Headteachers
All of the participants highlighted the importance of mutual trust, respect and collegial relationship between the leader and the team to be effective in their roles as leaders. Only two of them mentioned that leadership was a skill, not a role and as a headteacher, they must ensure a flow and development of this skill across the school (Headteachers Private School 2 and 3).
“The concept of leadership is changing; it is more about having a collegial relationship based on trust and respect for each other with a shared belief that we can make a difference”. (Headteacher Private School 3).
Two out of six headteachers mentioned the value and belief system of the team members and the head to understand the role of leaders in schools.
“All stakeholders influence effectiveness of school through their style of interacting with each other that determines the way a school works. The most important is that how team members understand and appreciate their own and each other‟s capabilities and how they try to enhance these”. (Headteacher Private School 3).
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The following two roles (leadership and management) have been identified as two important roles as emerged from data collected from the headteachers. The headteachers mention that they are usually busy in administrative and strategic matters. Using well established divisions between leadership and management responsibilities (Kotter, 1990), the Table 6 (p. 170) gives a description of some of the responsibilities of the Administration/Management Role and Leadership Role by these headteachers. Two out of six headteachers also referred to the “considerable autonomy” (Private School 2 and Private School 3) that they have in leading their schools. Whereas two other participants suggested that “more autonomy” and “decentralization” should be in practice in schools (Private School 1 and Public School 1).
One of the public school headteachers complains about “power” to be “extremely limited, I consider myself more like a „chokidar‟ … a gatekeeper only” (Headteacher Public School 2). Headteachers from the private schools in the sample are happy to have more “managerial freedom”. As a result headteachers have “more responsibility and ownership of all aspects of the school” (Headteacher Private School 2). “Authority” delegated to school leaders and subsequently to teachers is considered an important factor by the majority of the headteachers to improve their “ability” that results in improved learning outcomes.
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Leadership Roles Administration/Management Roles
Leading by example Meeting the targets
Setting the agenda Financial issues
Creating a culture that promotes learning in
school Safety and crisis management
Staff development Troubleshooting
Performance management of staff Communicating Policy matters Managing change and transition Record Keeping
Listening to staff issues and recommendations Resource management
Recruiting to targets Retention targets
Development plan for school to classroom Seek to influence broader strategies Improve effectiveness of learning outcomes Ensure improvement in results
Ensure progress and growth of school Being available to staff, students and parents School Image Building
Table 6: Description of some of the responsibilities of Headteachers as Administration/ Management Role and Leadership Role
Teachers
Teachers have a whole range of opinions about the concept of leadership. They talk about the role of headteacher as being “busy in administrative matters most of the time” (T 10 Public School 2), although “headteacher has an open door policy, but it is very difficult to find such a time when she can really give you time” (T 16 Private School 1). The majority of the public school teachers (12/15) say that “authority” that lacks “ability” to “appreciate” and acknowledge teachers‟ efforts to improve learning results in “power distance” (T 4 Public
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School 1). Similarly “frequent changes in the rules” (T 12 Public School 3) are disapproved as well.
“Everyday more and more rather rigid and difficult rules and policies are being imposed on us, lots of paperwork, big class sizes and no facilities … very low salaries and … no one to pay attention to our problems … we don‟t know where to go” (T 9 Public School 2).
The data from the private schools demonstrate that teachers have a mixed perception about the role of headteacher but the majority of the participants (11/15) consider that the headteacher is “visionary, knows her job and is great admirer and strong believer of teamwork”. However, few of the respondents‟ opinions resonate with that of the public school teachers in the sample when they find that the headteacher is “bureaucratic and authoritative” (T 17 Private School 1), who is good at giving “unrealistic deadlines without any support” (T 19 Private School 1) and with “deficient knowledge of academics” (T 20 Private School 1), “… no appreciation of work results in poor motivation and low aspiration to work among teachers” (T 19 Private School 1).
Parents and Students
15% of the parents from the public schools strongly disagree that headteachers like to lead the process of learning and constantly try to know what parents feel about the quality of teaching and learning in the school (Figure 11, p. 172).
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Figure 11: Parents‟ response if Headteacher likes to know their opinion about the quality of learning offered in the school
Another 30% of parents from the public school also disagree whereas a total of 36% is of the same opinion from the private schools. In the open-ended part of the questionnaire, parents from the private schools appreciated “the headteachers efforts to bring improvement in the school practices” (50/150) and for being available to them (40/150) however few from the private schools (30/150) and more from the public schools (60/150) seem to be unhappy because of the bureaucratic approach of the head. They find it difficult to access the headteacher to discuss matters related to their child‟s progress. 110/300 parents (from total population) feel that mostly they find headteachers busy in some sort of “paper work and administrative issues” whenever they go to school.
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Students
Students‟ responses resonate with the parents responses in the area.
Almost 24% and 54% of the students from the private and public schools respectively feel that the headteacher does not like to know their parents‟ opinion about the teaching and learning conditions of the school (Figure 12).
Figure 12: Students‟ response if Headteachers‟ like to know their parents‟ opinion about the quality of learning offered in this school
A vast majority of 63% from the public school participants have chosen option A given in the open-ended/semi-structured questions that state the headteacher in their school is mostly busy in administrative affairs. In the private schools the response is 45% for the same option. School development plans are approved by the headteachers in all of the schools. School logbook, newsletter and calendars and school development plans in four of the six
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participating schools have no evidence of any such projects, plans or activities where headteachers have been involved actively in leading any learning activity in schools. However, approval of all of the co/extra curricular activities in four out of six schools is at the discretion of headteacher.