Recruiting headteachers in Wales for a new era of professional collegiality

Recruitment to headteacher posts in Wales is proving challenging and applications for headship posts have dropped sharply during the academic year 2016-2017 (EWC, 2017). This paper presents the findings of a systematic... [ view full abstract ]

Recruitment to headteacher posts in Wales is proving challenging and applications for headship posts have dropped sharply during the academic year 2016-2017 (EWC, 2017). This paper presents the findings of a systematic discourse and content analysis of 171 job advertisements for headteachers in Wales during this period. It examines how the concept of leadership is constructed in the published person specifications and headship job descriptions. The results provided an understanding of the range of attributes, skills and competencies that are considered as essential and desirable in applicants. It explores to what extent these align with a techno-rational model of organisational activity and reflect a vision of a ‘lone hero’ within a hierarchical organisational structure or support a networked approach that positions a headteacher as an ‘educative mentor’, that views leaders as learners themselves who are focused on leading the leadership and learning of others. It suggests, that tensions that exist between the new rhetoric of professional collegiality and support for ‘subsidiarity’ (Handy, 1995) that is now being aspired to in schools in Wales (Donaldson, 2015) and the reality of increasingly hierarchical structures and decision making, driven by a pressure to perform, within schools and reflected in these Headteacher adverts. Our findings reveal critical gaps between a policy direction in Wales that supports an emergent and collective approach to leadership and the current articulation of skills and attributes that underpin headteacher appointments. The absence of the requirement of skills that have been identified as common in formal leaders of high-performing organisations and ‘educative mentors’ is highlighted (Collins, 2001; Daly and Milton, 2017, Morgan et al, 2017) such as listening more than speaking and considering they do not have the monopoly on good ideas, viewing themselves as learners, orchestrating safe environments for risky talk (Eraut, 2000), engaging in collective sense-making practices. In what way these job descriptions and person specifications reflect what is viewed as appropriate in terms of relationships and ways of working for the staff and students within schools is explored. Suggestions are made for schools, governing bodies, local authorities and other stakeholders involved in selecting potential candidates for Headship in an era in Wales where policy dictates that scope for positive disagreement and argument, based on mutual trust, confidence and reverse delegation are essential features of professional practice.