Thirty years of leadership in New Zealand education: From the shadows of management to sine qua non

Abstract

Leadership is now promoted as the sine qua non (essential ingredient) for maintaining and developing effective education in New Zealand. It was not this way in the latter years of the 1980s and through the 1990s, when educational management was the preferred nomenclature. Since the turn of the millennium, management has subsided into the shadows of leadership in New Zealand education as part of a global shift in the education policy lexicon and the Educational Management, Administration and Leadership (EMAL) field. Rather than argue whether leadership should be preferred over management, or vice versa, this article focuses on the rise of leadership in New Zealand education over the last 30 years.

Promises and challenges for effective school and system leadership

“…It took until 2002 for the government to contract a First Time Principals programme, which was voluntary. It was not until 2009 that there was the first national school leadership strategy, the Ministry of Education's Professional Leadership Plan (Youngs, 2020).…”

“…The Ariki project that grew out of voluntary quality learning circles in the 1990s was given some funding (Stewart, 2011). But in 2010 the Ministry of Education, facing a drop of government funding, cut not only these programmes, but also disestablished the small Ministry team focused on leadership development (Youngs, 2020).…”

Can we cast away Crusoe? A search for other edu/economic-leaderships

“…Karen Starr (2014) suggests that ‘educational leadership is so complex and covers such a huge range of responsibilities that the skill sets required go beyond those found solely within an individual’ (p. 224) yet, in New Zealand, job descriptions continue to locate the concept within individuals (p. 229). Youngs (2020, p.67) suggests that, lately, the term ‘strong leadership’ (sometimes ‘strong professional leadership’) is evident in government policy. The language, as Learmonth and Morrell (2021, p.1) assert, creates ‘a semantic aura’ around leadership which hides a problem: ‘[R]eferring to executives as ‘leaders’ draws a veil over the structured antagonism at the heart of the employment relationship and wider sources of inequality by celebrating market values’ (p. 13).…”

“…New Zealand has, since the 1990s, been a neoliberal ‘FIRE economy’ (Brash, 1996; Kelsey, 2015), enacting many of Treasury’s positions through New Public Management.[NPM led to] breaking up of large government public sector units into smaller units, with an emphasis on accountability systems, performance measures, outputs rather than inputs, efficiency, and the use of “proven” private sector styles of management to operationalise these components … Principals became responsible for the management of the school, including its budget, appraisal of teachers, and development of staff. (Youngs, 2020: p. 63)…”

“…However, at the turn of the 20th century, it became a much-used term. In the interim, state agencies such as Education Review Office, and the Teachers’ Council externally monitored schools and individual teachers and the latter agency led discussions on educational leadership (Youngs, 2020). Devolved self-governance meant many schools, especially those in poorer, low-decile areas, and rural schools, struggled with the weight of administration and expectations that they should be lifting ‘quality’.…”