Understanding the complexity of system-level leadership in the English schooling landscape

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role and leadership practices of executive leaders in English multi-academy trusts (MATs) considering the meaning of system-level leadership and its perceived impact on schools' improvement processes, conditions and culture.Design/methodology/approachThis paper was guided by an ecological systems approach emphasizing the interactions between the micro-, meso-, macro-, exo- and chronosystems, and was used to develop context-sensitive accounts of leadership across groups of schools. It involves interview-based multi-perspective case studies using a sample of five MATs and collecting data from 31 interviews with various school and MAT leaders.FindingsThe primacy of leadership at the executive level was central to efforts for school and MAT transformation and that was evident throughout the findings of the study. System leadership was multifaceted and was understood through the multiple layers of the organizational structure of MATs. Four major domains of practice highlight the efforts of these leaders to address complex and systemic challenges. These are setting strategic directions, developing people and organizational capacity, establishing organizational infrastructure to support schools' improvement efforts and providing instructional guidance.Originality/valueFindings reveal new empirical data about the role of executive leaders in English MATs and highlight the ways in which they seek to establish, manage and sustain school and MAT-wide improvement providing the research with a holistic idea of system leadership.

Systemically oriented leadership: Leading multi-school organisations in England

“…The central role played by executive leaders, acting as system leaders in MATwide instructional reform, goes beyond reform-via-programme adoption to deep engagement in the work of systemic, aspirational practice-focused improvement (Elmore, 2004;Fullan et al, 2015). They constitute an important source of productive organisational learning and MAT-wide improvement with increasing responsibilities such as: establishing and monitoring MAT-wide improvement strategies, improving individual and organisational capacity, managing effective resource and account management, and creating conditions conducive to a high-trust culture with value-added relationships with stakeholders and collaborators in the environment of the MAT (Constantinides, 2021;Greany & Higham, 2018).…”

“…From a complexity thinking perspective, system leadership does not occur as a series of isolated events but in unison with the activity of autonomous entities (MAT executive leaders), collectives (school leaders and teachers), and systems and subsystems within grander unities (schools within MATs within socio-political educational contexts) (Senge et al, 2012;Shaked & Schechter, 2017). Consequently, to explain system leadership, one would need to take into account what sort of local knowledge, difficulties, routines, and aspirations shape and are shaped by individual practices, values, and beliefs (Constantinides, 2021). The active role of values, morals, and ethical purposes would therefore need to be acknowledged in decisions about which strategies to apply and how they should be combined, applied, and changed over time.…”

“…1 Educational ecosystem framework-ecological influences underpinning system leadership practices (adapted from Bronfenbrenner, 1979) to occur. Therefore, system leadership is construed as a complex process representing recursive interactions between levels of the ecosystem and elements that join together in ways that are unpredictable and uncertain (Constantinides, 2021).…”

“…Consequently, the academies programme allowed for mass conversions, either voluntary or forced takeovers where schools were underperforming, irrespective of sector (Eyles & Machin, 2019). This trend also enabled the genesis of non-profit multi-school organisations, with the most dominant organisational arrangement to be that of multi-academy trusts (MATs) operating groups of academies at a local, regional, and/or national level and becoming accountable for their individual performance, centrally allocating funding, and monitoring expenditures (Constantinides, 2021;Greany & Higham, 2018). Education policy researchers refer to MATs as 'middle tier' institutions responsible for governance, management, and administration of education, working outside of the traditional local authority level (Greany, 2020;Simkins et al, 2018).…”

What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education?

“…Consistent with decades of research (see Blackmore et al, 1996 ; Smyth, 2011 ) there was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability (e.g., these logics force public schools to run themselves like businesses, prioritise narrow outputs and compete for students which leads to stratification and residualisation within education systems and inequitable resource allocation for students) (Constantinides, 2021 ; Fitzgerald et al, 2018 ; Karseth & Møller, 2020 ; Keddie et al, 2020a , 2020b ; Lundahl, 2019 ; Wilkins et al, under review). Consistent with ongoing concerns in this space, there was a questioning of the idea of the public in public (Gerrard, 2018 ) and private education (Boyask, 2020 , 2021 ) in terms of who and how education operates for the public good and relatedly; about how private sector interests and logics have permeated public school governance to prioritise market imperatives at the expense of educative imperatives (Hursh, 2017 ; Lipman, 2017 ; Lubienski, 2009 ; O'Neill, 2021 ; Skerritt, 2019 ; Skerritt & Salokangas, 2020 ; Thrupp, 2020 ; Yoon et al, 2020 ); about how the increased expectations and responsibilities associated with school autonomy reform were continuing to take an enormous physical and mental toll on teachers and school leaders in relation to untenable work intensification (Fitzgerald et al, 2018 ; Heffernan & Pierpoint, 2020 ; Keddie et al, 2020a , 2020b ; Skerritt, 2020 ; Wilkins et al, under review; Wylie, 2020 ); and about how these reforms as they are driven by a narrow performative culture, continue to degrade pedagogy and curriculum towards a teach-to-the-test mentality (Hursh et al, 2019 ; McGrath-Champ et al, 2018 ).…”