The Greatest Threat:

The core aim of education, as I see it, is to eradicate social and economic disadvantage and ensure the success of every young person irrespective of their background. Undoubtedly education serves many other purposes – knowledge creation, citizenship development, culture transmission, economic progress – but social justice must always be at the heart of any education system. A commitment to this ‘moral purpose’ should be what motivates every school leader. The research is clear that your people who are successful educationally not only earn more and contribute to wider economic development, they are healthier, less likely to be involved in criminal activity, have better health – the list goes on. High performing schools are not just good for young people and parents, they are good for everyone.

Schools truly have the potential to make the world a better place!

It is therefore vital to the educational system and society as a whole that school leadership is driven by over-arching moral principles and values that guide headteachers to intentionally design their school in a way that leads to improved life chances for every pupil – irrespective of background.

If every single headteacher does this – and willingly works with colleagues in this common aim – then the whole education system will drift inevitably towards social justice and human flourishing.

Thankfully there are some excellent examples of individual schools and groups of schools that do have an absolute dedication to a moral purpose of eradicating educational disadvantage. However, the education system as a whole remains stubbornly focused on a very narrow concept of success that is predominately based on high stakes testing. While this narrow view of success is an easy way to compare schools with one another and may be beneficial to many pupils, testing, exams league tables and the accountability measures that result have tended to warp educational outcomes and move the focus school leaders have away from improving the life changes of young people towards improving test results. High test results improve the school’s – and the leader’s – reputation. What results is an approach that very often ‘problematises’ the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people as they are unlikely to be successful under a regime of high stakes testing. Consequently, to get the test results needed to be successful within the high stakes accountability system, these vulnerable young people can be side-lined and excluded by leaders who are not fully engaged in the moral purpose of school leadership.

This is not just an issue in education. Leaders in all fields will talk of the lofty and worthy purpose / values / principles / beliefs that drive their own leadership and the behaviours of their organisation – only for their actions over time to show that, in reality, the choices they make are not ethically driven at all, but by the expedient desire to achieve results and achieve a quite narrow view of success.

It would seem that the problem deep at the heart of leadership is that leaders are not inclined to design organisations that have a moral and ethical ‘rudder’ that steers their purpose inevitably towards social justice. And why would they? There is no accountability measure in place that measures the wider concept of social justice. All that can be measured is one small part – test results.

Consequently, leaders design their organisations to be protected against all threats to successful outcomes. These threats may be external like competitors or changes in the market or internal like underperforming employees. Consequently, the majority of leaders tend to be highly expedient in their approach and the ‘rudder’ they have steers the organisation towards aims that serve their own personal motivations and interests. This narrowing of the focus to pursue only the aims of the leader of the organisation narrows the focus of success, leads to an exploitation of others and impacts negatively on the overall outcomes that the organisation can achieve.

What follows is a number of blogs that explore these issues in relation to educational leadership and puts forward the idea that school leaders can ‘intentionally design’ their school to protect against the biggest threat there is to gaining improved outcomes for young people – their own leadership!