘divisions of labour, social relations, welfare provisions, . . . ways of life and thought, . . . attachments to the land and habits of the heart’ (p. 3). The pervasiveness of marketing assumptions and practices within daily life has, in Harvey’s account, resulted in the incorporation of neoliberalist ideas in ‘the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in and understand the world’ (p. 3). The tone of Harvey’s language underscores the highly charged nature of debate around the economically driven reforms of the public sector, fuelled by commitments to very different ideologies based on opposing understandings of how human affairs and relations should operate. Whether or not Harvey’s account of the adverse effects of neoliberal reforms is accepted, there can be little

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doubt that the economic analyses using public choice theory promoted by the New Right mounted a considerable challenge to pluralist theories of state and generated debate on public policy at both ends of the political spectrum. In the reading of Eliassen and Sitter (2008), this challenge contributed to the renewal of centre-left policies, and helped ensure that the urgent questions for centre-right and centre-left governments alike became how to make market liberalization and public sector modernization work. Hartley and Skelcher (2008) consider that, following a period of criticism, devaluing, privatization and disinvestment generated by the rise in neoliberal ideologies in the 1980s and 1990s, a more refined version of neoliberalism has emerged that recognizes the importance of state and public services in ensuring social and economic stability but which relies on a new coalition between business and public sector actors.

Public management reform Hartley and Skelcher (2008) argue that public services are of singular significance for nation states for various reasons, not least their sheer scale and because of their contribution to national competitiveness. Though writing prior to the Lehman Brothers’ collapse that precipitated global economic crisis, despite neoliberal reforms, they cite data revealing that in 2000 government spending accounted for 37 per cent of GDP across OECD countries, rising to 45 per cent in the United Kingdom by 2005. As well as providing direct employment for a significant proportion of the workforce in developed economies, public services increasingly provide employment on a contracted-out basis through partnerships with the private and voluntary sectors. In addition to providing goods such as education, health, pensions and welfare benefits, the public sector is also involved in managing infrastructure such as roads, transport, training, systems of regulation and inspection and so forth that support economic and social progress and the integrity of the state. In light of the scale and scope of the public sector, it is not surprising that the literature on public service reform is extensive. Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) offer a placeholder definition of public sector reform as ‘deliberate changes to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective of getting them (in some sense) to run better’ (p. 8). In their analysis, reasons for reform include the following: making savings in public expenditure; making government more efficient, or policy implementation more effective; strengthening political

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control of bureaucracy; liberating public officials from managerial constraint and enhancing accountability to public citizens. However, Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) also remind us that alongside these purposes, personal ambition may be a factor in the reform process as reforms are also undertaken because they confer ‘symbolic and legitimacy benefits’ (p. 6) for politicians and their mandarins. In an age where national governments are increasingly constrained by local, national and international factors, spearheading strategies for improving public administration is one means of demonstrating that something significant is ‘being done’ and in ways that will bring about visible, describable and measurable changes. While in no way suggesting that the SBM professional project was driven by personal ambition, the data presented in Part 4 is unusual in offering an insight into the role of individual agency and commitment in the progress of a reform initiative. But beyond the part played by political and personal ambition, there are other reasons why public sector reform initiatives warrant critical scrutiny. Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) offer a clinical dissection of the phrase ‘public management reform’. The first term of the phrase invites a consideration of what distinguishes public from private sector organizations as boundaries between the two have become increasingly blurred. The wholesale application of market principles and practices to public service organizations can be questioned on the grounds that the public and private sectors differ in important respects (Haque 2001; Hartley and Skelcher 2008). These include the fact that private organizations may be in a position to target a particular segment of the market, or, if providing services on behalf of the public sector, are free to exit from their contract. Public organizations in contrast are obliged to provide services to anyone who is eligible for them and may have additional obligations to ensure unwilling members of the public conform to requirements such as planning regulations, environmental health, demands of the criminal justice system etc. A second difference is that public organizations are controlled, directly or indirectly, by politicians elected to represent the population as a whole, both present and future generations. This feature, along with the fact that they are funded largely by the public purse, means such institutions can also be subject to extreme scrutiny and conflicts of over priorities among stakeholders with divergent needs and values. A third characteristic of public service organizations is that they are required to operate in ‘arenas of market failure’ (Hartley and Skelcher 2008, p. 8) in the face of highly complex, cross-cutting external challenges (aging population, unhealthy lifestyles, environmental problems, etc.). While the private sector may contribute

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to solutions to such problems, orchestrating an overall response rests firmly with the public sector. Finally, while private sector organizations are primarily concerned with questions of profit and market share, public services operate to provide broad social and economic benefits. Data obtained in a series of studies in relation to the SBM professional project in which I was involved up to 2010 (see Appendix I), indicated that the belief prevailed among some head teachers that education questions should be, as far as possible, free from the constraints of business aspects of schooling. Consistent with findings in other research, differences in professional culture and values between educational leaders and SBMs were revealed in this work to have significant implications for the ability of some business managers to deploy their expertise effectively in some schools (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a; Woods 2009). Questions of public service orientation and perceptions of the differences between the commercial and public sectors were therefore important to explore with research participants in the final round of data collection in 2013 and these matters were therefore rehearsed at interview. In their analysis of the phrase ‘public management reform’, Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) note that the ubiquity and apparent neutrality of the terms ‘management’ and ‘reform’ can disguise the fact that they are, instead, highly loaded, valueladen terms. Management is not merely a set of neutral technical practices, as it can begin to appear when routinely embedded within official discourse, but a process that is inseparable from its sociopolitical context. Hartley and Skelcher (2008) point out that administration shares semantic roots with ‘ministration, or service’ (p. 13). Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) discuss the gradual substitution of the term ‘administration’ by ‘management’ in the discourse. While in practice descriptions of these two functions will typically have much in common, this change in terminology does at least suggest a shift in style and emphasis (i) towards the generic processes of management, derived overwhelmingly from the commercial sector and focusing on the best use of resources in pursuit of objectives and (ii) away from the traditional understandings of administration, which, in addition to these processes, also encapsulate public service values, such as ‘democracy, accountability, equity and probity’ Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004, p. 9). The last 20–30 years have seen the increased use of generic management thinking and practices, largely derived from the commercial sector, within public administration systems internationally. Yet despite the skilful rhetoric of policymakers in selling the benefits of effective and efficient management practices

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for public sector organizations, responses to this incursion of business practices within state institutions vary from, at one extreme, (i) seeing such practices as the solution to the wide-ranging ills that can beset public administration systems to, at the other extreme, (ii) viewing commercial methods as having no legitimacy within the public services and (iii) all points in between these two positions. Larson draws an analytic distinction between (i) professional expertise, which is client-focused and employed in the service of the public and (ii) techno-bureaucratic expertise, which has a weaker client-orientation and is applied in furthering the aims of the organization. This latter type might be exemplified in the role of the hospital administrator, school superintendent in the United States, the school business manager in England, or senior professionals who assume technically bureaucratic positions, such as principals, deans or hospital consultant-managers (Larson 1977). Yet the position an individual adopts in relation to the legitimacy of management practices within their public sector organization will not depend solely on job title, with some autonomous professionals relatively favourably disposed towards them, and some in bureaucratic roles relatively sceptical of their benefits in securing the best quality outcomes. Though often understood in rather black and white terms, therefore, the question of individual orientation to business-inspired reform is a complex one. A more nuanced understanding requires that those who are actually involved in business management practice within the public sector are provided with opportunities for their voices to be heard. In continuing their analysis of the phrase ‘public management reform’, Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004) note that ‘reform’ implies ‘not just change but beneficial change – a deliberate move from a less desirable (past) state to a more desirable (future) state’ (p. 15). However, as Pollitt and Bouckaert argue, reforms involve compromises and contradictions. Improving performance against one objective can result in losses in other areas; reforms can produce unintended side effects or can fail to achieve the expected outcomes. Establishing the appropriate targets for change, and weighing the benefits and unfavourable consequences of reform, will inevitably involve judgements of relative value and worth between competing alternatives. Reform thus brings into play the values held by individual actors at different levels of the system: the politicians that introduce reforms, those involved in managing and delivering public services locally and the citizens that access them. Business managers in public sector organizations are apt to possess specialist expertise in generic and financial management and to have been socialized into a rather different set of professional values from

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the service-specific leaders they work alongside (Woods 2009). As the evidence presented in this book illustrates, this can present significant challenges for the working lives and practices of these two types of employees with profound implications for the organizations they run. So far this chapter has briefly set international reforms of public management that have taken place over the last 30 years or so within the context of the political and economic changes that helped shape them, and has provided a critical examination of the phrase ‘public management reform’. The following section will consider four significant cross-cutting trends common to public service developments internationally.

Common characteristics of reform Although authors identify features that distinguish the unique characteristics of public service provision within individual nation states, comparative analyses also identify universal themes in writing about public sector reform since the 1980s (Eliassen and Sitter 2008; Hartley and Skelcher 2008; McCourt 2001; Minogue 2001; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). This section will draw on five such themes, illustrated with evidence from education, health and policing. The themes identified are transnationalism; privatization; decentralization and autonomy; accountability and audit and workforce reform. They are dealt with separately in the interests of conceptual clarity, though in reality the different aspects of reform described are closely interrelated. Together they help explain how global trends have entailed the systematic development of expertise among a wide range of associate staff in public sector organizations, including SBMs.

Transnationalism Consistent with the trend towards globalization referred to earlier, authors point to a process of internationalization or trans-nationalization of public management reform. Free trade in goods and services, greater freedom of travel and digital communication mean that national borders have far less significance that they once did. As restrictions on movement and communication have decreased, so has the tendency for ideas and practices to spread rapidly, with questions of policy and governance being no exception. Indeed, organizations

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such as the Public Management Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been active in promoting the exchange of ideas in meeting contemporary challenges to public administrations. The global dimension of the SBM professionalization project is reflective of this trend. In some cases, the transfer of ideas and practices between countries has not been wholly positive. The exportation of ideas from the developed to the developing and transitional economies has a particularly chequered history, characterized by the ‘browbeating’ of developing and transitional economies by donors, consultants and academics. McCourt (2001, p. 220) and policies aimed at redirecting aid to promote particular models of statehood (Minogue 2001). Beyond the well-known and powerful transnational agencies and groups such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the OECD, Ball (2012) refers to less formal mechanisms for the diffusion of countervailing reform approaches. He describes the activities of transnational advocacy networks (TANS) defined as ‘fluid and open relationships among knowledgeable, committed actors’ (p. 12) spanning national boundaries, which exist to promote principled causes, ideas and values. Transnational trends can be seen within all major public services. Within education, as understandings of the world as marketplace have taken hold, so the imperative to compete economically on the world stage has become a growing preoccupation of nation-states within the global knowledge economy. The results of worldwide studies comparing student performance in key subjects are widely reported and are apt to be interpreted uncritically by the media and policymakers as markers of the effectiveness of education systems in producing an adequately skilled workforce. Examples of such studies include the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance on mathematics, science and reading. It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every 3 years. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement are similar studies. Similarly, Ham (2009) details the rapidly expanding bank of data allowing international comparisons of quality of health care and public health, with implications for how resources are targeted and priorities set. In similar vein, experts in law enforcement policy illustrate the trans-national nature of modern crime and policing (Henry and Smith 2007).

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Privatization As indicated above, an important strategy for reducing the scale of public services within developed economies has been to transfer activities from the state to the market. This has involved the dual processes of privatization, or ‘the transfer of assets from state to private ownership’ and liberalization, or ‘the introduction of competition to sectors that were previously dominated by a single or a few suppliers’ Eliassen and Sitter (2008, p. 55). This section deals with the first of these processes. The sections that follow discuss the impacts of the trend towards liberalization. Though often linked with the agenda of the New Right, Eliassen and Sitter argue that both processes were shaped as much by ‘practical concerns and political games’ (p. 56) as by ideology. One hallmark of public sector reforms over the last 30 or so years has been experimentation by the governments of developed economies with alternative forms of ownership such as privatization, semi-privatization and public ownership in the shape of independent agencies and trusts. In terms of independent agencies, the term Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB) is sometimes used in Britain to capture the wide range of quasi-government and quasi-non-government organizations that now exist. Shortly after taking power, the current administration conducted a review of over 900 bodies in spring/ summer 2010. Proposals published on 15 December 2011 confirmed the reform of approximately 500 public bodies, the abolition of over 200, more than 170 merged into fewer than 80, reducing the total number by approximately 300 www.gov.uk/public-bodies-reform. The National College lost its notionally independent status and became subsumed within the Department for Education as part of this process. Within this complex picture, distinctions between public and private ownership have become increasingly indistinct. Alongside the question of transfer of ownership of state assets, public sector reform has brought about changes in the financing of services, both in terms of who pays for them and who is allowed to charge users. A long-standing commentator and critic of the impacts of the changing economic landscape on state education, Ball (2007) examines the involvement of the private sector in the organization and delivery of state education. What Ball calls the ‘Education Services Industry’ was even then big business, in his analysis, perhaps marking the beginning of the end of state education in England. Johnston (2007) estimates that the private-to-public ratio of police in the United States might have been around 3 to 1 by 2000, with the UK ratio of almost two to one

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being not too dissimilar to that found in North America in the late 1980s. Though data are somewhat patchy, and national rates vary considerably, the evidence presented suggests significant levels of growth in private security personnel in policing across eastern and southern Europe, Asia and Africa. As with many of the commercial operations involved in education provision as described by Ball, Johnson notes that private security internationally was increasingly being provided by a small number of large transnational companies. Healthcare systems also typically involve a complex mixture of public and private sector activities. Gray (1991) asserts that although many private hospitals in the United States were built with government funds, and the idea of health care is still heavily imbued with the notion of public interest, in reality the part played by the US government in delivering health services is quite limited, with most individuals and organizations that provide medical services operating within the private, non-governmental sector. Gray, writing in 1991, notes that the nongovernmental sector in the United States accounted for the activities of about 95 per cent of all doctors, about 75 per cent of hospitals and most nursing, with more than 60 per cent of personal health services being privately financed, either through employment-based health benefits or through direct payment by the patient. Official figures for the United Kingdom in 2006 classify 87 per cent of total health expenditure in the United Kingdom as public compared with the OECD average of 73 per cent, though pressures such as the ageing population, the increase in chronic diseases and advances in medicine in the form of new drugs and forms of medical and surgical intervention are apt to lead to private expenditure increasing more sharply than public funding of the NHS (Ham 2009). The Academies Programme, referred to in the next section and elsewhere in this book, is consistent with the move towards privatization. Academies are schools that operate independently of the local authority and are managed financially along similar lines to private enterprises. All types of schools meanwhile are now encouraged to be entrepreneurial and to boost income by bidding for funding and raising money through activities such as renting premises and selling goods and services. The SBM has an important role to play in such activities. In essence, their role is derived from that of the Bursar, the individual who is traditionally responsible for a school’s finances in the private education sector in Britain. Decentralization, the next aspect of public sector reform considered in this section, in involving the delegation of budgetary control to individual institutions, made high-level financial skills an urgent priority for many schools.

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Decentralization and autonomy Decentralization has been a feature of contemporary welfare states in the developed economies, though models vary, as does the extent of this trend. One form of decentralization gives power to local government, while the second increases the autonomy of the individual institution, with centre-left government broadly speaking favouring local government and centre-right parties tending to allow greater power to the individual institution in delivering public services. According to Eliassen and Sitter (2008), the practice of giving a lump sum budget to municipalities for them to use at their own discretion has been an important cornerstone of local democracy and self-government in Scandinavia, though this freedom has been challenged by the tendency for politicians to assign many more tasks and services than the lump sums were designed for. Within Britain local control of public service delivery has decreased, with more power going to local institutions such as schools and hospitals. Higham and Earley (2013) provide an overview of how school autonomy has featured in education policy thinking in England, with its origins in the 1960s and 1970s. Their analysis indicates that there has been a pro-autonomy consensus among the leading political parties in recent decades, a viewpoint consistent with that of the civil servant who managed the SBM project cited later in the book, Trevor Summerson, who had the experience of working closely with both Labour and Coalition politicians during his tenure. The Academies Programme is a highly contested reform (Gunter 2011) and one that has accelerated significantly under the current Conservative–Liberal Democrat administration. Academies are analogous to charter schools in the United States and are publicly funded schools operating outside the control of the local authority. They are granted greater freedom than other state schools in how they manage their finances, the curriculum they follow, whether or not their educators are trained teachers and in the pay and conditions they are able to offer. They receive their funds directly from central government along with money for extra services, such as support for children with special needs, which was previously held by the local authority for distribution across all the schools in their jurisdiction. Similarly contentious are so-called ‘free schools’, the name given to schools set up by charities, religious and voluntary groups or groups of parents and teachers and that are funded along similar lines to academies. Given their responsibilities for financial management, the implications of academization for SBM practice are profound. As yet this is an aspect of academization that

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does not appear to have been examined by researchers, though the evidence in the data presented in this book, and especially in Chapter 9, suggests that the process can pose significant challenges. The drive towards the autonomy of public service organizations has given rise to a welter of complex regulatory frameworks. The replacement of collective control and accountability implemented through the democratic process in the post-war era, with individual control exercised through competition and market mechanisms, has proved to be a great challenge. Indeed, authors argue that the importance of developing alternative forms of control over price and quality has led to control mechanisms that are far more complex than the direct control exercised through state ownership (Eliassen and Sitter 2008, p. 134). Ironically, because institutions like schools and hospitals were developed within a system of state control, they are often ill-equipped to deal with the complex requirements of monitoring and regulation. This focus on regulations and targets can therefore serve to reduce the efficiency of public institutions. The large quantity and often poor quality, of information available to the individual in making choices about which school to send their child to, or which hospital to attend, have made the exercise of individual judgement, and therefore the market as a system of control, a far less effective mechanism than was anticipated. Meanwhile, (i) the complex frameworks and technologies set up to monitor and regulate public sector organizations functioning as autonomous entities and (ii) the requirement to produce performance data for the purposes of consumer comparison both had profound effects on the working lives of professionals. The demand for measuring and recording activity in public sector institutions increased exponentially. Professionals were being required to complete growing quantities of administrative work in ways that were widely perceived to be adversely impacting on workload and affecting their ability to devote adequate attention to their core professional duties.

Accountability and audit Centralized controls associated with autonomy have generated a significant increase in the focus on rules, regulations and targets within public sector organizations. According to Eliassen and Sitter (2008), it was Hood who first coined the now widely used term ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) to describe this phenomenon (De Vries and Nemec 2012). McCourt (2001) attributes to

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Pollitt the term ‘managerialism’ to describe the assumption that every political problem has a management solution, allowing for the uncritical and inappropriate importation of private sector models within public service provision, and the privileging of managers’ interests over those of other stakeholders. Many of the regulatory frameworks put in place to monitor and control public services are highly technical and require considerable specialist knowledge and skill, with health and safety procedures being a prime example in schools. Even where the introduction of a business-derived approach could be seen to offer benefits for an aspect of public service provision, therefore, it might also cause concern centrally that those implementing it will lack the necessary skills and ‘make a mess of it’ (author italics) Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004, p. 14). Indeed, with its emphasis on measuring the quality of services provided, the culture of audit and monitoring associated with NPM is suggestive of a lack of confidence in the competence of public sector employees, and has generated sustained and impassioned critiques, especially within health (Dent and Whitehead 2013) and education scholarship (Ball 2003; Deem 1998; Strathern 2000). As these authors plainly demonstrate, the exponential growth in paperwork, coupled with the sense of being mistrusted and under perpetual surveillance, were significant ways in which public sector reforms have profoundly altered the working lives of professionals. Alongside the culture of audit and surveillance, a second consequence of decentralization is a shift in the forms of accountability in operation. Paradoxically, a significant side effect of greater institutional autonomy reported in the literature, has been an increase in perceptions of constraint on professional freedom as a result of external accountability demands. Cranston (2013) contrasts external accountability in education, typically designed for external audiences and external purposes, with professional responsibility that goes beyond the ‘must do’ and the ‘need to’ but is internally driven and focuses on making positive changes for students. Higham and Earley (2013) note a number of important changes in the way accountability operates in schools. First, autonomy has been granted in areas such as financial and site management, while the traditional fields of professional autonomy for educators, such as curriculum and assessment, have been prescribed through standardized curriculum and testing. Second, the nature of accountability has changed with national inspection and published tests being introduced in 1992 and subsequently central target setting, intervention and oversight based on government analysis of pupil level data. Third, the operation of the quasi-market, creating incentives for schools to attract particular types of

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student, has intensified the importance of external accountability judgements and school league tables. Citing Simkins, Higham and Earley (2013) refer to the ‘balancing act’ that school leaders undertake in managing the competing pressures of local governance, parental choice and central control. In Simkins’ analysis, the role of educational leaders can sometimes more closely resemble ‘autonomy around the edges’, or power to lead on operational matters, rather than wielding what he calls ‘criteria power’, implying a genuine ability to shape the aims and purposes of a service.

Workforce reforms The changes in the working lives of public sector professionals indicated above have been associated with a loss of appeal in taking up such roles. For example, difficulties have been noted internationally in recruiting teachers and physicians and there is less enthusiasm on the part of qualified professionals to take up leadership posts (Whitaker 2003). As Butt and Gunter recount, questions of low teacher morale and high workload were important triggers for the reforms to the schools workforce of which the SBM professional project was a part. Common responses in tackling the shortage of qualified staff, and/or trying to meet the demands for quality services at reduced cost, have included (i) outsourcing through tendering of contracts for the delivery of public services by private sector companies; (ii) remodelling, whereby teachers delegate their duties to teaching assistants, head teachers to SBMs or physicians to nurses or paramedics and (iii) civilianization, such as the employment of non-sworn police officers in the form of community support officers (Butt and Gunter 2007) or the possibility for academies to employ nonqualified teachers. In this sense, these ‘new professionals’ in associate and lead roles might be understood as lying at the end point of the process of devolving down of decision-making from central or local government to the autonomous institution. A study into the deployment and impact of support staff differentiated seven areas in which school support staff work: teaching assistant equivalents, pupil welfare, technicians, other pupil support, facilities, administrative and site (Department for Children Schools and Families 2009). It is the last three of these areas with which the SBM role is most closely associated. Unlike in the United States, where specialist degrees in education, health and law enforcement management are commonplace, in the United Kingdom, the pursuing of such

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courses is rarer, though it is on the increase. In England, the schools sector appears to be unusual in having its own systematic, policy-driven specialist preparation for its business management staff. Within the NHS, unlike its medical staff, little is known about management colleagues, their educational backgrounds, work experience, roles and aspirations (Walshe and Smith 2011). Writers on health reform refer to the low status of hospital managers who are blamed for the poor state of the NHS, vilified from above and below and who are suffering from ‘a sense of helplessness and reform fatigue’ (Smith et al. 2001, p. 1262). Indeed one of the recommendations of the Francis report on the public enquiry into serious failings at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in 2013 was the creation of a leadership staff college or training system (Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry 2013). A College of Policing was created in 2013, though a spokesperson interviewed confirmed that the first priority was with training entry-level police officers and training for support staff was not on the immediate agenda (College of Policing 2013). The idea of colleges of policing and health to parallel the activities within education of the National College for Teaching and Leadership may be evidence of the phenomenon of public services borrowing ideas and practices from one another, and indicative of an increasingly pro-active stance by central government in England in taking charge in matters of professionalism. The role of sociopolitical thought in determining the collective fates of public services internationally and the nature of working life for professionals employed within state bureaucracies outlined in this chapter illustrate how political ideology is inseparable from discussions of professionalism. Debates around the ways in which public service organizations are and are not distinctive from those in the business sector has also raised the question of ‘publicness’. Questions of value, ideology, politics and public service are central to professionalism and will be discussed in the next chapter.

3

The Public Sector Professional

The upheavals in public services described in the previous chapter have profoundly altered the working lives of state sector employees and caused significant soulsearching around what being a professional in this context means. Based on an examination of literature, this chapter provides a set of conceptual tools that will be employed and elaborated on in shaping the analyses presented in the chapters that follow. This conceptual work will serve to clarify thinking about such questions as what the anticipated outcomes of the SBM professionalization process might have been; what different perspectives on being a professional might be expected within the SBM community; and how these might compare to understandings commonly associated with more established professional groupings. The chapter draws mainly on sociological work on professionalism, both generic uses of the concept and ones applied to specific professions, and particularly within education and health. The chapter outlines common and traditional versions of what being ‘professional’ means, identifies critiques and challenges to these understandings and presents illustrative alternative perspectives on professionalism. The chapter ends with a conceptual framework, which draws significantly on Freidson (2001), a work that was influential in shaping the most recent phase of data collection and analysis for this book.

Common understandings of professionalism Sullivan (2005) explores everyday understandings of what being a ‘professional’ means via its common opposites. The term ‘amateur’ conjures up the idea of someone who is unpaid and in some cases not particularly expert at what they do. A professional, in contrast, is someone who is paid for their work and who does it to a high standard. But, as Sullivan points out, the idea of being ‘professional’

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can also have moral overtones. In popular vocabulary acting ‘professionally’ is high praise indeed, while behaving ‘unprofessionally’ can be a ‘most damning epithet’ Sullivan (2005, p. 37). Contemporary academic accounts of professionalism include these commonsense understandings but are considerably more complex. Such accounts typically avoid precise definitions, preferring to underline the variability of the concept across time and social context. Historical accounts of the field often begin by describing the early professions of medicine, law and theology, shaped in the medieval period. These three held sway until the nineteenth century when other groups mobilized to gain recognition across Western Europe and the United States (e.g. journalists, engineers, the secular university academic) alongside the development of business schools and new civic universities (Crook 2008; Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008). Berman Brown and McCartney (2000) uses Elliott’s (1972) labels of ‘gentlemanly’ and ‘occupational’ to distinguish the long-established professions from the relative newcomers developed from the occupations of the middle class that grew out of capitalist industrialism. They contrast the emergence of these more recent occupational professions in the United Kingdom and the United States, where the state was relatively passive and the middle class organized their own training and accrediting institutions, with the situation in European countries other than the United Kingdom, where professional status and security were conferred by virtue of attendance at elite higher education institutions. Though they differ in detail, academic descriptions of what has traditionally constituted ‘professionalism’ tend to share common core characteristics. These include the notion of a social contract whereby the state grants professionals autonomy of judgement in return for self-regulation, the justification for this being that the professional group is in the best position to develop, manage and evaluate the specialist knowledge and practice of its own members. This social contract is collective in nature in that it does not depend on a practitioner’s ‘personal virtues, values, or rules’ but rather is ‘derived from her or his adherence to a set of group norms’ (Shirley and Padgett 2006, p. 31). In this way, through socialization into ethical norms, professionalism makes the use of discretion predictable and removes the requirement for bureaucracies to monitor and control the behaviour of individual practitioners. Alongside self-regulation and autonomy, there are two further elements to this conventional account of professionalism: (i) that practice is not directed by self or professional group interests but towards the public good and (ii) there is an associated body of knowledge to be mastered.

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Challenges to the nostalgic view of professionalism Authors point to significant challenges to the ‘nostalgic’ view of what being a professional means as described in the previous section. Two of the strongest are (i) erosion of public trust and confidence in professionals to work in the best interests of the citizenry and (ii) debates around the social stratification and inequality associated with professional privilege and status. First, academic critiques of the traditional notion of the professions acting for the common good abound. The idea that the professions have been inclined to act in their own self-interest in ensuring good pay, status and deference, rather than for the benefit of the general public, is prevalent in the literature (Collins 1979; Fournier 2000). Crook (2008), for example, cites research demonstrating how prominent associations of German lawyers teachers and engineers in the first part of the twentieth century publicly acclaimed Hitler’s new order. Kanes (2011) highlights failure by the medical profession in the West to disseminate adequate conceptions of health, or to teach preventative medicine, preferring to further its economic and political power by promoting advanced technologies and expensive drugs. Sullivan (2005) argues that even taking care to be ethically correct can be a form of ‘canny self protection’ (p. 257) primarily driven by the professional’s desire to avoid costly lawsuits in increasingly litigious times, rather than driven by professional values. As well as collective failures, there is no shortage of examples in the media of trusted professional figures – individual physicians, educators or police officers – acting unethically, negligently or with criminal intent. It seems reasonable to suppose that often rather hyperbolic media reporting, together with the monotonous frequency of such revelations, will have contributed to the common, though largely untested, presumption that the general public is less trusting and less confident in the judgement of professionals than they once were. In addition to creating a perception of loss of public confidence, such cases have also occasioned widespread re-examination of the idea of professionalism, and what being ‘professional’ means. Debate among politicians, academics, professional associations and regulatory bodies since the turn of the millennium has taken a distinctly ethical turn in re-thinking codes of conduct and the education and regulation of professionals (Doukas 2006; Sullivan 2005; Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008). Academic accounts of political responses to real or imagined loss of confidence in professional competence and integrity highlight consumerism and managerialism as highly significant. The consumerist response relies on

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market forces to weed out professional ineptitude, with successful schools and hospitals flourishing as the informed consumer rushes to avail themselves of their excellent services, while less successful ones raise their standards or face closure. Managerialism refers to the adoption of principles and practices from business management in developing and implementing strategies that, in principle at least, ensure the best use of available resources in delivering predetermined outcomes. Both approaches involve the application of ‘the rationalities of transparency and efficiency’ (Kanes 2011) and so require the time-consuming processes of gathering, analysing and presenting data. As made plain in the previous chapter, both also imply the use of such data in order to compare performance between institutions and individual professionals, thus tending to limit the use of discretion and to suggest a lack of faith or trust in the individual to apply their expertise ethically, correctly and with due commitment. However, as critics point out, the benefits for the public that policymakers imply will flow from these two strategies are by no means automatic, and are often accompanied by damaging side effects (Dent 2006; Hargreaves 2000; Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008). The negative effects of systems of audit have been extensively discussed in the literature, were briefly aired in the previous chapter, and will not therefore be rehearsed again here. It is perhaps sufficient to draw on Thistlethwaite and Spencer (2008) in their discussion of the use of comparative performance data and its impact on public trust in professionals. They summarize the BBC Reith Lecture given by the Cambridge philosopher and ethicist Onora O’Neill in 2002 in which she argues that bureaucratic accountability is inclined to distort, rather than enhance transparency and that it is ultimately damaging to professional morale and integrity. Paradoxically, the drive for transparency can produce information that is poorly analysed, misleading and an inadequate basis for decision-making by members of the public, and can make institutions more inclined to cover up, rather than admit to and learn from, their mistakes. Ultimately, therefore, measures to increase transparency can have the opposite effect and lead to uncertainty among the public rather than increasing trust in the competence of professionals, or in their willingness to apply their expertise in the public interest. A second significant challenge to professionalism concerns its links to social stratification and inequality. This line of argument is based on Weber’s account of formal qualifications taking over from birthright as the contemporary means of monopolizing socially and economically advantageous positions in society. ‘Credentialism’ is one element of this argument. Though sometimes now seen

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as synonymous with ‘credential inflation’, whereby the educational requirements for jobs ‘ratchet up’ (Bills 2011, p. 2) more sharply than job demands dictate, the term ‘credentialism’ was initially coined to refer to the idea that, rather than serving the purpose of providing valuable work skills as is commonly understood, the main value of professional qualifications is as currency in obtaining status and security. One widely cited author has argued that most professional skills and knowledge could be learnt at least as well on the job and that, because access to qualifications is inherently biased towards particular social groups, the acquisition of credentials contributes to social inequalities (Collins 1979). In addition to highlighting the contribution of the professions to stratification within society at large through their privileged status, authors point to inequalities both within and between professional groupings. In writing about health professions in the United States, for example, Castellani and Hafferty (2006) describe much contemporary academic discourse around medical professionalism as ‘a highly selective and privileged narrative’ from the top tier of physicians, developed by what they refer to as ‘the ruling class of medicine’ (p. 3). This narrative ignores the widely differing backgrounds, experiences and attitudes to working life among a far from homogenous community of medical professionals. This idea is pertinent to the SBM project as education business management has been found to be highly stratified. Furthermore, this stratification is strongly associated with gender, with better paid and more prestigious positions in secondary schools typically being the preserve of men, with primary school work being overwhelmingly undertaken by women (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a). Gender is a common thread in academic work on differential status among professionals. In a comparison of the professional projects of the school superintendent and of the teacher in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Larson (1977) describes how ‘the abundant supply of cheap female labor’ and ‘the feminisation of schoolteaching logically reserved the better paid and higher-level positions in the system to males’ (p. 184). Stratification along gender lines is still strongly in evidence within education, with the greater emphasis given to caring within primary and early years education, compared to a sharper focus on developing pupils’ formal knowledge within the secondary phase, tending to afford the work of secondary colleagues’ higher social status. Dalli refers to almost exclusively female domain of professional work with younger children historically as the ‘cinderella of education – undervalued and underfunded’ (Dalli et al. 2012, p. 3). Indicative of the trend towards government-supported professionalization initiatives, of

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which the SBM project is an example, the article notes that the situation is now changing around the world as this phase of education has crept up the policy agenda of national governments. Questions of gender have also been keenly debated within community care, where the lack of specialist training required renders the ‘caring’ work of nurses, social workers and carers subordinate to the more outcome-oriented and technical activity of those involved in therapeutic work (Malin 2000, p. 9). Carers, social workers and nurses are predominantly female and typically not paid as well as their colleagues in higher-status professions. As stated in the opening chapter, it is my view that the low status of support staff and lack of recognition of their contribution to the operation of public services is regrettable. Higher status professionals can be unaware of how much is involved in keeping the organizations they work in functioning. The work of support colleagues is often largely invisible, unacknowledged and poorly rewarded in ways that cut across different areas of public service. In discussing the health sector Shirley and Padgett (2006), for example, note: While the discourse of professionalism emphasizes the autonomy of practitioners, the practical work and lives of physicians are inextricably entangled with, and dependent upon, the work of others, primarily the work of women. In the public sphere, the work of physicians is dependent upon the work of lessprestigious occupations, such as nurses, social workers, physical and occupational therapists, and others, as well as an ensemble of even lower paid workers, such as housekeepers, nursing assistants, secretaries, and clerks. The labor of these workers is largely made invisible by the discourse of medical professionalism, through its exclusionary focus on the individual practitioner. (p. 32)

Larson (1977) in discussing the question of privilege and status in connection with professionalism cites Bachrach in stating that democracy is ‘dependent upon the ability of the gifted to command the deference of the many for the wellbeing of all’. She argues that this political ideology is therefore for professionalism ‘both a foundation and a prison’. Professionals possess knowledge and skill that are important, though not always essential, for social development and ‘the full satisfaction of human needs’. By choice, and via socialization, professionals ‘are often deeply involved with the intrinsic value of their callings’. However, no matter how pure and worthy their behaviour in applying professional knowledge, the professional cannot help but legitimize ‘inequality and elitism by the factual demonstration that knowledge is beneficent power’ (p. 243). This is a significant tension within the ethics of professionalism. The professional, in

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applying their specialist knowledge in the interests of others, is perforce setting themselves apart from, and in some sense above, the non-expert, and thus reinforcing social difference.

Professionalism as project The idea that professional status can change, in other words is not fixed, is important to the discussion of how the reform of public institutions described in the last chapter has impacted on the working lives of public sector employees. Shirley and Padgett (2006) argue that professionalism does not constitute status per se but a claim to status, which can be more or less successful within a particular social context. In other words, professions are not ‘once and for all’ creations but rather ongoing projects that involve the active maintenance of claims to authority. Fournier (2000) explores how threats to professionalism may involve ‘boundary work’, whereby a profession constructs and maintains the boundaries that are required in its creation and continued existence. This ‘labour of division’, (p. 69) involves erecting and maintaining boundaries between the profession itself and non-professional groups (e.g. clients, patients, lay people), and between itself and other professions, which is achieved by creating a self-contained field of knowledge. Thus, professions in developing their field of knowledge may appropriate particular problems as falling within their jurisdiction, rather than within those of other professionals. For example, obesity might be viewed as either primarily a medical or as a social problem, depending on professional standpoint. A profession may reinforce their claim to distinction from the general public by virtue of specialist expertise, and ensure dependence among clients and lay people through such strategies as generating and exploiting anxiety and by employing specialist language that is only understandable to others in the same profession. Fournier (2000) identifies a third boundary that was traditionally erected by professions, and that is between their members and the market. Professional services were traditionally rendered rather than sold, and characterized by their use value rather than their exchange value. Drawing on Weber, Fournier argues that professional knowledge ‘places professionals in a special social position that transcends the favouritism of politicians or the self-interest of market relations’ (p. 76). Thus, professionals are not accountable in terms of the laws of the market but on their own terms, as defined by professional appeals to truth, the effectiveness of their interventions and their code of ethics.

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These professional boundaries have been severely challenged on a number of fronts in recent decades. First, the logic of the market, in which the consumer calls the shots, sits uneasily with the idea of the public sector professional exercising their independent, professional judgement about what is appropriate for the patient/child/client. Viewed from the perspective of the professional, the pro-activity of some groups in drumming up business that does not serve the interests of the client (such as unnecessary medical screening, legal contracts governing normal human relations, or an ever-growing array of specialist insurance products) further weakens the boundary between professionalism and the market. Second, claims to professional expertise have been challenged by the explosion of information readily available via the internet. This allows the public to reduce their reliance on professional advice, for example to have greater knowledge about, and more say in, their medical treatment, questions of legality, or education options. Third, employees with different professional backgrounds both between and within different areas of public service may be required to work much more closely together than was formerly the case. The drive for flexible, client-oriented and ‘joined up’ public service delivery means that police officers, social workers, health services and educators may now also be expected to collaborate and engage in inter-professional team-working in delivering public services. In addition, strategies to modernize public service workforces have included delegating less specialist tasks to new kinds of workers. Police officers, teachers and physicians are now assisted by a wide range of support staff, with the effective delegation of work tasks to them often requiring new kinds of inter-professional collaboration. As the contribution of these less specialist colleagues within the public sector has become more visible, so have the claims for professional dominance and credit for successful outcomes by the specialists been weakened (Collins 1979; Shirley and Padgett 2006). Of particular relevance to this book is the increased demand across the public sector for support staff with expertise in management and administration in response to the demands of market logic (the requirement for quantitative data about performance to enable judgements of quality by consumer, the delegation of budgetary control and the requirement for more efficient financial management etc.). Writing about health Berman Brown and McCartney (2000) describes different responses to this incursion of managers into the professional territory of medical experts, in some cases causing hostility and in others resulting in hybrid manager-physicians. The same could be said of the field of education, with head teachers variously resisting or aligning themselves with the

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managerial perspective. This particular inter-professional relationship, between the expert in management and the specialist educational professional, will be a recurring theme in the chapters that follow.

Alternative understandings of professionalism In light of the kinds of critique raised in the previous section, it is unsurprising that there has long been questioning of traditional understandings of professionalism and ‘quasi-’, or ‘semi-professions’ may no longer aspire to this traditional version of professionalism. In academic circles many alternative models of the concept have been proposed and professionalism has increasingly come to mean ‘whatever people think it is at any particular time’ (Whitty 2008, p. 32). Writing on professionalism within medicine, Castellani and Hafferty (2006), for example, identifies empirically derived alternative perspectives according to the importance given by professionals to different aspects of their lives (autonomy, personal morality, commercialism, professional dominance, technical competence etc.). Their research yielded seven different forms of professionalism: nostalgic, entrepreneurial, academic, lifestyle, empirical, unreflective and activist. As most present-day professionals are employed within bureaucratic organizations, or certainly regulated by government, their status is in large part determined by the mandate they have struck with the state. Hargreaves (2000) traces this relationship across four historical phases of teacher professionalism. In the pre-professional age, teaching was seen as demanding but technically simple, being largely a question of commonsense gained through trial and error. From the 1960s the status and standing of teachers improved in many national settings. During this age of professional autonomy, teachers were able to choose the methods they thought best and pre-service and in-service education by experts became more widespread. In the mid-to-late 1980s, the increased complexities of schooling in some contexts made individual teacher autonomy unsustainable and the age of the collegial professional was born. Writing in 2000, Hargreaves suggests this age was still emerging as efforts were being made to build strong professional cultures of collaboration to develop common purpose and cope with complexity and uncertainty in an era of rapid change. Finally, Hargreaves posits a fourth post-professional or postmodern professional age, where teachers either work effectively with new partners as part of a broad social

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movement that advances professionalism or ‘crumble under multiple pressures, intensified work demands, reduced opportunities to learn from colleagues, and enervating discourses of derision’ (p. 175). For his part, in a discussion of changes to teacher professionalism in the face of New Labour’s education reforms, Whitty (2008) refers to a marked divide within the profession between ‘old collectivists’, pursuing the traditional welfarist agenda, and ‘new entrepreneurs’, who have adopted the changing agenda enthusiastically, thus gaining enhanced status and rewards (p. 36). He also outlines two ‘new’ or emergent forms of professionalism consistent with educational reform: (i) ‘collaborative professionalism’, whereby teachers overcome traditional divisions between occupational groupings and increasingly become involved in multiagency working and (ii) ‘democratic professionalism’ which goes a step further, and involves demystifying professional work and forging alliances between teachers and often silenced groups such as students, parents and community members. Citing Johnson and Halligarten, Whitty notes that such an activist professional orientation invites teachers to conceive of themselves as agents rather than victims of change. Activism is not usually an idea associated with techno-bureaucratic roles, such as those exercised by the school business manager, because of their traditional lack of client-orientation (Larson 1977). Nonetheless, alternative perspectives on professionalism such as these provide potential ways of thinking about the orientations of individual SBMs to their occupational roles.

Conceptualizing the study Generating fresh thinking about established conceptual models of social phenomena as circumstances change is an important goal of research. As stated in the opening chapter, one of the purposes of the research undertaken for this book was to use original data from a group of colleagues who have been little researched to extend understandings of professionalism. In order to establish the lines of enquiry to pursue in collecting and analysing data, rather than adopting the ‘professionalism is whatever people think it is’ approach taken in some empirical work (Whitty 2008, p. 32), this book draws principally on foundational work in the sociology of professions. Both Larson (1977) and Freidson (2001) talk of the ‘ideal-typical’ version of professionalism as a useful thinking tool, rather than a phenomenon that exists in reality. Like authors mentioned above,

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both also make reference to boundaries between professionalism, the market and bureaucracy. The aim of Freidson (2001) is to provide a framework for understanding the concept of professionalism in all its complexity and across disciplines. Education does not feature prominently in his illustrations and analysis, but the work does offer significant depth and breadth of scholarship. Freidson’s aim is to contrast professionalism, managerialism and consumerism as alternative ways of organizing work. Because managerialism and consumerism are often depicted as the twin evils of public sector reform by scholars critical of it, and are aspects of schooling where SBMs play a significant role, this juxtaposition made Freidson (2001) an excellent initial framework for conceptualizing the study. The three logics through which work can be controlled, as contrasted by Freidson, are (i) the logic of the marketplace, whereby work is organized in the interests of the consumer and is measured primarily by cost; (ii) the logic of the organizational bureaucracy, the main concern of which is with predictability and the efficient management of resources; and (iii) the logic of professionalism, within which specialist workers are committed to doing good work, and where managers can be confident in the quality and value of what the specialists do. Just as the version of professionalism presented is an ideal, rather than a reflection of reality, nor can Freidson’s logic of the market or the logic of managerialism as a means of organizing work ever be fully realized in practice. Nonetheless, contrasting the implications of the three logics provided a useful means of thinking about the SBM professional project and the kinds of questions it would be useful to explore with participants. The conceptual territory explored within Freidson (2001) is extensive and complex and not all is relevant to the SBM project. However, a summary of key elements of his version of ideal-typical professionalism is offered below and represented visually in Figure 3.1. Freidson identifies five interdependent elements to the logic of professionalism. First, absolutely fundamental is specialized work that has a recognized place in the economy. Ideal-typically, this expertise will be based on abstract knowledge, which the professional has significant latitude in applying, giving them special status in the labour force. Second, in Freidson’s ideal professionally organized workplace, the individual has exclusive jurisdiction in a particular division of labour, controlled by occupational negotiation. Third, the logic of professionalism offers a sheltered position within the labour market. The ideal-typical professional acquires this position via credentials created by the occupation. Fourth, qualifying credentials

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Anatomy of a Professionalization Project Institutional circumstances

State agencies

Elements of professionalism Specialist expertise • Recognized • Abstract • Discretionary Exclusive jurisdiction • Division of labour occupationally controlled Sheltered labour market • Qualifying credential • Occupationally controlled Formal training • Outside labour market • Accredited • Occupationally controlled • Higher education Ideology prioritizes • Public value over economic gain • Quality of work over economic efficiency

Variables critical for professional projects

The occupational group

Figure 3.1 Conceptualization of the ideal-typical profession (after Freidson 2001).

are obtained via formal training programs, which lie outside the labour market, involve higher learning and are controlled by the occupation. Finally, the idealtypical professional is driven by an ideology ‘that asserts greater commitment to doing good work than to economic gain and to the quality rather than the economic efficiency of work’ (p. 127). In addition to these five elements of professionalism, Freidson posits three variables that are critical for establishing and supporting professionalism, and which alter over time and place. These are the organization and policy positions

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of state agencies; the organization of the occupations themselves; and the institutional circumstances required for the successful application in practice of different bodies of knowledge and skill. As stated above, not all of the elements of this conceptual framework were equally relevant to the SBM professional project. For example, it seems that it is the state, rather than professional associations, that has so far taken the lead in systematizing the development and accreditation of training in the SBM case examined here. Nonetheless, the definitions and debates raised in the text were valuable in shaping, thinking and in developing research tools. An illustrative list of type of questions used during interviews with a variety of stakeholders, and how they map against this conceptual framework, are included in Appendix II. The value of specialist knowledge is not absolute. That politicians can be convinced that they have greater understanding of education, based on personal experience and political preference, than professional educators have, and the vast sums spent in the developed world on alternative medical therapies, are examples that attest to this fact. The status afforded expert knowledge in the political economy is therefore fundamentally a question of value and ideology, meaning it has to be fought over and defended. Professional projects are thus inevitably political in nature, a fact that participant testimony makes abundantly clear in the empirical sections that follow, in which questions of value, ideology and politics are never far from the surface.

Part Two

School Business Manager Professionalization The first three chapters have set the scene for the remainder of the book. Chapter 1 introduced the aims and scope of the research and introduced the SBM professional project. Part 1 provided a map of important themes and ideas that have shaped thinking and analysis in writing this book. Chapter 2 provided a sketch of some of the main sociopolitical changes that lay behind the wholesale reforms to public services that have occurred within developed economies over the last 20 to 30 years, and indicated important themes in this area relevant to the SBM professional project. Chapter 3 outlined ideas in the scholarship of professionalism and presented the conceptual framework that underpinned the final phase of data collection and analysis. Part 2 is the first in a series of three empirical sections cataloguing and analysing, from various perspectives, the process of SBM professionalization given impetus by the government in England in 2001. Chapter 4 draws principally on documentary sources to provide a brief chronology of the professionalization programme from its early origins to the present. It ends with details of the different elements that have constituted government-led professionalization activities so far, and facts and figures illustrating what has been achieved to date. Chapter 5 draws theoretical distinctions between different kinds of knowledge and skill. It then examines formal frameworks of professional competencies to analyse the types of knowledge and skill in evidence in the professional preparation of SBMs at different career stages, how these intersect with those associated with the professional role of the head teacher and considers the implications of this analysis for the division of labour between these two groups of professionals. The chapter surfaces important themes in professional education scholarship, which resonate with policy moves in teacher education. These include the

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relative value of practice-led preparation such as that provided in teaching schools, versus university-based teacher training, and the trend towards interprofessional education. Chapter 6 concludes the section with the presentation and analysis of data on SBM credentials and careers mainly from the perspective of SBM practitioners themselves. It considers the attitudes of SBMs to the idea of school business management as a career, the place of the National College’s credentials within their careers, the value of these qualifications in the labour market and the implications of transferring to education from the corporate sector as part of a professional career. The chapter raises important questions about the distinctiveness of business management practice as applied within education, and highlights the challenges posed for SBMs by the academies programme.

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The School Business Manager Professionalization Programme

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a flavour of the multifaceted programme of SBM professionalization coordinated by the National College in partnership with other organizations at the behest of central government in England from 2001. It offers an inevitably rather approximate chronology of key elements of the programme, most of which involved various stages in their gestation, rather than being associated with a specific moment in time, with many developments taking place concurrently. First-hand accounts of the professionalization process from the perspective of key actors in the SBM project are reserved for Part 4 of the book. Evidence used in the current chapter consists mainly of (i) documentary and web-based sources to provide factual information about professionalization activities and (ii) reactions and reflections on them from SBM programme participants and other stakeholders collected via interview and questionnaire surveys. As is often the case in researching government initiatives, there is a lack of wholly independent and theoretically informed sources to draw on, and the documentary sources referenced are therefore largely policy-oriented publications. Particularly useful for a more complete picture of the various SBM initiatives organized by the National College are two impact and evaluation reports (National College 2007, 2009) and a two-part volume by the College’s Head of Research at the time (Southworth 2010). The original survey data cited were collected as part of various programme evaluation research studies commissioned by the National College and, in some of which I was involved, over a 10-year period (see Appendix I). An espoused commitment to evidence-based policy development is a common claim in contemporary public policy internationally, and New Labour was no exception (Department for Children Families and Schools 2009). The inherent challenges and tensions involved in conducting empirical research

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within a policy context, due to such factors as tight timescales; parallel and sequential initiatives making it impossible to attribute findings to a specific element of reform; and the asymmetrical power relations involved, have been explored extensively in the literature (Pollit and Bouckaert 2003). It is fair to state that the time pressures experienced by the SBM team, and therefore also the evaluators, were considerable, and the purposes of evaluations from the College’s perspective were clearly functional, rather than there being an expectation of theoretical depth or criticality (Simkins 2012). Nonetheless, the rich bank of evidence gathered over a decade did enable an understanding of the SBM project over time and from multiple perspectives, and provided a firm foundation for more in-depth work subsequently (Woods 2009; Woods et al. 2013; Woods et al. 2012). The chapter begins by describing the origins of the SBM professionalization process at the dawn of the millennium. It then details the development, form and content of the National College’s first programme of professional education for SBMs, the Certificate of School Business Management (CSBM), and the three further certificated programmes that followed it. It outlines some of the array of additional initiatives, under the coordination of the National College, that supported the four programmes as part of concerted efforts to place school business management nationally on a firmer professional footing. The chapter ends with facts and figures to illustrate some of what the professionalization process has accomplished to date.

Origins of the professional project As Chapter 2 made plain, public services have undergone something of a revolution over the last 20–30 years. In this section, attention shifts from this general backdrop to focus more sharply on state schooling in England. Pollit (2007) identifies various reasons why the British system of government allows an ‘unequalled capacity for intervention’ (p. 534), and education reform in England is widely acknowledged as being at the vanguard of reform internationally. It is not possible to do justice to the array of initiatives in all areas of education policy, and what follows is merely intended to serve as contextual background, especially for those readers unfamiliar with policy in the schools sector (for a more detailed discussion, see, for example: Chapman and Gunter 2009; Chitty 2009; Whitty 2002). As described in Chapter 2, education and other public

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services are increasingly viewed and compete trans-nationally, and are shored up by innumerable enterprises that supply and service them. Within state education in England, far-reaching changes have occurred in the amounts of money schools are responsible for, in the work involved in their financial management and administration, and in the expertise required for effectiveness in these areas in a market-driven and competitive environment. Since the 1988 Education Reform Act, much of the administration of schools has passed from Local Authorities (LAs) to head teachers and governing bodies. Alongside this shift, major curricular changes at the national level have occurred, there has been an explosion in the use of information and communication technologies, both for educational and administrative purposes, and an increasing demand for data from schools to support national mechanisms of accountability and comparison (national standardized test scores, school league tables, etc.). Meanwhile, schools were increasingly being encouraged to bid for and manage large sums of money. Under new Labour, the 1990s brought government programmes like Education Action Zones (EAZ) and Excellence in Cities (EiC) and private finance initiatives. Opportunities to make money by selling educational and management products and services to schools and to parents have been seized enthusiastically by organizations and individuals. Private tuition is on the increase and schools routinely buy in a wide range of services from the private sector, such as staff recruitment and cover, payroll and equipment, premises maintenance and so on. The increased push for academy conversions and free schools referred to in Chapter 2 has further intensified the privatization process under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition (HM Government 2013). Alongside national curricular innovation (e.g. the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies) and unprecedented technological advances, the nature of the workforce, the way schools are organized, even the range of purposes that schools are involved in fulfilling have altered fundamentally over the last 20–30 years. The government green paper Every Child Matters (ECM) published under New Labour in 2003 paralleled developments in the United States under No Child Left Behind. The green paper set out an ambitious shared programme of change to improve outcomes for children and young people (Department for Children, Schools and Families 2003). This and the subsequent Children’s Plan emphasized collaboration among schools and between schools and other agencies (e.g. health and social workers) to provide integrated educational and welfare services. Schools were seen to be well

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placed to deliver the range of services required and this has led to changes such as closer partnerships between schools and families; the extension of the school day; greater community use of schools in term time and during school holidays. The phrase ‘extended schools’ was used to capture the idea of schools working in partnership with other agencies to offer activities such as study support, sport and music; childcare services; parenting and family support; ready access to specialist services; community access to adult and family learning, sports and ICT equipment. Partnerships are a major element of social policy internationally, being seen as a means of building capacity, pooling financial and human resources and alleviating the negative impacts of competition (Sullivan and Skelcher 2002). This emphasis on collaboration was given further impetus by the global financial crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, but which had its early warning signs in 2007 (Kingsley 2012). The extreme fiscal pressures that have arisen as a result have further encouraged the sharing of personnel and finances and have hastened thinking about the appropriate management, governance and leadership of schools working collaboratively with one another and with other agencies. For some years, developing new ways of structuring and funding schools and other agencies has therefore been a major thrust in education policy, and has spawned a range of new types of organizational and leadership arrangements at both system and local levels, including co-headships, federations and academy chains (Chapman et al. 2008). The relentless pace of reform, and the growing expectation among the public about the standards of service and care schools should provide, together have placed considerable demands on schools. For many head teachers, the number of different roles implied, the volume of work involved and the levels of technical expertise needed in some aspects of leadership and management are far in excess of those once expected of educational leaders. In some cases these challenges also lie outside those for which their original professional training and experience prepared them. As in other national contexts, increased workload and complexity in the role are believed to be at least in part responsible for concerns over current and future difficulties in recruiting and retaining head teachers in England, with fewer teachers prepared to take on headship (Whitaker 2003). In 2001 management consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers were commissioned by the government in England to conduct an investigation of teacher workload that suggested that head teachers were typically overloaded and lacked adequate administrative support (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001). Their report

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recommended that a good administrative team allows head teachers to share responsibility and thereby concentrate on raising standards, set strategic direction and improve the quality of education generally. In 2001, the quality of administrative support in schools in England was very variable. At one extreme, some educational leaders were able to draw on the expertise of a specialist business manager, supported by a team of administrative staff, while at the other, especially in the primary sector, some were managing the ever-growing demands upon them aided only by basic, part-time secretarial support. The particular skills and knowledge possessed by a suitably expert SBM were ones that meant that they were strongly placed to take over some of the expanding array of administrative and financial responsibilities being required of educational leaders. In an era where public services were expected to deliver more and more with less and less, PricewaterhouseCoopers (2001) argued that SBM expertise could potentially enable schools to (i) increase return on investment from public funds through more effective financial management and (ii) give greater attention to the leadership of associate staff in schools. As part of a significant restructuring of the schools’ workforce in England, on 1 June 2001 the Secretary of State at the time, Estelle Morris, announced a government commitment to training 1,000 school bursars within the following 5 years (Woodward 2001).

The project begins In 2002 piloting of the Certificate of School Business Management (CSBM) was begun by the National College in collaboration with (i) the Teacher Development Agency (TDA), with which the College has since merged, and (ii) what was then known as the National Bursar Association (NBA, now the National Association of School Business Management, or NASBM)1. The Certificate was to be the first of a suite of four formal training programmes for SBMs developed with the purpose of offering a means of recruiting, developing and accrediting SBMs and of providing a clear career pathway for the profession. As explained later in the chapter, these have now been reduced to three. Colleagues at the University of Lincoln, and authors of a core text on school business management in England, played a key role in creating the teaching materials for what was at the time a cutting-edge ‘blended learning’ curriculum

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(O’Sullivan et al. 2000). The blend involved onsite one- or two-day workshops, print-based instructional materials and tasks, support from a tutor and peers via tutorial groups interacting online and onsite, and a vibrant online community for previous and current course participants. The CSBM was aimed at new SBMs, or those transferring to education from other sectors, and provided the core skills and competencies needed to be effective in the role at operational level (Table 4.1). The competency-based CSBM programme content reflects the diverse nature of the SBM role. It has undergone significant revisions since the first version, including conversion of print-based to online content, but still covers broadly similar areas. At the time of writing, the aims set out for programme participants are to provide a framework for developing, learning and improving professional practice; and ‘through this to enhance the outcomes for the school and Table 4.1 Certificate of School Business Management Modules Development Modules Understanding school business management

Analysis of learning needs, organizational setting, SBM role and impact within the workplace

Planning and leading projects in schools

Identifying, planning, leading and managing development projects

Operational Modules Managing school facilities

Strategic and operational management of site, ICT, catering

Managing school finances

Principles of school financial management, sources of funding, budget planning and management, probity, managing cash, debtors, creditors, value for money etc.

Managing human resources in schools

Personal [sic] management, staff development, labour relations and collective bargaining, payroll administration

Managing office services

Organization and management, operational design and evaluation and communication

Managing risk in schools

Management of risk, health and safety, emergency and contingency planning

Managing the school environment

Sustainable development, whole school approaches, energy and water management, the school environment

Source: National College CSBM webpages 2013 (Crown Copyright)

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community in which you work’. It offers the ‘opportunity to explore and develop leadership, administrative and management skills and to acquire professional knowledge’ (National College CSBM webpages 2013). This version of the CSBM is organized into an online induction followed by two ‘Development Modules’ and six ‘Operational Modules’ as follows: In the early years, the CSBM was free of cost to participants working in the state sector and is still subsidized by the state. At the time of writing, applicants could take the CSBM at a cost of £500 if employed in schools either in England or overseas if funded by the English state; or early years settings; or local authority education departments, provided they could demonstrate that they had (i) relevant professional responsibilities and experience and (ii) the support of their head teacher and chair of school governors. Those in independent schools, those in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, or applicants not yet working in school (so called ‘aspiring’ applicants), were being charged £2,000 for the CSBM programme. It was also possible to purchase just one or two of modules of the CSBM at a cost of £350 per module. However, a process for arranging the licensed delivery of SBM programmes was set in train towards the end of 2013 and future pricing structures and delivery models are therefore as yet unclear. A mere 22 months elapsed between the commitment by the Secretary of State to train 1,000 of the nation’s bursars and the start of the national roll out of the CSBM (Woods et al. 2004). This period saw the launch of (i) two CSBM pilot programmes in February and October 2002 (around 100 participants per programme), the onsite element of the second taking place on the National College’s purpose-built premises based within the campus of the University of Nottingham, and (ii) the national roll out of the programme launched in April 2003 (with 375 places). The roll out was overseen by the National College but delivered by two independent contractors: Manchester Metropolitan University and Serco, which has since become a significant beneficiary of outsourced contracts across the public service sector, from education and health to transport and the prison service. Anglia Ruskin University later also became a major provider and, in addition to national CSBM programmes, by 2009 around a third of local authorities had been involved in delivering the course to local SBM groups (National College 2009). Both interview and questionnaire survey data collected from participants showed that the new CSBM was well received overall (Woods et al. 2003). This was a group of school employees who had in many cases been working in rather isolated circumstances and who relished the contact with colleagues working in similar roles and with whom they could exchange knowledge and mutual

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professional support. In many cases they were also hungry for opportunities to develop themselves and their role, and for recognition by their school colleagues for its actual and potential contribution to school functioning. Initial anecdotal evidence of impact on the workplace was encouraging, offering numerous examples of development in working practices and reduction in workload of teaching staff. Participants appreciated the up-to-date thinking on leadership and schooling that the programme provided, and which benefited their schools as they applied this knowledge in reviewing existing practices. The programme’s virtual communities offered an invaluable source of support and a mechanism for sharing, learning and disseminating good practice. In evaluation work on any education programme there is always a concern that participants might merely be offering favourable reports of their professional development experience in gratitude for the efforts made on their behalf, or because of concerns about the implications of negative feedback for their tutors. However, in CSBM pilot evaluations, respondents were assured of their anonymity and urged to be brutally honest in the interests of maximizing learning from the pilot. Even so, few negative comments were made. True to their professional concerns, a number of participants were critical about the assumed cost of hosting professional development at the National College’s luxurious premises while they were working hard to reduce expenditure in their schools. Despite the overwhelmingly positive views expressed about the quality and relevance programme, it did present significant challenges for participants, three of which were particularly salient in the data. First, participants obviously found the CSBM surprisingly tough-going, especially when combined with work and family commitments, as evidenced in the following comments: I don’t think anybody found it easy. We had a real mixture of people on the course – from very experienced staff in secondary and primary education to people that had come in to education from outside and none of us thought it was a doddle. I have actually done a post-grad diploma at University and that was nowhere near as challenging as this was. I’d been a manager and I’d had staff to manage so I was able to use my old experiences, translating what I’d done into education. There were some that hadn’t done anything like that and they were struggling.

The fact that participants were clearly well and truly stretched by the governmentfunded programme is arguably a major strength. The demanding level it was pitched at and the breadth of coverage provided will have been key features in

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enabling the kinds of favourable impacts participants reported having on their schools. Nonetheless, they clearly found the experience of the CSBM a shock in many cases, and the challenging nature of the programme had to be made more explicit in subsequent publicity. A second and related theme that recurred in the data was how important it was, in terms of maximizing the professional development opportunities of the programme, to have the full support of the head teacher and for them also to have an appreciation of the programme’s demands. Data indicated that both were highly variable. In some cases, participants evidently had the full commitment of the school to their professional development. For instance, one respondent remarked that their head tried to give them time for their studies in school and was happy for her to make them a priority when required: ‘I’ll say “the course comes before anything else this week” and the head’s happy for me to be doing that’. A second was aware that they were fortunate in having co-workers who supported their professional development, having observed others who were in a less favourable situation: ‘They[work colleagues] were very committed for me to do the course. If they weren’t so committed and supportive, it would be different. Some people on the course have found it very difficult’. Lack of interest in, awareness of, or lack of support for, CSBM participants’ professional development was strongly in evidence in some settings, as captured in head teacher comments such as the following: ‘We were very surprised by what was involved, the amount she had to do. We had no idea’; and ‘I haven’t been much involved, to be honest’. Other interviews betrayed experience of a rather patronizing attitude to the development of associate colleagues: It was very challenging and I think anybody doing it needs to know just how much work is involved. I could see a lot of schools having problems because a lot of headteachers did send it [the CSBM application form] in thinking ‘it will keep the secretary quiet if we send her on a little course’. Then they saw the amount of work that came back.

This evidence of an attitude among some educators that professional development for support staff is of less value than that of educational colleagues is a phenomenon observed in the other SBM evaluation studies listed in Appendix I and has been noted in other research (O’Sullivan et al. 2000) as well. A third theme was one that was strongly in evidence in data collected in all the evaluation research projects in which I was involved from 2001 to 2010, and in other research literature on the developing SBM profession. The following three example quotations are indicative of participant experiences

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of frustration with the sensitive task of negotiating new areas of responsibility with their head teachers: ‘Our head needs to let go of a lot of the bursar’s role’; ‘He sees doing everything as his keeping control of the school. He’ll have to give me some of it to allow himself to get on. To free himself up he’s really got to start delegating more’. She’s had to learn herself how to do it all, the pitfalls of the job, the easiest ways round it. Plus, the buck stops with her, so she’s saying, ‘No, give it to me. I can do it quicker than I can show somebody how to do it.’ It’s very hard to just say, ‘Great. Now hand it over!’

School governors have responsibility for the business as well as for the educational aspects of their schools, powers which they typically delegate to the head teacher. The question of feeling accountable for the school, coupled with the fact that old habits die hard, perhaps in large part explains the reluctance of some head teachers to delegate financial responsibility to their SBMs. The next group of quotations is from the head teachers of CSBM participants, and illustrate various other dilemmas faced by them in relinquishing control of business management tasks. One barrier to delegation identified by head teachers was concern over lack of SBM ability in managing people: ‘But it’s likely a person who’s dealing with contracts, with finance, is not necessarily going to have people management skills. I’ve had to have both sets of skills because I couldn’t have managed this far if I hadn’t had them’. A second point raised by school leaders was the idea that giving power to their SBMs might signal a difference in status, or create divisions between teaching and support staff: ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to hand over management of support staff to anybody else. I wouldn’t like to run that sort of school’; and All the adverts you look at, it’s always the Bursar who’s in charge of support staff, as if they’re not a terribly important set of people. In no way demeaning the Bursar’s role – I know they can be a very senior person in school – but to me it would be divisive in a school having your support staff managed by a nonteacher and your teaching staff managed by another.

A third reason head teachers gave for reluctance about yielding responsibility for areas of management to their SBMs was the prospect of losing the participant post-CSBM to a higher status job elsewhere: And so really I should be learning that lesson myself [teachers delegating to classroom assistants] and saying ‘No, the office can deal with that’. It’s a difficult

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one this because maybe she [SBM] would be willing to do more but I guess eventually that would lead to some kind of upgrade of her contract and I think if that happens she’d move somewhere else looking for a Bursar’s job.

These quotations emphasize the tensions that such significant professional development of an individual member of staff can unleash on the unsuspecting organization. They also demonstrate the importance of institutional circumstances and interpersonal factors in shaping the opportunities for professionalization attempts to influence existing workplace norms and practices. Evidence illustrating the ways in which personal, interpersonal and institutional factors were perceived to enhance or restrict newfound professional expertise is examined further in Part 3.

Further programmes Developments in the government’s SBM professionalization project continued at the same breathless pace for almost a decade from its early days. In tandem with information for schools about the national agreement on workforce reform (Department for Education and Skills 2003b), in 2003 a booklet was published and made widely available by central government for ‘heads, governors, and others involved in running schools’ discussing the ‘benefits which bursars can bring to the school’ and outlining the ‘potential span and range of the role of the bursar’ (Department for Education and Skills 2003a). Following a similar blended model as the CSBM, the same year saw the launch of the Diploma in School Business Management (DSBM), with national roll-out the following year. Designed for experienced SBMs (normally with the CSBM) and for ‘aspiring’ applicants with relevant experience in other types of organization, this course aimed to provide participants with the ability to take a senior, strategic role in the school and to act as a key member of their school’s leadership team (SLT). Like the CSBM, according to participant data obtained via National College commissioned evaluation research, the DSBM was favourably received (Wright and Colquhoun 2007). Though strong support for the programme was confirmed from a small sample of head teachers, not all educational leaders contacted made themselves available for interview, and some SBMs, as with the CSBM, indicated that negotiating new responsibilities with their head teachers was not straightforward. Recommendations from the evaluation work underscored the necessity to keep course content up-to-date

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in the ever-changing policy context and the course was extensively revised in 2009. It currently has four phases, an online induction followed by three main phases, each made up of three modules: leading and managing the self and others (personal effectiveness, leading and managing teams, stakeholder engagement); leading and managing the business of schools (thinking about strategy in schools; analysing the strategic direction of schools, planning strategic initiatives in schools); and leading and managing school improvement (understanding school improvement, leading and managing change, improving efficiency) (National College DSBM webpages 2013). Various studies in 2007 confirmed an appetite among the SBM community for higher-level qualifications for those exercising a leadership role and working in complex or particularly challenging environments (Woods 2007; Wright and Colquhoun 2007). A report by management consultants the same year argued for building the capacity of leadership teams to support educational leaders, promoting a model of shared leadership (Department for Education and Skills, and PricewaterhouseCoopers 2007), the notion of ‘shared’ or ‘distributed’ leadership being much in vogue in policy and academic circles at the time (Crawford 2012; Gunter et al. 2013). The report identified staff and community expectations of an ever-available ‘hero-head’ as a barrier to sharing leadership responsibilities more widely, alongside ‘legislative, accountability and resourcerelated barriers’ (Department for Education and Skills, and Price waterhouse Coopers 2007, p. ix). Piloting of an Advanced Diploma in School Business Management (ADSBM) duly began in 2008 with national roll out the same year (National College ADSBM webpages 2013). This course was designed for experienced SBMs, usually already in possession of the DSBM, working as members of the SLT. Its purpose is to enable participants to work strategically, often in complex environments such as groups of schools, or collaborative arrangements involving schools and other agencies. Like the CSBM and DSBM, the ADSBM was available both to those already working in schools and those aspiring to do so (Table 4.2). Applications were opened in December 2009 for the first cohort on the School Business Director (SBD) programme, the fourth and final of the formal training programmes for SBMs developed by the National College. This programme was intended to meet the needs of experienced and ‘aspiring’ school business managers working ‘in the context of increasingly diverse and complex settings’, and who ‘face new challenges in terms of their leadership and management

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Table 4.2 Phases of the Advanced Diploma in School Business Management Phase of the programme

Contents

Phase 1: Online Induction

Orientation Induction activities

Phase 2: Preparatory Review of professional role

Unit 1: An introduction to practitioner research skills Unit 2: Self-review; stakeholder review Unit 3: Developing your practitioner research skills

Phase 3: Diagnostic School-focused professional enquiry

Module 1: Enabling learning Module 2: Measuring school performance

Phase 4: Exploratory Research and development programme

Module 3: Transforming organizations Module 4: Understanding the leadership of organizations

Phase 5: Planning Skills development planning

Module 5: Managing strategic finances Module 6: Managing programmes

Source: National College ADSBM webpages 2013 (Crown Copyright)

skills’. Compared to the other three SBM programmes offered by the National College, the approach was more individualized, combining executive coaching, peer support, action learning sets, experiential learning and the use of online resources to create a ‘co-constructed’ course. It promised ‘a nationally recognised professional qualification which reflects competence at the highest level of the profession’ and that will ‘enable participants to continue their learning after the programme to a Masters level’ (National College webpages 2013). However, demand for the programme was limited and at the time of writing was no longer available in its original form. It is currently in the process of being incorporated into a leadership programme for both educational and business leaders. It will be instructive to see how this experiment in inter-professional education unfolds. The National College was successful in gaining accredited status for its three remaining programmes from the Institute of Administrative Management (IAM) in order to gain national recognition and enhance transferability of its SBM qualifications for candidates (National College 2007a). IAM went into liquidation in November 2013, but at the time of writing it was expected that their qualifications would be offered by another awarding body in future.

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Additional project elements Alongside the four formal professional education programmes described, the National College’s professionalization process has involved a series of other initiatives and support mechanisms to consolidate the SBM role within the state school system. In parallel with the launch of the ADSM began arguably the National College’s most innovative and ambitious SBM development initiative to date; 2008 saw the publication of an invitation for groups of schools to bid for grants of up to £50,000 to fund the so called ‘SBM Demonstration Projects’. These projects brought together two significant strands within policy thinking at the time: making schools more ‘business-like’ and encouraging inter-school and inter-agency partnerships and collaborations (Woods et al. 2013). The title ‘demonstration project’ indicates the function of these projects as ‘test-beds’ for innovative practices, a strategy adopted by the New Labour government, and other national governments, to encourage experimentation in education and other public services (Malin 2000). In the case of the SBM demonstration project programme, project groups were given the freedom to develop and try out bespoke solutions for acquiring, and/or developing, SBM expertise to be shared across partner schools. Twenty-seven groupings launched projects in the first four waves of the programme. Settings for the Demonstration Projects were groups of primary and secondary schools, or cross-phase groupings, to include, where relevant, extended service provision. At the request of the Department, additional projects were identified in clusters of small primary schools in eight rural settings (Wave 5). In addition to formal professional education programmes and the SBM demonstration projects, the National College has collaborated with a range of organizations in a variety of ways to increase the stock of the SBM community nationally and internationally among a wide range of stakeholders. Activities have included regular workshops and seminars for and about SBMs; extensive guidance for SBMs, head teachers and school governors about the role, training opportunities, SBM recruitment, etc.; a pro-active approach towards engaging professional and local press and media; a wide range of marketing literature in print and online; the appointment of SBM ‘advocates’ to champion the role and act as a point of contact and information in different regions; regular graduation ceremonies, the first of which took place in November 2003 and included a speech from the Secretary of State; and the co-production by the National College and the NASBM of the SBM competency matrix, discussed in

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the next chapter, to shape professional education nationally and guide individual SBM careers. Forging international links with SBM leaders and professional associations has also been a feature of the College’s activity, including ongoing work with the Association of School Business Officials International, launching the adapted CSBM in South Africa (Western Cape) in 2008, and organizing an annual international SBM conference. As the above summary should make clear, the government-supported SBM professionalization process in England has been characterized by simultaneous, rapid early development in a number of different areas alongside a commitment to ongoing revision and renewal to keep activity abreast of shifts in direction in an ever-changing social, technological, economic and policy context (see Appendix III for an overview of key milestones). The final section of this chapter will offer a brief glimpse of some of the results of this frenetic activity, as reported principally in sources published by the National College. Future directions and priorities for the SBM professional project that emerged from interviews with its leaders are considered in Chapter 11.

SBMs by numbers This final section of the chapter offers information and concluding comments by way of summation of the achievements of the National College coordinated professionalization efforts. This information is derived primarily from impact and evaluation work published by the National College (National College 2007, 2009, 2010; Southworth 2010). Consistent with their summative evaluation purposes and policy-orientation, these documents are replete with features that illustrate its rationalist assumptions: information about progress against predetermined objectives, figures, tables and charts. Places on SBM programmes run by the National College increased from 1,875 in 2006/07 to 2,486 in 2008/09, and by 2010, over 7,000 had completed the CSBM (National College 2010). In addition to national groups, over 30 per cent of local authorities had delivered CSBM programmes in their neighbourhoods by 2009 (National College 2009). Meanwhile, the demand for SBMs was increasing nationwide and, according to College projections, the number of posts might rise ultimately to around 13,000 nationally. Demographic data reveal most SBM programme participants to be white and female, with CSBM candidates predominantly being in their 30s and 40s, and DSBM participants in their 40s and 50s.

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In terms of status and levels of responsibility, National College (2009) reveals that 82 per cent of DSBM graduates had a place on their schools’ leadership teams and that around 17 per cent of CSBM, 53 per cent of DSBM and 77 per cent of ADSBM participants had responsibility for managing more than four associate colleagues in their schools. CSBM and DSBM programme graduates believed the ability to operate as leaders had been enhanced by their programmes of study (92 per cent and 93 per cent, respectively), with 89 per cent indicating that their professional remit had expanded as a result of the programme. With regard to financial impacts for their schools, National College (2009) identifies average additional funding of £50–£60 per pupil and savings of between £8 and £15 per pupil for CSBM graduates. From a study of the financial benefits of the SBM Demonstration Project Programme conducted by Oakleigh Consulting, Southworth (2010) includes estimated savings from 123 schools presented in Table 4.3, amounting to projected net savings in 2009/10 of £95 per pupil and £1,705 per member of leadership and teaching staff. A note of caution is called for in interpreting this material on the achievements of the professionalization process. First, it should be noted that funding allocated to SBM activity was close to £6 million annually from 2007/08 to 2009/10, representing a significant investment of public money (National College 2010). Second, the data presented are taken from documents the purpose of which was, at least in part, to trumpet the project’s successes and promote the National College and its programmes. Further, in conducting our own evaluation work, the research team was keenly aware that many of our participants might be considered early adopters by nature, and/or enthusiasts for the SBM cause, otherwise they would not have taken places on programmes at such an early stage of development. The likelihood that head teachers who were less keen to talk to us might also be those who were less committed to the SBM programme also gave rise to the nagging doubt that we might be missing out on dissenting voices

Table 4.3 Estimated savings in 123 demonstration project schools Gross savings (£m)

Net savings (minus SBM costs(£m))

Approved grants (£m)

2008/09

0.7

0.6

0.3

2009/10

3.1

2.6

0.9

Source: School Business Management: A Quiet Revolution (Southworth 2010, p. 17) (Crown Copyright)

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that perhaps were more prevalent in the general school population than they appeared to be in our overwhelmingly supportive data. It is therefore possible that some skewing was in evidence in some of the evaluative data presented above. However, even with these provisos, it cannot be denied that a relatively small and committed group of people at the National College were responsible for developing and coordinating an impressive array of activities over a 10-year period, and ones which were favourably viewed by the SBM community and many of their teaching colleagues; and were perceived to be having a positive impact on participants’ schools. The visibility of the SBM role in the national and professional media has grown somewhat since the project started, though it is largely absent in more scholarly accounts of school life. Perhaps more importantly, recent interviews with SBMs and their colleagues suggest that there is greater understanding of the SBM role and appreciation in schools themselves of its importance in ensuring that schools operate effectively. A framework for professional and career development is in place, as are accredited programmes of professional development at three levels, which enjoy a high degree of participant satisfaction. A very significant contribution of the professionalization process lies in the knowledge and skills that it has provided for the state school system. It is beyond question that these have enabled many schools to run better as a result. SBM expertise in the effective management of dwindling resources, and in the leadership and development of large numbers of school associate staff, will have supported many schools in weathering the challenges of a turbulent and demanding period. To close, the chapter will highlight some lessons to be drawn from the profile of the professionalization process it has provided. First, high-quality, multilevel professional development to be delivered on a national scale does not come cheap, either in terms of effort by the individuals tasked with delivering it, or in terms of the public purse. Second, change in one professional project cannot be accomplished without affecting the professional projects of colleagues in allied fields of expertise. Yet the support of these co-workers will be fundamental to success. This underlines the highly political nature of professional projects and the fact that any professionalization initiatives need to be accompanied by a concerted campaign to win the hearts and minds of a variety of stakeholders. Some of the achievements of the National College’s SBM work have been presented in this chapter. Limitations, threats and future prospects for the SBM professional project will emerge in the chapters that follow.

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Note 1 Under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government, non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) were reorganized and the National College became an executive agency of the Department for Education on 1 April 2012. National Leadership Development Bodies (NLBDs) (Wallace 2011) have also since been re-structured and the College officially merged with the Teaching Agency on 1 April 2013 to become the National College for Teaching and Leadership.

5

Professional Knowledge and Skill

A degree of specialization is one characteristic of professional work, as emphasized in Chapter 3. It is this body of specialist knowledge that enables the individual to make a distinctive contribution, that is, one that could not readily be provided by someone without the same professional preparation. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the intimate connection between specialist knowledge and skill and the professional project. The chapter begins by clarifying some important concepts in talking about different types of knowledge and their application, which ideal-professionally, is abstract, formal and discretionary. Next, the nature of SBM expertise is examined as evidenced in the formalized professional development framework jointly developed by the NASBM and the National College. This is compared to the framework of competencies for head teachers, and the implications for the division of labour between the two types of professionals are briefly aired. In covering this territory, formal documents produced by the National College constitute the principal evidence, though the final section employs some quotations from participant interviews in summarizing contemporary themes relevant to the SBM project: curriculum models; the role of critical knowledge and the university in professional education; the challenge of keeping curricula current; and the contemporary trend towards inter-professional education.

Knowledge, skill and professionalism In order to retain control of its work, a profession needs to be able to demonstrate the distinctiveness of what it brings to the organizations where it operates from that which other types of workers are able to contribute. There exist different ways of thinking about and labelling the kinds of abilities people exercise in their work. To examine the application of specialist knowledge in professional life, therefore, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by some of the terms in

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common use in talking about the different types of knowledge and skill exercised in paid employment. Writers on historical developments in specialist working practices and professionalism vary in the terms they use and what they focus on in their analyses. However, there is universal acknowledgement that the number of professions associated with particular types of specialist knowledge in developed economies has grown very significantly over time and continues to expand rapidly. Archaeological evidence has long demonstrated that specialist trades existed in the earliest complex civilizations but with the Industrial Revolution came a much higher degree of specialization in working life. Just as manual jobs that might have been performed from start to finish by one person in the pre-industrial era became fragmented into a series of narrow, routinized mechanical tasks, more cerebral work also underwent a revolution during this period. Formerly the preserve of gifted amateurs with the financial resources to indulge their interest, scientific endeavours gradually developed into full-time paid occupations accessible to an expanding middle class. The original status professions from the medieval period (law, medicine, the Ministry and university teaching) divided and subdivided into a range of organized disciplines. This was part of a general trend towards the continuous increase in specialization, in the study and application of complex, formal knowledge and techniques, a trend which has continued ever since. Thus, a large number of occupational professions of experts and technicians have emerged since the late eighteenth century, along with a plethora of ‘new’ terms to describe them. Freidson provides a useful starting point in analysing different forms of knowledge and skill applied in the workplace. First he distinguishes ‘mechanical specialisation’, where ‘performance is specifically organised to minimise individual discretion’ from ‘discretionary specialisation’, calling for the regular exercise of ‘fresh judgement’ (Freidson 2001, p. 23). While the discretionary specialist may perform tasks of a routine nature, they will also be capable of discerning when circumstances require an alteration to routine. These two types of specialization do not equate to manual versus mental labour, as physical labour can also involve the intellect to a greater or lesser extent. What distinguishes them instead is the type of knowledge and thought that is applied, with mechanical specialization applying knowledge acquired through everyday life, while discretionary specialization involves the application of knowledge gained through specialist training and experience. This might be illustrated by comparing a building labourer, who undertakes routine tasks as instructed by the foreman, with a

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professional builder applying his or her expertise in designing building projects and solving technical problems that arise in implementing them. A second distinction can be made between ‘knowledge’ and ‘skill’, with skill referring to the ability to apply in practice one’s knowledge, or what is known in theory. Everyday experience shows that theoretical knowledge about how to do something does not necessarily lead to ability in completing a task successfully. Individuals sharing similar relevant knowledge may differ in their ability to apply what they know either to a manual task, such as operating a machine, or an intellectual one, like solving an abstract reasoning problem (Freidson 2001). A third difference in types of skill and knowledge needed in employment is that some are formalized and codified in such a way that they can be studied, while others are tacit, or ‘unverbalized, perhaps even unverbalizable’ (Freidson 2001, p. 25). Formal knowledge is organized into fields or disciplines and is discussed, revised, created and communicated by specialist knowledge workers, primarily in universities. It can be fairly abstract in nature and, for successful work performance, this knowledge typically needs to be supplemented with specialized knowledge and skill of a more practical kind. This practical, ‘working knowledge’ is acquired through experience in performing concrete tasks in real settings, as in the case of a teacher or physician working under supervision immediately following formal training. Bruner argued that modern societies need both modes of thinking and it is perhaps ‘the blending of analytic and practical habits of mind that professional practice demands’ that represents the most significant challenge for professional educators (Sullivan 2005, p. 199). These distinctions between types of knowledge and how they are applied are important for professional projects. For Freidson, the ideal-typical profession is built on knowledge which is abstract and requires formal learning, and will involve the exercise of discretion. The right to apply discretion affords the professional special status, implying as it does that they are trusted to act responsibly, ethically and in a way that shows due commitment in their work. This in turn can be significant for the way work is organized and the way employees perceive one another and the different roles that they fulfil. Further, the question of relative value assigned to different kinds of knowledge is essentially an ideological one. The status given to a particular kind of knowledge or skill will therefore vary over time and place, and from individual to individual. For this reason, perceptions of the value of professional expertise are fundamental to the progress of professional projects over time.

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SBM knowledge and skill It follows from the previous sub-section that professional expertise typically involves a melange of disparate academic and practical skills and knowledge, and personal attributes such as wise judgement. Any attempt to professionalize a disparate group of employees will require careful deliberation over what exactly an appropriate set of skills and knowledge might consist of, and how these might best be imparted. An important element of the SBM professionalization project was therefore the establishment of a formalized competency framework setting out the standards expected of employees at different career stages in six discrete areas. This framework captures important thinking underpinning both design and delivery of the SBM programme curricula. Preparation of the SBM competency framework involved a collaboration between the National Association of School Business Management (NASBM) and the National College to provide ‘a common training platform for both organisations to work from’ (National College and National Association of School Business Management 2009, p. 1). The framework distinguishes four levels of expertise, while acknowledging that individuals may operate at different levels in different areas. The four levels identified in the matrix are school administration (SA), school business management (SBM), advanced school business management (ASBM) and school business director, expected to work across a group of schools, or schools and other agencies (SBD). It seems likely that these were intended to match directly onto the National College’s four SBM training programmes (CSBM, DSBM, ADSBM and SBD), though the SBD programme is no longer offered, as explained in the previous chapter. Potential uses of the framework are set out as follows in the document: ●

●

●

As the basis for educational programmes, qualifications and, potentially, accredited prior certificated learning arrangements: This would include professional and occupational standards, and professional courses, programmes and qualifications offered through national colleges, other national associations, HE institutions and national and local providers. As the basis for professional assessment: The framework can be used to inform role design, recruitment and selection procedures, assessment and development centres, performance management processes including annual performance review, 360-degree feedback and succession planning. As the basis for CPD (Continuing Professional Development): As professionals develop into new roles and progression their career

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development, the framework offers an opportunity to benchmark against new and unfamiliar areas to inform personal development, review and feedback, assessment, coaching, mentoring, qualification requirements and career choices. (National College and National Association of School Business Management 2009, p. 5) As this excerpt illustrates, the SBM competency framework was designed to enable a range of stakeholders to contribute to the professionalization process in a concerted way. In light of the wide variety of training courses and credentials available to current and aspiring school business management colleagues both before and since the start of the National College’s SBM programmes, the framework provided potential for a more structured approach within and between institutional offerings. It also provided a means of, and a stimulus for, systematic professional development planning for the career-oriented SBM, or those involved in supporting the professional development of administrative support staff in schools. Furthermore, it allowed school leaders from teaching backgrounds to see more clearly the types of knowledge and skill that a trained SBM might possess, consider which of these might be of greatest value to their schools and thus assist them in making appropriate training and appointment decisions. In addition to the four levels described above, the framework is made up of six sections, all weighted equally, each of which is further subdivided into between three and five subsections yielding 27 subsections in total (see Table 5.1). The bulk of the framework document (pp. 8–33) is given over to the presentation in detail of the competencies expected at all four levels for each of the 27 subsections. The set of competencies for the area ‘Facilitating Change’ is included in Appendix IV by way of illustration. Alongside more specialist education management areas, the framework includes a high proportion of fairly generic business management competencies that might be acquired via a wide range of forms of business education and applied in many kinds of organization (planning, project management, people management, marketing, monitoring performance and self-management). Consistent with the idea of the professional as being someone who is trusted, within the first section of the framework (managing self and personal skills) the following text is repeated verbatim for all four levels of SBM operation within the subsection on maintaining professional values and ethics: ‘Acts with integrity, honesty, loyalty and fairness, always within the limits of professional competence, to safeguard the assets, financial probity and reputation of the school’ (p. 10).

• Provide leadership • Plan school/ academy improvement • Ensure compliance with legal, regulatory, ethical and social requirements • Manage risk – Foster school/ academy culture

2 Providing direction • Plan, lead and implement organizational change • Develop innovation • Build capacity for organizational change

3 Facilitating change

Source: NASBM/National College SBM Competency Framework p. 7 (Crown Copyright)

• Manage own resources • Maintain CPD • Develop personal networks • Maintain professional values and ethics

1 Managing self and personal skills • Allocate and monitor the progress of work • Develop productive relationships with colleagues and stakeholders • Recruit staff and support workforce planning and reorganization • Manage staff performance and development • Build, develop and lead teams

4 Working with people • Manage financial resources • Manage technology • Manage health and safety • Manage physical resources • Manage environmental impact

5 Effective use of resources

• Manage projects • Manage school/ academy processes • Implement school/ academy service improvements • Improve school/academy performance

6 Achieving results

The competency framework contains six separate sections, all of which carry equal weighting. Each section is then broken down into sub-sections that describe the professional attributes, knowledge and understanding that the SBM is expected to exhibit in order to effectively deliver in that area.

Table 5.1 SBM competency framework overview

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As is to be expected, throughout the framework the competencies described illustrates that the degree to which an SBM might be required to exercise their individual discretion tends to increase in reading across the four levels from SA to SBD. While the SA ‘responds’, ‘contributes positively’, ‘implements’ and ‘follows guidelines and instructions’ in undertaking what seem likely to be fairly routine tasks falling within relatively proscribed areas, in contrast, the SBD ‘leads’, ‘role models’, ‘develops’, ‘creates’, ‘builds’ and ‘embeds’ networks, processes and structures between organizations at a strategic level. Two ideal-typical applications of professional knowledge are in evidence in the more senior SBM competences, bearing the hallmarks of ideal-typical professional discretion: thinking creatively, and, implying advanced formal knowledge, ‘thinking conceptually’ (p. 17).

SBM and head teacher competencies compared It is instructive here to compare the competencies required for educational leadership. The National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) was introduced by the New Labour government in 1997 and made compulsory for all new head teachers in 2009. It was overhauled and made optional again under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition for relaunch in September 2012. Controversially, in removing the qualification as a prerequisite for headship, the change meant that applicants who were not trained teachers, such as senior SBMs, could, in theory at least, become head teachers within the state school system. According to a report in the Times Educational Supplement announcing the proposed revisions to the programme, features of the new provision include more time in schools, ‘and with outstanding headteachers’; a wider range of providers, including universities and schools; and a modular approach, with some compulsory and some optional modules to provide greater flexibility (Maddern 2011). In the article, the Chief Executive of the National College, Steve Munby, refers to closer links between the new NPQH and higher education courses such as the MBA and master’s degrees. Consistent with the view that true professionalism involves the acquisition of formal, theoretical knowledge, the executive director of the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers is cited expressing the view that University involvement in delivering the new qualification will add ‘status and kudos’ (Maddern 2011).

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Practitioners often hold a relatively sceptical view on the value of theory for professional practice. This is reflected in views expressed in postings about the experience of the old-style programme to the newspaper’s community blog (TES Connect blog, 6 March 2011): ‘The programme should be high on practical advice and low on theory’; and It [NPQH] is an intimidating experience run by academics and based on questionable theories and principles. The people who run the course act as gatekeepers. If you don’t go along with it and learn to speak and think like them then you won’t get your NPQH. We need to send the academics back to their ivory towers along with their silly theories.

Though it adopts an extreme position, and suggests a view of the life in the academy that certainly does not fit with personal experience of it, the second quotation does illustrate effectively the strength of ideological commitment to the relative value of abstract versus practical knowledge for working life. In comparing SBM and head teacher competencies as presented in the two formal frameworks published by the National College, an obvious difference is in the number of dimensions identified within the two spheres of operation. While, as set out above, the SBM framework contains six distinct dimensions, the head teacher matrix has only three: strategic leadership, educational excellence and operational management (National College 2011). Like the SBM dimensions, these are further subdivided into five to six competencies, though different levels of performance are not distinguished as they are in the SBM framework (see Table 5.2). Table 5.2 Overview of NPQH competencies reflecting three key dimensions Operational management

Strategic leadership

Educational excellence

Self-awareness and self-management

Delivering continuous improvement

Efficient and effective

Personal drive and accountability

Modelling excellence in teaching

Relationship management

Resilience and emotional maturity

Learning focus

Holding others to account

Conceptual thinking Future focus

Organizational and community understanding

Partnership and collaboration

Analytical thinking

Developing others

Impact and Influence Source: National Professional Qualification for Headship Competency Framework, p. 1 (Crown Copyright)

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Commonalities with the more senior SBM competencies can be discerned in the head teacher framework, reflecting their shared leadership function, albeit in different spheres of school operation: the importance of having a firm focus on the future and on continuous improvement; being an excellent communicator and role model; and having a commitment to developing others, or holding them to account when required, even where such decisions may be unpopular. The policy imperative of establishing inter-organizational learning in the public sector is also strongly in evidence in both sets of competencies through the inclusion of items on building relationships, networks, partnership and collaboration. Within the head teacher framework, the part to be played by formal learning in professional preparation is in evidence in the mention of ‘analytical thinking’ and ‘conceptual thinking’ (p. 1). However, what is notable is the greater focus on personal attributes that might be seen as being largely questions of character, or personal style, such as a resilience, drive, and being attuned to the feelings and emotions of self and others. This set of competences thus includes a significantly higher proportion towards the tacit, hard-to-train or even ‘unverbalisable’ end of the knowledge and skills spectrum than does the SBM framework. Arguably, ‘modelling excellence in teaching’ (p. 1) could also be considered as a possession of largely tacit, working knowledge acquired through experience, if the common idea is accepted that teaching is more art and craft than science. Unlike the SBM framework, absent from the head teacher competencies is any mention of integrity, ethics or values. This may reflect the relatively established status of teachers as professionals and therefore as people who should be trusted implicitly. This is worth noting in the context of high-profile cases of financial impropriety involving head teachers that have occurred since schools have been able to release themselves from control by the local authority. The third dimension within the head teacher framework ‘operational management’ displays considerable potential overlap between what the head teacher is expected to know and be able to do, and the attributes required of a more senior SBM (see Table 5.3). It is to the question of division of labour between the two types of professional that the discussion turns in the next section.

Division of labour Specialism is an intrinsically relative concept. As just one element of a subject discipline, or of a product or service to be delivered, it cannot be understood

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Table 5.3 Head teacher competencies in operational management Efficient and effective Someone who is ready for headship will ensure that all systems and resources, including financial, human and environmental resources, are used efficiently and effectively to achieve the school’s goals and in a way that maximizes performance and secures value for money. They are attuned to opportunities that increase the resources available to the school and improve the way the school functions. They monitor the implementation of plans and the effectiveness of organizational structures. They take corrective action where necessary to secure required outcomes and account to the governing body and others for the school’s performance. They have a broad understanding of the legal, political and technical knowledge that affect the running of a school and keep up-to-date with major changes. Analytical thinking Someone who is ready for headship collects information and data systematically from a wide variety of sources. They confidently analyse complex information and data and understand the connections between issues through breaking down opportunities and challenges into their constituent parts. They are able to break down a problem in a systematic way and establish causal relationships between issues that may or may not be obviously related, to better enable a solution to be found. Their analytical skills enable them to prioritize issues and to plan how to implement the actions necessary to achieve change and improvement. Relationship management Someone who is ready for headship is able to develop and sustain appropriate internal and external relationships, manage individuals and lead effective teams. They know about the impact of behaviour and emotions of relationships, use this knowledge to understand why others behave the way they do and take this into account when communicating and working with others. Holding others to account Someone who is ready for headship holds others to account by clearly communicating expectations, and gives constructive and specific feedback. They ensure goals or objectives are achieved by getting others to do what is asked of them even if it involves tough or unpopular decisions. These choices or actions will always be instigated with the best interests of pupils/students and the school in mind. Developing others Someone who is ready for headship develops others so that they develop leadership potential where possible. They ensure succession planning is in place and learning and development needs are addressed. This involves continually seeking out opportunities to support and develop colleagues so they perform at their best. Source: National Professional Qualification for Headship Competency Framework, pp. 6–7 (Crown Copyright)

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without reference to the other elements contributing to the whole. While the head teacher of a secondary school might be considered more of a generalist than their head of mathematics, they are more specialized than a director of children’s services in the local authority. Specialization therefore represents a relationship rather than a freestanding position, its relatively leaving it ‘subject to strong ideological winds’ (Freidson 2001, p. 37). Freidson defines ‘division of labour’ as ‘the structure of social relationships that organises and coordinates the work of related specializations or occupations’ (Freidson 2001, p. 41). Given the potential overlap between tasks that might be conducted by either the head teacher or the SBM, how labour is divided between them to reflect their specialist knowledge is an important question. Within bureaucratic models of organization, clear lines of authority are established leading up to the most senior member at the top of the pyramid. Working within the rules of the particular organization, jobs and titles may be modified by the administration when circumstances require, with little control over the process by employees. Freidson argues that even within de-layered organizations boasting flatter pyramids and flexible workers, this is more a reconstitution of bureaucracy rather than an elimination of it, and that the division of labour is still managed and evaluated by executive authority. In contrast to this bureaucratic, top-down model, the division of labour may be controlled by the occupations themselves, an essential aspect of professionalism. With the growing number of specialists and technicians required in modern organizational life, a more horizontal division of labour may emerge with a variety of specialists working together on an equal footing. However, even where bureaucratic modes of control are absent, hierarchy may not. Cooperating occupations may work in parallel on related tasks, or may have a vertical structure in which some occupations have authority over others, or even a combination of the two, with authority being exercised both by virtue of expertise and through its relationship to other specialisms, rather than being a question of economic or administrative status (Freidson 2001). The occupational division of labour therefore requires the ongoing negotiation of professional jurisdictions. With the devolution of budgetary and other kinds of decision-making from regional to school level, it is the head teacher to whom ultimate authority is delegated by school governors. The position of the head teacher thus gives them both bureaucratic authority and authority by virtue of being the lead professional in the area of children’s education and welfare. Therefore, while doing the accounts, managing ICT and building projects and dealing with the extensive,

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complex and technical work required to meet health and safety requirements in schools might all be tasks that could be seen to fall well within the SBM’s purview and outside the specialism of educational professionals, the division of labour is far from straightforward and the head teacher will need to have confidence in their SBM before relinquishing control of activities even in these relatively clear-cut areas of SBM expertise. To reflect the ultimate authority of the head teacher over every aspect of the functioning of the school, the NPQH competences include areas that fall within the SBM’s area of expertise and are covered within the SBM framework: Someone who is ready for headship will ensure that all systems and resources, including financial, human and environmental resources, are used efficiently and effectively to achieve the school’s goals and in a way that maximises performance and secures value for money. They are attuned to opportunities that increase the resources available to the school and improve the way the school functions (National College 2011, p. 6).

Such overlaps illustrate the requirement for the ongoing negotiation of jurisdiction between head teachers and SBMs in the division of school leadership tasks and responsibilities, a recurring theme in previous research on school business managers’ working lives and an important focus of discussion in Chapter 8.

Professional education themes and implications Professional education is a complex business and it is beyond the scope of this book to tackle the questions it raises in depth. This section is therefore limited to highlighting in brief a small number of ideas relevant to the SBM project that emerge in the literature, in current policy or in the study data. The themes identified are the types of curriculum model available, where professional education takes place, the challenge of keeping knowledge current, and the relevance of inter-professional education. First comes the question of which curriculum model is most suited to the type of professional development required. Curriculum models, like much else in life, are subject to fads and fashions, and the competency frameworks discussed earlier in the chapter are consistent with the modernizing agenda of government at the time, as embodied in the work of the National College: in this period leadership and management development typically involved

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the identification of clear standards and competencies (Simkins 2012). In the literature, competency-based and outcome-based approaches to education are critiqued and juxtaposed against syllabus-based approaches. Competency-based approaches offer a method of assessing behaviour and performance using core performance descriptors, rather than the prescribed list of topics to be covered in training that is characteristic of a traditional syllabus-led approach. Outcomebased education emphasizes what the person in training or development is expected to know or be able to do at the end of their period of study. This entails defining and ideally expressing in behavioural terms the endpoint of a particular learning experience. As well as promoting clarity, accountability, relevance and self-directed learning, in theory at least, standardized approaches should also provide a framework for assessment (Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008). A common criticism of standardized approaches, however, is the difficulty of defining with adequate precision what is expected of the individual on completion of their educational experience. Writing in the field of medical education, Shirley and Padgett (2006) illustrate this point with the notion of ‘excellence’ defined in a document by the American Board of Internal Medicine as ‘the conscientious effort to exceed expectations’. This raises questions about what ‘conscientious effort’ means and how ‘ordinary’ is to be defined (e.g. for a lone physician working in a rural hospital versus one in an urban care centre) and by whom (e.g. patients, other doctors, the insurance company). This process of definition in relation to SBMs, would inevitably raise questions around, for example, what ‘wise judgement’ might look like and how it can be taught and assessed. Doukas (2006) makes the additional point that it takes time to develop the ethical understanding and commitment needed to exercise discretionary professional judgement. Standardized approaches to curriculum can place emphasis on those areas of knowledge and skill that can be easily defined, explained and assessed at the expense of those areas that cannot. In this way, curriculum time and systematic attention to more complex questions of professional judgement can be squeezed out. A second theme in professional education is one that is highly contested and the focus of intensive debate in England at the time of writing. The question concerns where and from whom necessary knowledge and skill should be acquired, given the combination of academic and practical knowledge and skills associated with professional life. Modelled on teaching hospitals, the current government in England has introduced teaching schools as a means of developing professional knowledge and skill, and reduced the number of places

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available for university-based initial teacher training. The teaching school initiative involves schools working together within a teaching school alliance in delivering initial teacher training; continuing professional development and leadership development for teaching and support staff; or school to school support. These teaching school alliances form strategic partnerships with, for example, other schools, universities, academy chains, the private sector, diocese, or local authorities to deliver particular aspects of activity (www. education.gov.uk/nationalcollege). The concomitant reduction in places on university initial teacher training courses funded by central government has been controversial. The move away from the university as the place traditionally central in promoting critical and ethical judgement among professionals, and towards a more practice-led approach, strikes at the heart of an ideological divide. Sullivan (2005) sees the university as key in bringing the practical and theoretical together, as the centre for both advancing and transmitting professional knowledge, or ‘the pivotal point at which social needs and economic and political imperatives meet advancing knowledge and aspiring talent’ (p. 205). However, the relative merits of theoretical knowledge versus practical experience have been debated throughout history, fuelling cyclical revisions in curricula first in favour of one position and then the other. One extreme view in favour of practical experience was evident in the views of the head teacher captured in the second blog post cited above, while others will feel equally passionately that critical theoretical understanding is essential to professional knowledge, and best acquired in a university setting. A third question is that of how professional knowledge and skill are to be kept current for public sector professionals in an ever-changing technological and policy landscape. At least two important implications flow from this. One is that a professional’s knowledge will need to be constantly updated to ensure it remains adequate to the job. The position of the current administration and the opposition in England in relation to teaching qualifications is pertinent here and could not be more different. The devaluation of teaching qualifications by the current administration was signalled in the removal of the need for teachers in academies and free schools to have qualified teacher status. The Labour opposition, on the other hand, in 2014 re-proposed the idea, which they first floated in 2009, that teaching should become a licensed profession. This would mean that a teacher’s professional credentials would have to be revalidated periodically, a position which is highly consistent with

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the idea that keeping knowledge and skill current is part of a professional’s responsibilities. A second implication of the pace of change in requisite professional knowledge and skill concerns how to ensure the currency of professional curricular. A quotation by a senior SBM who had taken all three of the National College’s programmes makes this point well: I learn constantly from doing my job. And you have to read constantly to try to keep up to speed with all the new initiatives. Sometimes I think a programme that is written can never be as reactive as your own reading. It can’t be as current as you may need it to be. I think it’s probably one of the things that I find most frustrating with regards to programmes for education business leadership. To keep that currency is really challenging. Some of the things that people would be studying on the ADSBM now, I would be thinking ‘Gosh. That’s old hat. Things have moved on’. If you look at how far we’ve come even in the last five years, for anybody to write materials to keep up to speed with that, it’s almost impossible.

The above quotation illustrates the demands on those responsible for keeping professional knowledge and skill fit for purpose. This holds true regardless of (i) whether the process is led by policymakers, or the professions, or a marriage of the two and (ii) who is involved in creating and imparting new understanding, whether in formal institutes of learning or practice settings. Finally, inter-professional education (IPE) is being widely promoted in academic and policy circles and this seems relevant to the SBM project in two interconnected ways. First, as the above analysis of their respective competency frameworks illustrated, there is significant potential overlap in the type of knowledge and skill, and the areas of responsibility, of SBMs and head teachers. Learning together might enable a better appreciation of the knowledge of the other party with implications for the effective negotiation of jurisdiction in the division of labour. In discussing the merger of what was the SBD programme with advanced education for other kinds of leader in schools and children’s services more generally, a member of the SBM team at the National College saw the benefits of IPE for the more effective deployment of SBM expertise: [With IPE] You will have teachers actually accessing resource management modules, which will address a worry that I’ve got. We’ve got a huge army of quite skilled people [SBMs] now and some of them are not being stretched or challenged because the headteacher does not have the skills, the knowledge to

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A second way that IPE might be relevant to SBMs is in their often quite significant involvement in liaising with other schools and agencies. Because of the high degree of specialism and need for close collaboration among medical professionals, IPE has become common practice in health nationally and internationally. Though evidence of effectiveness is as yet thin (Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008), the United Kingdom now boasts a Centre for the Advancement of Inter-Professional Education to support this trend within the health sector (http://caipe.org.uk). IPE might therefore become a stronger feature of the professional education of SBMs and others they come into contact within their professional role over time. This chapter has set out important distinctions between different kinds of knowledge and skill and how they relate to professional education. It has also compared the competencies set out in formal professional education frameworks for head teachers and SBMs in England in ways that are relevant to the division of labour in school leadership and to the data presented in subsequent chapters. Finally it has raised contemporary challenges for professional education identified in the literature, which also emerge as themes in the remainder of the book.

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Credentials and Careers

This chapter presents an analysis of data relevant to SBM credentials and careers mainly from the perspectives of SBM practitioners themselves. Traditional understandings of professionalism often include the idea of individuals who see formal qualifications, and keeping their expertise up to date, as one of their professional obligations, and who may expect to move between organizations in order to advance their careers. The working lives of many SBMs today bears little relation to the stereotypical roles of two or three decades ago, such as the private school bursar role as sinecure for the retired military officer, parttime employment as a primary school secretary or administrator with long holidays and predictable and stable work patterns. This chapter presents recent perspectives of SBMs on their careers and their credentials with a view to understanding the role of the National College’s professionalization activity in shaping these viewpoints. The chapter begins with an exploration of the ways in which the SBMs interviewed respond to the idea of school business management as a lifelong career. It then presents data in relation to attitudes to the acquisition of formal qualifications and the perceived credibility of the National College’s credentials as indicators of professional competence. The next section examines understandings of the relevance of these credentials to the SBM labour market. The chapter ends with a consideration of ways in which individual SBMs experience working life when crossing the boundary between business and education as they progress through their professional career. The academies programme emerges as significant in the data in requiring competence in business accounting practices, both for the value of the College’s SBM qualifications in the labour market and for the working lives and careers of SBMs.

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Professional careers as personal projects The career is a rather neglected area of study but one which is valuable in at least two ways (Inkson and King 2011). First, rather than focusing on immediate concerns, in taking a long-term view, a career focus reflects a future orientation that is arguably becoming more common among public sector workers and organizations than was traditionally often thought to be the case. Second, a career orientation moves beyond the traditional territory of negotiating collective interests, a shift which sits well with the contemporary move towards more individualized employment relations. Freidson (2001) draws a distinction between the career lines stereotypically associated with the three different logics of consumerism, bureaucracy and professionalism outlined in Chapter 3. In a free labour market, ideal-typically individuals ply their knowledge, skills and experience on the open market in careers that are apt to be disorderly, as their success and direction is determined by the vagaries of client choice. In the idealtypical bureaucratic labour market, careers proceed vertically upwards in regular fashion within the firm’s hierarchy once entry is gained through the personnel office via assessment against formerly prescribed job and person specifications. In the ideal professional labour market, career progression involves horizontal movement between organizations, and the application of discretionary, transferable knowledge obtained via a recognized credential. Freidson’s characterization of the professional career as a horizontal one, moving between organizations, and within which the individual holds bargaining power by virtue of their expertise, captures something of the idea of the career as a personal project, involving individual, rather than collective negotiation with the employer. Within the bureaucratized state, ‘the practices and discourse of strategic human resource planning, performance evaluation, employee development, and succession planning normalise the organization’s assumption of control and effectively expropriate the individual’s career’ (Inkson and King 2011, p. 40). However, individuals with knowledge and skills that are highly prized and in short supply are in a strong position to negotiate their own interests, potentially resulting in organizational ‘wars for talent’ (p. 40), leading sports teams vying for star players and ivy league universities competing for Nobel prize-winning academics being prime examples. If careers are to be conceived of as ‘the result of deals negotiated between individual career actors and the organizations in which they work over their working lives’ (p. 37), SBM perspectives on their careers are a central element of the professional project.

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In essence, SBM careers are a concrete realization of the professional project as masterminded by the bureaucratized state, under the stewardship of the National College, but mediated via the personal career projects of individual SBMs. SBMs interviewed varied considerably in terms of the extent to which they seemed to view their careers as personal lifelong projects. In some cases, individuals appeared to have gone into school administration or financial management largely by happenstance having worked in retail, banking, industry or some other line of work. As one CSBM graduate expressed it: ‘I don’t think I’m going to be here forever. I just kind of landed here’. Among those who had been working in school administration for some time, there were also intimations from third parties of a degree of reluctance or even resentment at having to undergo professional training and accept new responsibilities in some cases. The duties of the modern-day SBM are very far cry from the often part-time role of the school secretary of two or three decades ago, so it is perhaps unsurprising that there should be anecdotal evidence of lack of enthusiasm for the idea of gaining professional credentials and assuming the increased responsibilities associated with a higher status role, as illustrated in the following quotations: ‘I see a few SBMs who perhaps have done it [gained a credential] because they had to in order to keep their jobs and it’s not really what they wanted to do’ and I was at a meeting earlier in the week with a number of business managers from around the country and some of those people had started off as school secretaries and have come a far distance in terms of what they are now being asked to do. Most of them, I think, welcome that but a few kind of resent it, and think ‘this isn’t what I came into it for and I don’t think that’s what I want to do’.

At the other extreme were highly career-oriented individuals, who clearly saw the significance of personal agency in shaping careers. These SBMs viewed their professional lives from a very different standpoint from their less career-focused colleagues, actively seeking out or creating opportunities to apply their expertise in new ways, to learn and to augment their personal stock as professionals within a competitive labour market: Yes I definitely see this as a lifetime career but I would say it’s down to each individual school business manager because there are jobs out there that give

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Anatomy of a Professionalization Project that challenge but there are also the school business managers, how can I put it, who don’t use the abilities and skills that they have. It’s depends on the individual and on the school that you are in. I think I’m very lucky here because I have been given lots of opportunities with the federation, with the new build, going to fourth form entry. We’ve got the challenges here. I enjoy that. It’s great. I could have been a school business manager in a small school where things just chug along and there is no major change, but I enjoy the change aspect, I enjoy the different challenges and looking at things in a different way. I mean I don’t always get everything right but you learn from your mistakes.

Some interviewees made reference to the wide variation among schools in terms of the opportunities for professional development and advancement they offer: Schools are very different depending on the head and the senior leadership team. The school business manager, in some schools they are just perceived as admin, and that’s the way it will always stay, whereas in other schools they are an effective part of the senior leadership team. I have to say it depends on where you work and your attitude to the role.

They also recognized that their less career-savvy peers did not always understand the wide variability in the level of responsibility that can be held by two incumbents, both with the title SBM, but working in different schools: Some school business managers struggle to understand that School A and School B can be very different in the dimensions of the leadership structure and responsibility. They therefore see that the SBM in School A is getting this salary and think that they should therefore be getting that salary in School B. Some still think that they are both school business managers and should be paid the same, though they’re doing a completely different job. Some struggle to recognise that.

More career-oriented SBMs appeared to see their own development as part and parcel of their professionalism but recognized that not all SBMs took this position: I think for some getting qualified is very empowering and I think some they totally misunderstand it. They see it as ‘well I’ve done the certificate therefore you should pay me this salary’ and they don’t recognise that the salary goes with the experience as well, and are not prepared to move from their own school to get the experience.

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Opportunities for new learning were seized on enthusiastically by some SBMs, using this as a basis for decision-making about whether to take on new roles and whether to stay on in the existing school or to move: To be perfectly honest with you, I was actually looking at a secondary school and I was offered an interview for an assistant business manager role at a large secondary school but then the federation came along and I was asked if I would be school business manager in that school too and I thought ‘Yeah, hang on a minute, I can make a difference here’. So I pulled out from the interview and decided to stay here. I applied and was successful in becoming a specialist leader in education [SLE] through the local teaching school. I’ve had a few deployments from the local authority who wanted help and advice on school business management, particularly cluster business management. They’ve then contacted the teaching school and the teaching school have deployed me as SLE to those schools. That is growing and developing. I am told that to have a non-educational SLE is fairly unusual. There is lots of talk at the moment of getting local, and I guess national, SBM school support up and running as the role and the wherewithal of the local authority diminishes.

The above quotations about school business management as a professional career in England are consistent with the summary of the present position from a member of the SBM team at the National College: I would break down SBMs into three categories. The first is those SBM’s who really are at the top of the profession, are wanting to push the profession forward, who want to professionalize it, who are wanting to take up a place as, actually as I think it should be taken, and that is as the second most influential person in the school. There are then a middle group who basically want to make sure that they do as good a job as possible for their school and take their lead from the headteacher. And then there is another group who want the SBM badge but don’t want the responsibility.

This section has illustrated a variety of understandings of, and commitments to, school business management as a career, with some SBMs clearly seeing their relationship with the school as being one involving mutual investment: the SBM’s knowledge capital in exchange for opportunities for developing career capital. The point illustrated in Chapter 4 that some head teachers were reluctant to offer their SBMs opportunities for professional development, either because such opportunities for associate staff were seen as less valuable than for teaching colleagues, or for fear of losing their SBM to another employer, is pertinent

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here. It shows that both parties in the relationship, the school and the individual SBM, need to share the view of the SBM as professional for significant career advancement to be possible.

Careers and credentials Starting with the CSBM, academic credentials were the first, and a very major, element in the government-led SBM professional project. The relevance of the College’s qualifications to SBM careers was therefore an important question to raise with participants. Discussion of professional credentials can be somewhat coloured in academic accounts due to negative associations with the term ‘credentialism’ (e.g. Collins 1979). Credentialism is used in various ways. First, it may refer to the degree to which individuals in a given society are allocated to particular positions in the occupational hierarchy on the basis of their qualifications. Second, it can be understood as the ongoing trend towards ever higher educational requirements for jobs and thus synonymous with ‘credential inflation’. Third, credentialism may be viewed in terms of the non-linear return in terms of earnings associated with schooling, with qualifications being rewarded beyond their contribution to productivity (Bills 2011). Despite negative associations in the academic literature, educational credentials can be seen as just one among a wide variety of labour market signals that influence prospects for employment and advancement. Indeed, it could be argued that formal educational credentials are preferable to many alternative conscious and unconscious labour market signals conveyed and interpreted by the expert offering their services and those employing them: characteristics such as age, race, gender, class, religion alongside testimonials from former employers, or membership of a particular family group or social network (Freidson 2001). Labour market signals, including formal qualifications, are almost always indirect in that it is usually not possible to see at first hand the actual work that an individual has done. In that sense, the employer or consumer must take them on trust. The credibility of the National College’s credentials, both among potential applicants for the College’s programmes and among schools as recruiters of SBMs, is an important marker of the success of the College’s professionalization activity as a means of injecting business management expertise into the school system. As established in Chapter 3, ideal-typically, a profession will ‘own’ a body of abstract, theoretical knowledge, which is formally assessed and accredited, and that enables it to control its place in the labour market. From the perspective

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SBM programme director, Trevor Summerson, at the National College, the value in terms of conferring status and credibility of (i) working with universities in developing the content of SBM training programmes and assessment and (ii) with obtaining formal accreditation by an external body, were understood at the outset. I think there was a sense that if we could link with one or two universities and we could also link with accrediting organisations, that would help develop the programmes and develop the awards in such a way that they would be valued.

As Summerson explained, the need for qualifications at different levels, to reflect the very variable demands being placed on administrative and finance support staff in different school settings also soon became apparent. Beyond the basic operational level knowledge and skills supplied by the CSBM, there was a perceived need for higher-level qualifications to support SBMs with more senior roles to develop their ability to contribute to their schools, to enable career progression and to support further study at postgraduate level. In the early days of the Certificate it was becoming very, very clear very quickly that the certificate would not be enough. It was certainly in my thinking in and around those six months of getting to the pilot stage of the Certificate that there would be a need for a Diploma and beyond that, probably we were talking about a level 6 programme as well. Consequently, it made sense to really engage with the institutions to try to develop some sort of career progression so that candidates could go on to more structured, higher education at level 6 and above.

Summing up the practical value of the College’s credentials from the perspective of SBM practitioners at different career stages, an SBM who had completed all three of the National College’s current programmes (CSBM, DSBM, ADSBM), had this to say: The CSBM for me was, without a shadow of doubt, operational. The DSBM was far more about management and on the ADSBM we started touching on leadership. For me I still see it in those three ways. Somebody who has done a CSBM does have a great operational overview of the core purpose of what a business manager does. Then I think those doing the DSBM are often beginning to think ‘oh gosh I might have to manage people. What am I going to do about that?’ and some of those skills start to develop through the course. Even then I would say the DSBM doesn’t give you those real key leadership skills that start to be developed on the ADSBM. It’s more strategic as you come on to the ADSBM.

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As in the above quotation, SBM data confirmed that the various College credentials covered effectively the territory set out in the different levels of the competency matrix discussed in the previous chapter. However, as might be expected, attitudes varied considerably among the SBMs interviewed both in terms of the appeal of studying for them and in their perceived contribution to the ability to function effectively in their role. Some CSBM graduates relished the opportunity for academic study and went on to do the DSBM, ADSBM, or undergraduate or postgraduate programmes in school business management, while others did not enjoy formal study and did not intend to progress beyond the CSBM: I actually think I am at my best when I’m studying but it’s finding the time to be able to dedicate to it. I love writing. I’m a closet academic really. It’s one of those things that if I won the lottery I would go part time and I would actually do some proper research and really get some things written down. But you never know. Perhaps one day. Personally I didn’t want to go further than I’ve done. I don’t want to go back to writing essays, completing a learning journal. I’m just not interested in any of that. That’s not to say that I’m not learning. With everything I’m doing at work I’m increasing my professional knowledge. I don’t need a certificate tell me that.

These last two quotations are reflective of the different perspectives on the value of practical versus abstract knowledge in professional life referred to in Chapter 5. As the second quotation illustrates, some SBMs felt that the professional knowledge that they were gaining through their day-to-day experience of working in schools was ultimately of greater value in terms of their effectiveness than working towards an additional credential. While all respondents saw the National College’s credentials as offering valuable professional knowledge and skills, some interviewees referred to the inevitably imperfect match between the academic knowledge acquired via their SBM qualifications and their day-to-day working lives: For those new to the role the CSBM is very helpful. What you do is not necessarily what happens in day-to-day life in the school. The flipside is that if you do not have that knowledge, you cannot put it in to that day-to-day life. In fact SBMs need that background to make things run better in their schools.

Others saw the main purpose of credentials as being to enhance status or for career advancement:

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There are those for whom this is their career, but they are the ones that have done the CSBM, then do their DSBM etc. That actually doesn’t interest me. I’m quite happy to come in here and do my job and do my job well, and this might sound disrespectful to some who are, but I’m not interested in doing programmes for the kudos of having an extra qualification to say I can do the job.

Given their value as labour market signals, the extent to which the National College’s SBM credentials could be taken as a sign of fitness to practice was a question rehearsed with respondents. A number of interviewees drew a parallel with teaching credentials and the fact that a teaching qualification was not a guaranteed indicator of effectiveness in the classroom. Head teachers believed that in most cases the SBM credentials were a useful indicator for prospective employers, though not in all, as the following two quotations illustrate: ‘I would say in 90% of cases they’re [SBM qualifications] okay but for 10% they aren’t. It’s like with teachers. You can have the badge but not have the ability to apply the skills’; ‘It’s the same with other jobs. You think teachers have the qualification and will be good but you get into the school and they don’t always deliver all that they appear to be able to deliver on paper’. First-hand practical experience was seen by some SBM respondents to be a necessary prerequisite for successful application of the knowledge gained in theory via SBM credentials: I think headteachers think ‘well they’ve got that piece of paper, so they must know what they’re doing’. Anyone can do the training, get the piece of paper but until you’ve sat in that chair and done that role, you don’t have a clue. You really don’t have a clue. Some colleagues are doing other [SBM] programmes and would answer very differently. But it’s very clear in my mind that it’s a personal thing. I did my CSBM. I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I don’t want to repeat that experience. But those that want it, it’s great but I don’t think it qualifies you to do the job.

Viewed from the opposite perspective, just as possession of a qualification can offer no absolute guarantee of professional competence, nor does absence of one indicate a lack of effectiveness. An Australian academic commenting on the highly variable situation in their context with regard to SBM qualifications and experience agreed with the common observation that an absence of formal qualifications was no indicator of lack of ability to be an effective SBM: A lot of them don’t have any qualifications in Australia. It’s not compulsory. However that doesn’t mean to say that they can’t do the job. A lot of the people

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Anatomy of a Professionalization Project who haven’t got qualifications have been doing the job for a long time and are running very complex, multi-campus sites, so a credential doesn’t say anything at all about the person’s where-with-all.

Other interviewees, too, made reference to the qualities of the individual as being decisive in employing the knowledge acquired via professional education effectively in practice: I have seen some SBMs who were brought in originally doing some secretarial work and they’ve grown into the role, have done their CSBM and are doing an outstanding job. For others, that’s not the case. Two people with exactly the same qualification, one doing an outstanding job, one is doing a poor job and why is that? You’ve just got to look at the qualities of the individual.

The quotations cited in this section indicate that the National College’s SBM qualifications are seen as valuable in providing relevant knowledge and skills at different career stages, and are recognized as useful labour market signals by SBMs wishing to enhance their careers and by head teachers in recruiting SBMs. Nonetheless, individual enthusiasm for undertaking study leading to qualifications to increase career opportunities, and perceptions of the relevance of formal learning to professional life beyond career advancement, were variable among SBMs as they probably are among many professional groupings.

SBM credentials and the labour market Ideal-typically, as discussed in Chapter 3, professionalism offers a form of labour market shelter, whereby the profession is able to control access to work opportunities, and the value of its associated credentials in securing employment. This is clearly not the case for the SBM professional project in England examined here, which has been led by the state rather than SBM professionals as a grouping. Further, the SBM job market is not a closed one, as the College’s suite of programmes are not prerequisites for obtaining employment. However, questions of supply and demand and of the value of these credentials in the labour market could be understood as indicators of the progress of the Collegeled professional project. Participant interviews therefore explored impressions of the current SBM labour market and invited them to consider the relevance of the College’s professionalization activities to this market.

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Conversations with members of the SBM team at the College suggested the country is in ‘a good place’ with regard to numbers of qualified SBMs, and head teachers and SBM themselves also indicated that the supply of qualified SBM labour currently seems broadly to match demand, as in the words of this primary head teacher: ‘I’ve never felt there are too many qualified SBMs about. If a school advertises for a school business manager and they want one in the true sense [working beyond the operational level], I don’t think there are too many of them.’ The academies programme was mentioned by some respondents as relevant to the value of the College’s SBM credentials in the labour market. As one SBM trainer and former practitioner put it: ‘I think what’s happening is that academization is what’s driving the demand up. But I think the supply is probably about right for that increasing demand now.’ The impact of the academies programme on the careers of SBMs is a question that is returned to later in the chapter. Two main points were revealed about the status of the new qualifications in the marketplace from the perspectives of those seeking to recruit SBMs. First, as the qualifications have been tried and tested over time, so has appreciation of them as reliable indicators of SBM competence grown over the last decade, and they are now well known among the education community. Second, the effort required by individuals in successfully completing the College’s SBM credentials is increasingly understood. Obtaining the qualification, therefore, also demonstrates both an individual commitment to professional development and the intellectual and practical capacity to complete a demanding programme of study, as one head teacher explained: I think increasingly if they are looking for a business manager, schools will look for a specialist qualification. Just because there are lots more people around who have got the College’s qualifications, lots more people are aware of them. It signals two things I guess. It signals a level of ability but I think it also signals that that person has an inclination to get themselves qualified.

From the viewpoint of SBMs acquiring credentials to gain access to the labour market, respondents noted an increase in uptake of specialist school business management qualifications, as opposed to generic business credentials, over the duration of the College’s SBM professionalization activities: There are certainly more and more people wanting to go down the route of professional qualification within school business management. It now is

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Anatomy of a Professionalization Project definitely seen as a career in its own right, which is great to see. A number of years ago school business managers would be looking for a qualification that was outside education, but that hopefully would add some value to what they were trying to do in their schools and it’s great to see that that growth in specialist qualifications. Entrepreneur in educational services and former SBM

Whether or not the individual SBM intends to use their qualifications to launch themselves on the labour market and further their career, a specialist credential was still believed to benefit the candidate in enhancing professional credibility and status within the schools. In the words of one SBM who joined education from the business sector: I think it legitimises their role, their position, if that’s the right word. It gives it a status. I’ve seen that more and more. I’m different from the majority of people I meet in a similar role in the schools I visit, in that most of them are people who have taken a job in the school and then grown their role and grown their set of skills. I think particularly for those people the qualifications that they have been able to take have helped to reflect their new status in the organisation.

However, alongside these indications of ways in which the College’s suite of SBM credentials were influencing the labour market in positive ways, a number of points were made by respondents about how qualifications as labour market signals might be relevant to inequalities and disparities. First, as within other kinds of work organization, SBMs referred to the challenges of trying to manage work within a pressured environment, home life and the demands of formal training. In a predominantly female profession, family commitments were often cited as a barrier to the acquisition of further qualifications and to career advancement: When I was doing the CSBM, the role itself as a school business manager is that demanding that taking on the additional training of the CSBM and still trying to manage your family life and have some fun in between, it was very difficult and I don’t think it’s fair on me, or on the family, to go through that again, so at the moment I’m not taking any sort of training.

A second issue raised regarded one of the versions of ‘credentialism’ referred to earlier: the rewarding of qualifications beyond their contribution to productivity. Respondents observed that it was not uncommon for employees with posttitles like Administrative Assistant, and working at a strictly operational level, to be

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given the title of SBM on completion of the CSBM, but without any real increase in the level of responsibility. This practice was seen by SBMs to be contributing to the often seemingly rather arbitrary relationship between the post title and the nature of the work undertaken: The [local] authority ran their own CSBM course a couple of years ago and there are a lot of admin officers who actually went and did the qualification and were given the title of school business manager, though there are a lot of those that don’t have a school business manager role. They were given the title because they’d done the CSBM. So whilst there might be a lot of people called school business managers, many don’t actually do a school business manager’s job.

The whole question of how to label SBM posts in ways that give some indication of what the job entails, and how it should be remunerated, emerged as a vexed one. For example, the kinds of criteria used by local authorities to decide the pay scales primary SBMs should be placed on were clearly problematic. One SBM working across several primary schools remarked that though the governors in their school were keen to put them on a higher pay grade, ‘HR in the local authority have said “no” because there are no other primary business managers who are at that grade’. The great diversity in SBM roles and levels of responsibility was not reflected in the narrow range of pay grades available, as explained by one primary SBM: For primary SBMs within our authority there are two grades. You have one grade for a one and two form entry and another grade for a three and four form entry school. Irrespective of what you are doing in your role, those are the grades you will be paid at.

This was seen to give rise to disparities and anomalies in terms of remuneration, although no clear solutions were identified. It’s difficult because every single school business manager, especially in the primary school, is different. My level of work is very different to the lady in the school down the road, yet we are both school business managers. I can understand that it would be difficult to go into each individual school and say, ‘Well come on then. Let’s see exactly what you are doing’.

Such anomalies around how post-titles and remuneration map against levels of responsibility are not limited to the English context but are reflected in data from Australia presented in Chapter 10.

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A third source of inequality was in the significant differences in remuneration between the pay scales for primary and secondary SBMs, with the latter having higher status in the labour market and being better remunerated. This is one of the ways in which education business management is a ‘gendered’ profession, with the highest paid positions often being held by men in secondary schools within a profession where the majority are females (Starr 2012a; O’Sullivan et al. 2000). Overall, data on the relationship of the National College’s SBM credentials to the labour market indicate that, for the time being at least, the supply of qualified candidates appears well-matched to the needs of the school system in England, and that they have gained credibility, both for SBMs and for potential recruiters, as reliable signals of professional competence. However, various challenges remain, not least in terms of trying to improve consistency in the way credentials, responsibility levels and remuneration relate to one another in order to reduce disparities at the systemic level.

Crossing the boundary from business to education In order to meet the demand for SBMs nationally, part of the National College’s professional project involved encouraging individuals with suitable expertise from outside education into schools. Just as more career-oriented SBMs are apt to move between schools in order to enhance their prospects, business managers from other types of organization have also taken up opportunities in schools as the next step in their careers. Prime candidates for this were personnel in local authority education departments fearing job losses due to very significant funding reductions, or employees in the banking sector facing similar threats because of the international financial crisis. The notion of the ‘boundaryless’ career has grown in prominence in academic literature and in public consciousness, alongside literature on globalization, innovation and changes in employment relations in the face of more competitive work environments and labour markets. Originally derived from thinking about the permeability of organizational boundaries and movement between organizations in contrast to the more stable bureaucratic career, ‘the boundaryless career is predicated on the assumption that organisations are no longer able (or willing) to offer workers job stability and progressive careers in exchange for loyalty and commitment’ (Rodrigues and Guest 2010,

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p. 1158). The boundaryless career is associated with physical mobility across jobs, functions and organizations and can be viewed in opposition to the organizational career. In this sense, the boundaryless career and the organizational career have much in common with Freidson’s professional and bureaucratic careers respectively. Despite the popularity of the concept, Rodrigues and Guest (2010) argue that the idea of the boundaryless career is not new and that evidence for the end of the traditional career in one organization is not supported by the evidence. As indicated earlier, it is still common for SBMs in English schools to stay in one institution for a substantial portion of their working life, with some CSBM graduates obtaining their qualifications after an extended period working in a school. In addition to developing the skills of the existing pool of school administrative staff, part of the National College’s SBM strategy involved trying to attract individuals with financial and business skills obtained elsewhere into education. Given that much of the administrative and financial expertise required of the SBM comprises relatively generic business management content, it was interesting to interrogate the participants’ views on the characteristics of educational versus business practices and the experiences of those whose careers involved moving from corporate life into education. Individuals coming into education from business clearly found the transition challenging. They saw developing the necessary specialist knowledge as a long-term commitment, and emphasized the need for flexibility: I was senior admin manager and a stock control manager in retail at a supermarket. I wanted to change and took a big pay cut. The school I joined knew a senior colleague would be retiring in one year, so I had a year to adapt. I have to say it was a baptism of fire. It was the steepest learning curve I’ve ever had but I survived and I can still tell the tale. I still have a lot of learning ahead of me in terms of education and, of course, you have got to go through that l before you can start to contribute fully. If you are able to adapt those skills from outside you’re, fine. If you can’t adapt, or if you’re not prepared to adapt, it’s going to be very hard.

Common sources of confusion, or aspects of work in schools that new incumbents struggled with included: education terminology and acronyms; being in an often rather isolated role, the need to establish quickly contacts with the necessary specialist knowledge; the very rapid rate of change in terms of regulations and policy in education; and less rigid ways of applying policies

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than in the business world, with more emphasis on negotiation and micropolitics than on the rule book: What seem like small things make life difficult. Like terminology. There are an awful lot of acronyms in education. There is a lot of language to learn. A lot about how things work in education and building up a network. That’s something that is time-consuming but has to be done. You need to know who to talk to if you need to get something done. Schools. It’s a constantly changing environment. You can never say where you are going next. Business is unpredictable in its own way but in the same way there are rules. You sell at this much and you buy at this much and this is what you’ve got left. I’m from an accounting background so that to me was just like day-to-day stuff but the personnel side of the school and the politics, they are completely way beyond anything I’ve ever dealt with before. The procedures are so much more flexible and lenient than I’m used to with my background. I keep thinking, ‘They can’t get away with that, surely’.

The difficulties in adjustment for those joining education from the corporate world, raise the question of to what extent, and in which ways, business management within education might be seen as distinct from business management in other kinds of organization, and therefore how readily knowledge and skills acquired outside could be transferred. The observation was common that not everyone with suitable technical skills and knowledge seemed able to keep the distinctive mission of schools adequately in mind: Many of them [business and finance skills and experience obtained outside education] are very transferable. However, experience shows many people coming in from the private sector don’t understand that our core business is children and they bring financial and business acumen in and try to run things as a business forgetting what our purpose is. They don’t take that properly into consideration.

This point was made by SBMs working in different national settings, all of whom agreed that the knowledge that they were working for the benefit of children’s education and welfare was absolutely fundamental to their professional lives, an idea explored further in the next chapter. Respondents also noted that, for those who acquire business qualifications and experience outside education, appreciating fully the ‘specialness’ of business management in schools can take time to develop, as explained by one US school business official: Business and education are two totally different worlds, two totally different mindsets. One is more profit and loss and one is more about educating the

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students and the well-being of those students. So sometimes us folks have a real difficult transition, seeing what the endgame is. I will be one of the first to admit that it took me a while to get that, because when I first started I was just dollars and cents all the time.

Though SBMs internationally saw business management in education as distinctive from business management in corporate life, some SBM respondents in England readily recognized that, via the many elements of business practice now fully incorporated within the school sector, and particularly with academization, drawing sharp distinctions between schools and business was becoming increasingly difficult: The school I first went to was a secondary and when staff needed pens and pencils and stuff you’d just farm them out. But I’m thinking, ‘But surely you should be bringing your old ones back’. So I asked about this and I was told ‘no just give them new ones’. I explained that at Sainsbury’s [supermarket] you wouldn’t get a new one unless you bought your old one back. And it was interesting because I had to be less strict, less hard because obviously the guidelines I had been used to working with in retail, where everything is profit and loss, were very different from education. Sometimes I’m criticised or told I have to be fairer because ‘we are not running a business here’. But if we become an academy, actually we are, so there’s a very fine line between running a business and running a business in education.

A number of commentators with long-term experience of schools referred to a shift in thinking in education. Though professional cultures in business and education were seen as being markedly different, there was clear evidence of growing openness to and acceptance of business practices within schools: It’s over 20 years since I worked in industry. When I first came into school, I was of the impression that it was very insular, that people hadn’t had the experience of being ‘out there’ and being in what I used to say was ‘the real world’. But I think that’s changed over the years because more and more opportunities have come for teachers and for headteachers to have experience of being ‘out there’. Our chair of governors used to be our headteacher’s business mentor, for example, because he was a marketing executive. I don’t think it’s changed a great deal because you’ve still got an awful lot of teachers who go straight from school to university and then into teaching, so all they’ve ever known is schools. I guess with time, because schools are becoming more and more like businesses that will change to a certain degree but not totally.

The somewhat grudging acceptance (at least from the perspective of the SBM cited below) of business thinking in schools was seen to have improved the

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ability of some SBMs to make a difference to their schools, as education and business leadership agendas have become more closely integrated: I think we [schools] are definitely improving but a major problem in school business management has been that the school business manager and the rest of the leadership team can seem to be on two separate agendas. Now it’s definitely getting closer and the school business manager is definitely now more often seen as part of that leadership team and to have some real valuable input to make, but think it’s taken us a long time to get here.

Research undertaken by Davy (2012) as part of a school business management degree explored attitudes to SBMs taking on senior leadership roles among head teachers, school governors, parents and SBMs. On the question of whether it was appropriate for SBMs as non-qualified teachers to assume Chief Executive roles in schools, or chains of schools, opinions varied markedly, with governors tending to be more favourable than head teachers or parents. My own data similarly indicated a range of views. The following quotation is included as it is perhaps somewhat unusual in being from a primary head teacher in favour of the idea of an SBM, with the appropriate educational experience and leadership skills, acting as chief executive: I think you could appoint a non-teaching executive to school. Children aren’t widgets but if the person has a wide experience of working with children away from the widget mentality it could work. I can’t see why not. I think they’d have to delegate certain tasks, and talk to and get ideas from teaching practitioners. That can work very well. It’s all about working with people. People skills are large part of it. You’d need to get the right person, though.

Unlike the finance system used in schools managed by local authorities, academies employ a business accounting model. The impacts on the working lives of some SBMs implied by conversion to academy status are aired in Chapter 9. However, academization is also relevant here as the government drive for conversion to academy status was cited by respondents as having an impact on the value of the National College’s qualifications in the labour market and in the status they confer: What I’m seeing is that a lot of the academies are looking for a professional qualification that was gained outside of education to be brought it in, so it might be a legal qualification, it might be a chartered or certified accountant’s qualification.

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I think what’s going to tend to happen is they are going to bring more and more people professionally qualified in from outside. I think that’s a consequence of the fact that academy trusts are recognising that what they need is a qualified accountant. It’s a shame really, as the business manager of a school suddenly now becomes number two rather than number one within the support side of things because of the huge emphasis on financial accounting in academies.

Like the respondents whose views on the difference between business management in the schools and the business sector were cited above, what was of concern to some interviewees was the lack of understanding of the uniqueness of education among those with an accountancy background: Clearly there are some outstanding accountants coming in to the sector, doing a tremendous job in academies. But I have also seen where we have got fully qualified chartered accountants as school business managers and to be quite frank, some I wouldn’t pay in washers because they don’t understand the uniqueness of the education environment and the fact that the strategy and the vision of the school is there to drive the school, not finance and admin considerations.

Aware of the extraordinary growth in demand for SBMs with strong accountancy skills that the acceleration of the academies programme would bring about, the SBM team at the National College developed a special module for SBMs in schools converting to academy. Though not all interviewees were aware of this module, a number mentioned their belief that providing SBMs who already have qualifications and experience in schools with the additional accountancy knowledge required would be the best way of ensuring SBMs with an appropriate marriage of technical skill and professional ethos for the sector: We’ve just got to make sure that, especially with academies, we don’t bring in more professionally qualified accountants at the expense of people who have trained and worked their way up through the ranks of professional qualifications within the sector. That’s going be the difficult one. As we get more and more academies, are we going to be bringing in more people from outside who are more professionally qualified? Just by the very nature of those people coming in, academies will become more like businesses. It would be great to see school business managers get professionally qualified through the National College, or whatever, and then getting the tools to develop into very serious players within the school sector and within the academy sector. That would be great. We are beginning to see some of that.

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I’ve got an accountancy qualification and became a school business manager. I think more by good luck than good management, I would probably be ideally suited to being a school business manager in an academy. People that have got the accountancy background and have come through a school business manager route in terms of personnel management, you know managing all the HR issues, looking after the whole of the premises. That’s the ideal background really rather than accountants who have just come in from the accounting profession who are suddenly in an environment which is pretty unique and are struggling.

This section started by introducing the idea of the boundaryless career. Citing Arthur (1994), Rodrigues and Guest (2010) identify a number of ways in which careers can display forms of boundaryless characteristics, including changing employer; drawing validation and marketability from outside present employment; sustaining career via extra-organizational networks or information; by breaking organization norms or principles of career advancement; rejecting career opportunities for personal reasons; and perceiving a boundaryless future regardless of structural constraints. There are intimations in the data presented above that SBM careers were featuring such characteristics, for example through moving to schools offering greater opportunities for professional development; adopting a role beyond the school as Specialist Leader in Education; drawing on professional networks; or prioritizing family over career. Interestingly, a further, novel form of boundarylessness emerged from the data, involving boundary crossing in terms of areas of responsibility with co-professionals through the negotiation of jurisdiction, an idea that is elaborated on in Chapter 8 and exemplified in the experience of David Ginsberg from South Africa in Chapter 10. This ends the first empirical section of the book, which has introduced the SBM professionalization programme set in train by the National College: the professional education programmes developed, the knowledge and skills they set out to impart, the associated credentials and perspectives on their value in shaping careers and in accessing the labour market. Connections have been made with contemporary policy initiatives relevant to schools and to educational professionals, such as the move towards practice-based education in teaching schools and away from universities, and the impacts of academization on the working lives of SBMs. In Part 3 attention turns to factors influencing the application of SBM expertise at individual, inter-professional and institutional levels.

Part Three

Professional Knowledge Applied At the heart of professional practice lies the application of specialist knowledge and skill to further the mission of the employing institution in serving its clients. The chapters in the previous section presented and discussed evidence in relation to the various elements of the government-sponsored professionalization activities coordinated by the National College to support and reward the acquisition of SBM knowledge and skills. The nature of that expertise and how, on paper, it relates to that of the lead educator was examined in Chapter 5, while interviewee perspectives on the role of the National College credentials and other activities in shaping their professional practice and careers were analysed in Chapter 6. The current section is the second of three drawing on empirical data to deepen understanding of factors that influence the way SBM specialist expertise is exercised in the workplace. Together the chapters that make up Part 3 examine SBM professional knowledge and practice from three vantage points. Chapter 7 examines how the attributes and attitudes of the individual SBM can be understood to shape their ability to apply their professional expertise effectively in their schools. It reviews themes within data connected with SBM feelings about and orientations to their specialist role, about what they believe supports and what frustrates them in using their knowledge to good effect, and about their perceptions of the distinctiveness of their contribution to the functioning of their schools. Chapter 8 turns to evidence on SBM practice at the interprofessional level, specifically their working relationship with the head teacher. It explores how the negotiation of jurisdiction between the two roles is carried out and the degree of latitude SBMs have in applying their specialist knowledge. The implications of these findings are examined by drawing on research on the analogous Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer relationship in corporate life. Though still drawing on the perspectives of individual SBMs

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and head teachers, Chapter 9 examines institutional-level factors affecting SBM knowledge and practice. The academies programme and primary partnerships are two structural forms that have found favour among national policymakers. Both were salient in the data and are therefore the focus of the chapter. There has been considerable media and academic interest in the academies programme, though so far not from the perspective of SBMs. The data in Chapter 9 reveal the significance of academy conversion for SBM knowledge and practice and identify factors likely to influence both the ease of the conversion process and the way it is experienced by individual SBMs. Data on primary partnerships point to factors critical to their success. Opinions among governors, local authority personnel and head teachers in such partnerships about the relevance of the SBM role to student outcomes were seen as fundamental in decision-making, and thus to influence the extent of the SBM contribution and whether or not joint-funded posts would be retained over the longer term.

7

Individual Perspectives on Professional Practice The previous chapter reviewed data in relation to how individual career aspirations and commitments were relevant to the SBM professional project. In a similar vein, the attitudes and orientations of the individual SBM to their work role are here seen as a crucial element of how this national policy initiative is enacted at the school level. The chapter is not therefore about the amount of money individual SBMs have successfully bid for or saved their schools, and nor is it about the many and varied contributions they make to the organizations where they work. This territory has been covered elsewhere (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Southworth 2010; Starr 2012a; Woods et al. 2012). Rather, the chapter presents an analysis of insights from SBM questionnaire and interview survey data on the nature of working life; personal understandings of their service role; what keeps SBMs motivated and committed to their demanding but, as discussed earlier, largely ‘invisible’ work; and how they understand the contribution of their expertise to the school’s educational purposes.

Perceptions of working life It seems reasonable to suppose that individual SBM effectiveness in applying expertise will be determined in no small measure by how they view the role and respond to its demands. Regardless of their level of operation and the type of organization within which SBM respondents were operating, there was great unanimity of purpose among them and marked consistency in describing key facets of daily working life. SBM accounts of what characterized the day-to-day experience of working life chimed with those presented in other research (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Southworth 2010; Starr 2012a). The same adjectives and phrases recurred time and again to reveal a busy, varied and unpredictable role, which offers both rewards and challenges and calls for stamina and flexibility, as in the following excerpts from

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three SBM interviews: ‘It’s hectic, unpredictable, exciting, challenging. There is never a dull day. You never know what’s going to happen and I think that’s basically it. You’ve got to be able to think on your feet.’; ‘I would say manic but I wouldn’t change anything about it.’; ‘I’d describe it as busy, rewarding, hectic, varied.’ Common in the data were catalogues of changes that individual interviewees’ schools had been through, were going through and were about to embark on. These changes often included school mergers, complex building projects, IT infrastructure projects and the like, running simultaneously, or hot on the heels of one another, and within which the SBM had a key role to play. The following excerpt about the first year working in a new school is not untypical: I applied and got the job as SBM of the amalgamated school. Since then we’ve had building work to join the two schools, an Ofsted inspection, and another set of building work to organise because we’re moving from a two to a three form entry, from 480 to 630 children next year, and we are also looking to change to academy status, so I’m just thinking ‘oh my goodness!’ I don’t know which way is up at the moment but you just kind of keep going.

Unsurprisingly the characteristics of the role also brought with them time pressures and alongside wholly positive appraisals of working life from some SBMs, more mixed views were also expressed. When asked if they had any words and phrases to describe their working life, one SBM candidly responded: Not ones that you’re going to want to print. Every day is different. You come in with a ‘to do’ list and have done none of it when you go home and haven’t stopped all day and invariably you’ve added to the flaming list. That’s not very constructive is it? Some days are stressful, some rewarding.

The idea of variety in the job and the sense that periods of excitement were interspersed with those occupied by more routine activity were common. Two SBMs replied as follows when asked for descriptions of their work: ‘Depends what day you catch me. Some days it’s great fun exciting, different. I guess it’s never boring.’; ‘I was just going to say ‘challenging’ but, though it can be challenging, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. One area of routine activity highlighted by respondents was the number of data returns required by the state and the local authority. Echoing the experience of more established occupational groupings referred to in Part 1, SBMs also found irksome some of the bureaucratic demands of the audit and accountability processes that have been a strong feature of public sector reforms. The potential of such regimes to sap energy and enthusiasm and eat up time appeared routinely in

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the data. The fact that processes designed to improve efficiency can, in effect, make public sector organizations function less efficiently was raised in Chapter 2, and has been mentioned in other SBM research (Starr 2012a). Focusing specifically on the area of risk management, an increasingly technical and complex business, Starr (2012b) identifies a further irony in that processes designed to manage risk, can themselves be inherently risky, implying professional and personal danger for school leaders, while ignoring well-known but politically sensitive areas. The bureaucratic demands of audit and accountability were clearly a significant source of workload that offered little stimulus and caused frustration in preventing SBMs from focusing on what they felt was important. In the words of three respondents: ‘Bureaucracy. Sometimes that can really slow things down’; ‘The job’s very different from the days when my mum worked in the school office. You didn’t have all these processes and procedures that the Department now say you have to follow and report on. It’s very different’; We all have piles of things that come at us that are not ultimately going to change the world but have to be done, whereas leftfield things, important things, something that we really want to get done, we can never find time for. It’s juggling those things and trying to find enough time to do the important but not urgent things.

Being able to analyse and understand facts and figures in detail is an important aspect of the SBM’s professional competence. The challenge that emerged from the data was simultaneously to marry this fine-grained picture of the school with a broader and longer-term view of its educational purpose. Without this strategic perspective, the SBM contribution to organizational development could be compromised: An anecdote from the conference yesterday [for finance and administrative staff joining an academy chain]. You hear SBMs whingeing about risk assessment, all that kind of thing but yesterday the presenter asked about the purpose of the SBM role. Our table came up with ‘They’re there to assist teachers in delivering education to children’. That’s why we’re here. That was all that needed to be said. Our job is not to tell the school constantly what we can’t do because we can’t afford it but to come up with a solution to make sure that the activities, the objectives, the strategy, the vision of the school is supported, making sure the resources are supporting those things, constantly. School business managers need to fully understand that they are there to support the leadership team in terms of its strategy and vision and its aims and

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objectives, not to hold the school back because they are trying to keep a tight rein on the purse strings but to make sure that if we do have limited resources that they are be absolutely targeted in the right place.

Managing the bureaucratic demands of the role and enabling adequate time for larger scale projects called for excellent time management and having a clear sense of priorities. As one SBM expressed it: ‘Having the time is a challenge but then again that’s down to me really and prioritising.’ This final comment illustrates the role of individual self-awareness in managing conflicting demands in such a way that the SBM is able to maximize the benefit of their professional expertise for their school. It is to evidence of personal qualities such as this that emerged as valuable for SBM effectiveness that this analysis now turns.

Personal attributes From data from SBMs applying their knowledge at different organizational levels and in school contexts that were highly diverse in terms of size, location, structure and intake, a picture emerged of the kind of person likely to be most effective in the role. Views were sought via questionnaire and interview survey about what attributes were deemed most important for an SBM to be successful in deploying their expertise in ways that would bring tangible benefits for their schools. The most common qualities mentioned were in the realm of interpersonal relations. A high proportion of respondents emphasized the importance of effective communication and included phrases such as ‘good communicator’, ‘listens’, ‘able to communicate with people at all levels’, ‘able to articulate the strategic view’, ‘gregarious’, ‘able to mix in’, ‘a people person’, ‘approachable’. In some cases, this interpersonal ability was with reference to working with others as part of a team (e.g. ‘team player’, ‘supportive’, ‘cooperative’) or to leading a team (e.g. ‘influencing and persuading people in other schools while directing your own’; ‘ability to create and lead a team to deliver business management across a group of schools’). Almost as frequent were phrases indicating the personal qualities needed to manage the demands of a role that can be both complex (‘adaptability’, ‘flexibility’, ‘multi-tasking’, ‘manage conflicting and diverse priorities’) and pressured, while retaining equanimity and sense of purpose (‘able to work under pressure’, ‘a calm workhorse’, ‘dependable’, ‘strong work ethic’, ‘determination’, ‘persistent’). Prevalent in the data were phrases suggesting attitudes or personal qualities that

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would help the SBM to keep their motivation strong in the face of adversity or challenge: ‘positive attitude’, ‘can do attitude’, ‘enthusiasm’, ‘sense of humour’, ‘patience’, ‘thick skin’, ‘rhino skin’, ‘self-confidence’, ‘resilience’, ‘assertiveness’. These perhaps reflect the fact that, rather like the head teacher’s, the SBM’s position can be a rather isolated one, and may not always benefit from the camaraderie and social support of co-workers in moments of crisis or doubt. The ability for ‘forward’ or ‘long-term’ and ‘strategic’ thinking, or ‘seeing the big picture’, was commonly mentioned as a key SBM attribute, especially being able to combine this viewpoint with an ability to link this vision to the organizational picture in detail. Generic management skills (such as managing change, logical thinking, negotiating, time management) were also mentioned. A notable proportion referred to the need for ‘tact’, ‘diplomacy’, ‘confidentiality’ and ‘discretion’ in dealing with a people with a wide range of roles. ‘Fairmindedness’ and ‘humility’ were also referred to. The previous chapter presented data in relation to individual commitments to school business management as a career and attitudes to obtaining credentials to that end. But besides the motivation for continuing professional development in terms of career advancement, the desire for professional learning both for its own sake and in order to discharge professional duties more effectively, are often seen as hallmarks of professionalism. Chapter 5 cited interviewees who raised the matter of the need for the individual SBM to keep their professional knowledge current. This idea was also evident in questionnaire survey data where a keenness or willingness to gain knowledge and experience, either for professional development or on behalf of schools, was mentioned as an important SBM attribute. A participant who had come into education from industry quoted in the last chapter referred to the insularity of schools populated mainly by graduates that had undertaken a postgraduate qualification for teachers on finishing their degree and then gone straight into teaching. The idea that there could be insufficient contact with other kinds of workplace within schools was similarly mentioned in a small number of SBM questionnaire surveys. While knowledge of educational policy and systems was considered an important attribute for SBMs therefore, respondents also acknowledged that experience from outside education could add value by offering, in the words of one, a ‘less blinkered view’. As well as the attributes and qualities of the individual SBM, another factor seen as an important determinant in how well specialist expertise was utilized in a school concerned the leadership arrangements, and especially the SBM role

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on the school leadership team. The SBM professionalization process has tended to promote a place on the SLT as a sine qua non of SBM effectiveness. This is in keeping with bureaucratic conceptions of how work is organized and that see the institution in structural terms with roles to be filled by people with predetermined sets of attributes. Data from SBMs suggested that the idea should not be adopted unquestioningly as a mantra. Whether, when and why SBMs might, or might not, add value to SLT meetings is highly contingent. One important factor will be the particular attributes of the individual incumbent: The role that the school business manager plays in the leadership team is often determined by the qualities of the school business manager: the individual skills, experience, knowledge, just generally what they can bring to the table. Rather than saying, ‘We are a school, so without doubt the SBM needs to be part of every leadership team meeting because that’s the structure’, that’s not what I’m seeing. If the school business manager is to play a very active role in the leadership team then it’s often down to the qualities of that individual.

SBMs working at the senior level who were interviewed concurred with this viewpoint. Further, their experience indicated that their own commitments would not allow them to attend all SLT meetings, especially when working across more than one school, and that not all of the discussion was relevant to their spheres of activity. This testimony supported the idea that the assertion that the SBM must always be included in SLT meetings needs to be challenged.

Professional networks One form of ‘boundarylessness’ mentioned in the previous chapter as a potential aspect of an individual’s career was the use of personal and professional networks beyond the organization (Rodrigues and Guest 2010). SBMs similarly talked of the importance of having a strong professional network in terms of developing their knowledge and allowing them to be more effective in their role. In the early days of the National College’s SBM professionalization activity, data from CSBM participants showed that a sense of isolation was a common complaint among business support staff in schools. They also indicated that opportunities for networking, both online and face-to-face, were viewed as very significant benefits of the College’s SBM programmes from the outset. It is interesting to note therefore that references to isolation were far less prominent in interviews with SBMs in 2013 and that there was evidence of substantial development in the area of professional SBM networks since the College’s professionalization

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programme started. One respondent reflected that: ‘Networking’s been one of the things that has developed a lot over the last few years’ and another that, ‘ There is a sense of community and more so today than when I joined in 2004.’ It seems plausible that a growing sense of solidarity among SBM colleagues is therefore perhaps a notable achievement of the College’s programme. Interviewees referred to professional network activity at various levels, from informal networks with colleagues encountered through professional training or other development opportunities, to geographically organized groupings. Many respondents appeared to belong to at least two networks that met regularly, often a town or cluster-wide network and a larger city or regional organization: I still keep in touch with SBMs who I made friends with on the Masters course and they’re from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Stoke. We get together two or three times a year but from a local point of view we have a school business manager’s forum in the city where we meet once a term. Everybody meets to talk about any training issues, government legislation, anything that affects the role really. I also belong to a school cluster group where there are about 12 SBMs and we tend to meet once every half term and we create our own agenda if anybody has got anything they want to talk about, any issues, news that’s to be shared. I have helped set up local networking forums both within the immediate locality but also within the county. So we have networking meetings half termly now for both of those forums and they are very helpful I think for everybody. Both for new business managers coming in to the profession but also for those that are becoming more experienced in it.

SBM meetings provided opportunities to arrange for expert speakers, either internal or external to the network, to keep members abreast of new developments. Such meetings, and online fora, also allowed for less formalized sharing of professional knowledge and advice. When asked how important contact with SBM colleagues was in carrying out their work, responses indicated just how significant it could be for negotiating the complexities of administration in an ever-changing and highly regulated sector: I think it’s very important. There is this city bursars group which is a massive organisation. I think there are over 400 schools involved. They have an online forum which is absolutely amazing. There are so many resources and so much information. And you can just ask the most ridiculous questions and you know you’ll get the answer that you are looking for. There is a lot of experience and value there. So overall, the forums and the meetings and the communication are imperative – they’ve got to be there.

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This type of support was highly significant for the ability of individual SBMs to apply their professional expertise, offering significant time savings through building on the ground work of others, and enabling them to keep abreast of developments in policy that otherwise might have been missed: Networks are very important. The support is phenomenal. From the work point of view it’s great because instead of inventing the wheel sometimes, you can just send out an email to your cluster and say ‘I’m doing this, can anybody help?’ and people always email back. Sometimes it saves you an awful lot of work because the work has already been done somewhere else and you can adapt that to suit your own setting. It’s really important also for information because sometimes not every school gets the information that they should have, so updates and things like that are extremely beneficial. We have a locality group set up here in the town. I think there are eight or nine of us and we meet termly. When there are problems people ring one another or email one another. And it’s good because when you’re in one school you don’t have time to think about what’s happening in the outside world and sometimes you need to just stop and think ‘Well actually everyone is in the same position as me. And I can save myself some time because that person’s already done this’ and it’s just a two minute phone call, problem solved.

The feeling of all being in the same boat, of a real sense of solidarity in their professional communities, came through strongly in participant testimony. Though isolation appeared to be less of an issue among SBMs interviewed most recently, in addition to purely informational support, the value of professional networks as sources of social and psychological support was also acknowledged, especially when the individual felt under pressure of one kind or another: ‘It’s nice to have the support of people in the same boat as you and just reassurance that you’re not alone.’ The willingness of an individual to build and sustain relationships with others in the occupational grouping thus emerged as an additional personal attribute that could be highly significant. These contacts offered a mechanism for saving time, reducing isolation and keeping knowledge current in a highly changeable environment.

Orientation to the role Respondents varied in terms of their assessment of how much of themselves they invested in their role. When asked about their personal investment, SBMs

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showed a wide range of positions. At one extreme, one SBM commented: ‘(Laughing) Too much. One hundred and twenty per cent’, a second said ‘I love my work. I love my role. School is very important to me. I mean obviously I will try and do my best and want to be the best SBM I can be.’ A third SBM had this to say: I think very much so. I think that when I come over very enthusiastic especially about what we do I think that’s because I am very enthusiastic and passionate about what we do and I just think that being in the education sector is the best sector.

Others were less effusive, as in the case of the following two SBMs when asked how far they invested themselves in their work: ‘Reasonably far but not ridiculously so. I think in a previous career I learnt not to over-invest. I think I know exactly where my limits are now. I think that comes partly from maturity anyway, doesn’t it?’; and ‘Blimey! This takes me back to the CSBM. Reflect on this! Write that in your learning journal! I’m not sure how to answer that. I’m just doing my job.’ SBMs also varied in the extent to which they saw themselves as being public servants. Some excluded themselves from the category on the grounds that they were not employed directly by the state, while others had a broader understanding of the term. One SBM stated: ‘I don’t really think of myself as a public servant: I’m not really employed directly as I was when I worked for the local authority’, while two others summed up their position as follows: I don’t see myself as that [public servant] but I do see this as an important role as it’s taxpayers money I’m dealing with. So I do feel responsible about what we do with the school and everyone in it, probably more so than if it was just my own business. I do feel very responsible. One of the things that I think I try and do is get this balance between running a private company and supporting the public sector. I still very much see myself as a public servant really, trying to enhance what local authorities do, central government do, just trying to give schools the best possible opportunity they can and I’ve spent all my life in the public sector, although more than half of it is within a private company. Yes I still see myself very much as a public servant trying to improve the opportunities the kids have got and trying to support the local authorities. Entrepreneur in education services and former SBM

Regardless of whether or not they saw themselves as public servants, what was universal among SBM interviewees was the claim that children lay at the heart

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of their professional activity. There was a very clear sense of enabling effective education as the purpose of their role. The following were typical comments that illustrate this commitment to educational outcomes: ‘We are all here for the children. That’s the top and bottom of it.’ When I started, I soon totally understood that teaching and learning was what’s driving the school, not finance and admin. I think once I had that recognition that everything I had to do was about improving the life chances of those pupils, that was critical for me and my role as school business manager. Although you don’t really see them [the children] much, you just hope the benefit is going to be for those kids at school. Everything I try to do is about focusing on – it might sound a bit crass – but it’s just giving them a better life, more opportunities.

Though children were ever-present in guiding thinking in the SBM’s professional activities, most SBMs reported having relatively little day-to-day contact with the children in their schools, or the children’s families. For most this did not seem to be problematic, while for others the relative lack of contact with children that their roles typically afforded them was a source of regret. A strategy adopted to counter this lack of contact with children was for these SBMs to get involved wherever possible with projects, events and activities that would allow them to observe or interact with them: ‘I do attend lots of the events that we do in school and you get to see the families and the children. Any opportunity that I’ve had to get involved with the children, I’ve done it’; I love working with the children. With being an SBM, that is one of the unfortunate things I don’t get to really see an awful lot of the families. I don’t get to know them as well as I used to when I was maybe out on the front desk. I am a little bit more isolated in that way.

Given this overriding sense of purpose, as might be expected, seeing the fruits of the school community’s collective endeavours in terms of creating a rewarding educational environment or experience; or the response of children to new resources and knowing the part they have played in acquiring them, seemed to be among the principal satisfactions for the SBMs interviewed: ‘At the end of term seeing the kids have had a fantastic term, taking their bits and pieces home’; ‘What I love most is seeing them getting nice things and the pleasure in their faces.’ Besides the direct impacts on children’s schooling, other main sources of satisfaction were the accomplishment of complex tasks using their professional knowledge and skill, a sense of achievement over doing a job well,

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or over simply making life easier, or better in some way, for their colleagues, as in the following quotations from two SBMs: ‘What I most enjoy is making a difference. Not just making a difference to the children but making a difference to the staff here, to the head teacher. Doing a good job’; ‘I think seeing a job well done, seeing a project through to fruition, seeing something that’s improved the working life of the school, helped the head, giving the school the financial benefit, all of the above’. As these data illustrate, while all respondents did not feel the label ‘public servant’ applied to them, what they did share was a strong service orientation towards the children and colleagues in their schools. Being successful in this support role, and doing their job well, seemed to provide significant sources of satisfaction and sustained their professional commitment.

Distinctive contribution Previous research has already established the kinds of benefits that the application of SBM expertise can bring to the school system, for example, in terms of cost savings and income generation (National College 2007, 2010; Southworth 2010), head teacher motivation, effectiveness and succession (Woods et al. 2012), developing associate staff, managing premises, IT infrastructure and so on (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a). Illustrative data and case studies are widely available in these and other sources, such as via a search for CSBM or DSBM case studies on the National College’s website (www.education. gov.uk/nationalcollege). As to be expected, therefore, when interviewees were asked in 2013 if SBM professional expertise made a difference to children’s lives, respondents, both head teachers and business managers, were unanimous and unequivocal in stating that it did. Some respondents highlighted their distinctiveness by contrasting their professional approach with those associated more commonly with educators: I think we bring a different dimension to the teachers. I am very literal in the way I think and they’re very creative. They run parallel, complementing each other and hopefully making things right for children. I think it’s the business perspective, that way of looking at things being a bit more logical and a bit less intuitive but also perhaps the view that, although I’ve not got so much experience within education, I’ve got more experience of industry and the world in general.

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Respondents were clear that SBMs were making a contribution to school outcomes through enabling both human and financial resources to be used well. Of paramount importance here was the ability to enable the head teacher to use their time and energies more effectively in their task of educational leadership. For example, one primary head teacher expressed the view that having the support of a strong SBM was more important in terms of their professional satisfaction and motivation than increased financial reward: I would rather have someone like Sam [SBM] than have a wage increase because I get more job satisfaction that way. It’s the law of diminishing returns. You can be given more and more money but you can only get so far with that because you just get less satisfied with the money. I see myself as in a vocation. I do the job because I enjoy it and the money doesn’t come into that. I mean once I’ve got enough to pay the mortgage, obviously, and to live on.

While indirect and therefore often rather intangible, SBMs talked about having impacts in their schools through using scarce resources efficiently and ensuring they were carefully targeted towards educational aims: The fact that I can make a difference is perhaps the reason why I still want to do this job but it’s not direct. What school business managers can do is improve the efficiency of the school, which then has to have a knock on effect in making more resources, in terms of educationalists’ time and in the money available, to educate children. It’s a kind of an indirect link, isn’t it? Everyone has different strengths and they bring these to their schools. I see myself as making sure everything people need is available. If teachers need things, if parents need things, if the children need things: my priority is to make sure we don’t run out, that money and other things are available.

Some SBMs made reference to the fact that their professional backgrounds in some cases created less social distance with some stakeholders than did the professional personas of education colleagues. These SBMs saw acting as a link person with the local community, or between support staff and the lead educators in the school as part of their role: ‘Some people would rather come to me than the head teacher or deputies as they find them intimidating’. Particularly in areas of social deprivation, SBMs highlighted their part in creating a healthy and safe environment for students whose lives outside school could be difficult and unpredictable, and in securing resources to provide educational experiences that might otherwise be unavailable. In this way they

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illustrated the SBM contribution to the social dimension of schooling in contrast to the traditional academic domain of education staff: If an SBM does a good job they ensure that everything is in place. I’m talking providing a safe learning environment for the children, health and safety wise, ensuring that the school budget enables the children to access what they possibly wouldn’t get at home, that sort of thing. I think if you have good teachers in school, that’s what you need for the academic side but school is not all about being academic. It’s the other side, the social side. I think a school business manager can really help develop and offer opportunities to children. For instance we’ve done our first trip abroad for year six children. Lots of the children had never been abroad before. The cost of that trip was £500 per pupil but school put in £200 per pupil from the school budget to help them do that. And part of that was my role ensuring that we had enough budget available. If you do your job properly, there are lots of different ways that you can help children develop.

The data presented in this chapter have conveyed something of the common characteristics of the SBM role, its pressure and variety; the individual qualities and commitments of SBMs to their role in serving the children and colleagues in their schools; the value of maintaining professional networks in developing their expertise and the distinctive contribution of that expertise in achieving organizational purposes. The next chapter looks at the influence of relations with colleagues, and especially the head teacher, in enabling them to apply their expertise to good effect.

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Applying Expertise Inter-professionally

The previous chapter examined evidence of individual SBM perspectives on their working lives. Illustrated using quotations mainly from interviews with head teachers and SBMs, in this chapter attention turns to working relations between SBMs and lead professionals within schools, and how these relate to the application of SBM expertise. The chapter starts with evidence in relation to a sometimes rather restrictive understanding of what SBM expertise involves among education colleagues, which is perceived to act as a barrier to SBM effectiveness in some schools. This material is set within the context of perceptions of differential status between education and associate staff in schools in evidence in the data. The chapter then presents evidence of differing degrees of latitude in applying specialist knowledge among SBMs, and data are presented in relation to the process by which jurisdiction is negotiated between the head teacher and SBM. Two factors relating to such negotiations are then examined: the quality of the inter-professional relationship and mutual understanding of the different primary jurisdictions associated with the two roles. A comparison is drawn between the SBM and the chief operating officer function within corporate life, and implications are proposed for educational leader development and succession. The chapter ends with data in relation to changing attitudes among head teachers over time to the incursion of business practices and the use of SBM expertise in schools.

Head teacher understandings of the SBM role As has been extensively reported in other research (O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a; Woods et al. 2013), educational professionals were perceived by interviewees as having a range of orientations to the SBM function. In some cases, a somewhat restrictive understanding of the SBM role was believed to exist among educational leaders, who viewed it as broadly synonymous with

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financial management. This in turn was believed by some SBMs to prevent head teachers from fully grasping the potential of the SBM role in supporting their own professional activity as educational leaders: I think it’s a lack of understanding sometimes about what a business manager can offer. Some headteachers will say ‘I’ve got to concentrate on the learning of the students and on the quality of teaching’. We [SBMs] would say ‘Yes but if you are freeing your staff and yourself up from these administrative activities, and you are generating income and making more effective and efficient use of the resources, then you are going to be able to invest more time and more resources in those key areas’. It’s getting across the idea that there is this clear link between the two areas and that they’re not mutually exclusive.

Data collected were consistent with research indicating that ‘the majority of education business managers believe that they are only as effective as formal education leaders will allow’ highlighting the significance of questions of power and status between the two roles in determining SBM effectiveness (Starr 2012a, p. 49). In some instances, interviewees suggested that feelings about employing business managers could run deep, perhaps indicative of concerns over job losses for trained educators with the delegation of work to support staff. Teaching in the United Kingdom does not enjoy as high a status as in some countries (Hargreaves 2013). In relation to the traditional markers of professionalism outlined in Chapter 3, it could be argued that the status of teachers in England has been further eroded in recent decades. For example, legislative changes mentioned in previous chapters mean that people without a formal qualification are now eligible to teach in academies, that non-qualified teachers can legally act as head teacher of a school and that the role of universities in developing critical, theoretically informed teacher expertise is being reduced through the policy emphasis on teaching schools. Earlier reforms, like the introduction of a national curriculum and standardized testing, might also be seen as ways that the discretion of teachers in applying their professional judgement has been gradually reduced over time. Under the circumstances, policy moves aimed at devolving elements of work done traditionally by qualified teachers to support staff may be experienced as further weakening of the profession. Reservations about relinquishing control of some activities formerly conducted by teaching colleagues to associate staff, could perhaps also be understood in the context of what some interviewees referred to as a more general ‘divide’ between education and support staff. The fact that the latter occupy a lower status in

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organizational terms is widely acknowledged in the literature (Butt and Gunter 2007; O’Sullivan et al. 2000; Starr 2012a; Woods 2009). Interview data indicate that the ideas reported in previous research persist that support staff are seen to have jobs, unlike the careers of their teacher colleagues, and are not perceived as being motivated by the same desire to support children’s learning (O’Sullivan et al. 2000, p. 25). The evidence presented in Chapters 6 and 7 indicates that SBM career orientations and professional motivations may not be as different in kind from their education colleagues as is sometimes assumed. In the case of SBMs specifically, this status differential may be reinforced through the traditional separation between education and business agendas in schooling in evidence in Chapter 6. Starr (2012a) argues that, whether the business aspects are managed by the head teacher, or delegated to ‘a bursar working behind the scenes’, business in this traditional model is ‘hidden and disconnected from major education decision-making’ (p. 48). Thus business work is positioned as ‘perfunctory and unworthy of serious consideration’ in leadership terms, even though education operations depend on it (p. 48). Starr (2012a) presents data that illustrate how ‘business managers receive many overt and covert messages that leave the clear perception that people don’t understand or want to understand the role and that they are positioned at a lower level in the organisation than teachers’ (p. 57). Starr notes the difficulty SBMs can therefore have in persuading teachers to perform necessary administrative tasks unless requested by the head teacher. This finding is consistent with recent comments below from UK SBMs interviewed, such as the following: ‘ There is still a divide [between teaching and support staff ]. There is still a big divide’; and If I need something doing it’s not followed through with the same urgency. If the headteacher or deputy put something on the board everyone jumps. As a member of the senior leadership team I’m not as highly regarded as if I was a teaching professional. Perhaps that’s the best way of putting it.

While the precise origin of the lack of enthusiasm among some head teachers towards exploiting SBM support more fully in their schools is unclear, as the above discussion suggests, concerns over loss of power and status, and seeing financial management as tangential in decision-making, might be contributory factors. A further barrier might be attributable to ideological convictions with regard to the incursion of business practices within state schooling. The following quotation is from a primary head teacher describing reactions from other head teachers when talking about the benefits experienced in having the support of a

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qualified SBM. The language used gives an intimation of the depth of feeling the issue can engender: I’ve been shouted at and I’ve had hate mail from people asking ‘Who do you think you are?’ I’ve talked about being freed up to work on curriculum and had a barrage of insults on several occasions. And I’ve had people saying ‘But I do all that, so why do I need an SBM to do it?’ And I tell them that I don’t want to do all that admin. I want to do what I’m good at and what I took on the job to do.

O’Sullivan et al. (2000) recognize that this ideological conflict can be interpreted as a symbolic one, illustrative of the cultural change in education away from knowledge and nurturing and towards finance, competition and the market. However, from the head teacher’s perspective, developing the role of the bursar can be understood from two opposing standpoints. At one extreme, the unfavourable position would interpret SBM professionalization primarily as a means of furthering the business agenda by stealth. At the other, it might be embraced wholeheartedly as the best means of enabling head teachers to return to the more complete focus on the traditional professional concerns that they might once have enjoyed. A sense of some of the ways the different positions taken up by head teachers in this respect can influence the ability of SBMs to deploy their expertise is conveyed in the next section and in Chapter 9.

Discretionary application of knowledge As the lead professional, head teachers are ultimately accountable for their schools. Accountability here refers to ‘the mechanisms by which individuals and organisations are held responsible for their behaviour’ (Gray 1991, p. 10) and is a complex question in thinking about public services. The accountability systems developed in response to this complex picture and referred to in Chapter 2 seek to regulate activity in terms of financing, quality and providing services that meet basic needs. In addition to being held accountable in these different areas, public service institutions are accountable to many different parties such as the communities they serve, taxpayers, their governors, other funding organizations and the various monitoring agencies they report to locally and nationally. Further, accountability mechanisms vary in terms of formality, for example, from detailed financial contracts to the often unwritten rules of the marketplace, which help

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to determine ‘client’ numbers, and thus funding and ultimately organizational success. A final complicating factor is that in trying to satisfy demands for access, quality and prudent financial management, trade-offs are inevitable. School head teachers and principals in many countries work within ‘high stakes accountability frameworks’ and are judged on the outcomes of student examinations and test results, and through national inspection regimes (Bush 2013). Consequences for schools that perform poorly, and for their leaders, can be profound, and may ultimately result in school closure. Under these circumstances, ‘playing it safe’ and staying close to national prescriptions is an understandable, if questionable, guide to professional practice (Cranston 2013). With growing autonomy for schools in England, financial responsibilities have increasingly been delegated to school management teams, with the first submission to the local authority of the new Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS) being required in 2013. Research in the primary sector in England, where local financial management is a more recent and less diffuse phenomenon than in secondary schools, suggests that primary head teachers learn about financial management through experience of working with governors, local authority and school staff over time, though governors may often play more of a monitoring role, rather than engaging in the budget-setting process. As financial responsibilities increase, more primary head teachers might be expected to want to avail themselves of greater support from SBMs, and/or governors with financial expertise, in ensuring the best use of resources in enabling student outcomes (Fitzgerald and Drake 2013). One of the hallmarks of professionalism in the conceptualization presented in Chapter 3 is the ability to use discretion in applying specialist knowledge. Given the serious consequences if performance is judged to be wanting, it is not hard to see why head teachers, or other lead professionals in public service institutions, might experience some nervousness about relinquishing control over areas of institutional operation. Nervousness among head teachers about delegating control to their SBMs was in evidence in the study data. However, just as with interpretations of what the SBM role encompasses, data indicated wide variability in head teacher beliefs about the extent to which they should allow their SBMs to use discretionary judgement. So I am very fortunate here because I’ve got a head in this school who is happy to delegate, who has confidence in me. And the two federated schools in the cluster, the young head in there is just extremely grateful for the work I do. So I am very lucky but I do know SBMs in other schools, and it’s very difficult for them.

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It was different in every school [in the cluster the SBM was working across]. It depends upon the leadership style of the headteacher, and how much they were prepared to delegate and let go of. Some are particularly controlling and therefore wanted to keep authorisation and invoicing and things like that while some were happy to say ‘There you are – get on with it’.

What was unclear, however, was whether reluctance by the head teacher to delegate was due to lack of confidence in the individual SBM, the tendency to continue through force of habit with tasks that they have performed in the past, a general individual tendency to want to keep close control, or a combination of various factors. One primary head teacher saw the desire for tight control by some educational leaders as a significant factor, citing the analogous experience of education middle leaders as evidence of this: ‘I think it would be the same for a deputy head. Exactly the same. Heads vary widely. Some reel them in and control everything they do and don’t tell them anything.’ From the SBM perspective, another respondent similarly made reference to the desire for control but also referred to the influence of habit in shaping head teacher willingness to delegate: It’s often a question of what the headteacher is used to. The previous school business manager made clear what she would and would not do. There are many tasks that the headteacher still performs that I’ve been trying to take away from her because actually they are not headteacher tasks. But because of the, and I hope I’m not sounding out of line, ‘control freak within’ they still think they have to do it. I keep trying to put across that when you’ve got a school of 500 children it is actually not possible that all tasks can be done by the headteacher.

Developing the idea of the role of habit in influencing the lead professional’s keenness to delegate to an SBM, one head teacher was of the opinion that some colleagues, as a result of educational reforms, had grown used to having a more administrative and office-based role and were reluctant to return to more challenging and less tangible work in leading learning in their classrooms and staffrooms: They’ve come away from the teaching and learning aspect of their work. It could be quite a fearsome thought to go back into the classroom. They’ve been at it that long that they’ve lost sight of that [educational leader role] and they’re business people now.

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If you’ve got paper – health and safety audits, your accounts, this many orders, stuff that piles up, you can say ‘I’ve done all this’. You can’t see the children’s learning right away. It might be two years before the effect kicks in in the SATS.

A lot of SBM testimony conveyed the idea of trying to convince their head teachers to allow them more discretion in their areas of expertise. SBMs talked of ‘battling’ with their heads, or ‘working on them’ to encourage them to ‘let go’ or ‘hand over’ tasks that they felt lay within their jurisdiction. When interviewees were asked about specific areas where SBMs felt they enjoyed the greatest amount of discretion, the traditional bursarial role of financial management was a prime candidate. SBMs had expertise and dedicated time that allowed them to make savings and increase revenue in ways that many head teachers valued: In my school it’s finance. I seek advice in terms of budgeting, about what we can afford. The SBM enables me to act quickly to get financially advantageous contracts. For example, Jo got a 25% discount on a contract provided we could have the work done the next week, so she just got on with it.

Alongside finance, complex and technical areas such as health and safety were important tasks where SBMs were often given greater discretion. Nonetheless, even here there was a clear, shared understanding that the head teacher was accountable for all areas of school operation, and interviewees emphasized that ultimately decisions had to be approved by the lead professional: I take care of things from the finance point of view. I know what we can and can’t do. I know the nitty gritty of it, which the head doesn’t, so obviously although the headteacher makes the ultimate decision procedurally, I am making the financial decisions except in exceptional circumstances.

The highly technical nature of some SBM tasks and the level of specialist expertise involved can make it difficult for the head teacher to make a judgement about the soundness of decisions they are required to approve. Both SBMs and head teachers therefore saw SBM discretion as something of a double-edged sword. SBMs voiced their concerns that they might not be fully supported in decisions made, to all intents and purposes, alone. They also raised the spectre of SBM incompetence or deliberate wrongdoing not coming to light: I mean with the financial procedures, now we’ve changed to academy status in particular, she [the headteacher] has totally got her head in the sand and trusts me implicitly, which is good and bad. If something does go wrong, I haven’t got

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the support behind me and if, God forbid, I chose to do something that wasn’t very ethical, she wouldn’t know about it. I think there’s a potential risk there. As a primary school it’s just me doing the business management, you know, I’ve got no staff, nobody checks what I’m doing. We have the responsible [local authority] officer coming in but that’s only termly. I think there needs to be more internal control. In some of our secondary schools we have directors of business who take things a step further. That’s what a lot of head teachers have a problem with and whilst they might give their approval, I don’t think they always feel comfortable doing it, and they’d rather not have to do it.

For their part, one head teacher admitted to a sense of discomfiture in having to pass judgement on the soundness of their SBM’s financial work and emphasized the importance of dialogue in establishing discretionary boundaries: ‘I can only do that [make a judgement on their work] if I’m talking to them. I think I can look at their work and make a judgement but it would have to be a joint judgement’. In underscoring the need for dialogue, this last quotation raises the question of how head teachers and SBMs go about the delicate business of negotiating their different areas of responsibilities, the topic of the next subsection.

Negotiation of jurisdiction Chapter 3 provided a sketch of three logics, underpinned by different sets of assumptions, that may be used to analyse how work is organized: the logic of the market, bureaucratic logic and the logic of professionalism (Freidson 2001). Where labour is occupationally controlled, professionals may work in parallel to each other at related tasks in a horizontal structure, or in a vertical structure where some occupations have authority over others, or both. Ideal-typically, the professional logic dictates that it is the content and character of expertise and the functional relationship of that expertise to that of others that confers authority, rather than economic or administrative status. Thus physicians have authority over nursing and other staff whose expertise is subservient to that of the medical knowledge of the doctor. Similarly, in a school, by this logic the head teacher has authority by virtue of their expertise as lead educator and not merely via their status in the institutional hierarchy. Jurisdictions can be negotiated among occupations at the systemic level to determine which occupations have the right to perform and control particular

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tasks. Because such negotiations have implications for the amount and type of work available, they may involve the support of the state in enacting legislation, for example, whether an individual who is not a trained teacher can lead a school, or whether anyone other than a physician can prescribe medication. The role of national politics and policy in supporting SBMs as an occupational grouping is considered in Chapter 11. The topic of this section is the realm of the day-to-day negotiations conducted by individual head teachers and their SBMs in determining how their potentially overlapping areas of expertise are employed in accomplishing necessary administrative work within the school. What came over strongly in interviewee testimony was the lack of any standard or ‘typical’ negotiation process, with SBMs who had experience of working with more than one head teacher noting stark differences in how agreement was reached with different individuals. An SBM working across a cluster of schools described the negotiation process as follows: It takes place pretty informally really because of the way my role is set up. I meet with each of my heads at least once a week, talk to them and we talk about everything that could be an issue in terms of who does what. How do I know what I can do without talking to the head? We haven’t formalised that process. I suppose I have just got to learn, and what I can do isn’t necessarily the same in each of my schools.

A sense of frustration at the sometimes rather haphazard nature of the negotiation process was palpable in SBM testimony, as in the following example: A bit sporadically if I’m very honest with you. My head teacher is a lovely person but she is sort of all or nothing, so she will either give me a job in its entirety, or she will take something off me and keep it in her office. An example of that is the policies for the schools. With the previous head, I used to manage the policies, make sure the correct ones went through to governors at the correct time and made sure that they had signed copies available etc. The head teacher has now taken them off me. To be honest they are getting in a little bit of a mess and it bothers me. So yes, it’s a bit of an all or nothing scenario.

With regard to negotiating jurisdiction day to day, two factors emerged in the data as being of primary importance: the quality of the professional relationship between the two parties and degree of mutual understanding of one another’s roles. These are considered further in the following sections.

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Professional relationships Absolutely key in negotiating jurisdiction appeared to be the quality of the relationship between the head teacher and the SBM. Naturally enough, SBM efforts in trying to understand the head teacher’s expectations, and in establishing trust and confidence, were seen as significant in the process: It’s all about relationships, isn’t it? You know, there is what’s written down in your job description and there is what your head expects you to do and is comfortable for you to do. And over time you know what those things are. It can be tricky and sometimes it’s a case of trying to negotiate upwards or downwards depending on the task and on the head. If they are used to doing everything themselves, it takes some work to give them the confidence to delegate.

Consistent with this idea of developing a strong working relationship over time, SBMs who had worked under the same head teacher for an extended period spoke of how they had gradually acquired latitude in applying their specialist knowledge. One SBM said, for example: ‘I do believe she has confidence in me to say to me, ‘This is what I want. Go away and do what you can do’, because we have worked together for ten years now’. Another described how the relationship with the head teacher had changed since an interview with them some years earlier: He just throws everything at me now (laughter). We meet every morning. He doesn’t guide me anymore in anything, he is just quite happy to let me get on with it. I’ll give you an example. Last year we wanted to set up a private day care nursery on site. That’s the sort of thing where the head just said to me, ‘This is what I want to do. See if it’s viable, do your presentation to governors’. Once I got the nod from them it was just ‘Go ahead and do it’. So then that became my project, to set up the nursery and to get that running. So now we’ve got our own private day care nursery, which is the separate business arm of the school, and that’s doing very well. So things have changed a lot from the way they used to be a few years ago.

Recognition was evident among the SBMs interviewed of their subordinate role to that of the head teacher and of the need to keep this in mind. Several mentioned the necessity of always seeking head teacher approval for decisions and of exercising tact in negotiating jurisdiction day to day: It very much depends on the head teacher of the school and how far they are prepared to let you go because there are still headteachers who, I wouldn’t say

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feel threatened exactly, but feel that some school business managers are stepping on their toes. If you get a head teacher like that then you’ve got to be very good at gentle persuasion and doing things by the softly, softly approach and just trying to bring them round to a different way of thinking. But there are some head teachers still out there who dig their heels in. How can I put this? For an SBM to be successful in a school it [negotiation of jurisdiction] has to be done very carefully. I think if an SBM goes into a school and believes that they are at the same level as the head teacher and tries to go in there calling the shots, they’re not going to get very far. I think it has to be done with tact and diplomacy really. I mean there have been situations where I have made decisions where, out of respect for the head teacher, I will go in and say ‘Look here’s what I think. This is what I’m planning to do. Are you happy with that?’ I wouldn’t just make an important decision that would affect the school without clearing things through him first. I just wouldn’t do it. I would if I was in a situation where I had to and he wasn’t here for any reason. Then I’d report back to him later but if he is here, I will always pass things through him first.

An aspect of the relationship implied by some SBMs as essential for it to be fully functional, is one that is a feature of any genuine negotiation: the fact that exchange is two-way in nature. For instance, there were many examples in the data of tasks taken on by SBMs, which would seem to fall more readily within the remit of a qualified teacher, and might equally well have been performed by a deputy head teacher. Such examples emphasize the potential overlap and interplay between the two sets of responsibilities and the benefits of a genuine commitment to negotiating jurisdiction. Nonetheless, fundamental in this give and take was the notion of mutual respect for the particular expertise of both parties and recognition of their unique contribution. Negotiation depends on the personality, and the skills, and how it’s done. And it works both ways because I’ve seen good business managers assisting heads with timetabling and curriculum because they have a good understanding of those things. It might be different in a very leafy suburban school but here we’ve got a very challenging set of circumstances, high social deprivation. I wouldn’t have the first clue about how to deal with any of that. I think you need a special kind of person to do that and I think my head has those qualities. I wouldn’t always agree with how she does things, and she wouldn’t always agree with what I think or say but we have huge respect for one another as professionals and we work very well together.

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I sit and listen to my headteacher and hear all the things that they have knowledge of – about teaching and assessment and special needs and safeguarding – it’s so much more than just being in a classroom and delivering the lesson. I wouldn’t feel equipped to deal with all that. As for telling them [SBM] what to do in terms of financial management, to be quite honest, it would be stupid because I have come to realise I don’t understand as much as I thought I did. There you go. An admission of ignorance. (Primary headteacher)

This final quotation raises an important point. It is indicative of the value of having more than a passing understanding of the responsibilities of the co-professional in the negotiation process in ensuring the best use of expertise. It is to this question that discussion turns in the next section.

Understanding the co-professional’s role The negotiation of jurisdiction will be facilitated where both parties in the process have a good understanding of the nature of the other’s expertise. Concerns among educators that someone with a finance background will not have the necessary understanding of schooling required to allow discretionary decision-making are justifiable. Nonetheless, as schools continue to assume greater responsibilities for their financial management, especially in the case of academies where formal financial accounting is required by law, this argument might be seen equally to apply in relation to the lack of financial expertise of some head teachers. As the analysis in Chapter 5 indicated, there is considerable potential overlap in areas of responsibility between the head teacher and SBM. In order to make best use of the particular professional strengths of those concerned, having a good grasp of both areas of responsibility and of one another’s professional knowledge and skill will be fundamental. Particularly problematic will be situations where one or other or both parties are unaware of their own lack of necessary knowledge, or, unlike the head teacher quoted above, are unprepared to acknowledge it. Data showed instances of very clear recognition of the need for detailed knowledge of the co-professional’s expertise among practitioners. A number of SBMs have undertaken the national professional qualification for headship (NPQH) in England. The testimony of David Ginsberg in Chapter 10 explains how, in order to work more effectively together, he, with a business role, studied

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for the headship qualification, while the educational leader in his organization in South Africa undertook the CSBM. The need for head teachers to understand business management in order to negotiate jurisdiction effectively with their SBMs had implications for the professional preparation for headship. The director of SBM professionalization activities at the National College, Trevor Summerson, expressed his viewpoint in this way: I think NPQH was really good in giving head teachers leadership skills and understanding of how to lead an organisation and all that. But as far as I am concerned it didn’t give them all the specialist skills that the leader needs to have to operate in a sector as it is now much more diverse than it was 10 years ago. It’s not about a head teacher having the skills to do the school business manager’s job, it’s really the head teacher having the skills to ask the school business manager the right questions. Now NPQH has been strengthened in that area. Not as much as some would have liked but there is only so much you can put into a course. But you cannot get the best out of your school business manager if the head teacher doesn’t understand the broad concept of that role and doesn’t have the skills to ask the right questions about school business managing. You will not get effective deployment of that school business manager. You won’t get maximum output from them. That’s how critical it is as far as I’m concerned.

Summerson made a comparison with the roles of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) in some private enterprises: When you look at CEOs, COOs and private organisations across the world there is no distinct job description for a COO. When you look at the CEO and the COO’s jobs together, you are covering these tasks but they are divided up differently depending upon the strengths of the CEO and the strengths of the COO. I think that’s another thing that’s going to happen in schools. There will be a range of tasks that need to be done at the highest level. The head teacher will cover these sorts of tasks and the school business manager will cover these sorts of tasks but they will differ from school to school depending on the competency strengths that the head teacher and the SBM have.

Bennett and Miles (2006) propose a typology of seven very different kinds of COO and argue that, though the COO role is critical to the success of many companies, it is prevented from becoming more prevalent because it is widely misunderstood. The parallels between this role and that of the SBM are notable and their findings instructive. First, there is extraordinary variability in the backgrounds and roles of COOs, as is the case with SBMs, who have widely

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differing career paths, qualifications and job descriptions. Second, as with the SBM whose duties will be determined by the particular professional strengths and limitations of their head teacher, and unlike other jobs that are primarily defined by the tasks to be done and the structure of the organization, the COO’s role is ‘defined in relation to the CEO as an individual’ (p. 72). Third, the authors identify the importance of high levels of trust between the COO and CEO in a relationship that can otherwise be dysfunctional and generate unhealthy rivalries, defensiveness, misconceptions and doubt. They highlight other difficulties such as not having an obvious pool of potential applicants to draw from, which parallels the situation of school governors who might be unsure whether to recruit an SBM specifically with education business management experience and/or credentials, or to cast their net more widely. Similarly, board members, or school governors in the case of SBMs, may need convincing that the COO role will genuinely add value because of perceived overlaps on paper with the responsibilities of the lead professional. Further, given the importance of chemistry between the two individuals, in recruiting an SBM, CEOs will not necessarily know who will be most deserving of their trust, and potential COOs will not know if the job is right for them. Bennett and Miles (2006) make pertinent points in relation to the potential tensions that arise if the boundaries between leader and second-in-command are not observed. They suggest mutual obligations owed by the two parties. The CEO should expect from their second-in-command: true respect; an ego held in check by one who must ‘lead while serving’ (p. 76); an eye on implementation and a bias towards action; coaching and coordination skills. The COO for their part requires their CEO to communicate clearly, directly and quickly any emergent thinking with operational implications; negotiation of explicit and reasonable demarcation of responsibilities, with clear decisionmaking rights; a shared spotlight, meaning that although the COO’s job is to make the CEO successful, this can make them invisible and so they have the right to expect that the CEO will enable them to develop new knowledge and skills and to share the glory for their success whenever appropriate. The idea of these two lead roles in schools as being increasingly negotiated and flexible, and of the importance of chemistry in the process of negotiating jurisdiction, has significant implications for the quality of working life when one or other party changes job, as these SBM quotations illustrate: Crucially, I’ve had headteachers that all supported me. When one left and a headteacher came in that didn’t support me, it was a real shock. They basically said ‘that’s my job. I don’t need you here.’ And there is nothing I can do about it.

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I’m on my second head teacher now. The first head teacher involved me in absolutely everything and anything but this new head teacher she is a stronger head, shall we say. I think it’s very much down to the individual.

This was a situation that the SBM team at the College was well aware of from their contact with schools, as Summerson relates: When a head teacher changes in the UK, often the school business manager moves on, if they are operating in a very senior position. The reason that happens is because the head teacher that comes in has a different skill set from the head teacher that has left and consequently there is overlap, tension, you name it, between the new head and the school business manager that’s there. And that’s one of the reasons, and quite a significant reason, why you get the school business manager, who just three months after a new head teacher has been appointed, decides to move along into a new post.

The potential closeness of this working relationship has implications for succession planning, that governing bodies would benefit from being made aware of in Summerson’s view: I think some guidance has got to go out to school governing bodies where they are advised along the lines of, ‘The school business manager will always be critical to the school, as you know, so how will this particular head teacher that you are thinking of appointing impact on that school business manager?’ I’m not suggesting that they don’t recruit the head teacher that they want to recruit, what I’m saying is that they’ve got to plan for the potential fall out of that appointment. Is there likely to be a clash? Is the school business manager likely to leave? Consequently you’ve got to think of succession planning for your school business manager as well as the headteacher.

The data highlighting the necessity for more than a passing understanding of the co-professionals area of responsibility for successful negotiation of jurisdiction are instructive, as are the insights from work on the highly individual nature of the CEO–COO role in business for the analogous head teacher–SBM relationship. As illustrated in this section, together they have significant implications for school leadership development, appointments and succession planning.

Shifting attitudes Evidence of a growing understanding and acceptance of business thinking in schools, and of closer integration of business and education agendas,

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was presented in Chapter 6. Similarly, research data highlighted a growing appreciation of the role of SBM expertise among the education community. One relatively recent graduate of the CSBM remarked: ‘I’ve only been around [in schools] for four years but certainly I think things are improving, and have improved over that time.’ A former SBM-turned freelance leadership trainer within the school sector had noted a significant thawing of attitudes to SBMs among educators: In 1989 when I was a school business manager, the comment I was hearing regularly was ‘What the hell does this guy know? He’s not even a teacher.’ I don’t hear any of that now. What I do see is some really good quality professional school business managers that are having a major impact and adding real value to the leadership team and very much accepted as part of that leadership team.

In addition to the fact that older head teachers who had been used to overseeing everything in their schools were becoming proportionately fewer, the major factor in this shift of attitude was felt to be the perception that the pressures on head teachers were continuing to increase. Respondents believed that the accretion of new roles and responsibilities and ongoing change in the schools sector meant head teachers were no longer able to keep tight control over the ever-growing number of activities for which they are accountable: So at the minute we’re still working on that [negotiating who does what] but I think when we go forward into Academy she isn’t going to have time to do things full stop. So she’s going to have to hand more work over. If head teachers didn’t have more support now than they had a few years ago, I think a lot would go under because there are increasing demands on them. If they didn’t have our support, they just wouldn’t be able to cope.

This chapter has examined data in relation to the SBM–head teacher relationship, surfaced some of its tensions and distinctive characteristics and suggested possible implications for educational professionals in terms of leadership development and succession. A general softening over time of attitudes towards business practices in schools among the education community is in evidence, as is a greater acceptance of the potential contribution of the SBM role to children’s education since the launch of the National College’s SBM professionalization activities. The final chapter in this section looks at the implications of structural arrangements for the deployment of SBM expertise.

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Institutional Arrangements and Knowledge Application

This chapter examines evidence in relation to how institutional arrangements influence the professional lives of SBMs. Here ‘institutional’ should be understood as operating at two levels. The chapter is based principally on evidence from SBMs and head teachers on the significance for the SBM professional project of structural arrangements at the level of school, or school cluster. It is primarily at this level at which the term ‘institutional’ should therefore be understood to operate. However, since the institutional arrangements concerned can only be understood with reference to the policy context that created them, ‘institutional’ should also be interpreted as including institutions involved in developing and implementing education policies nationally. These include the Department and its agencies such as the National College. During the final phase of data collection it was the impact on the working lives of SBMs of two types of structural arrangement promoted within policy that were most salient in the data: academies and primary partnerships both emerged as examples of the ways in which structural arrangements can be highly significant for professional projects. It is therefore around these two examples that the chapter is organized. As discussed in Chapter 2, autonomy and collaboration are both important elements of schools policy in England, and more generally within public services internationally. Academization and primary partnerships are illustrative of these trends. Although an analytic distinction is made here between the two types of institutional arrangement, in practice this is not clear cut, with some primary partnerships including academies and some academy trusts consisting of groups of primary schools in partnership. The financial procedures required in academies are markedly different from those that pertain for schools under local authority control. The data make plain that academization is having very significant consequences for SBM expertise

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and practice in ways that have thus far not featured in academic work on the academies programme. Supporting overstretched primary head teachers was an important objective in the later stages of the National College’s SBM professionalization activity. Primary partnerships were seen as one means of addressing the problem, and many interviewees also had experience of such institutional arrangements. The chapter first provides brief background on the academies programme before examining SBM perspectives on the relevance of academy conversion for professional life. What emerges is the very significant change implied by academy conversion to the method of handling school accounts, the volume of work involved and how accounts are scrutinized. The implications of conversion for the relevance of SBM professional knowledge and practice can be profound, with data indicating a number of variables that shape how smooth the conversion process is likely to be and the level of challenge it poses for individual SBMs. The chapter then explains how the primary partnership programme had its origins in the National College’s SBM demonstration projects. Using data from SBMs and head teachers, it illustrates how views on the relevance of the SBM role to student outcomes among governors, local authority personnel and head teachers have been critical. Buying in SBM professional knowledge and skill across groups of primary schools may be deemed to sit anywhere on a scale between being a necessity and an expensive luxury. The position adopted was seen by respondents to lie at the heart of decision-making and therefore to determine the take up and sustainability of these joint-funded posts.

The academies programme Academies are schools that, while independent from local authority control, are nonetheless funded by the public purse (see Wolfe 2011 for a detailed explanation of the difference between maintained and independent schools). Academies are ‘shape-shifters’ and do not lend themselves to ready description (Beckett 2011). Though originally launched under New Labour in 2000, the direction of travel of the academies programme is apt to change in line with policy imperatives and has been modified and intensified significantly under the current administration. The academies programme is linked to the early experience of charter schools in the United States and has counterparts in

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other countries (Goldring and Mavrogordato 2011). Like their American counterparts, academies in England have been highly controversial and have given rise to extensive debate in both the media and in academic circles (Gunter 2011). The development of academies in England built on a programme of academy forerunners, City Technology Colleges. A significant commentator in mapping and critiquing the privatization process in education, Ball sees the programme as an important vehicle in bringing educational outsiders into the sector as ‘agents of policy’ in the form of academy sponsors (Ball 2007, p. 159). In the early days of the programme, Ball describes how ‘heroes of enterprise’, wealthy business people with a social conscience, were part of a network of new social and political actors circumventing established networks of policy influence and sponsoring academies offering specialisms in curriculum areas such as business, science and sport. The academies programme embodied key aspects of New Labour thinking and the role of privatization in their reform agenda: social responsibility, new forms of leadership and governance, innovation and technology, tackling social disadvantage and exclusion and importing business language and practices. Exempt from many of the normal restrictions of state education, such as following the national curriculum and national agreements over employee pay and teacher certification, academies were expected to employ technical and market solutions to educational problems. Imbued with notions of the power of individuals and institutions with the ‘right stuff ’ to flourish against the odds, the programme stands as a ‘condensate of state competition policy with all its tensions and contradictions represented in microcosm’ (Ball 2007, p. 160). As the articles in Gunter (2011) make plain, though in practice many academies have not been very successful academically, the rhetoric has encouraged association between the power of market choice and the fight for improved educational standards. The programme was initially small in scale, though its price tag was not insignificant. It involved a number of expensive building and refurbishment projects that expressed visually the bold, aspirational ethos and Ball cites an official estimate of £5 billion in 2005 for a target of 400 school-to-academy conversions (2007, p. 171). In exploring the role of business in education on a global scale, Ball (2012) makes reference to the academies programme as a policy development that encouraged the involvement of business in both the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ sides of service provision (p. 123). Global specialist education brands, such as Edison and GEMs, provide professional and accountancy

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services, while generic or portfolio companies may also tackle building, design and engineering. In reading the next section, the highly politicized nature of the academies programme should be understood. Despite instances of local community resistance and sustained criticism in academic circles and within the national and education media, the rate of academization has accelerated significantly under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government. According to the Times Educational Supplement, government figures released in February 2014 show that more than 400 primary schools were forced to become academies in 2013 for failing to hit government examination targets (Vaughan 2014). The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has been accused of using the Academies Act to sack school governors who resist academization and Ofsted have had to review their policy of sharing information with the Department before inspection reports are received by schools when head teachers reported being put under premature pressure to become academies (Moorhead 2014). The academies programme has the full force of government behind it and is proceeding on a scale and at a pace that is breathtaking. As the following section illustrates, the progress of this juggernaut can have significant implications for SBMs in schools managing the consequences of conversion.

SBMs and academies As conversion to academy status has intensified, so the need for personnel with the requisite financial skills has mushroomed. While initially academies were required by law to employ a qualified accountant, the rules laid down by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) are now less stringent. Their ‘Academies Financial Handbook 2013’ states that in addition to ‘standard charitable controls’ an academy trust must employ finance staff that are ‘appropriately qualified and/ or experienced’. The Principal Finance Officer (PFO) is expected to play ‘both a technical and leadership role in the trust’ and may combine their financial responsibilities ‘with a range of other support and leadership responsibilities in which the existence of a formal accountancy qualification may be less relevant’. As evidence in Part 4 makes clear, the SBM team at the National College were instrumental in bringing about this change in legislation to allow individuals other than accountants to oversee academy finances.

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Aware of the demands that academy conversions would make on the nation’s SBMs, the National College worked first with the EFA to determine the most critical financial skills required in an academy, and subsequently with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountants to develop a module to support SBMs in schools becoming academies. Though the module has now been available for a number of years, it is unclear how far schools are aware of it, or how extensively it has been taken up. No SBMs interviewed made reference to it and according to a member of the SBM team, feedback from participants has suggested that not all have found it very accessible. Compared to the College’s SBM programmes it was reported to use a ‘rather traditional teaching model’, which some participants have not enjoyed. Also, as the data below illustrate, the financial accounting approach is a significant departure for SBMs used to their local authority system. In the words of one member of College’s SBM team, ‘you’re either right or you’re wrong but I’m afraid that’s the nature of accounting. We can’t get round that.’ Just how radical a shift in the way accounts are prepared and monitored in academies compared to how this is conducted by schools under local authority control was brought into sharp relief in interview data. When asked, rather naively in retrospect, about the implications for SBMs of conversion to academy status, one SBM with and accountancy background responded: ‘ That’s a huge question Charlotte. We could probably talk about that for the rest of the morning’; a second described financial management under academy status as ‘ Totally different. It’s a totally different model. It’s much more pure accounting that’s needed in an academy than it ever was in a school. And there’s much more focus on it.’ An entrepreneur and former SBM whose company offers various management and staff development products and services described the nature of financial management for schools with academy status in this way: Because of the huge emphasis on the financial accounting side, it’s a full time job in an academy to do the budgeting, the returns, to keep all your accounts for the Charities Commission, whoever you have got to report to at the trust. That’s a full time job now just looking after the finance side.

These quotations indicate changes for SBM practice with conversion to academy in three interdependent ways. First, there is a change in the method of accounting requiring many SBMs to learn a fundamentally different approach. Second, there is a question of work volume, with the last quotation making clear the amount of time required in preparing the relevant accounts. Third, there is the question

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of how accounts are scrutinized. Taken together, these three changes imply a radical shift in practice for many SBMs. Quoted below is the SBM of a primary school soon to convert to academy status. While this SBM understood that there is a difference between business and local authority accounting systems, they had not used business accounting before and had been obliged to learn how to do it in order to comply with procedures after conversion: I know some accountants who have come in to do the business manager role and the way of doing finance is very different from the accounting world, just by virtue of the finance system that we use. I have now got to learn how to do business accounts, where really I’ve always been happy with the lovely fluffy, woolly finance package used by the local authority. I won’t have any of that when we become an academy.

SBM testimony like this provides an insight into feelings around moving to the new system of accounting on conversion and why some of them see the gaps in their existing professional knowledge as potentially problematic. A number of interviewees cited in this section make reference to REAch2. The name of this academy trust stands for Raising Educational Achievement for Children. Though it has only been in operation since September 2012, it has expanded rapidly and extended its geographical reach since that time. Founded on two primary National Support Schools, its website states that it ‘aspires to create a family of primary academies that have strong reputations for delivering outstanding education for all pupils’ and invites small clusters of schools around the country to contact Steve Lancashire, their chief executive. REAch2’s stated aim is to build its capacity for schools to share expertise and support one another through ‘fixed term federations, executive headships, acting headship, headteacher coaching and school-to-school support at every level’. An SBM had attended a conference for staff in schools joining REAch2 the day before they were interviewed. They recounted the following exchange with their head teacher about the experience: Yesterday they told us, ‘You’ll be audited every year and it’s a five day audit and you’re going to have to have this many pages of stuff ready’ and I’m thinking ‘Oh my goodness’. I mean I don’t think I’ve seen an auditor for three years from the local authority. But from now on we have to think of ourselves as running a business, an educational business, but a business nonetheless. My headteacher asked me when I got back to school, ‘How was it?’ and I said, ‘You’re very lucky to have me still here because I nearly jumped in the Thames’. It just blew my mind.

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The humorous tone of the previous quotation perhaps rather disguises what are clearly profound implications of academy conversion for the working lives of some SBMs, and as reflected in the following quotations from an experienced practitioner: ‘Well I’ve seen quite a number sink, to be honest. I’ve seen some what were really good business managers struggling under academy’. The data illustrate that individual SBMs are at very variable starting points in terms of preparedness for academy conversion, and in their willingness and ability to rise to the challenge. As one SBM saw it: ‘Actually, for me it’s going to be a steep learning curve but I can adapt. Though it all depends on the individual and what kind of the learner and what kind of manager you are’. Others predicted that some SBMs would find it too demanding and simply leave: There are big changes with academy. I don’t think it will be such a worry for me. I only touched on accounting in my degree, but it’s not alien to me. But there are some who are going to say, ‘You know what? I can’t do this anymore. This is way beyond what I’m paid for, or what it I’m able to manage or even take on board’.

The SBM who had attended a REAch2 conference the previous day and was quoted above was taken aback by the lack of understanding of some who would be taking a more active role in school finance on conversion: It was really scary because you had people in that room yesterday that didn’t really have a handle on what would be involved. There were some who were really vague, saying ‘I don’t know what services my local authority provides us with’, so they were being told, ‘Well actually you’d better find out because you won’t have any of those services when you convert to academy. You’ve got to source those whether or not you buy them back from your local authority or not’. So I’m thinking ‘Oh my god. No wonder some schools are in such a mess,’ because they didn’t have a clue. I was horrified.

This quotation indicates a lack of knowledge among some administrative and financial support colleagues about how the finances in their schools are handled. This state of affairs may arise through (i) prior reliance on the local authority to handle such matters, (ii) a lack of desire or ability on the part of the SBM to take a more active role in them, (iii) a lack of desire on the part of the head teacher to allow their SBM to do so, or (iv) a combination of any or all of these factors. Whatever their origins, this lack of knowledge and experience might make the conversion process a particularly painful one in some schools. The way responsibilities had been settled between the SBM and the head teacher formerly was highlighted as significant in terms of SBMs being able to develop

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and apply appropriate expertise on academy conversion. The previous chapter examined data in relation to how jurisdiction is negotiated between these two colleagues and revealed the very individual nature of this process. This variation was cited as a factor in the different levels of preparedness among SBMs to fulfil the financial management requirements on conversion. In the words of one SBM: It depends on the headteacher. Some SBMs have very different roles to others. My headteacher is keen that I have a handle on everything that goes on – premises, health and safety, service level agreements, and so on, whereas for other that’s not the case.

The access the SBM has to financial decision-making processes and the breadth of experience of managing the school’s finances they have accrued will therefore be a significant determinant in their ability to handle academy conversion successfully. The above quotations illustrate that individual familiarity and confidence in taking on business accounting methods, and the previous level of involvement of the SBM with financial management in the school can both be important factors in the ease of academy conversion. A third factor identified as crucial to conversion, and which like the other two was highly variable, was the quality of external support available. As one SBM working across a cluster of schools saw it: There are two sides to the question of how well-prepared schools are. One is how ready the business managers are for what they are going to be faced with, and the other is what level of support are they are going to get from whatever organisation is either sponsoring or involved with the conversion. Even taking the three conversions that I am involved with at the moment, one is sponsored by a company called REAch2 and the level of support appears to be very good. That level of support will allow for any shortcomings in the business management. Another school, they’ve elected to convert to academy status on their own. It’s a good school and it will have a link with the diocese but from what I’ve seen so far the support mechanisms that the diocese has are not very extensive. So if that school didn’t have an experienced business manager who knew a lot about accounting, I think they’d struggle. Somewhere in between, somewhere on that spectrum, are the majority of schools.

This comment indicates the potential patchiness of the conversion process. The two dimensions of SBM preparedness and external support together create a number of different scenarios. For schools with SBMs with suitable expertise and adequate support, the process might be expected to proceed relatively smoothly.

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Other schools will ultimately manage the conversion process by relying heavily on strength in one or other of these two areas. For the third group, where the school does not possess the requisite expertise and adequate support is not available locally, the conversion process might be expected to be problematic. While offering valuable support for schools, and significant development opportunities for individual SBMs, the kinds of partnerships between schools envisaged in academy groupings such as REAch2 have implications in terms of workload for those in a supporting role. One SBM expressed excitement but also some nervousness about what providing such support might mean for an already pressured working life: Steve Lancashire [Chief Executive of REAch2] came in here and he said he really wanted schools that knew what they were talking about and he said to me that there’d be looking for people like me to go out and support schools that are in difficulties, so already earmarking us as a school that will be supporting those schools rather than us needing support. It’s quite exciting but again I’m thinking, ‘How on earth do I do my own job as well as supporting everybody else? I’m sure there’s some way that it works’.

Chapter 6 illustrated ways in which the academies programme was having potentially far-reaching consequences for SBM careers and credentials. The above analysis indicates that this policy imperative is also having very real impacts on the relevance of SBM professional expertise for the school system and for the professional lives of SBMs.

SBM partnership research As the data in the previous section indicate, the academies programme exemplifies the prominence of partnership in the landscape of public service delivery internationally (Sullivan and Skelcher 2002). In addition to being a partnership between sponsors, the Department for Education and other stakeholders, in the case of academy chains, the academies programme also involves partnerships between schools sharing skills and knowledge to enable ‘stronger’ schools to support ‘weaker’ ones within the chain. The idea of sharing expertise among groups of schools has been firmly embedded within education policy for several decades both under New Labour and the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition. This section will draw on data from SBMs deploying their expertise across school collaborations. A number of them were involved in the

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SBM Demonstration Project Programme, which is therefore introduced briefly below, while others had been interviewed as part of previous National College SBM programme evaluations. In all cases participants were interviewed again in 2013 to ensure the currency of the perspectives expressed. In 2008, the National College furthered the policy drive for inter-school collaboration by organizing a programme of SBM ‘demonstration projects’. These demonstration projects involved groups of schools, sometimes in collaboration with other public sector agencies, developing their own means of enhancing business management capacity through sharing SBM expertise within their partnership. An important feature of this programme, and on the research conducted in relation to it, was its primary school focus. Though many secondary schools have long had the benefit of site-based professional support in finance and administration, this has not generally been the case for primary schools, many of which have relied on relevant knowledge acquired by the head teacher and members of the school governing body, often buying in specialist services (e.g. finance, HR) from the local authority or other providers. Groups of schools interested in taking part in the SBM Demonstration Project Programme were invited to submit proposals to compete for start-up funding of up to £50,000 from the central government (Woods et al. 2013, 2012). The programme was innovative: ways of sharing educational leadership across schools had been studied previously but this was the first time that collaborations based on shared business management had been tried in England, and research on the programme was exploratory. The study was funded by the National College and policymakers were keen to know the financial impacts of the collaborative arrangements (see Southworth 2010) and to develop the ‘know-how’ that could benefit the wider schools system (e.g. What structural arrangements were adopted? How were SBMs recruited? What roles did they perform?). The programme involved 35 projects and over 300 schools in all phases and throughout the country, including collaboration with other agencies (e.g. health services, police, social services) in some cases. The project groupings were diverse: in areas of social deprivation and relative affluence; in urban and rural settings; involved schools of all sizes; schools that were judged both successful and unsuccessful by government inspectors; schools which already had effective business management arrangements in place and ones which had none. The know-how developed from this research was made available in the form of case studies and guidance for schools via the College’s website, and subsequently funds were provided by government to support what were called

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‘Primary Partnerships’, albeit at a reduced rate (up to £25,000 per cluster). Indicative of the current administration’s intention to convert as many schools as possible to academy status, the most recent incarnation of policy-led primary collaboration are multi-academy trusts (MATs). Funds of up to £50,000 were made available until March 2014 for groups of three or more schools applying to form a MAT, provided the majority are primaries and at least one school is ‘performing well’.

SBM partnership findings Previous publications arising from research on the demonstration projects/ primary partnerships have highlighted some of their strengths and limitations. Apart from more predictable and easily identifiable benefits arising from SBM expertise, such as increased revenue and reduced costs, successful clusters also pointed to less tangible outcomes. Using interview data from head teachers in these groupings, Woods et al. (2012) delineate ways that drawing on SBM expertise was enabling a reduction in head teacher stress and workload in some settings, and potentially having a favourable influence on head teacher recruitment and retention rates. Head teachers in these clusters reported that SBMs were making educational leadership more attractive to potential future leaders, making their own workload more manageable, and making them more effective and more satisfied with their work through activities such as: mentoring deputies in financial and other non-teaching areas; supporting new head teachers or those working in very challenging circumstances; and through offering experienced head teachers new opportunities for development that might encourage them to defer retirement. In contrast, Woods et al. (2013) examine some of the root causes of tensions in less successful clusters. In addition to the kinds of factors in evidence in previous chapters, such as lack of understanding about the SBM role, unwillingness to delegate among head teachers and so forth, further barriers to the effectiveness of SBM partnerships were identified. Significant among these was the tendency for schools routinely to try to boost income through bidding for any funding available. This could mean that insufficient time was invested and too few individuals with important roles to play in the cluster were involved in the process of bid development. In clusters where the main purpose in bidding for an SBM post was income generation, it could also mean that, once in post, expectations were placed on a new incumbent solely to generate significant

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new funding at the expense of applying a variety of expertise and contributing to work towards other priorities. An SBM recruited to work across a primary partnership expressed their frustration as follows: We were being asked for a lot of information [from governors] about new income and where savings had been. I was getting a bit nervous because that wasn’t why I was in [the project]. We [SBMs] can all save money. It wasn’t the purpose at all and it must never be the driver in schools. Work/life balance for teaching staff is the driver and them being happier in their posts, or being able to do the job better.

In the remainder of the chapter, data will be presented that demonstrate different viewpoints on the potential contribution of SBM expertise within primary partnerships. SBMs and those head teachers who were supportive of the role were of the firm opinion that SBMs were at least as important in primary schools as in secondary ones in the current era. Two main reasons were given to support this viewpoint. The first has been discussed in previous research and is rooted in the argument that primary head teachers are required to submit the same number of returns to local and national government as larger schools (Woods et al. 2012). This is in spite of the fact that head teachers in smaller schools may have teaching responsibilities that colleagues in larger schools do not, coupled with limited options for delegation. The second argument is that although budgets are typically smaller in primary schools, this does not mean that financial management is no less crucial. Indeed, as this SBM argues, the tighter margins of error make it of paramount importance: You might be a small primary school with a tiny budget but in actual fact your margin of error is much smaller than a huge secondary school, so in a way you’ve got to be even better at this financial planning stuff. Two or three hundred pounds either way in a tiny primary is huge, so you’ve got to get it absolutely right.

Yet some proposals to become SBM partnerships almost fell at the first hurdle because there was a lack of conviction among key decision-makers about the need for an SBM in a primary school. In having power of veto in state schools over new appointments, school governors and local authority personnel were mentioned as significant groupings in this respect. For example, it was notable that within the national SBM Demonstration Project Programme, some project proposals were supported or even led by the local authority, while other authorities appeared to be less persuaded of the value of groups of schools

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sharing SBM expertise. As one head teacher involved in preparing a primary partnership proposal expressed it: ‘In this authority we kind of work in a culture where it’s “oh what are you doing that [the SBM demonstration project] for?”’ Another head teacher related the following conversation with a member of staff at the local authority education department when the idea of the primary partnership was first under discussion, revealing the strength of feeling and gap between different perspectives raised by the issue: The question was actually asked by someone in HR [the Human Resources department within the local authority], ‘well actually if you’ve got a business manager, do think your salary ought to be reduced because he’s doing your job?’ That is some of the thinking.

Some interviewees believed that staff in LA departments and school governors could lack understanding both of how the demands on head teachers have grown over time and of the potential of SBMs to alleviate the pressures some head teachers were experiencing as a result. This lack of understanding was reported by interviewees to be a factor that could contribute to reluctance to fund SBM partnership posts. The task of raising the matter of SBM recruitment with governing bodies was therefore seen by some primary head teachers as a challenging one: It’s got to be fully explained that the vast majority of what the SBM does reduces the burden on the Head. In the governors’ eyes if they’ve appointed you, they appointed you to carry such a burden so how do you then explain to them? You’ve got to justify what else you are now doing. Governors need to understand that the only way we are going to sustain heads is if we have people like this [SBMs].

Respondent testimony also illustrated the significant variability in the knowledge and experience that members of governing bodies bring to bear in their role, as in the following excerpt: Heads have been under this huge amount of pressure and you’ve got within your governors people who recognise that, especially people in finance who understand the million pound business that you run. But then you do have the others who say ‘Well doesn’t the Head do that [finance and administration]?’, those who don’t know the job.

One head teacher related the following anecdote about how dissent over funding an SBM partnership had spilled out into the local community.

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A rumour went round the local working men’s club that I’d gone crackers and spent all the school’s money, so the governors requested we had a parent seminar. So we showed them all the things that were happening in the project [SBM partnership] and told them all about Jo’s [SBM] role. When we explained the role the parents thought it was a brilliant idea, so we asked them if they could kindly tell their friends I hadn’t gone mad.

These quotations are indicative of a lack of appreciation by school governors and the communities they are drawn from of the pressing need experienced by some primary head teachers for operational support. This parallels the situation mentioned in the previous chapter where company boards may be reluctant to recruit a Chief Operating Officer as the role may be seen as covering similar ground to the duties of the CEO and therefore as being unnecessary. Some head teachers identified inter-school competition as a further barrier to SBM partnerships, recognizing that for some governors the focus was on the success of their school, rather than thinking of it in terms of quality of education for the local community more broadly. This quotation captures well the effort made by one head teacher to try to persuade school governors that partnership was the right strategy for providing greater equity of provision locally: That’s where 12 or 13 years of being a head come in. You call up on all that experience in that meeting and say ‘I’ve got to win this’. A significant core of governors have bought into the moral imperative of the partnership and that moral imperative is that we’ve got a standard of education here which is high and it’s actually immoral that kids in those other schools do not have the same standard. So the governors buying into that concept is exactly what the partnership is about.

As well as winning governor support in initially preparing partnership bids, head teachers also mentioned the challenge of making an effective case to governors in order to retain their SBMs when project funding was exhausted. Because impacts of an SBM on pupil outcomes are indirect, they are also longterm and often intangible. A lack of understanding among governing bodies of how, in the head teacher’s view, effective SBM support should enable favourable impact on pupil outcomes over the longer term, made it difficult for the head teacher to make a case for taking on an SBM, as opposed to increasing the number of teaching-related staff. For some of the interschool collaborations involved in the demonstration project programme, the difficulty of proving effectiveness in terms of outcomes over the project life time (typically a year or

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less) was a real barrier in terms of making the SBM role sustainable. Two head teachers described this situation in the following terms: It just seems to me to be the lead time for setting up the project, for her [SBM] to actually get into post, get set up with the systems, get her feet under the table, come round and meet everybody, that takes time. You can’t do that in a few weeks. So the first six months she’s had to spend building relationships and finding out where we all are and what we are doing and where we are going and I think it’s unrealistic for us to expect that kind of financial sustainability to be built in after the first year. That’s what has made it so difficult with some of the governing bodies. Now the project funding is finished we have to start paying for her out of our budgets and it’s a leap of faith to go with that. We’ve had to look at where the budgets are because it might mean looking at the value of Sam [SBM] against the value of a couple of TA’s [teaching assistants] for example. So I have got to be sure that I can show that to governors and prove that that is the best way to raise attainment in the school and that’s a big issue for me.

Interviewees mentioned a number of obstacles to making an effective case to governors. These included the difficulty of effective objective setting for the SBM across a group of schools and of providing adequately persuasive evidence of the impact of the role over the short term. A hint of the complexities of achieving transparency in terms of SBM impact across a cluster is provided in these interview extracts from two head teachers: The accountability for me is one thing I don’t feel we’ve quite sussed across four schools because there are four different heads, four different schools, four different ways of doing performance management and so on and that’s an area I think we need to develop. I mean Sue’s written reports to our governors about successes of the project and they form accountability of a kind but I’d like to include targets and what the SBM is being judged on for the board. Not in a hardnosed way but I still think if you are going to pay this amount of money for a person of this quality you have got to have something that they are judged against. I mean we have that soft target for this first year ‘Well just pay for yourself [ie SBM to cover the cost of their salary]’. But it’s got to be more than that going forward and I am sure the Governors as part of signing off on the role will want to see that it is. And that will probably mean different targets in different schools in the project.

Indeed in a number of cases within the demonstration project collaborations, there was disagreement within school partnerships about whether or not to

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continue with the SBM post once the project funding had been spent. In these cases typically the budgets of the reduced school clusters would not support the continuation of the post. This meant that the SBM had to find alternative employment and the schools keen to retain the post were left feeling frustrated. One SBM described what happened as follows: ‘The project schools weren’t all willing to fund the post and decided that whatever they were going to do, they would do without me, so I was made redundant’. Whether or not the SBM was retained beyond the end of the funded project was not perceived to be merely a question of financial viability or SBM performance. An SBM recruited to one primary partnership attributed the non-continuation of the post to differences within the cluster that had existed from the outset and that were never satisfactorily resolved: The post was viable. It was certainly viable but from the word go it was difficult for me because the cluster was split. There was one half of the cluster that really wanted me to continue and they were all very happy to put the money in from their school budgets to support me in that role but the other half didn’t and I think that side won out over the others. I thought they would have bitten my hand off for that support but some of them obviously didn’t feel like that.

As well as the disappointment felt by some SBMs who were not retained by their primary partnerships, some head teachers also clearly felt let down by the decision: It’s like losing an arm, losing her [SBM]. I think if somebody’s brought thousands of pounds into your budget and reduced a huge deficit in one school and made your school look absolutely fantastic, then they’re a success. I think that our issue was, despite everything, they [headteacher in a partner school] just didn’t get it. It’s disappointing.

In some instances, non-continuation was due to a change in head teacher in one or more schools across the cluster, as a member of the National College SBM team relates: Not all of them [demonstration projects] continued. Some did stop and went by the wayside. Sometimes that can be due to a new headteacher coming into post and saying, ‘Actually we don’t think this is a priority for our school’.

Participants working in partnerships that proved to be sustainable over the longer term highlighted as critical to success the following factors: to have the

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commitment of head teachers and governors in all schools in the grouping to use the SBM role to full effect, and to have strong SBM expertise to draw on: It all depended on the motives of the cluster and those that were truly embracing what the primary partnership grants were about and actually wanted to make it sustainable rather than ‘here is some money, we will get this for this year’. If they went with the strategic viewpoint of ensuring that it became sustainable then a lot of them continued. I think what made ours successful was the fact that I was already a practitioner. I had absolute buy-in from my head and my governors. They already knew how a business manager could benefit their school, so that was a given. What we were doing was trying to share that expertise with some of our primary schools.

In successful projects, benefits were seen to extend well beyond the immediate realm of SBM expertise. These partnerships were enabling collective learning, for example about the academy conversion process, and as forums for sharing ideas and resources around curriculum, use of IT, or how to support pupil transition from primary to secondary school. One SBM described their collaboration as follows: The work that we do with the other schools has gone beyond just the business side of it. We do a huge amount of work with them in all kinds of ways. Yet we’ve all retained that independence. Nobody is beholden to anybody else. It’s a true partnership and it’s a true strategic alliance and that is what we are pursuing.

The same SBM saw the partnership as a flexible grouping which schools would join and leave over time but with each learning something from the experience that they could use and share with others: Some of our original primary schools are no longer with us but that’s because they’ve developed their own styles, they have a business manager within their own set up. Whereas some people would say well that means the project has not been successful, I would say completely the opposite. It’s shown that they do value what a business manager brings to their school and now they feel confident to go it alone. I think that’s a huge success and we’ve then been able to partner up with other schools.

As well as schools learning from one another through partnerships, individual SBMs also saw these strategic arrangements as a crucible for individual professional development: Partnership has had an impact on my role here but I have to say I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed the challenge. One school is in a part of the city that has got

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quite a lot of deprivation, completely different to the school here. There are all these changes going on, so it’s quite an exciting time here. You turn a corner and something new is happening.

The last few quotations cited here indicate the opportunities that new institutional forms can provide for some individuals and institutions. However, taken as a whole the data in this chapter illustrate how the kinds of restructuring envisaged in national policy can equally create significant threats and challenges. The idea that the rapidity and reach of policy-led restructuring of public services in England is perhaps unique in the world was referred to earlier in this book (Pollit 2007). As interview testimony in this chapter makes apparent, the impacts of such top-down policies on the relevance of professional expertise and how it is used in professional practice can certainly be profound. In contrast, the next section considers the role of individual actors in influencing policy development and enactment at national level in different countries, and thus how individual agency has helped shaped the destiny of the SBM professional project both in England and internationally.

Part Four

Politics and the Professional Project This part offers illustrations of how politics have come into play in the progress of the SBM professional project. As argued previously, bodies of specialist knowledge and skill are an essential element of professionalism. However, these alone do not confer status or power. The art of politics, here understood as mutual persuasion, or influencing others at the institutional or individual level, is a primary tool for advancing and maintaining positions of influence and economic advantage in liberal democracies. The state and its policies, or even transnational authorities, are important for professional projects in having the power to affect the status of occupations in the economy through, for example, defining and classifying work in the labour force, defending labour market shelters against would-be competitors, supporting credentials and giving credence to professional ideology. Whether or not the state chooses to support the profession will vary over time and with its own agenda. The SBM is an interesting case for examining how politics and professionalism connect in a school system under tight state control and in which Freidson’s (2001) three logics of consumerism, bureaucracy and professionalism maintain an uneasy truce, giving rise to competing sets of ideas and values. Blase and Blase (2002, p. 7) see ‘politics’ as the means by which decisions are made about the allocation of resources within a given society or social organization; that is ‘who gets what, when, and how’. They distinguish two broad perspectives on the politics of education: macro-politics and micro-politics. Both forms are grounded in concepts such as ‘power, influence, control, conflict/ cooperation, strategies, exchange, negotiation, interest groups, values, and ideologies’ (p. 7) with much political action resulting from ‘perceived differences between individuals and groups, coupled with the motivation to use power to influence and/or protect’ (p. 9). They state that ‘macro-politics’ typically refers to the school’s external relationships and environments at the local, state, and

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national levels . . . and the interactions of public and private organizations within, between, and among levels’ (p. 9). For these authors ‘micro-politics’, in contrast, ‘refers to the use of formal and informal power by individuals and groups to achieve their goals’ within organizations (p. 9). Making reference to literature from a variety of fields, the authors note the consistent assertion that the two forms of politics are not easily divisible and that micro-politics is not restricted to a single organization but can occur at any level of the system: individual, organizational, systemic or societal. The evidence presented in this section supports the idea that micro- and macro-politics are indistinguishable. While the content is divided into two chapters, – the first of which focuses on the activities and personal aspirations of individuals and the second which is concerned more with political institutions – the distinction is somewhat arbitrary. What becomes abundantly clear is the centrality of the individual actor to the style and progress of the macro-political process. Both chapters draw extensively on first-hand accounts from key political actors within the SBM project. Chapter 10 presents findings in relation to the personal investment of central figures in National College-influenced professionalization activities both in England and internationally. Chapter 11 examines data in relation to how the SBM professional project in England was advanced at the institutional level, and especially via the National College, and then considers its political associations with institutions in other national contexts. The evidence makes plain the importance of government priorities for the status and fortunes of professional groupings by illustrating how the stock of the SBM profession has been intimately bound to the value placed on its professional expertise by their political masters. The chapter ends by setting out political priorities for the SBM project as identified by interviewees mainly in England and the United States.

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Chapter 10 presents excerpts from interviews with six individuals who have been pivotal to the SBM professional project in England and internationally in a variety of ways. Their testimony makes abundantly clear something that does not typically feature in academic accounts of professionalism: that political activity, though most often analysed at the macro level, nonetheless at heart is a process in which individual efforts to influence those with power is absolutely fundamental. This inescapable fact tends to be obscured in academic analysis of professional projects for two main reasons. First, the focus of sociological analysis is at the level of institution, thus the role of the individual in the political process tends to be obscured. Second, such analyses often deal with professions that have a long history and first-hand accounts from significant actors are therefore not always readily available. The chapters in this section are therefore unusual in (i) being based on empirical data, rather than conceptual analysis and documentary sources and (ii) giving an insight into the individual motivations, attitudes and concerns driving the politics underpinning the professional project. The first two accounts are from people who were instrumental in putting the SBM project in England on the relatively firm footing it now enjoys. The first is the only viewpoint from someone with an overtly political role: Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment whose political announcement was the starting point for the SBM programme. Excerpts from an interview conducted in 2013 capture her personal perspective on the origins of the project, the challenges involved and on progress to date. The second personal account comes from Trevor Summerson, the civil servant seconded to the National College to manage the SBM programme in its early days, and who stayed at the helm until his retirement in 2013. His has been a central role in SBM developments internationally, as this and the next chapter make clear.

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The remaining snapshots are taken from lead SBMs in countries where the National College’s professionalization activity has been highly influential and where, as in England, the profession is still very young: Linda Lee and Mary Monaghan from Australia, Val Wenham in New Zealand and David Ginsberg in South Africa. In a sense these people are pioneers. They have all been highly active within their national contexts in promoting school business management in a variety of ways: leading professional associations, garnering professional awards and endeavouring to exert influence in favour of SBMs among stakeholders at every opportunity. Space in this book only permits very partial glimpses of a tiny number of individuals among an international community. However, their testimony provides a window on the world of individuals at the forefront in trying to establish a recognized, international profession: what being a member of the profession means to them and why they are driven to work, often well beyond the call of duty, for recognition. The excerpts presented in this chapter capture perspectives on a moment in history as a newly emergent profession takes its first steps on the world stage. What they have to say is therefore presented in their own words with minimal commentary, allowing their voices to speak directly to the reader.

Estelle Morris A former teacher, and now Labour Peer, Estelle Morris was the Secretary of State for Education and Employment responsible for introducing reforms to the schools workforce, including the SBM professionalization programme. Morris’s stewardship of the Department was of relatively brief duration, but she still takes a keen interest in educational affairs and is a regular columnist in the education pages of the Guardian newspaper. She explained the reasons behind the reforms of the workforce as being primarily driven by the reactions of the teaching profession to the pressures they were experiencing as a result of the administrative demands of audit and the pace of change on multiple fronts: The constant complaint of teachers was that they were overworked and we wanted to get to the position whereby teachers taught and other people did the things that teachers didn’t need to do.

In relation to SBM reforms more specifically Morris made clear that, although the connection is indirect and therefore less obviously linked to educational

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outcomes than what teachers do, from her perspective the project was all about raising standards: Our starting point was, what do you need to do to raise standards for children? One of the answers to that is to improve the quality of teaching. If you follow that through, one of the ways of improving the quality of teaching is to free teachers from other things they are not trained to do and not skilled to do. It’s quite an important point that, although bursars don’t teach, and their role is at a distance, their role is all about raising standards for children because it makes the workforce more effective.

An important element of the professionalization process for Morris was the idea of developing a framework to structure the development of administrative staff in schools in a more systematic way that would help to raise their standing in the workforce: We absolutely wanted to raise their status. I felt in a way that we were creating a new post. Not that we were creating it from scratch but we were looking at what there was and we were putting in place a top professional structure for administrative staff who worked in schools.

When asked how important she felt effective business management was to schools, Morris emphasized the need for a range of expertise for success in any organizational setting, with schools being no exception: I think it’s absolutely crucial. I mean, you look at any other organization and they’ve got a mix of skills. One of the things I noticed when I became a member of parliament was that the support I got to do the job here was far greater than I got when I was at school. It’s very important in that wider education agenda.

Morris’s conversations with SBMs early in the professionalization process evidently reflected the frustration seen elsewhere in the evidence presented so far: the sense of being limited in their ability to apply new expertise due to lack of understanding or of support for their role. She attributed the sometimes ineffective deployment of SBMs to various factors as follows: I think that was the position but it is changing. When I spoke to bursars early on they said the development of their career was absolutely dependent upon the head letting them do the job. I think two things were happening at the time. It was a particularly pressurised time for heads and they were dealing with a lot of change and perhaps they almost didn’t all have the foresight to

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see how looking at administrative staff could actually help them manage the changes that they were facing. The heads who embraced it [SBM development] and thought it was a good thing were those who could see that looking at the whole of the school staff, rather than just looking at the teaching staff, was actually part of the raising school standards agenda. Other people sometimes saw it as another burden rather than something that could help them. I’ve no evidence of this but perhaps some of them were very satisfied with the school secretary approach and maybe it wasn’t easy for them to change the way they worked.

At interview I was curious to hear Morris’s response to critical comments and conjecture about workforce reforms that circulated at the time. One point was that delegating the workload of teachers, doctors, police officers and other established public sector professionals to various kinds of support workers was primarily a means of getting their work done at a lower rate of pay. The second was the fact that head teachers were perfectly capable of leading the business aspects of schooling without additional support and that to suggest otherwise was insulting. Her response was unequivocally that these motivations played no part: None of that was the case. If heads thought that it was merely about saving money then that was a shame. Of course school leaders will need to do some administration but giving them a professional service to support them in this and free them to spend more time leading teaching and learning must be a good thing.

I wondered whether Morris felt that there might have been a more ideological resistance among the education community to school business management as a principle, due to its association with the business/privatization agenda. This was not an argument she had come across, though her response shows that she had concerns at the time about being seen to be adopting practices from the private schools sector: No. I can’t see that. What I can see is that it looked a bit as though we were copying independent schools. I did worry about bringing into the state system of education a system of administrative support that actually came from independent schools, and I wondered how schools would respond to that. Having said that, I can’t in all honesty remember people raising it with me as a problem.

In rehearsing reasons for lack of interest or support for SBM professionalization, Morris felt strongly that there could sometimes be an element of superiority among more established professionals about the professional development of lower status colleagues:

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I think there’s a bit of snobbery there. If somebody hasn’t got their GCSEs, who might be returning to work, say, they’re not seen as quite as professional. So they don’t embrace the idea of their [SBM] professional development, and it’s infuriating. This was about professionalising a group of people, many, many of them women, who had a lot of skills and they weren’t being used. I think there was perhaps a bit of superiority. I think some people perhaps just didn’t see that it [business management] could connect with teaching, or that it was a profession that was worth developing and investing in.

Morris’s personal commitment to the SBM project was evident at interview. Her satisfaction was evident in improving the professional circumstances of a predominantly female grouping whose contribution and prospects had often been severely limited. Her positive appraisal of the progress and achievements of the SBM project was nonetheless coloured by recognition that there was still work to be done: It’s gone very well. Better than I thought, though it has been patchy. When I see those people for whom it really has worked and they’ve got a career, and they’re doing a Masters degree, it is really a joy. I’m absolutely thrilled because I know with these women – I’ve never met a man but I know there are some – know without it they wouldn’t have had the chances they have had. I have a bit of a rose-tinted view on this but I’m absolutely thrilled and when I meet people and I look at their areas of responsibility in the school, I’m delighted for them. It really does just fulfil the expectation that there was a huge well of talent there in these people who just needed to be given a chance. It’s also great when I speak to heads who say to me, ‘I couldn’t manage without my Bursar’. But I know it’s not been universal, it’s not happened everywhere.

One area where the place that SBMs now occupy in schools was seen to have exceeded expectations was in the area of support staff leadership: I think they are managing more staff than we expected. There are some, particularly in secondary schools, where there are more non-teaching staff in the school than teaching staff, and the Bursar is actually in charge of all the nonteaching staff, so that is huge.

When asked about the professional status of SBMs in the school community as compared to 2001, Morris responded as follows: I would say in individual schools and with certain heads, it’s absolutely been secured. I cannot say that in every school I go to somebody says, ‘Would you like to meet the Bursar?’, or ‘The bursar’s over there.’ So there is still work to do in that sense.

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Morris was convinced that schools and head teachers were in a stronger position as a result of SBM professionalization than they would otherwise be: Absolutely. I’m one who thinks that standards have risen in schools and I think one of the things about some of the heads I meet now, is they are utter professionals. When I was a teacher, I couldn’t possibly have been as good as them. And I genuinely think that one of the reasons is that over the last 10 to 15 years we’ve done very well at saying to heads and teachers, ‘You’ve got to focus on teaching and learning’ and they are better at their job because they’ve got competent people backing them up.

The fact that SBMs negotiate jurisdiction alone with the head teacher was seen as a significant barrier to the effective deployment and professional advancement of the individual SBM. However, as demonstrated in evidence and discussion presented in previous chapters, this was recognized as being a common problem and not one with a ready solution: I think part of the problem is that they are negotiating alone. I can’t think of a way round this but if they are working with a head who isn’t thinking that way, I don’t know what they can do because it’s just them and the head and what the head says goes. There are lots of people who have not been given the chance. There almost needs to be a movement. You can’t say, ‘Let’s not worry about it’, leave it to the individual school secretary to keep talking to the head about development opportunities. I don’t know the answer to that but there needs to be a greater capacity to work with the heads who have not yet realised the advantages, so that they do.

As discussed in Chapter 3, ideal-typically, professions control their own labour market through systems of credentialling, chartering and so forth. Morris believed it was premature to be thinking in terms of closing the SBM profession at this stage but did not rule it out as a future development. I think with school business managers now it’s about opening rather than closing doors but perhaps in years to come it is an idea that could be worked towards. The profession needs different levels and there needs to be the chance of being promoted from one to the other. It needs progression.

The idea of having a career ladder was seen to be important to give school support staff aspiration and opportunities for development and was part of Morris’s vision for the future: I like to think that at some point in the future, you were talking to a young person in school or college and you said, ‘What do you want to do when you

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leave here?’ and they’d said, ‘I’d like to be school business manager. There is a whole range of jobs and it’s a good route to take.’

Morris had two main pieces of advice for any ministers and civil servants considering the implementation of a programme of professionalization. First, she emphasized the necessity to consider carefully how the relevant expertise connects with that of those the occupational grouping works with most closely. Second, she saw the quality of the professional development put in place as central to success: You can’t just do it as a stand-alone thing. It’s got to part of wider workforce reform. Virtually no-one does a job alone. It all fits into someone else’s job. I think it’s really important to get that right. The other thing I would say is that, when all said and done, it’s all about professional development. Just changing the job title without putting professional development in, is never going to be enough.

Trevor Summerson In October 2013, at the conference of the Association of School Business Official International in Boston, Trevor Summerson was awarded the Dr Fred Hill Award for distinguished service to the profession. As only the third recipient of the award, and the first non-American to win it, Summerson was ‘quite taken aback’ but clearly delighted and touched by the accolade. His contribution to the profession internationally can be in no doubt. Across the globe, every lead SBM interviewed for this book knew him and spoke of him with evident affection and respect. Though officially now retired, Summerson continues to be highly active in promoting the profession. This section provides a sketch of the origins and development of his commitment to the project over time; of the means by which he personally sought to find favour for the SBM project in England among key decision-makers; and of the main satisfactions he derived from his leadership of the professionalization programme over a period of more than a decade from start up until his retirement. The next chapter makes reference to Summerson’s secondment from the Department for Education and Employment to manage the initial project to train 1,000 bursars at the National College following the merger of Employment with the Department for Education some years earlier: I went to the College for a very, very specific reason and that was really to improve my knowledge of how schools operated. I was working in the policy division

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of what was then the Education Department having come from Employment, so I thought it was important to learn as much as possible about how schools operated.

He joined the College a few months after the Secretary of State’s announcement, when ‘the project was seen as just that, a project, to train a thousand bursars’ after which ‘there was a huge great question mark’. The College recruited Summerson to lead a project team where he could apply the skills that he had learned in the Department for Employment ‘in terms of project management, planning, that sort of thing’, reflecting that ‘it worked well, so well in fact that I stayed at the College’. Summerson quickly developed a firm commitment to SBM professionalization. This flowed from his belief in the potential significance for schools of SBM expertise in a number of ways. The first was the clear drive towards increased devolution of control to schools, irrespective of the party in power: I could see over a period of time that schools would become increasingly autonomous; they would have to run their own affairs. The acceleration of academies has come as no surprise to me at all. It would have happened if Labour had been returned in 2010, and consequently the management of resources was bound to become a major issue. I saw that there was a real gap in skills and in confidence within schools in this area.

The necessity for effective resource management at site level has since been brought much more starkly into focus compared to the situation at the start of the project, given (i) the current less favourable economic climate and (ii) the rapid growth in the number of school’s functioning outside LA control. In 2002, however, Summerson was already unconvinced that the professional preparation of head teachers was inadequate to the task of leading the autonomous school. He was also aware of concerns that were beginning to surface about recruiting and retaining a sufficient pool of educational leaders nationally: There was an assumption that head teachers could do it all and I thought that assumption was misplaced. We had all the issues in the mid 2000s around succession planning. Senior teachers were voting with their feet and not applying for headteacher jobs because they thought it would be too stressful. Basically, headteachers just aren’t trained, I don’t think, to run schools along business lines.

Political impartiality is an important professional value for the civil servant, whose role in implementing the policies of elected government is one that might be described as ‘meta-political’, involving activity that is linked to the work of

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politicians but not in and of itself political activity (Ribbins and Sherratt 2012). Nonetheless it seems reasonable to assume that some policies will be closer to any individual policymaker’s heart than others. It is difficult to imagine that this personal belief in the value of the SBM project did not play a part in Summerson’s commitment to it. The growth in this personal commitment to the SBM project over time was explored at interview. A number of stages were identified as typical in the early phase of the policy development process, the first being a ‘period of conceptualization’ involving ‘thinking through questions like “Why are we doing this?” and “What are the implications?” and all that sort of thing’. This initial phase is followed by background research and ‘you then move quite quickly to implementation’, a necessity given the ‘aggressive’ project timescales. Evidence in the next chapter points to the role of project evaluations as a vehicle for obtaining political influence. Tellingly, as an experienced policy developer, Summerson also saw evaluation as a means of testing his own assumptions and of guarding against misplaced commitment to a policy he had been instrumental in developing: There is a danger at that phase [implementation] that, because you’ve got a degree of loyalty to it, because you’ve grown up with that policy development, you feel very defensive if it comes under attack, if the basis of what the policy was conceived upon is found out to be flawed, or there are question marks about it. Now one of the ways I tried to guard against that in the SBM project was that I was determined that the evaluation would be robust, fair, open, transparent. It was a very heavily evaluated programme, and if it turned out that this was a misconceived project, then it would be dropped. Now I was fairly confident it wouldn’t be, but nevertheless I thought that was vitally important.

The findings of early evaluations were favourable, which gave Summerson confidence in the value of the SBM programme. As the next chapter illustrates, impact and evaluation reports were also persuasive when it came to his trying to further promote the SBM cause. The reports ‘not only confirmed that it was an important project, and it was working, but also generated further interest’. In this way, as successive project cycles came to a close, and ‘people might question whether we should be running it’ having positive evaluation reports supported not only continued investment but also the commitment of additional resources. In addition to concrete evidence from formal reports by external evaluators, myself included, Summerson’s interviews gave insights into the importance of interpersonal communication in obtaining and maintaining political influence.

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The first step was establishing who should be the main targets for such influence: ‘You’ve got to identify the people within the Department who are the key decision makers and make sure that you’ve got their ear.’ Keeping these individuals informed of developments is an essential element but that alone is inadequate to guarantee support for a policy: It’s not sufficient just to keep them updated with progress reports and things like that. I always took every opportunity to meet with those people who I perceived as key decision makers and people who were interested in the school business management activity, senior officials. If they weren’t kept abreast of what is going on, and they didn’t understand what we were doing, they had the ear of the minister and they could quite easily derail the project or slow it up. . . . I was often down in London [at the Department for Education] – on average about three or four times a month.

The Chief Executive of the National College was singled out as a linchpin in advancing the SBM project as he had monthly meetings with the Secretary of State. In this way, it was ensured that the Secretary ‘was well aware of what school business management was doing and the benefits it was bringing’ and that this knowledge was ‘fed regularly into the debate’ in Whitehall. As is revealed in the next chapter, after the rather alien climate of the Department for Education, the more ‘business-like’ atmosphere and ethos of the National College felt more like home to Summerson after long experience in the Department for Employment. The relatively small hierarchy was a feature of working life at the College that afforded him ready access to the Chief Executive and was one that he particularly appreciated: ‘At the start there was one person between me and the Chief Executive. In the last two or three years there was nobody between me and the Chief Executive’. The leadership style of his line manager was also believed to contribute to Summerson’s strong professional commitment to the SBM project in that he was given the freedom and authority to exercise his own judgement and initiative: You had a chief executive who said ‘Come to me with a problem, bring me up to date with what’s happening but I trust you to get on with it and deliver it’. That level of freedom and also knowing they trust you, you have the certainty that you have the buy in of a chief exec., come what may, that was very powerful, it was very motivating. It was sometimes challenging that responsibility but nevertheless I would rather have it that way than somebody that’s ringing you up every five minutes.

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This approach to leadership was felt to have enabled the rapid progress of the SBM project because it inspired confidence both in Summerson and in those who worked with him on the SBM project: He wasn’t hands off, far from it. He knew absolutely what was going on but he trusted his senior officials to get on and do it and that basically bred confidence. It also bred confidence further down if my managers were discussing a particular approach to the development of a programme, now all those quite involved decisions, they knew they could come to me, that it wouldn’t have to go any higher. They knew that we were, not a separate unit, but we were an independent unit that could make those decisions and have authority to make those decisions.

These excerpts give an insight into some of the factors contributing to the development over time of the commitment of the person responsible for managing the SBM professionalization project in England. They also reveal something of what was involved in maintaining the profile of the programme over such an extended period. This was not a ‘pre-planned strategy’ but rather ‘an evolving strategy, based on logic’: How do you ensure that school business management, the profile that we had achieved after two or three years, were maintained for a longer period of time? We knew we couldn’t maintain it indefinitely but I think we were quite successful in maintaining it for a period of about nine years, rather than the two or three years which is what normally happens with a project.

When asked if there was anything that he might have done differently in retrospect, Summerson expressed regret in two main areas that concerned perceptions of the SBM role outside the profession and how these affect its status. The first concerns the nature of the job itself. In opposition to the way the testimony presented in Chapter 7 indicates that SBMs themselves see it, their work can be perceived by outsiders as exceedingly bureaucratic and dull: I do think we made a mistake and it’s a fairly serious mistake. We pushed too hard the idea that the school business manager could take work from the head teacher to release them. I think in the early stages that was useful but I think now the role’s seen to be about all the work that head teachers don’t want to do, so basically school business management’s perceived by some as a job which involves tasks that nobody else wants to do.

The second regret is one where Summerson believes he and his team share responsibility with the SBMs themselves and that is in terms of recognition

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of the contribution of the business manager’s role to educational outcomes in comparison to that of educators: I think if I was going to be critical about myself and school business managers, it is that I think we still haven’t got the central message across to everyone that school business managers serve the children in their school just as much as the teachers that teach them. They have just as much impact.

Personal satisfactions derived from leading the project over more than a decade included ‘seeing school business managers at graduation’ and finding out ‘the real and significant changes that they have made within their schools’ and ‘how they have benefited the children’. Making international connections was another aspect that was considered particularly rewarding. The model of programme developed at the College is now being transferred around the world; ‘in South Africa; the Americans are adopting them; the Canadians are thinking about it; the Australians are going to do it.’ For Summerson this confirms just how universal the role is: ‘across the globe schools are schools and school business managers are school business managers. They might do things slightly differently but their core roles are essentially the same’. A third source of satisfaction came from the sheer enjoyment of working with his team on the project, which in his view was an essential ingredient in their success: ‘For the last 10 years I had fun and I think my team have had fun but that positivity has fed through and we’ve achieved a lot more because of that.’ Revealingly, this reference to enjoyment was contrasted with a point made by a speaker at a talk he had recently attended in the United States and that seemed to strike a chord: Kids go into primary school or into nursery and they are really enjoying themselves in the sandpit and you can see they are learning all sorts of things and then quite suddenly they are introduced to this almost Victorian regime of learning and a lot of them just shut down. And I know the speaker gave a very black and white picture but I do think sometimes we make it very difficult for children to learn.

Perhaps understandably after such sustained commitment over an extended period, Summerson’s work to promote the SBM professionalization project continues in retirement: One of the difficulties of being retired is maintaining the network while not giving the impression you are working five days a week, 52 weeks of the year, which I’m determined not to do.

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Given the extent of Summerson’s network, and his contribution to the SBM professional project, it seems likely that he will continue to be an influential figure in years to come.

Linda Lee, Victoria state, Australia Constitutionally education is state-based in Australia, though interviews with participants familiar with the Australian context gave the impression that federal government is tending to try to intervene more closely in education policy that it has done historically. When I spoke to Linda Lee, she had been seconded from her school position to act as President of the Association of Business Managers in Victorian State Schools (ABMVSS), a position she had held for 5 years. Like Victoria’s principals’ association, her post at the ABMVSS is funded full-time by the education department, though she is keen to point out that this does not mean she has to ‘do their bidding.’ ABMVSS enjoys ‘good relationships’ with the DEECD Victorian Principals Association, the Secondary Principals Association and the Australian Principal Federation. They try to meet once a term with the state principals’ association and Lee described how she sits ‘on the same working parties as they do, our department consultative groups and so on, so I can pick up the phone and speak to them if there is an issue, and that’s terrific.’ She will ‘take any opportunity to have a conversation with education leaders one on one’, including those overseas. She mentioned the attendance of several of the National College’s SBM advocates at their association’s conference in Melbourne, where one accompanied her ‘to a high-level meeting in our department with all the movers and shakers’, and that she had travelled to England for the College’s international conference also. Victoria leads the way in Australia in terms of devolution of control from state to school level, a trend that looks set to continue following a recent public enquiry recommending further school autonomy initiatives (Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission 2013). The situation is very different in New South Wales where Mary Monaghan, the SBM featured in the next section is based. New South Wales is, Lee suggests, ‘the least devolved state but also the largest, with about 2200 government schools’ and currently ‘a very centralised system’. ABMVSS had recently made contact with NSW colleagues and started inviting them to conferences and other professional learning opportunities, which, they were ‘jumping at and grabbing with both hands’.

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A new degree programme for business managers in development at Deakin University under the direction of Professor Karen Starr is causing some excitement among Victoria’s SBMs. A survey of members of ABMVSS in 2010 revealed how few had formal qualifications, in contrast to the independent school sector where most have accountancy or other qualifications. Despite this lack of formal professional preparation, according to Lee, the level of professionalism and commitment to the role among school business managers in the state is changing. She recalls that among her generation: A lot of people fell into the role. They might have been the parent who took the child to school and the principal said ‘Can anybody type? I need somebody to type up the newsletter.’ A lot of people went into it because they think it’s great while their kids are at school. I think that is changing dramatically. The majority of people don’t go into it for those reasons anymore because it’s viewed as more of a professional career, with most of us now entitled to four weeks holiday a year, if we take that. I just think a lot of people get into education and it gets into your blood. It’s very difficult to walk away because you become emotionally attached.

Lee sees SBM expertise in resource management as highly complementary to that of educators, each bringing something different but important to decisionmaking: Principals and teachers don’t know what they don’t know [about resource management] and they think they’ve got a handle on it. But they’ve all come from the same perspective. The business manager brings a different perspective. I’m not saying it’s always the correct perspective but it’s actually throwing something else into the mix. So we’re saying, ‘Well have you thought of this?’ and they say, ‘Well, no. I hadn’t thought of it in that way.’ I think there are a lot of teachers who’ve probably been in the profession for a long time who just see business managers as meddling people who won’t give them any money (laughing). That’s not what we’re here for. We’re actually here to make sure that the resources we have are spent adequately on the programmes and the strategic plan of the school to ensure our students have the best opportunities.

Lee, like her SBM colleagues in other countries who were interviewed was absolutely clear about the agenda that educators and business managers share, and about what they can achieve when they pool their expertise effectively: Making a difference to children’s lives is what we are all here for. We just need some people in our schools to understand that it needs everybody in the village

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working together to actually create the best opportunities for the students. The principal can set the tone but I think working together, goodness me, we can achieve a lot. If I leave this profession and I know that we have got something bedded down for SBM accreditation I will be a very happy person.

Mary Monaghan, New South Wales There are three distinct sectors within the Australian schools system, each with a substantial membership in every state: the government sector, the catholic sector and the independent sector. At the time of interview, Monaghan was business manager at Liverpool Boys, a government secondary school in the socially disadvantaged area of South West Sydney. The school was one of 47 that took part in a state-run trial of devolved funding ‘to see how more local decision making impacted on schools’. School business managers in New South Wales are a much more recent phenomenon than in Victoria state, where ‘years ago they devolved funding, really let go and scaled-down the Department’. To give all schools involved in the pilot the equivalent level of funding, the average cost of a teacher was calculated, and the schools that had below-average staffing costs received a top-up. Liverpool Boys received additional funding to bring it into line with schools that attract more experienced (expensive) teachers. The interview followed the federal Gonski review of school funding undertaken by the Labour government to tackle social disadvantage and to ensure a fairer and more transparent funding model nationwide (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations 2011). The current administration has agreed to honour the additional funding promised by the Labour Government until the end of 2015, but beyond that the situation is uncertain. The New South Wales Department of Education has not yet made a commitment to Business Managers. Under the industrial agreement with the union, business managers only exist in the context of National Partnerships funding and there is no guarantee that school principals will be allowed to continue to employ business managers once the funding finishes. Monaghan is aware that most public schools would not have the money to employ a business manager, but even those that could, are not permitted to do so. Because devolution of control to schools is still new in New South Wales, ‘some principles haven’t been involved in any of the new programmes. All secondary principals want business managers but a lot of them aren’t quite sure

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what you would do with one’. Another significant challenge is in countering the move by unions who ‘prefer all admin managers to be promoted a grade and called business managers’. Monaghan believes this is ill-conceived seeing the need for ‘an additional role in the school taking high level admin from principals and deputies. If the SAMs [school admin managers] get qualified and go for business management roles, I think it’s fantastic. It’s what I did. I really believe that we have to be looking at a higher level of qualification of some sort.’ A third priority is building awareness of this among school colleagues with financial responsibilities themselves: ‘there are SAMs currently studying but there are some SAMs out there that don’t necessarily think they need extra training. They see themselves as doing the role anyway, but the reality is it’s different to the SAMs role with a higher level of responsibility. It’s a sensitive issue here at the moment’. The hectic and interrupted nature of working life, and the job satisfactions identified by Monaghan were the same as SBMs the world over: I was walking behind a group of year 11 boys, and they didn’t know I was there, and then one of them said ‘Mrs Monaghan is doing a really good job looking after the school’. . . . Or when I see my principal or my deputy principals doing what they should be doing, I find that really satisfying. I have a deputy who has really put everything into this Focus on Reading programme and he’s so happy when he’s doing it. His interest is not in admin it’s in education, as it should be. I see him just running to a meeting and he’s so excited about it. I know I’m doing a good job when they’re free to do theirs.

Monaghan has recently started a local business managers’ network, which ‘got a really good response. People were so happy to hear from someone.’ She sees sharing information from conferences with her colleagues as an important part of her professional role. At state level there is the School Administrative and Support Staff Professional Association (SASSPA), which is linked to the Australian Association of Government School Administrators (AAGSA), so professional networks are becoming increasingly significant sources of information and support. Like leading SBMs interviewed in other parts of the world, she also sees promoting the profession as part of her remit: ‘I spread the word. I will talk to anyone that will listen. I love the school and I love the job and I really want to promote the business manager’s role, so more schools can work the way we do.’ Since our conversation, Monaghan has taken on a business manager job in a school within the Catholic system as it offers more secure employment. She is

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still in regular contact with colleagues in other states and looks forward to the day when there will be a National Association for business managers from all three school sectors.

Val Wenham, New Zealand Though the title of the role varies in New Zealand, as elsewhere, Val Wenham is known as Business Manager at Hillcrest High School in Hamilton, a school of around 1,650 students and 181 staff. Wenham is also Vice President of the School Executive Officers’ Association (SEOA), the national professional association for SEO’S, Regional Delegate for Waikato and Editor of the association’s Ex-Factor newsletter (http://seo.org.nz). After a career first in the corporate sector then as self employed, she joined education around a decade ago as she thought she could ‘make a difference . . . change the thinking . . . bring planning, organising and leadership management to the Education sector and, especially as it is taxpayers’ money, try to achieve the best we can from the funds that are allocated, make it go further and achieve more to make a better environment for teaching and learning.’ The SEOA has around 350 to 400 members and works closely with the national principles’ and the teachers’ associations, as well as the AAGSA. Wenham sees this kind of close inter-professional collaboration among education and business colleagues as vitally important for progress in the school sector: ‘we like to talk to all the other education associations out there and say “ This is what we are trying to achieve. We need to achieve this as a group”’. She notes a shift in attitude over the last 10 years among the education community, with growing acceptance of the importance of the business side of schooling. Wenham also takes every opportunity to promote the profession in policy circles. At present there are very significant gaps between what Executive Officers and Business Managers earn in different schools and she feels strongly that unless the role is valued and appropriately remunerated, the sector will struggle to attract suitable candidates into the profession in the future: Until it is out there in the workplace that the Ministry do value the business manager as much as they value the school principal, then you won’t get many people looking to go into the education sector. In my younger years, I went

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into corporate because I knew there was somewhere to move to. If you come into a school, where is there for you to go? I was earning more 15 years ago that I’m earning today. So currently if you want to get monetary returns, it’s not a profession at the moment that you would be looking to go into. I’ve spoken to the Minister of Education and with the Secretary for Education and they’re contributing with regular articles into our Ex Factor magazine, so we are communicating better and a number of people are realizing what we do and can do within the Education Sector for the smooth running of the business side of Education, so things are definitely on the up. I’m trying to do my bit to make sure that in the future we do have business managers in schools. The new Secretary for Education Minister came to our conference to tell us how important we are to schools, which is great, but it all depends on who you’ve got sitting in those ministry seats. If you have a change of government, things could change.

The central role of building and maintaining influence at senior level within the professional project seems to be clearly understood by Wenham, who is ‘very keen on getting us out there one way or another’ and is regularly chosen to work with the Ministry of Education especially in the property and salary areas: ‘I am very vocal, and I think that helps both parties’. Overall, Wenham seems optimistic that these influence strategies are paying off, stating that ‘New Zealand’s SBMs are moving forward but we have to be heard, and we have to back up what we say with actions if we want to prove our worth. We are contributing to the outcomes to teaching and learning by helping to make a more efficient, environmentally friendly venue for teaching and learning’. She does, however, regret the fact that New Zealand is in such a geographically isolated situation: ‘we don’t know what is happening in England, and they don’t know what’s happening here.’ She was delighted to have the chance to be interviewed, to ‘let people know there is life this side of the world’.

David Ginsberg, South Africa In 2004, Director of Finance and Administration of Herzlia Schools in Western Cape Province, and former Chair of the Southern African Bursars of Independent Schools Association (SABISA), David Ginsberg noted with concern that although there had been an 80 per cent growth in black-independent schools in the previous 10 years since the ‘New South Africa’, the participants at annual conferences were still predominantly white. There was no structure for training new career

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bursars. Most bursars were second career middle-aged senior administrators or businessmen, or bookkeepers with additional roles added to their financial responsibilities. His mission and strategic focus for SABISA was to identify training for bursars in South Africa. Ginsberg was also keen to broaden the scope of the role beyond finance, and to develop ‘career laddering opportunities’ for a younger and more racially diverse set of entrants to the profession. A second element of his mission was to help establish a genuinely international and research-led SBM profession. Through international conferences and workshops, Ginsberg developed ties with Dr Ron Everett in the United States, ‘the father of school business management’, in 2002 and subsequently with key actors involved in developing the CSBM at the National College (Trevor Summerson, Ray Moorcroft, the materials development team at Lincoln University). He came to the United Kingdom in 2004 and immediately saw the potential of the CSBM for the South African context. In September 2005 his British partners facilitated UK tutors to deliver a two-day workshop for around 200 independent and state sector bursars and future bursar trainers in Western Cape. Ginsberg’s plan was that the programme would pass from the independent school sector to the state system. The Minister of Education for Western Cape, Cameron Dugmore, ‘was blown away’ by the event and ‘two months later was already visiting the National College’. Working in partnership with the National College, the Institute of Administrative Management (IAM), Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), the University of the Western Cape (UWC) as well as the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), a memorandum of understanding was agreed committing to the development of the profession in the Western Cape in South Africa. Work was done with the Further Education and Training (FET) colleges to re-contextualize the CSBM materials for school business managers in South African state and independent schools. The course was designated CSBA, certificate in School Business Administration, and is delivered through the FET colleges in the Western Cape. The few hundred graduates of the course are now able to add value to their schools and play a role in improving education in the Western Cape. Since that time for Ginsberg progress has been frustratingly slow in the national state sector: We have made representation to the SETA [the body formed to address skills shortages in the country] that capacity building in schools was a national priority. That’s been successful and they have made certain funding available for candidates, albeit on a more limited basis than we would have liked. But at

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least it’s a start. It hasn’t necessarily got the energy and exponential growth that I would have hoped for but I think it’s a step in the right direction. I think when a national association in the state sector in South Africa really gets some traction it will make a huge difference. But the genie is out of the bottle and you can’t put it back.

When asked for his analysis of the relationship between the principal and SBM based on his knowledge of the profession in South Africa, he characterized it as follows: There is a dynamic tension between the head, the governors and the school business manager and in a school with good energy and that’s healthy. But there can be a master/servant relationship which suppresses good governance. You can find people who, by virtue of their positional authority, feel that they are the authority on a subject, though they have no competence in that area. But in truth I think a lot of tensions between the roles are personality related or caused by a poor understanding of the roles. Some tension can be related to the reporting lines. The SBM reporting directly to the Board of Governors is fairly common, but probably more prevalent is the bursar (SBM) reporting to the principal, and that relationship can have the effect of limiting the bursars input, vision, and excluding development. So the key change has been the involvement of the role of the bursar in the senior leadership team and the growing understanding that the school business manager can impact tremendously on the vision of the school.

The relationship between Ginsberg’s role and that of the lead educator in his organization is a noteworthy one, somewhat reflective of the CEO–COO interrelationship discussed in Chapter 8. Ginsberg is joint CEO with Geoff Cohen, who acts as director of education in ten schools in Cape Town: Geoff ’s role is in leading teaching and learning. My role is supporting teaching and learning. So the principals report through to Geoff and all of the support staff, whether it’s HR, finance, IT, you name it, report through to me and I have managers in each of those sections. To give you an idea, when I introduced the CSBM into South Africa, Geoff and I were both trained as trainers on the CSBM and accredited. We did it together so that he could learn more about my role. And a bit later on we both took NPQH, which we did through the UK, so I could understand more about his role. It’s unusual but it’s working for us. Sometimes I’m a little bit of an educator, sometimes Geoff is a little bit of a financier and we allow for crossing of roles.

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Though the interviewees cited in this chapter have played different parts in the SBM professional project and work in geographically distant locations, many of the points made resonate with those in the excerpts from the accounts of SBMs in England presented in previous chapters. The frenetic pace and variety of the work, and its joys and challenges were often markedly similar. Lack of understanding of the role outside the profession; questions about how to distinguish levels of responsibility and reward SBM work in an equable manner; and the importance of familiarity with the expertise of co-professionals for the successful negotiation of jurisdiction are all examples of these universal aspects of the SBM professional experience. Further, what all the interviewees clearly share is an unshakable conviction that their expertise, effectively deployed, has the power to impact fundamentally on educational outcomes. Personal experience has shown them that professionals with educational and business expertise working in partnership can achieve great things. Building understanding and appreciation of the value of their expertise is evidently something they view as worth fighting for and each has invested energy and commitment in influencing the course of the SBM professional project in significant ways.

11

Professionalism as Political Project

This chapter has two purposes. First, it aims to illustrate how politics at the institutional level has played a part in the progress of the English SBM professional project, with particular reference to the National College as the entity charged with coordinating activity in this area since it became a political priority. In outlining how national education policies, such as the SBM professionalization programme, come to fruition, Trowler (2003) draws on Rein (1983) in identifying three steps in the process: problem setting, mobilizing government action and reaching settlements in the face of dilemmas and trade-offs. Data relating to the perceived systemic problems that the project sought to address, and the kind of dilemmas and trade-offs it has raised in practice settings, have been presented in previous chapters. The focus of the first part of this chapter is on political activity centrally. It presents evidence illustrating the role of politics in putting government professionalization policy into action, and how influence is wielded to mitigate the impact of priorities or viewpoints that might be in conflict with it. The second aim of the chapter is to propose future priorities for the SBM profession as derived from interviews with people who have been politically active in its project. The chapter begins with data in relation to the political priorities and ethos at the National College at the start of the project, and to the institutions it has worked with and consulted in advancing the SBM project nationally and internationally. Next it illustrates the types of influence strategies used by describing two specific examples: the use of evidence to maintain the support of the Department and the creation of a pool of SBM Advocates to promote the SBM role and to act as a bridge between schools and policymakers. The third section of the chapter offers illustrative evidence of the way that, as with all professions, the status of SBMs as an occupational grouping is determined by political priorities and support, and is thus apt to wax and wane over time. These first three sections of the chapter draw substantially on a series of interviews with Trevor Summerson, who directed the SBM programme at the College and who was cited extensively

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in the previous chapter. The final section suggests priorities for the professional project derived principally from the testimony of politically active members in England and the United States.

The project begins This section first provides something of the flavour of the political ethos and priorities that formed the backdrop to the professionalization project and shaped thinking at the National College when the project began, before detailing how influential groups were brought into the policy implementation process. Though many authors prefer to talk of ‘enacting’ policy, the term ‘implementation’ is used advisedly here to denote its top-down nature (Ball et al. 2012). Prior to the government’s public commitment to the SBM project, it seems likely that other groups, such as think tanks, will have been influential in the political process. Authors acknowledge the important role of a variety of policy actors in shaping political decision-making and characterize this world as highly masculine, proinnovation and action-oriented (Millar 2013; Pollit 2007). Though this hothouse atmosphere can be glimpsed in the testimony that follows, the role of these policy actors is not the focus here. Instead, the story is picked after the government’s commitment to the professional project had been made. The motivations and vision for the SBM professionalization process from the government perspective were expressed in the previous chapter in the words of Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment who announced its launch in June 2001. The initial commitment to train 1,000 bursars was part of a series of wider reforms of the school workforce. The separate government departments responsible for education and for employment had been merged under the Conservatives to form the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) in 1995. Trevor Summerson had been a civil servant within the Department for Employment prior to the merger and was keen to take advantage of opportunities to learn about education through activities such as taking on the role of school governor and cross-departmental secondments. Following the Secretary of State’s announcement a manager was sought for what was at the time viewed as a finite project to train a thousand bursars. A few months later Summerson was appointed via a competitive process to coordinate SBM activity within the National College. The bursar project team at the National College was initially very small, just four or five individuals. They enjoyed considerable latitude in determining

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how the project would develop but were working under pressure of time and policy expectation. Summerson saw similarities between the management structure and the way of working within the National College and the Manpower Service Commission, the quasi-governmental organization within the Department for Employment where he had previously been working. Used to the professional culture of an economically driven department, civil servants from the Department for Employment had experienced some frustration post merger when ‘confronted with taking a long time to bring an idea to fruition, or in developing policy and securing an agreement’ within education, which was perceived to adopt a more ‘ponderous’ approach. In contrast, the National College ‘were all about getting things done in the area of school leadership, school business management training. It was a return to that sort of culture and ethos.’ In this sense the culture of the College shared something of the highly masculine, pro-action orientation of its political masters. Summerson’s testimony gives insights into government thinking at the time, in a political context that was at worst a politically benign one for the SBM professional project. Factors facilitating the process include the fact that the Blair government had made clear that education was their number one priority and therefore ‘if you could link what you were doing to help improve standards, outcomes etc., then you were basically kicking against an open door’. A second aspect of the political climate was that the significant increase in investment and resources in schools without a significant improvement in outcomes caused ministers and officials to question the return on investment. This concern pushed the question of effective resource management further up the political agenda. The third factor stems from the drive towards school autonomy that has since intensified under the current administration. Increased responsibility in managing resources was causing political anxieties around whether schools had the necessary professional competence. A fourth concern was teaching leadership succession planning as predictions surfaced about future shortages of appropriate applicants. These predictions were based on factors such as an increase in early retirements for experienced educators, fewer teachers joining the profession and increased financial and administrative duties for teachers and head teachers, making the leadership role less appealing. Government-sponsored research had identified the recruitment of a bursar as a means of enabling head teachers to refocus their attention on their professional concerns, making the role more attractive (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001).

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The bursar team at the National College worked in consultation with the DfEE during the initial project to train 1,000 bursars and the ongoing professionalization programme. Various other stakeholders were consulted formally and informally in what Summerson described as ‘an early forerunner of what the College now calls the co-construction model’. During the pilot phase of the CSBM training programme, materials were being developed and refined in response to candidate feedback and also ‘in response to what head teachers and others were saying about the content’ – a strategy that ‘helped immeasurably in getting the design and the content absolutely right’, though given the pace of change in the school sector, ‘the CSBM that runs now bears no relationship to the CSBM that ran in 2002’. Time for lengthy consultation was restricted by project timelines at the National College, described by Summerson as ‘really, really aggressive’, though head teacher professional associations (the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders) were involved on a ‘courtesy and information basis’. Given the intended role SBMs were to play as a direct support to the head teacher, for the success of the professionalization process, educational leaders were clearly a vital constituency from whom to obtain support. However, despite the Government’s espoused aim of improving the working lives of head teachers, the SBM professional project was not met with universal and unconditional enthusiasm by the community of educational leaders and researchers. The question of mixed reactions to SBM professionalization among education professionals and academics has been a recurring theme in data presented in previous chapters and will resurface in Chapter 12. However, it is important to note that evidence points to a significant thawing of attitude towards the professional advancement of SBMs among senior education colleagues since the early days of the project. As an indicator of the contemporary stance of the head teacher professional associations towards school business managers and school business management, it is perhaps worth noting that both the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders now count SBMs among their members. This in turn provides an additional forum for exerting influence on educational thinking. As Summerson puts it ‘I think it’s inevitable that SBM issues and thinking will filter into head teachers’ ways of thinking’ through their membership of such organizations. The National Bursar Association (NBA, now NASBM) was also involved from the outset in the National College’s SBM development work on a ‘consultative

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basis’, the extent of their involvement varying over with time and changes of leadership. Development of the SBM competency framework analysed in Chapter 5 was produced during a period of close collaboration between the NBA and the National College. The NBA was involved in making an application to government for SBM charter status, which involved consulting their stakeholders, including the National College. This was not an element of the College’s SBM strategy, but was one they believed at the time they should support, given ‘the general direction of travel’ of their SBM policy. The notion of a chartered profession is consistent with ideal-typical conceptions of professionalism with institutional control of labour. The College’s support for chartering stemmed from the idea that the process would provide career progression for those wanting ‘to become professionals, who feel that their professional development never ends, who are continually refining and adjusting their learning’. Another institution approached by the College was the Institute of Administrative Management (IAM), which accredited the National College’s SBM programmes. These were, as a result, internationally recognized via the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF). At home accreditation was perceived to be a valuable source of influence among stakeholders in giving academic credibility to SBM professional expertise. Accreditation by an international body was also significant in terms of the trans-national reach of College’s SBM professionalization work, with their programmes being influential in stimulating professional development activity following a similar model in South Africa, and other SBM developments in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. Though IAM went into liquidation in November 2013, at the time of writing it was expected that their qualifications would be offered by another awarding body in future. Though not initially part of the College’s thinking, the international dimension of their SBM work soon became embedded in strategy. As Summerson described: As part of finding out what was out there, what we could build on and we could use, we did an international sweep. ASBO had developed a professional standards framework for American school business officials which we looked at. Not all of it was relevant, for instance transportation in American schools is tackled very differently to the UK. But those standards helped us develop some of the content of our programmes. We started going out to ASBO International [Conference of the Association of School Business Officials International] around 2006, and interestingly they started coming to our Seizing Success Conferences around that date, so I firmly believe that both organizations benefited equally.

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The international networking between lead professionals in evidence in the previous chapter is an indicator of the level of mutual influence at play in the SBM project.

Influence strategies Chapter 4 provided a flavour of the many and varied activities employed by the National College in promoting the profession as part of its SBM project. This section presents data in connection with two specific examples of strategies adopted in order to influence perceptions of the SBM role: the use of data to persuade the Department of the benefits of SBM professionalization, and the creation of the role of the SBM Advocate. The activities of those closely involved with the SBM professionalization project illustrate their pro-activity in developing and maintaining influence among decision-makers within the Department. New Labour had expressed a strong commitment to developing policy that was based on evidence, and providing data to demonstrate what the SBM team were accomplishing was a strong feature of the programme. Summerson attributes the attention given to producing regular reports with evidence of impact and achievements within the SBM project as perhaps arising from his background in employment: I felt that this was a finite project. It was a project which had very, very clear boundaries. It could be evaluated and could have something broadly comparable to an annual report that a company issues every year: the amount of money we spent, the activities we’ve undertaken, something about the volumes, case studies about the impact it has had on individuals. We ran those reports for four or five years. I think that gave the Department a lot of reassurance about investing in further years and actually led to a large extent for the programme moving from one that was finite to one that was more of a permanent feature on the educational landscape.

In addition to specially commissioned evaluation work, other governmentfunded research was undertaken that lent support for the SBM programme. An unpublished study by McKinsey suggested that the pattern whereby senior teachers or heads of department in schools 20 or 30 years ago would naturally be looking towards headship had changed (Southworth 2010). Their study pointed to teachers and middle leaders becoming more reluctant to take on the

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responsibilities of headship, seeing at close quarters the increased workload and stress levels experienced by head teachers: Headteacher workloads had more to do with the extra responsibilities that were being loaded onto them, rather than the role the government really wanted them to do, which was to focus on learning and determining the general teaching direction of the school. McKinsey undertook a significant piece of research which helped to identify just how much of a benefit school business managers could make. That was very persuasive when it came to departmental thinking. It was full-square in line with what the Department were trying to achieve.

By obtaining the ear of ministers through the provision of supportive evidence, the SBM team was successful in influencing decision-making in significant ways. One example of this was a change to existing legislation: the removal of the requirement for academies to employ a qualified accountant, some of the implications of which for SBM practice were illustrated in Chapter 9. Summerson recounts how it had become apparent that the growth in the number of academies would impact on SBM employability and increase significantly the cost of school financial management nationally: On the accountancy side, the College played an important role in getting the academy requirements, for want of better phrase, ‘watered down’. We were getting lots of complaints from SBMs saying ‘I was able to do this job and I was senior bursar and then, suddenly, we academized and a financial accountant had to be brought in’. You could see that if every school became an academy there would be a demand for something like 12-15,000 accountants in schools, which had the potential to drive up the bill to such an extent that it just wouldn’t be sustainable.

Through this intervention, the SBM team were able to influence the availability of suitable employment for their graduates and to help keep the cost of financial management within more affordable levels in a system where schools were increasingly expected to function autonomously. Setting aside important ideological arguments about the rights and wrongs of academization, this stands as an illuminating example of the messiness of large-scale reform, with the pace of policy implementation giving rise to unexpected and unwanted side effects that have to be managed ‘on the hoof ’, often with significant implications for professional practice.

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In addition to furnishing evidence for ministers, a second strategy employed by the College’s SBM team was the creation of SBM Advocates. Funding of these advocate roles was withdrawn in 2014 but for several years this group were important agents of influence for SBMs both within schools and in policy circles. This group provided one of the forms of business management support for schools offered by the National College, and operated within the nine government regions. According to the College’s website, their remit was ‘to raise awareness of the SBM profession, promote avenues for career progression and demonstrate how the role can improve school effectiveness’, acting ‘as a voice of practice on behalf of the College.’ Consultancy was made available at a fixed daily rate from the advocates, each of whom received a grant from the College so that schools were not charged for their advice. Advocates interviewed in 2013 made reference to various activities they were involved in as part of their consultancy work, such as working with head teachers and governors, giving advice on recruiting and deploying new business managers in single schools and across partnerships: We still have a lot of people saying, ‘I’ve got a business manager, what do I ask them to do now?’. So we talk about how you can effectively deploy your business manager, helping those that have business managers but are just not sure they’re getting the best out of them, not because the business managers aren’t willing or capable, but because sometimes their role hasn’t been clarified in a way that it needs to be clarified. We’ve worked a lot with groups that have had primary partnership grants. So that’s a group of schools looking at appointing a business manager across cluster.

The reduction in the number of funded initial teacher training places within universities in favour of close-to-practice provision through teaching schools was flagged in Chapter 5 as a contentious new reform in England. Teaching school alliances are also responsible for the continuing professional development of both teaching and support staff and teaching schools were described as ‘a big thing’ by one SBM advocate interviewed in 2013. Advocates had been busy conducting workshops to raise awareness of the business side of making schools into sustainable and self-improving systems. Assisting with academy conversions was another major area of demand for advice. This needed sensitive handling in that giving free consultancy for schools wishing to academize was not part of the advocates’ remit, but in the spirit of collaboration and support that was part of their role, they found themselves responding to regular calls and emails on the matter.

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By way of an example of their work with policymakers, advocates were involved in the Bureaucracy Reduction Group (BRG), which met at the Department every half term. As one advocate explained: We are in a fortunate position that we do get to see some of the policy that is coming out within the Department. Occasionally we have ministers come to see us as well. Our focus is in reducing bureaucracy for schools predominantly and we work quite hard at this. The missing facts documents, they are updated now fairly regularly, are great resource documents on the Department’s website for new heads or for people thinking ‘I’m never going to get through all this’ and ‘Should I really be doing this?’. Now you have it in black and white from the Department. Actually, no you shouldn’t. So we’ve reduced a lot of bureaucracy through that missing facts document but we do all sorts of things. A lot of the success of the BRG isn’t noticed outside because if we’ve done our job properly, we’ve reduced the bureaucracy of policy implementation before it’s come out and hit our colleagues. So we do a lot of work behind the scenes.

Particularly for those relatively new to headship, previous research has illustrated how trying to understand which administrative requirements are essential and which can safely be ignored or given low priority, can be extremely difficult, wasting significant amounts of time and sapping energy (Woods et al. 2012). This advocate work with the BRG is an example of one way in which SBMs use their knowledge and influence with political actors for the benefit of education colleagues nationally. Though, as is the case with many SBM activities at school level, this SBM work at systemic level remains largely invisible.

Shifting political priorities Notwithstanding the proactive stance taken by the SBM team at the National College in creating a favourable climate for advancing their professional project, informant testimony illustrated the acknowledged fact that, in the teeth of political indifference or opposition, a profession will find it difficult to exert influence. Interviewees were clear that the importance given to school business management in political circles at any given time was a key determinant in the progress of the SBM professionalization project. Commentators remarked on the change of fortunes of the SBM project in England with the change from the previous to the current administration, such as this member of the College’s SBM team:

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You’ve got to remember at worst during the period of development and the early years of the SBM programmes, the environmental backdrop was pretty benign, in fact it was very supportive, but now it’s pretty difficult. With lack of money, a change in ministerial priorities, all of those sorts of things, it’s a more difficult environmental backdrop than – precisely at the time when basically the centre needs school business managers more than ever because more and more schools are becoming quasi-independent.

The White Paper announcing the Coalition’s vision for the school system on taking power made clear their narrower focus on the quality of teaching and educational leadership in raising standards compared to the previous administration (Department for Education 2010). Evident in interviews was the perception of a reduced emphasis on the role of support staff, including SBMs, and of collaboration with other public services in raising standards, with one SBM advocate predicting the demise of their group in 2013: I think there has been a very public move towards focussing on the quality of teaching and that’s borne out by the White Paper. Sadly for our profession, we’ve almost been overlooked. I don’t know that that was done intentionally. The Coalition’s priority has been on improving the quality of teaching and I think we business managers get one mention. I’m concerned that that something won’t be available for the Advocates in future. I’m not convinced that the government, at this current time thinks they’re a priority. We are in times of austerity, so looking at making cuts and it wouldn’t surprise me if they felt that this was one of things that they would cut. I think that will be such a shame but I think the writing is on the wall.

From conversations with those close to the SBM project, there was a palpable sense of disappointment having, as one SBM put it, ‘come such a long way’, to be ‘suddenly cast out into the wilderness again’. These feelings make plain the rather brutal nature of the political process, with potentially significant personal costs in the face of shifts in policy directions for those who have invested themselves heavily in implementation. Summerson outlined a significant difference in emphasis between the two governments in terms of resource management, in his view being accorded a lower priority under the current than the previous administration: I think this might surprise you, but from their statements etc they [the Coaltion] don’t appear as concerned about resource management as the last administration was. You can’t get really a cigarette paper between them regarding the two central features of the effective education system: they are leadership and the quality of

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teaching. The essential difference for me is that the current administration doesn’t seem to be overly concerned about how schools manage their resources. I mean if I was a headteacher who’d been listening to the ministerial team over a period of about a year, I would take from them that I’ve got to look at strategies that will improve my outcomes, that the government are saying that teaching quality is critical and leadership is absolutely important, so that’s where my focus is going to be. I haven’t heard a speech from any of the ministers about how important the effective management of resources is, or even a reference to it.

Summerson explained his interpretation of what lay behind this shift in attention away from resource management as follows: I’ve got a particular view about why that is the case: as soon as resource management and resources are mentioned, schools believe that cuts are coming down the line, given the current economic backdrop, and they [the Government] don’t want to open that Pandora’s box. But that’s got the unfortunate knock-on effect that headteachers think that school business management is now a waning star, that the day of the SBM and their importance is over, that teaching is where our focus has got to be and there is evidence that some schools are cutting back on SBM activity as a result.

Having worked hard at building support for the SBM role among those working within the school system, there was evident concern among the College’s SBM team about how the new government’s stance was impacting on the perceptions and priorities of stakeholder groups, such as teachers, school governors and local authorities. As one explained: They are starting to ask the question: ‘Is there another way that we can do this?’ in much the same way as they might ask, ‘Is it right that we should have a full time French teacher, or should we share a teacher with another school in the town?’. It’s right that they should reflect and review if there are better ways of doing things. I just think that where you have got decreasing budgets, it leads teaching leaders to think ‘Well the only place that we can cut is the back office, because we can’t cut the teaching areas, because they’re the government’s priorities, and we can’t cut back on educational leadership.’ I’ve put that very simplistically but I’m not surprised that that’s happening in schools.

In summarizing the current government’s stance, Summerson acknowledged that the SBM professional project no longer enjoyed such a high profile in ministerial thinking. Nonetheless, the cyclical nature of the policy process means that, in his view, there are reasons for SBM optimism:

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I think within the Department it would be fair to say that the school business management star has declined a little. Having said that, I can see within the next two or three years Treasury and others asking questions. If I was in Treasury now, I would be saying, ‘Hang on a minute, how much do we spend on education? And we are 22nd out of 24 countries in literacy and numeracy? Where is this money going to? We’re in the top quartile in terms of per capita investment in the OECD. How does it marry up? What’s going on?’. I don’t think it’s going to be long before Treasury starts saying, ‘Well, you know, how efficient are our schools? Are they wasting money?’, and then the school business management star will start to rise again. But at the moment I think it’s certainly not as high as it was in the years 2007–10.

Writing this on the day that the latest PISA results were announced, one cannot but wonder whether that day may come sooner rather than later.

Future priorities for the SBM professional project The book has provided evidence that indicates that the SBM professional project has come a long way in a little over a decade. The final section of this chapter draws together and illustrates a number of priorities for the future progress of the SBM profession as derived from the testimony of individuals who are politically active in its project internationally. Quotations from School Business Officials in the United States are strongly in evidence for the first time in the book. The SBMs whose viewpoints were presented in Chapter 10 operate in countries where the drive for systematic professionalization was given impetus largely through contact with the SBM activities of the National College that form the focus of the book. In contrast, the profession in the United States has a much longer history, with a national association (Association of School Business Officials) dating back to 1910. However, there are clear parallels between the challenges facing educational resource management in England and the United States. The views expressed by SBOs often resonate strongly with those of their counterparts in England, and their perspectives are therefore included by way of illustration. First, and specifically in relation to SBMs in England, the first priority would seem to be for its membership to assume control of the progress of the project. As indicated earlier in this chapter, SBMs close to politics through their work with the National College were aware that their role enjoys less prominence in

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current policy thinking than it once did. They were also aware of the implications of this for their professional project. As one stated: We need to move now and to move quickly and, actually, to say, ‘Hang on a minute. Are we going to stand up and be counted here? Let’s look at how in the future we’re going to work as a profession to continue to impact positively on the outcomes of our children.’

According to Summerson, the current ‘mood music of policy development’ means that ‘it’s not going to be the centre that is going to direct what is happening in schools, but the schools themselves’. Under the circumstances, it will be up to the profession to ‘drive standards forward and get them embedded’, rather than the Department or the National College. One element of this process will involve lead SBMs persuading their own constituency to see themselves as professionals. As one SBM put it: There are a lot of school business managers around now who have taken the certificate and they’ve taken the view that that’s it. Personally I don’t think that’s sufficient.

Ultimately, this implies the profession developing a system of chartering or registration to distinguish between those who ‘are operating in the SBM area and want to call themselves SBMs, but really are not’, from those whose responsibilities require them to use their discretionary judgement, who see themselves as professionals and who are willing to work at keeping their knowledge up to date. The second priority is one that appears to be relevant to the SBM community internationally: the ongoing task of improving understanding of their role among various interest groups, including educators, academics, political decision-makers and members of the general public. To encourage people into the profession, this will involve countering perceptions that SBM work is tedious, or ‘not a real job’. More generally, the task of influencing opinion will also require vigorously tackling perceptions that the role is either irrelevant to educational outcomes or that it merely serves to support the policy drive towards privatization. Evidently individual motivations and professional orientations will vary as with any occupational grouping. Nonetheless, among those interviewed, there was no evidence that what drove SBMs in their work was in essence any different from what motivated teachers, namely the desire to contribute to giving children a good education. In the autonomous school, resource management is no less a part of this endeavour than teaching activity.

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Though the contribution of the SBM to educational outcomes is less tangible, as one interviewee expressed it, ‘if the resources aren’t there, the lesson just doesn’t happen.’ An SBO based in the United States explained how an appreciation of how the two sides of education were inseparable had grown among SBOs and educational leaders in recent decades: Years ago when I first started, my area was the concern of bean counters and no connection with outcomes was ever made. My superintendent and I always laugh because I say, ‘At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what discussion you are having with any one of your educators, nine times out of ten everything you are talking about comes down to money’. There is always that connect somehow.

Over time, and through very close cooperation with educational leaders, the work of this SBO had evolved to become much more intimately connected with educational thinking. However, the closeness of this connection continues to be poorly understood in the wider community. Some interviewees attributed this poor understanding of the contribution of the SBM role to education to outdated perceptions among members of the public about how schools today operate. An SBO spoke of how ‘community members saw schools as the kind of places they went to, not as multi-million dollar enterprises’. They saw part of their role as getting the message across that: ‘you wouldn’t run a $60 million company without a financial manager, so why would you do that with public money?’ Interviewees regularly made the point that even if, unlike businesses, their aim is not to make a profit, schools still cannot afford to waste time, money or effort. Given the large sums of public money involved, how a school’s finances are managed is an important area of responsibility and one that has potential to be highly significant in terms of educational outcomes. Regardless of the national context, SBMs emphasized the need to improve awareness of this fact. The challenge in promoting SBM expertise identified by respondents was the often rather self-effacing nature of members. An SBO talked about their role in preparing press releases, web content and so forth at the state level ‘to promote our members because our members will never promote themselves’. This promotional task was something that they discussed regularly at the state and national levels to try to identify ways of increasing understanding of the role among the community. Building understanding of the SBM role will be facilitated by a third area of activity that emerged as a priority for the SBM professional project: strengthening

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networks within the profession and between SBMs and allied professions, at local, regional, national and international levels. Chapter 7 illustrated how significant strides have been made in the area of local and regional SBM networks in England, but interviewees internationally recognized the importance of contact with colleagues both in terms of sharing knowledge and for professional support in what can be a rather isolated occupation. As one SBO put it: When I started in the field I was asked ‘Are you sure you want to do this? It’s a lonely job because you are sometimes the only one who is not an educator in the room and you’re trying to tell them why they can’t just have more. You have to say “no” and you’re the one stressing about things that others are not’. But it’s much less lonely when you meet up with your colleagues and you’re all dealing with the same thing.

Evidence presented in Chapter 10 and in the first part of this chapter made reference to the benefits of networking with other SBMs internationally and of having close working relationships with the professional associations of educators. In some cases regional associations of SBMs and educational leaders worked in the same building, which was seen to be highly beneficial. A fourth important priority arising from the research is connected with the previous one. In terms of developing strong relationships, a primary target must be in building alliances with educators in facing the responsibilities for shaping the educational outcomes that they share. Data indicated the many benefits of such an alliance, some of which have been aired in previous chapters. Three examples include the following: combating policies that are perceived to be detrimental to a socially just education system through speaking as one voice; influencing positively potential opportunities presented by increased school autonomy; defending state schooling against reputational damage caused by misinformation. In terms of social justice, for example, like many educators, some SBMs interviewed on both sides of the Atlantic were critical of the academy/charter school movement. They understood that beyond the political rhetoric around providing choice for local communities, these strategies did not increase the options available for some children and could have the effect of diverting resources away from where they were most needed: The [US] President often talks about opportunities for students to choose the best school for them, and so we have charter schools promoted by legislators, governors and presidents. It’s definitely part of their political speak. I’m not sure they understand the ramifications for the other students who don’t get to choose because not all students really have a choice. Students who are in very poor

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districts are taking their dollars with them to these charter schools, if they can get in, leaving the other students behind with even less. It’s really not fixing the system. It’s very frustrating.

These SBMs saw that there was work to be done in terms of educating their local community about the difference between using business principles in running education to improve efficiency and running schools as businesses to make a profit. The features distinguishing public sector organizations from businesses had been drawn on by one SBO to explain to members of the local community how the increased freedoms granted to charter schools (as to academies) can give rise to systemic inequalities: There are a lot of people from our community that make that comment and say ‘Well, what’s wrong with running a school like a business?’ and we point out a number of reasons why that’s very hard to do. We are not here to make a profit. We don’t have the flexibility to adjust our fixed costs and things like that, especially when we have costs that are mandated. There is nothing you can do about those. We must serve every student that walks through our door in public schools. Now some of the charter schools are able to pick and choose. But regardless of ethnicity, demographic background, cognitive ability, we need to serve every student to their fullest potential, so when you do that, it’s not like running a business. I think you can use some business principals in your decision making, and I think that’s wise to do, but I don’t think you can just run it like a business.

While academies and charter schools clearly gave cause for concern, interview data also suggested a fourth area where the autonomies they offer might present opportunities to be grasped by a strong coalition of education and school business leaders. One English respondent saw the academy movement as an avenue that schools might pursue in trying to regain greater control over educational decision-making in ways that could ultimately prove challenging to central policy-making: With the academy and free school movement basically what the government is saying is that all these schools can have autonomy within reason, that they can develop their own policies as long as this and that happens. The challenge then is if they start developing as groups. You’ve got some academy chains that are almost as big as local authorities now, that could start to develop policies that challenge wider departmental and government policy. That’s when you will find out whether they are truly autonomous. Or is the government going to want to step in and say ‘Enough is enough’?

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The interviewee postulated a scenario whereby a community group went on a fact-finding tour to Finland to try to ascertain why the system of education there is seen as being so successful internationally, and as a result decided to abandon standardized testing in their group of schools. Such a move would be in conflict with government policy, thereby creating ‘tensions between schools and the Department and eventually with ministers.’ Especially in the case of very large academy chains, new regulations might be resisted and the interviewee saw grey areas emerging over where government ends and schools start, with the boundaries varying over time and place. Such ‘grey areas’ might present opportunities for a strategic alliance of education and business professionals to wield influence in determining the direction of policy in their schools. The third area where a strong alliance between educators and SBM colleagues could usefully operate is in countering a barrage of misinformation about the quality of state schooling. SBMs in England and in the United States identified a significant battle to be fought in this respect. They referred to the tendency among politicians, ably supported by some sections of the media, to convey the message that ‘state schools are doing a bad job, when actually they’re doing a pretty good job overall’ and to ‘put a bad light on public education, to try to siphon money into charter schools.’ By drawing on arguments from their respective areas of expertise, and using the different modes of expression typical of their professional cultures, educators and business managers collectively arguably stand a better chance of influencing a wider range of opinion, and to greater effect, than either could do alone. A fifth priority for the profession is in ensuring vibrancy through attracting and developing talented members. In England, evidence suggests that supply and demand is about right in the SBM labour market at present. In some parts of the United States, respondents reported significant problems recruiting people with sufficient background in education to be effective in the SBO role. Having an adequate pool of education specialists in business management would seem to be an important means of ensuring a happy marriage between education and business priorities within national education systems. In light of the prominence of collaboration between schools, development opportunities that prepare members for leading in complex organizations would seem highly appropriate. The data presented in Chapter 8 on the working relationship between the lead educator and their SBM, and the point about building strong relations with education professionals argued above, indicate that courses offering opportunities for inter-professional education might be particularly valuable.

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Study at the degree level would allow for the development of a strong ethical dimension within the profession. Respondents made reference to members undertaking study on masters and doctoral programmes as well as at the undergraduate level. Activities associated with postgraduate study, such as conducting research, writing and presenting at conferences, would seem to be valuable strategies for raising the status and profile of the profession. In the idealtypical model of professionalism presented in Chapter 3, higher learning was central because of its focus on critical, ethical thinking. Consistent with this, an Australian academic emphasized the advantage of obtaining a degree in education business management over government-led professional development: It’s very, very different because it comes from a totally different set of premises. That’s what’s important. Education is really political, so you have to have a position and maybe learn more about how to advocate for education through running a business.

Professional education at the degree level provides members with the credibility they need among the education community to be treated as equals and taken seriously, and enables them to develop their practice in ways that are ethical and socially just. A concrete example of this would be in their leadership in areas of finance within academy chains, where they might use their influence in shaping policies relating to terms and conditions of employment. In some academy chains, chief executives receive generous salaries. An SBM might work to ensure that this is not achieved at the expense of further weakening in the employment conditions of already poorly paid support service staff (McInerney 2014). In reinforcing this ethical dimension, and holding members to account, developing a code of ethics was highlighted as a priority by interviewees both in England and Australia, such as the one used by ASBO. To support members in applying this code, a need for stronger whistle-blower protection was also suggested. This chapter has sought to convey the idea of the SBM project as a political one, by giving examples of the ways by which influence has been brought to bear first in the establishment of the profession as a significant player within the education sector and then in highlighting future priorities in exerting influence. The empirical data employed in this book so far have presented a specific example of how a professional project might unfold over time. The final chapter presents a complex, holistic general conceptualization of a professional project, which attempts to impose order on the multi-dimensional picture that has emerged throughout the book.

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Professionalization Revisited

In Chapter 3 a visual representation was presented of important elements of the ideal-typical professional, broadly based on Freidson (2001). The first purpose of this chapter is to present a visual map of a professional project derived from the research presented in this book. Developed from data and discussion specific to the SBM case presented so far, this visual is intended to offer a means of conceptualizing the different elements that make up professional projects in general, young or established, within the public sector. While the ideas contained within it may not be startlingly new to those familiar with academic work on professionalism, it is distinctive in various respects. First, in being developed bottom-up from empirical data, it is a departure from a large proportion of work on professionalism that is theoretically grounded. Second, it deals with a little-researched and poorly understood occupational grouping, rather than on relatively established ones that are the focus of most scholarship. Third, unlike most sociological analyses, the conceptual framework presented gives due weight to the individual and the central part they play in the progress of professional projects. The framework aims to represent the elements that shape professional projects in the most complete and holistic way possible. It is followed by questions to illustrate how the model might act as a stimulus for thinking among researchers, policymakers and practitioners. The second purpose of the chapter is to present a series of concluding reflections on the SBM project, setting out what I currently see as some of the most significant lessons learnt. The chapter ends with points arising for the academic community that have emerged from the study.

Anatomy of a professional project Figure 12.1 attempts to capture the complexities of a professional project: to reprise the title of this book, its ‘anatomy’. It illustrates the many project

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Figure 12.1 Anatomy of a professional project.

elements, and their interconnectedness, as revealed through the research. Three assumptions are fundamental to a proper understanding of this visual representation. First, professional expertise lies at the heart of the professional project. It is this expertise which allows for the professional’s distinctive contribution to organizational mission in and a way that distinguishes it from that of other professional colleagues working towards the same goals. Second, but no less important, is the notion of public service that must underpin the application of this specialist knowledge, an ethos that sets the public sector professional apart as an individual guided by a transcendent value beyond the profit motive. Third, as participant testimony has illustrated very clearly in previous chapters, professional projects are permanent, complex and resourceheavy processes, rather than one-off, short-term initiatives. These three aspects

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are significant themes in the discussion in the second half of this chapter. They are not important foci with Figure 12.1 itself, however, but rather should be understood as forming a backdrop to it. What Figure 12.1 attempts to provide is an empirically derived framework for thinking about what professional projects involve. It will be of theoretical and practical relevance to those keen to advance the contribution and status of a little-known occupational grouping but its value is not confined to them. Instead it is intended to enable systematic thinking about research and practice in relation to any professional project, new or established. The concentric circles in the diagram represent the four interconnected spheres of thinking and activity revealed by the research to constitute the professional project: the individual, the inter-professional, the institutional and the international. Here, ‘inter-professional’ refers to working relationships within the organizational context rather than between professional bodies. ‘Institutional’ should be taken to refer both to the public service institutions where professionals work and to national institutions such as professional and state bodies. The four circles are sub-divided into three segments. These segments emphasize areas of activity in relation to specialist knowledge and skill that emerged as distinct in the data and that broadly map onto the three empirical sections (2–4) of the book: developing expertise, applying expertise and promoting expertise. It is important to emphasize that the lines that divide the spheres and segments in the figure are not intended to signify that they are entirely distinct areas of thinking and activity, and in practice there will be considerable overlap among them. Rather the framework serves as a tool to enable depth, breadth and clarity of thinking by making all the many project elements explicit and by drawing an analytic distinction between them. Keeping the notion of public service firmly in mind, systematically working round the framework enables a wide range of questions to come to light. For example, for a new professional project like the National College’s SBM activities, thinking might begin at the individual level within the developing expertise segment and involve establishing exactly what are the distinctive types of knowledge and skill possessed by the occupational grouping, and how, where and with the support of whom they might best be developed. For a more established profession, attention in this area might be desirable due to significant technological or policy change or in the face of threat (such as the transatlantic Medical Professional Project begun in 1999 in response to reputational damage (Thistlethwaite and Spencer 2008); or considering the potential ramifications for individual expertise of the move away from university and towards school-based

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initial teacher training in England). The following is intended as an illustrative rather than an exhaustive list of examples of the kind of questions that might arise in thinking through the framework:

Developing expertise Individual level: ●

● ●

●

●

What distinctive skills, knowledge and attributes would constitute professional expertise for individuals at different career stages? How might these best be developed, assessed and accredited? Who might contribute in developing individual expertise and in what contexts? How might higher learning feature in developing an individual’s critical, ethical orientation? How might the individual be encouraged to maintain the currency of their knowledge over time?

Inter-professional level: ●

●

●

●

With whom will the professional work mostly closely and what is the nature of their specialist expertise? How well do these distinctive areas of expertise complement one another and ensure coverage of the knowledge and skills required? How might these co-professionals contribute to the mutual development of appropriate expertise? Do opportunities for IPE exist?

Institutional level: ●

●

What contributions might the workplace make to the ongoing development of expertise? Which institutions will be involved in developing and embedding new professional knowledge in the system so that it remains relevant?

International level: ●

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In what ways is professional expertise universal and how does it differ in line with national priorities and legislative frameworks? Which bodies and individuals internationally might usefully be involved in knowledge development for the profession?

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Applying expertise Individual level: ●

●

What attitudes, habits of mind, personal qualities and commitments will best enable the individual to apply their knowledge effectively in serving the public? How might professional networks be developed to support the individual in making best use of their knowledge?

Inter-professional level: ●

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To what extent can mutual understanding and appreciation of the professional expertise among relevant occupational groupings be said to exist in the system? What are the implications of this for the use of discretion in applying expertise and for the effective negotiation of jurisdiction?

Institutional level: ●

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What implications do different institutional arrangements have for the nature of professional expertise required? How might planned or likely institutional restructuring impact on the expertise required, or how is it deployed?

International level: ●

What current practices, developments and concerns about the application of professional knowledge internationally might be learnt from?

Promoting expertise Individual level: ●

●

How might individual drive and commitment be harnessed in enhancing reputation and raising awareness of the contribution of professional knowledge? How might commitment to individual development be celebrated and rewarded in non-competitive, socially just ways that do not undermine social relations?

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Inter-professional level: ●

●

Which are the occupational groups whose working lives are most closely connected to the professional project? What activities and processes at the level of the workplace might enable mutual understanding and support for the role among co-professionals?

Institutional level: ●

How might productive working relationships be developed between the professional associations of allied occupational groupings?

International level: ●

●

What professional associations, researchers, developers of educational resources and other groups internationally could make effective partners in promoting the profession? What meetings and conferences might offer a useful platform for raising awareness and enhancing reputation internationally?

In considering the applicability of the conceptual framework presented in this chapter to other professions, it is interesting to compare the thinking behind a recent re-examination of teacher professionalism by a renowned scholar in the area. Hargreaves (2013) argues for the development of ‘professional capital’, defined as ‘the collective human, social, and decisional capital of the teaching profession’ (p. 291). Hargreaves juxtaposes professional capital against the idea of ‘business capital’, serving ‘a big new market for investment in technology, curriculum and testing materials, and in schools themselves as for-profit enterprises,’ estimated at $500 billion. Rather than investing in developing individual human capital, business logic organizes education to get quick returns on business investment favouring a young, flexible, temporary and inexpensive workforce. This business viewpoint is in contrast to the idea of teacher professionalism that sees good teaching as technically sophisticated and challenging; as requiring high levels of education and long periods of training; and involving wise judgement, collective accomplishment and a sense of responsibility. In Hargreaves’ analysis, professional capital in turn is made up of three other kinds of capital: human, social and decisional. ‘Human capital’ is about developing the requisite knowledge and skills, knowing your subject and how to teach it, and is about ‘individual talent, commitment and capability’

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(p. 295). He makes the case that it is the education systems in countries that consistently invest heavily in developing and rewarding the human capital of their teachers that perform well internationally. ‘Social capital’ refers to the ‘quantity and quality of interactions and social relationships among people’ in ways that affect ‘access to knowledge and information, the sense of expectation, obligation, and trust’; and how far professionals ‘are likely to adhere to the same norms or codes of behaviour’ (p. 300). Social capital is a notion that underlines that individual skill and commitment alone are insufficient for outstanding performance. Groups, teams and communities are far more powerful in this respect, highlighting the pernicious influence of systems that reward individual performance and thus undermine social cohesion. Finally, ‘decisional capital’ is the ability to make discretionary judgements, which can only be acquired through substantial professional training and experience and honed through reflection and interaction with colleagues. It is noteworthy that this version of professional capital for teachers shares much common ground with the conceptualization of professionalism proposed for SBMs in this book in emphasizing the importance of building and maintaining current, ethically oriented professional expertise; developing strong relationships with others within the same profession and with co-professionals; and in its focus on the centrality of discretionary judgement. The framework presented in this chapter, however, extends this perspective in providing a means of thinking through systematically and in detail what different elements might be involved in building and maintaining collective professional capital.

Professional projects revisited The second part of this final chapter sets out a series of reflections and implications that have arisen in undertaking this research. They are not intended as a summary of what has gone before but rather as some of the principal ideas and lessons in relation to the SBM project to emerge for me personally through undertaking this work.

Professionalization attempts are not for the faint-hearted First, as the evidence presented illustrates, the SBM professionalization process has required significant investment, both financially and in terms of collective and individual effort. The sheer number of activities set in train by the National

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College, and detailed principally in Chapter 4, gives an insight into the scale of the task of designing and implementing the explicit, formalized elements of the project, and of the likely costs involved. Second, at the heart of it all must lie cutting-edge professional development. When all said and done, any professional group worthy of the name must have specialist expertise that enables its unique contribution to fulfilling the institutional mission. Third, as it soon became apparent to the SBM team at the National College, provision will ultimately need to be provided at several levels to (i) enable participants to fulfil roles with differing levels of responsibility, and (ii) offer the opportunities for acquiring new knowledge and for career progression required and expected by any professional group. This implies the development of a clear framework of what these different levels of professional expertise might consist of. Fourth, if the inequities in pay and status in different contexts evidenced in the data are to be avoided, together with this mapping process a shared understanding is required of how post titles might correspond to these different levels of expertise and responsibilities, and how they might be remunerated. Yet alongside this formalized activity, what also emerges from the preceding chapters is the less obvious but nonetheless vital role played by politics in establishing the new profession. The testimony presented throughout the book, though especially in Part 4, makes abundantly clear the necessity to court groups whose support will be essential, such as the associations of established professional groupings, and to gain the ear of individual decision-makers with the power to influence progress. In this respect, identifying able champions at all levels, and providing them with opportunities to undertake this task of persuasion, will be essential strategies. For occupational groupings, like SBMs, who typically occupy quite an isolated role, enabling the development of professional networks will offer a vital source of support in this endeavour.

Professionalization is a long-term process, not a finite project Apart from the sheer scale and complexity of the project, a further emergent characteristic of professionalization is the degree of permanence the process must assume. As has long been recognized, policy initiatives have the habit of disappearing without trace unless they continue long enough to become embedded within professional thinking and practice. Further, because the

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value of professional expertise is not absolute, but fluctuates with shifting socioeconomic and technological circumstances and political priorities, so too is its stock apt to rise and fall. This brief history of the SBM project has made plain how it was born when economic, technological and political circumstances were particularly favourable. In a period of relative prosperity, SBMs offered a means of supporting education professionals grappling with the demands being placed on them by the technologies associated with audit and accountability and the political drive for increased autonomy and improved educational outcomes. At the time of writing, the political and economic climate is less benign, and the future of the SBM project rather less assured. It has long been understood that the fortunes of professional groups wax and wane over time. What this case underscores is the fact that the significant investment required at the outset is by no means the end of the story. Beyond efforts to build status and labour market position in the early stages, a proactive approach to maintaining support and shaping the future destiny of the profession will be required. Even in the case of policy-led professionalization projects, on current evidence, continued significant investment by national government should not be assumed and lead professionals need to prepare themselves for steering their membership towards self-determination, finding individuals to carry forward the work of early adopters and enthusiasts when they move on or retire. A major challenge facing any profession in contemporary life will be keeping its associated body of knowledge and skill current. The policies that guide schools and other public service institutions are constantly shifting. Meanwhile, new research is published at an ever-growing pace. Keeping abreast of developments is therefore not a straightforward undertaking but is essential for professional groupings seeking to make a valuable contribution to organizational functioning. The SBM team at the National College were in the fortunate position of being close to politicians, policymakers and elite practitioners and of managing a professional curriculum to be applied nationally. Yet even here, equipping SBMs with the skills needed for academization has been problematic. It is unclear whether and how the professional body of knowledge will evolve and be ‘managed’ in England with the SBM programme delivered under licence by teaching schools and other providers. However, mechanisms for developing and disseminating new knowledge, and knowledge with the critical and ethical orientation appropriate to a professional grouping, will be a necessary to maintain the relevance and vibrancy of the project.

Professionalization Revisited

205

Professionalization projects do not stand alone There are at least two reasons why any occupational grouping aspiring to professional status should resist a narrow focus on its own membership or within its own national borders. First, though initially conceived of as a national initiative, the strong partnerships developed with SBM associations internationally were in evidence in the findings presented, and especially in the voices recorded in Part 4. Just as the established professions benefit from international exchange for mutual learning, so too has this dimension of the SBM project resulted in the sharing of thinking, practices and models of professional development, and heightened professional status. Setting aside for a moment the important questions raised by policy researchers about the legitimacy of exporting national policies from one part of the world to another, this international dimension has implications for professionalization. First, this type of exchange does not come cheap. Without the support of government bodies like the National College, and even with modern means of communication, relatively small and invisible professional groups may need to work hard to gain the necessary financial resources to forge international links effectively. A second impediment to the free flow of ideas between countries is the diverse nature of the policy and regulatory frameworks within which professionals operate. The same applies to individual states within federal systems, as illustrated in the data from SBM colleagues overseas. This limits the transferability of professional development opportunities and materials. Nonetheless, certain core professional tasks will remain the same regardless of context, which raises a third implication. An academic working in the field of medical professionalism interviewed about the professionalization of support staff in health in England, speculated that, although the United Kingdom has historically been a net importer of skills and knowledge, shortages of support staff in health internationally might lead to a skills drain in the other direction over time. In light of concerns in the United States about lack of suitably knowledgeable and skilled business management colleagues in schools referred to in Chapter 11, it is perhaps not inconceivable that SBMs trained in England might also be tempted to take their expertise abroad in future. In the increasingly global labour market, thinking of professional groupings internationally may therefore be a wise option. Besides thinking beyond the national or state level, a second way in which the successful advancement of a professional project requires a consistently broad focus is in thinking through how the relevant expertise relates to that of

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close professional colleagues, and what the implications of this are for practice. The analysis of the SBM and head teacher competencies in Chapter 5 illustrated the potential overlap in responsibilities between the two roles. Interviewees underscored the importance for effective leadership of head teachers and their SBMs having a firm grasp of each other’s roles. In some instances this even involved taking formal qualifications in their co-professional’s areas of responsibilities to enable effective negotiation of jurisdiction. What emerged in Chapter 8 was the highly variable and difficult-to-define working relationship between the head teacher and SBM. Unlike other work, the SBM role is defined in relation to the particular abilities of the head teacher, with trust and what might be described as a kind of chemistry between them being essential ingredients for a successful partnership. As explained in Chapter 8, these findings have important implications for SBM and head teacher recruitment, role development and succession where such leadership arrangements pertain.

Professionalism is our best hope Chapter 3 explored competing notions of ‘professionalism’, and Freidson’s (2001) conceptualization was referred to as being particularly significant in developing the final phase of empirical research for this book. Freidson extends previous thinking in proposing professionalism as an alternative to the prevailing ideologies of consumerism and managerialism for understanding how work is organized. In this analysis, to be successful the ideas, claims and values of professionalism need to counter those of consumerism, following the ideology of market control, or the bureaucratic control of managerialism. As discussed in Chapter 3, in one sense Freidson’s might be considered a rather outdated view of what being a professional means, with authors arguing that the facts do not fit with the idea of the professional as selfless public servant, and proposing alternate empirically or rationally derived models of the construct. Talking to SBMs and head teachers and reflecting on the unassailable progress towards autonomy in public service institutions in carrying out this research, I would venture to differ. It is my conviction that an unwavering commitment to public service must not only remain but be reaffirmed as a defining quality of professional work. As schools function increasingly autonomously, a strong commitment to the public service ethos of the professional will be an important line of defence in stemming the tide of damaging impacts arising from the application of consumerist or managerialist

Professionalization Revisited

207

logics in organizing working life, such as inequities born of a dysfunctional quasi-market, the distortion of mission in the pursuit of institutional profit, or financial impropriety for personal gain. Alongside these risks, however, where coupled with a firm commitment to the values that define ‘publicness’, institutional autonomy also provides opportunities. In Chapter 11, the point was made that with the rise of alternatives to local government controlled groups of schools, such as academy chains, there is potential for resistance to centrally mandated policy. There is clear evidence in the words of the SBMs presented in this book of their strong commitment to educational outcomes. What drives those interviewed emerges as the selfsame deep and abiding desire to see children and young people achieve their full potential that drives their education colleagues. What distinguishes them is the type of expertise that they bring to bear in this endeavour. What the suitably qualified SBM has, that the education professional sometimes lacks, are both (i) a clear understanding of how resource management connects to educational outcomes and (ii) familiarity with the ways of thinking and communicating that the political establishment find persuasive. In this sense the specialist knowledge of the two types of professional is entirely complementary. Working together, both at the organizational and systemic level, they have potential to further one another’s professional development and status, support each other in their shared public service mission and influence education policy positively. The importance of this public service orientation and activist stance indicate that a focus on ethical orientation should be an essential element in professional curricula. Further, the benefits of maximizing synergies between the expertise of education and business professionals indicate the potential benefits of interprofessional learning opportunities and close connections between professional associations.

Lessons for the academic community Two broad and interconnected points emerge from the research, which, from my perspective, have particular relevance for the academic community. First, if the idea is accepted that, in order for professionalism to flourish, it must compete with the two opposing logics of managerialism and consumerism for organizing work, this has significant implications for education scholarship. It suggests that within scholarship the first of the three should be prioritized, or we risk contributing to the weakening of professionalism in the face of the other two logics. Academics

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have long argued forcefully and persuasively against the damaging impacts of bureaucracy and the market on public services. However, the reduction of the state has been a goal of Western-style democracies for many decades and is a trend that is unlikely to be reversed for the foreseeable future, regardless of the number of publications arguing against it. It could be argued that by focusing on the critique of consumerism or focusing on what is required for effective leadership, management and administration in the current climate, the tendency to think in terms of these two logics is being reinforced to the detriment of professionalism as an alternative. Developing new understandings of professionalism, and forcefully promoting them as a viable means of understanding how work is organized, might be a more effective alternative strategy. Members of the academic community writing on the theme of professionalism might take issue with the suggestion in the previous paragraph that there has been insufficient work in this area. However, based on recent published literature, in education and in other public services, discussion of professionalism has focused almost exclusively on workers in established professional groupings. Though some authors make mention of the desirability of these lead professionals working with the local community, or with other lead professionals, thinking and research all too rarely makes mention of support colleagues. This state of affairs, in my view, is inappropriate. First, this practice is exclusionary and reflects poorly on a community with an important role in giving voice to those whose viewpoints are seldom heard. The professional development and contribution of other kinds of workers to public sector outcomes deserves to be acknowledged, supported and celebrated. Second, this exclusive focus on lead professionals does not reflect the reality of contemporary public service institutions, where the number of support staff can exceed them. Research and scholarship in which only 50 per cent of the workforce is even deemed to exist, limits its potential utility and relevance. Talking to SBMs and head teachers who worked closely together to capitalize on their complementary areas of specialist expertise, it was evident that they saw their roles as entirely interdependent and equally necessary to organizational success. Failing to acknowledge the contribution of support staff to public service outcomes reinforces the perception that lead professionals alone carry the responsibility for them. When political priorities sharpen their focus on ‘elite’ professional groups, empirical and conceptual work underscoring the fact that colleagues with a range of backgrounds should share in both successes and failures, better reflects reality and might alleviate the pressure the more established occupations are under.

Professionalization Revisited

209

Research and thinking about the way public sector organizations operate need to reflect contemporary reality. To counter the worst excesses of the alternative bureaucratic and consumerist logics in shaping working life in the public sector, fresh and more inclusive versions of professionalism are required to shape future policy, research and practice.

Appendices

Appendix I

Overview of School Business Manager Research Projects and Data

Project

Final interview round

SBM Demonstration project evaluation study

SBD Scoping Study

Evaluation of CSBM National Rollout, Cohort 1

Data collection

June–December 2013

April 2008– December 2009

February– March 2007

May–November 2003 To assess early impacts of the programme, course design and delivery.

To explore perceived potential benefits and take up of development of School Business Managers beyond the DSBM level

To understand how SBM roles might develop across groups of schools, capture impacts, identify success factors and limitations

To update and extend data and ensure currency and coverage

Principal purposes

Informal conversations with participants and tutors during training events.

8 ⫻ formal interviews with programme staff (3 ⫻ tutors, 1 ⫻ materials developer, 1 ⫻ online facilitator and 1 ⫻ National College team member and 2 ⫻ training providers)

2 ⫻ interviews with each of 10 ⫻ SBMs and four head teachers

2 ⫻ SBM questionnaires yielding quantitative and qualitative data

Interviews with educational leaders, SBMs and representatives from the National College and NASBM.

111 questionnaires from educational leaders (68%) and SBMs yielding both quantitative and qualitative data.

Case study data, including 125 stakeholder interviews at demonstration project sites.

113 questionnaires from educational leaders (52%) and SBMs yielding quantitative data and evaluative comments on programme impacts.

35 interviews of between 25 and 105 minutes with: SBMs in England and internationally; educational leaders and political figures in England; members of the SBM team at the National College; academics researching professionalism in education and health and a spokesperson from the National Police College.

Main data collected

214 Appendix I

Evaluation of CSBM 1B Pilot

Evaluation of CSBM 1A Pilot

December 2002–March 2003

February–July 2002

To assess the impact of the training on SBMs and their schools and make recommendations for future programmes.

To assess the impact of the training on SBMs and their schools and make recommendations for future programmes.

Observation of training sessions

Informal conversations with participants and tutors during training events and at one assessment centre

9 ⫻ formal interviews with programme staff (tutors, materials developers, online facilitators and National College team members)

2 ⫻ interviews with each of 5 SBMs and their head teachers

3 ⫻ SBM questionnaires yielding quantitative and qualitative data

Analysis of online interactions

Observation of training sessions

Informal conversations with participants and tutors during training events

8 ⫻ formal interviews with programme staff (tutors, materials developers, online facilitators and National College team members)

1–3 ⫻ interviews with each of 12 SBMs and six head teachers

2 ⫻ SBM questionnaires yielding quantitative and qualitative data

These data were supplemented by objective training event feedback data collected by the training providers

Analysis of online interactions

Observation of training sessions

Appendix I 215

Appendix II

Illustrative Interview Questions (All Categories of Respondent)

Applying professional knowledge and skill in practice 1. Who has ultimate authority over what happens in the school? 2. In what spheres of operation does your particular type of professional knowledge give you authority? 3. In what ways do/don’t circumstances in your school enable you to apply your specialist knowledge effectively? 4. How far do you feel able to use your discretion? What shapes this ability? 5. Has this changed over time? 6. Can your expertise make a difference to children’s lives? How? Is it used to its best advantage in doing this? 7. What frustrates you about your job? What gives most satisfaction? Division of labour 8. How easy did you find it to move into a job in school business management from your previous work? 9. How transferable are general business credentials/experience to work within a school? 10. Who determines terms and conditions associated with your role? 11. How are your work goals/the content of your work established? 12. Who decides how boundaries are negotiated with other colleagues (who does what)? 13. Who is your line manager? And do you line manage anyone? 14. Do you see yourself as someone with general, transferable business management expertise or as an education specialist? 15. Can someone who is not a trained teacher organize and evaluate the work of education professionals? 16. Can someone who is not trained in business management evaluate and organize the work of business professionals? 17. Any comments on the status of SBMs in schools and whether it has changed over time?

Appendix II

217

Labour markets and careers 18. Do you see being an SBM as a permanent occupation? 19. What is the balance of supply and demand like in the SBM labour market at the moment? 20. Is CSBM/DSBM/ADSBM evidence of fitness to practice? 21. What are your views on non-QTS becoming teachers? Head teachers? 22. Do you think having a qualification might/should ever become a requirement for an SBM post? 23. How important is a specialist credential for a head teacher recruiting an SBM? 24. How would you compare the status of NCSL SBM qualifications versus alternative relevant qualifications for those recruiting an SBM? 25. Do you have comments on relative preparedness of applicants with specific SBM credentials compared to others (e.g. qualified accountants, MBAs)? 26. Do you intend to take further qualifications? Why/why not? 27. To what extent is progress up the career ladder something you aspire to? 28. Do you expect to succeed? 29. Would you be willing to move school/town for the sake of your career? 30. How would you describe your career prospects? 31. Do you have any comments about terms and conditions for SBMs? Is SBM pay in general about right, would you say? Training programmes 32. How are SBM training curricula updated? 33. Does research/academic input have a role within the curriculum? 34. How valuable did you find the ‘theory’ covered on the programme? 35. Were your tutors practising SBMs? Who were they? 36. How transferable is the knowledge covered on the programme(s) to other work contexts? Was it very specific to schools? 37. Did doing the SBM programme(s) change your attitude to SBM as a career? 38. How much contact do you have with other SBMs and in what forms? What issues do you deal with? 39. What are the most important professional organizations, formal/informal networks, publications from your point of view? 40. How important to you is being part of an SBM community of professionals? 41. How strongly do you think SBMs identify with the SBM profession/feel solidarity with others?

(Continued)

218

Appendix II

Perceptions of and commitments to role, including public vs. private sector attitudes and values 42. What words/phrases would you use to describe your day-to-day working life? 43. How important is being a public servant to you? 44. In terms of what guides your professional practice, do you see the values and principles as being any different from those of your teaching colleagues? 45. How far do you invest yourself as a person in your work? 46. How worthwhile do you feel the work that you do is? 47. How closely do you feel connected to children and families in your role? 48. How do they feature in your professional life? 49. How important is it to you to be child/family-oriented in your role? How do you put that into practice? 50. Do you see yourself as bringing something distinctive to the school in the way you work with children, families, the community, when compared with teaching colleagues? 51. Has your sense of purpose/have your values changed over time? 52. Did your training contribute to/change your sense of purpose/values/ commitment to the role? 53. ‘A head teacher of a large primary school in London recently reported in the Guardian that they run their school like a business’. What’s your reaction to that comment? States and associations 54. How did the National College’s SBM professional project come about? Who was involved? 55. How did university colleagues become involved in developing the SBM programmes? 56. Who else contributed to shaping the programmes? 57. What was the attitude of SBM and other professional associations to the College’s SBM project at the outset? 58. What were the main facilitators in those early days? 59. And the challenges? 60. What where the main purposes of the SBM project? 61. Commentators have made various suggestions of alternative, hidden purposes. (e.g. get head teacher work done for less money; support the privatization agenda). How would you respond to these? 62. Do you have any advice for others embarking on a professionalization project? 63. How are the New Labour and the Coalition stance towards the SBM project – similar/different?

Appendix II

219

64. What do you think have been the SBM project’s greatest achievements to date? 65. Have things turned out very differently from what you might have expected in the early days? 66. How do you judge the status of the SBM profession now? 67. What work is left to be done? 68. To what extent do you feel SBMs are better off as a result of professionalization process? 69. To what extent do you feel head teachers/schools are better off as a result of SBM professionalization process? 70. What are the prospects for the future?

Appendix III

National College Chronology of Project ‘Milestones and Achievements’ April 2007–July 2010

April 2007 ● ●

CSBM Cohort 8 local programmes start SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

April 2007 ●

First NCSL/TDA SBM international conference (Learning and Conference Centre, Nottingham)

May 2007 ●

CSBM Cohort 9 national and local programmes start

August 2007 ● ●

Primary leadership: advice to Secretary of State McKinsey & Co report delivered (commissioned by NCSL)

September 2007 ●

●

University of Manchester appointed as NCSL’s SBM Programme independent evaluators SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

October 2007 ●

●

Manchester Metropolitan University and Serco Learning appointed as the new materials review providers New SBM delivery contracts awarded

Appendix III

November 2007 ● ● ● ●

CSBM Cohort 9 local programmes start DSBM Cohort 6 starts DSBM local pilot starts SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

December 2007 ●

CSBM Cohort 10 national and local programmes start

February 2007 ●

SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

April 2008 ●

SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

May 2008 ● ● ●

CSBM Cohort 11 national and local programmes start SBM demonstration projects launched – wave 1 projects Second NCSL/TDA SBM international conference (Novotel, London)

June 2008 ●

DSBM Cohort 7 starts

July 2008 ● ●

SBM graduation ceremony (NCSL, Nottingham) Adapted CSBM programme launched in South Africa (Western Cape)

September 2008 ● ● ● ●

SBD demonstration projects launched – wave 2 projects ADSBM pilot programme launched Regional SBM advocates appointed Fundamental review of DSBM commenced

October 2008 ● ●

SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham) SBD demonstration projects launched – wave 3 projects

221

222

Appendix III

November 2008 ● ● ● ● ●

CSBM Cohort 12 national and local programmes start DSBM Cohort 8 starts NASBM annual conference 6,000th graduate of NCSL SBM programmes SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

January 2009 ●

● ●

SBD demonstration projects launched – wave 4 and wave 5 projects March 2009 DSBM Cohort 9 starts SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

April 2009 ●

SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

May 2009 ●

CSBM Cohort 13 national and local programmes start

June 2009 ● ● ●

NASBM/NCSL SBM Competency Framework to be published Third NCSL/TDA SBM international conference (Manchester) DSBM Cohort 10 starts

July 2009 ● ●

Regional demonstration projects workshops scheduled SBM graduation ceremonies (NCSL, Nottingham)

September 2009 ●

●

NCSL rebranded as National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services (the National College) SBM graduation ceremonies (National College, Nottingham)

October 2009 ● ●

SBM graduation ceremonies (National College, Nottingham) Redesigned DSBM programme Cohort starts in November 2009

Appendix III ● ● ●

●

223

DSBM Cohort 11 starts NASBM annual conference Revised external participant programme launched and renamed programme for aspiring SBMs CSBM Cohort 14 national and local programmes start

January 2010 ●

● ●

Oakleigh Consulting’s financial impact assessment of the National College’s school business manager demonstration projects ADSBM Cohort 1 programme roll-out starts ADSBM graduation ceremony (National College, Nottingham)

February 2010 ●

●

● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Interim evaluation report on demonstration projects by University of Manchester Strategic study of school business managers and school business directors by PricewaterhouseCoopers SBM graduation ceremonies (National College, Nottingham), March 2010 School Business Director (SBD) programme pilot starts ADSBM Cohort 2 starts 10 partnership advisers engaged to support school clustering Final report on SBM programmes by University of Manchester DSBM Cohort 11 locals starts CSBM Cohort 15 starts

April 2010 ●

●

Cost benefit analysis of school business management programmes by PricewaterhouseCoopers SBM graduation ceremonies (National College, Nottingham)

May 2010 ● ● ● ● ● ●

ASCL’s first annual SBM conference, Birmingham DSBM Cohort 12 starts CSBM Cohort 15 local programmes start CSBM autumn application round opens DSBM autumn application round opens, June 2010 ADSBM application round opens

224

Appendix III

July 2010 ● ● ● ●

National College/TDA’s fourth SBM international conference, Manchester Launch of Virtual School Launch of development guide Launch of The rise of the SBM profession – Geoff Southworth

Dates collated from the National College’s SBM Programme Impact and Evaluation Report 2007–09 and report update 2009/10 (Crown Copyright)

Appendix IV

Excerpt from the School Business Manager Competency Framework: Facilitating Change

Plan, lead and implement organizational change: This is about the planning that is required to make a specific change or put into practice a programme of change. It involves developing a strategy to make the change that is needed, taking note of barriers, risks and the need to put appropriate monitoring and communication systems in place. The driving force for change may be external or internal to the school/academy or a mixture of both. It may be a reaction to events or an attempt to improve the school/academy for the future. This reflects the need, in many situations, for someone to take control and provide a lead within the overall school/academy for a specific change or a wider programme of change. It involves leading the vision in terms of what the change is aiming to achieve and supporting the people involved in the practicalities of making the vision a reality. Develop innovation: This involves encouraging and supporting the identification and practical implementation of innovative ideas across schools/academies. Ideas may come from people working for the school/academy or beyond the school/academy externally to support new (school) services, improvements to existing services and improvements to existing practices, procedures, systems, ways of working etc. across the school/academy. Build capacity for organizational change: Leadership of the strategy and associated plans for a specific change or programme of change within the school/ academy is required. This involves putting in place the necessary resources and supporting systems, including monitoring and communications, to turn the vision into practical reality. Professional attributes ● ●

thinks conceptually to support and develop change processes encourages innovative thinking at all levels

226 ● ● ●

●

Appendix IV

plays a full role in enabling, leading and managing successful change develops the potential of individuals fosters an inclusive and innovative learning environment to move the school/academy forward develops a culture of innovation and continuous improvement – engages with and values the contribution of others

Knowledge and understanding ●

●

● ●

● ●

● ● ●

models, theories and methods for managing and leading organizational change planning techniques and ways of assessing the risks and benefits associated with strategies and plans techniques for solving problems and taking critical decisions current and emerging political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal developments relating to change management in schools/academies ways of achieving stakeholder and community engagement ways of motivating and encouraging innovative ideas to generate, develop and share ideas resources required to support and manage organizational change political, emotional, bureaucratic and resource barriers to change ways to recognize achievements and celebrate success

SA

• Plans and implements change within own team/ role.

• Understands the importance of proportionate innovation and the part own role has to play within this.

School Business Manager is able to

Plan, lead and implement organizational change

Develop innovation

• Articulates the benefits of innovation to the school/academy, its customers and other stakeholders.

• Plans, leads and implements change in and across wider areas of development. • Understands and uses effective planning techniques. • Understands stakeholder expectations and how they influence the change process.

SBM

• Leads whole-school/academy innovation projects.

• Leads change and engages with stakeholders to facilitate change across school/academy. • Uses a range of models and methods for managing change effectively, and understands their strengths and weaknesses. • Thinks strategically and analytically.

ASBM

SBM Roles and Levels

(Continued)

• Develops an organizational strategy for innovation across extended services.

• Innovates and supports change management within and across schools/academies. • Understands and manages the political, bureaucratic and resource barriers to change. • Thinks conceptually to identify new and improved ways of operating and overcoming barriers.

SBO

Appendix IV 227

School Business Manager is able to

SA

ASBM • Works with external specialists and experts and/ or in partnership with other organizations to generate and develop ideas that might lead to proportionate innovation in a wider setting. • Thinks creatively. • Selects and applies different methods for motivating and encouraging people across the school/academy to generate, develop and share innovative ideas. • Recognizes and manages proportionate risk in innovation and encourages others to take acceptable risks in pursuing innovation.

SBM • Leads proportionate innovation in own areas of responsibility. • Organizes the resources, time and support required for innovation.

SBM Roles and Levels

• Successfully communicates, leads and implements proportionate innovative projects across extended services. • Thinks creatively. • Establishes systems for measuring and reporting on proportionate innovation within and across extended services and providing information on organizational performance to relevant parties.

SBO

228 Appendix IV

• Understands the needs and interests of key stakeholders. • Provides administrative support that enables organizational expansion. • Evaluates proposals and plans for the practical implementation of ideas and approves those that appear viable. • Communicates regularly with parties affected by change. • Understands how to manage and support people through organizational change. • Uses appropriate methods for identifying and pursuing opportunities to work in partnership with external experts and/or in partnership with other organizations on the generation and development of ideas. • Evaluates proposals and takes critical decisions to resource and implement organizational change projects. • Selects and applies different methods for communicating, motivating and encouraging people across the school/ academy through change management processes.

National College/NASBM School Business Management Competency Framework, pp. 16–18 (Crown Copyright).

Build capacity for organizational change

• Encourages a problemsolving approach by all teams to address any weaknesses and remove obstacles to extended school/ academy improvement.

Appendix IV 229

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Index academies 15, 29, 30–3, 50, 82, 85, 95, 102–3, 106, 121, 131, 136–41, 144, 164, 184, 193, 225–7 Academy Programme, the see academies accountability 14, 17, 19, 23–4, 26, 31–3, 38, 53, 62, 76, 81, 108–9, 123–4, 150, 204 accounting see finance accounts/accountants 85, 100, 102–4, 131, 138–43, 170, 184, 217 see also finance activism/activist 9, 43–4, 207 Advanced Diploma in School Business Management (ADSBM) 62–3, 217, 221, 223 associate staff 3, 19, 26, 55, 67, 89, 117, 120, 121 see also support staff audit 14, 17, 19, 26, 31–2, 38, 108–9, 126, 141, 158, 204 Australia 11, 16, 93, 97, 158, 168, 169 autonomy institutional 4–5, 17, 19, 26, 30–3, 124, 136, 169, 180, 192–3, 204, 206–7 professional 32–3, 36, 40, 43 Ball, S. 12, 27–9, 32, 138, 179 Beckett, F. 137 Bennett, N. 132–3 Bills, D. 39, 90 Blase, J. 155 Bouckaert, G. 22–6, 32, 52 bureaucracy 9, 13, 23, 45, 79, 86, 109, 155, 186, 208 Bush, T. 7, 124 Butt, G. x, xii–xvi, 6, 33, 122 Castellani, B. 9, 39, 43 Certificate of School Business Management (CSBM) 52, 55–62, 65–6, 72, 87, 90–4, 96–7, 99, 112, 115, 117,

132, 135, 175–6, 181, 214–15, 217, 220–3 Chapman, C. 52, 54 charter schools 30, 137, 192, 193–4 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) 105, 132–4, 149, 176, 132–4, 149, 176 Chief Operating Officer (COO) 105, 120, 132–4, 149, 176 Chitty, C. 52 collaboration 42–3, 53–5, 64, 72, 76–7, 84, 136, 144–6, 149–50, 152, 173, 182, 185, 187, 194 College of Policing 34 Collins, R. 37, 42, 90 Colquhoun, D. 61, 62 competencies 15, 49, 56, 69, 73, 75–8, 81, 84, 206 Connell, R. 13 consumerism 10, 13, 15, 37, 45, 86, 155, 206–8 Cranston, N. 32, 124 Crawford, M. 62 credentialism 15, 38, 39, 90, 96 credentials 15, 17, 39, 45, 50, 73, 82, 85, 87, 89–99, 101, 103, 104–5, 111, 133, 144, 155, 216–17 Crook, D. 11, 36, 37 Dalli, C. 14, 39 Davy, L. 102 decentralization 14, 17, 19, 26, 29–30, 32 Deem, R. 32 delegation 29, 42, 60, 121, 147 demonstration projects 64, 137, 145–6, 151, 221–3 Dent, M. 8, 32, 38 Department, the 7, 64, 109, 136, 139, 158, 166, 183–6, 189, 190, 194 Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) 5, 33, 51, 53

238

Index

Department for Education (DFE) 28, 61, 62, 68, 144, 163, 166, 179, 187 Department for Education and Employment (DFEE) 163, 179 Department for Education and Skills (DFES) 61–2 Department for Employment 164, 166, 179–80 Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations (Australia) 170–1 De Vries, M. 31 Diploma in School Business Management (DSBM) 61–3, 65–6, 72, 91–3 discretion (in applying professional expertise) 9, 15, 30, 36, 38, 70–1, 75, 111, 121, 123–7, 200, 216 Doukas, D. 37, 81 Drake, J. 124 Earley, P. 30, 32–3 Eliassen, K. A. 20, 22, 26, 28, 30–1 evaluation 27, 51, 56, 58–9, 61, 65–6, 86, 165, 183, 214–15, 223–4 evidence-based policy 51 expertise 53–4, 55, 61, 64, 67, 69, 71–2, 79–80, 83, 85–7, 90, 98–9, 104, 105, 107, 110–11, 114, 117 see also knowledge Farrell, C. 8 finance 124, 139–40, 174 Fitzgerald, S. 124 Flood, C. M. 12 Fournier, V. 9, 37, 41 free schools 30, 53, 82 Freidson, E. 70–1, 79, 86, 90, 99, 127, 155, 196, 206 gender 39–40, 90, 98 Ginsberg, David 16, 104, 131, 158, 174–6 globalization 3, 17, 20, 26, 98 Goldring, E. 138 governors 57, 60–1, 64, 79, 97, 101–2, 106, 123–4, 128–9, 133, 137, 139, 147–8, 149–50, 152, 176, 185, 188, 192

Gray, B. H. 8, 29, 123 Guest, D. 98–9, 104, 112 Gunter, H. 6, 30, 33, 122, 138 Hafferty, F. W. 9, 39, 43 Ham, C. 27, 29 Haque, S. 6, 23 Hargreaves, A. 9, 11, 38, 43, 121, 201 Hartley, J. 22–4, 26 Harvey, D. 19, 21 health 2–3, 12–14, 19, 22–3, 26–7, 29, 32–5, 37, 39–40, 42, 53, 56–7, 74, 80, 84, 118–19, 126, 133, 143, 145, 176, 205, 214 see also medical professionalism Henry, A. 27 Higham, R. 30, 32–3 higher education 36, 46, 75, 90–1 Hinings, C. R. 9 Inkson, K. 86 interpersonal factors 2, 61, 110, 165 inter-professional education (IPE) 50, 83–4, 105, 197, 199, 207 invisibility xi, 5, 40, 107, 133, 186 Johnston, L. 28 Kanes, C. 37–8 Keating, I. 12 King, Z. 86 Kingsley, P. 54 knowledge 2, 6, 8–10, 12, 15, 17, 27, 32, 36, 39–42, 45, 47, 49, 52, 55, 57, 58, 67, 69–84, 86, 89–94, 99–100, 103–6, 110–14, 116, 120, 123–4, 127, 129, 131, 133, 136–7, 139, 141–5, 147–9, 151, 153, 155, 163, 166, 176, 186, 190, 192, 197–205, 207, 216–17, 226 Larson, M. S. 6, 9, 25, 39–40, 44 law enforcement 12, 27, 33 see also police Leach, D. C. 11 leadership 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, 33, 34, 54–5, 57–8, 61–3, 66–8, 74–8, 80, 82–4, 88, 91, 102, 109, 111–12, 118, 122, 125, 132, 134, 135, 138–9,

Index 145–6, 161, 163, 166–7, 173, 176, 180, 182, 187–8, 195, 206, 208, 220, 222, 225 Lee, Linda 16, 158, 169 Levin, J. S. 9 local authority 29–30, 57, 77, 79, 89, 97–8, 106, 108, 115, 124, 127, 136–7, 140–2, 145, 147–8 McCourt, W. 26–7, 31 McInerney, L. 195 Maddern, K. 75 Malin, N. 14, 40, 64 managerialism 15, 32, 37–8, 45, 206–7 Mavrogordato, M. 138 medical professionalism 8, 10, 29, 33–4, 36–7, 39–43, 47, 70–1, 81, 84, 127–8, 198, 205 see also health Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust 34 Miles, S. A. 132–3 Millar, F. 179 Minogue, M. 26–7 misinformation 192, 194 Monaghan, Mary 16, 158, 169, 171–2 Moorcroft, R. 12, 175 Moorhead, J. 139 Morris, Estelle 8, 11, 16, 55, 157–63, 179 Morris, J. 8 National College, the 7–8, 11–12, 15–16, 28, 34, 50–2, 55, 57–8, 61–9, 72–3, 75–6, 80, 83, 85, 87, 89–94, 98–9, 102–5, 112, 117, 132, 135–7, 139–40, 145, 151, 156–8, 163, 166, 169, 175, 178–83, 185–6, 189–90, 198, 203–5, 214–15, 218, 220, 222–4 National College for School Leadership (NCSL) 7, 217, 220–2 see also National College National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) 7, 34, 68 see also National College negotiation of jurisdiction 15, 80, 83, 104–5, 127–34, 177, 200, 206 Nemec, J. 31 neoliberalism 17, 19–22

239

networking 112–13, 183, 192 New Public Management (NPM) 31–2 New Right, the 20, 22, 28 New Zealand 11, 16, 158, 173–4, 182 Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB) 28, 68 O’Sullivan, F. 3, 8, 12, 24, 39, 56, 59, 98, 107, 117, 120, 122–3 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 5 Ozga, J. 9 Padgett, S. M. 36, 40, 41–2, 81 police 2, 7, 13, 28, 33–4, 37, 42, 145, 160, 214 Pollit, C. 6, 22–6, 32, 52, 153, 179 PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) 8, 54, 55, 62, 180, 223 primary partnerships 15, 106, 136, 137, 146–7, 151 primary schools 64, 97, 136–7, 139, 145, 147, 152 privatization 14, 17, 19, 22, 26, 28–9, 53, 138, 160, 190, 218 professional development 7, 9, 12, 51–68, 69–84, 88–9, 95, 104, 111, 152, 160, 161, 163, 182, 185, 195, 203, 205, 207–8 see also professional education education 49–50, 52, 63–5, 69, 80–4, 94, 104, 194–5 see also professional development ethics 10, 40–2, 73–4, 77, 195 public good 36 see also social good service 2–10, 13–14, 17, 19–20, 22–8, 30–2, 33–5, 40, 42, 49, 52, 55, 57, 64, 123–4, 136, 144, 153, 187, 197–8, 204, 206–8 trust 37–8 ‘publicness’ 6, 19, 34, 207 Qualifications see credentials Reay, T. 9 restructuring 55, 153, 200 Ribbins, P. 165

240 Rodrigues, R. A.

Index 98–9, 104, 112

SBM Advocates 169, 178, 183, 185–7, 221 Seddon, T. 9 Sherratt, B. 165 Shirley, J. L. 36, 40–2, 81 Simkins, T. 33, 52, 81 Sitter, N. 20, 22, 26, 28, 30–1 Skelcher, C. 22–4, 26, 54, 144 Smith, D. J. 27 Smith, J. 34 Smith, L. 34 social capital 201–2 disadvantage 118, 130, 138, 145, 171 good 21–4 justice 192, 195, 200 stratification 37–41 see also status South Africa 11, 16, 65, 104, 132, 158, 168, 174–6, 182, 221 Southworth, G. 51, 65–6, 107, 117, 145, 183, 224 specialism 77–80, 84, 138 see also expertise Spencer, J. 10, 36–8, 81, 84, 198 Starr, K. 3, 8, 12, 24, 39, 98, 107, 109, 117, 120, 121–2, 170 status 1, 6, 12, 14, 28, 34, 36–7, 39–41, 43–5, 47, 60, 63, 66, 70–1, 75, 77, 79, 82, 87, 91–2, 95–6, 98, 102, 108, 120–2, 126–7, 139–41, 143, 146, 155–6, 159–61, 167, 178, 182, 195, 198, 203–5, 207, 216–17, 219 Strathern, M. 32 Sullivan, H. 8, 10, 35–7, 54, 71, 82, 144 Summerson, Trevor 11, 16, 30, 91, 132, 134, 157, 163–9, 175, 178–84, 187–8, 190

support staff 3, 5, 13–14, 33–4, 40, 42, 59, 60, 73, 82, 91, 112, 118, 121–2, 161–2, 172, 176, 185, 187, 205, 208 see also associate staff teaching schools 50, 81, 104, 121, 185, 204 Thistlethwaite, J. 10, 36–8, 81, 84, 198 Times Educational Supplement (TES) 75–6, 139 Timmons, S. 14 transnationalism 14, 17, 26 Trowler, P. 178 trust 28, 32, 34, 37–8, 71, 90, 133, 139–41, 166, 202, 206 University 36, 50, 55, 57–8, 69–70, 75, 82, 101, 170, 175, 198, 218, 220, 223 see also higher education Urban, M. 81, 145 values

10, 23–5, 27, 36–7, 73–4, 77, 155, 206–7, 218, 226 Vaughan, R. 139 Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission (Australia) 169 Wallace, M. 68 Walshe, K. 34 Wenham, Val 16, 158, 173–4 Whitaker, K. S. 33, 54 Whitehead, S. 32 Whitty, G. 9, 14, 43, 44, 52 Wolfe, D. 137 Woods, C. E. 6, 8, 24, 26, 52, 57, 62, 64, 107, 117, 120, 122, 145–7, 186 Woodward, W. 55 workforce reform 6, 14, 17, 19, 26, 33, 42, 55, 61, 158–63, 179 Wright, N. 61–2