RESEARCHEARCH


Over the past 20 years, there has been a big increase in research on the role of chief executive oficers (CEOs) in managing firms. Much less is known about the effectiveness of CEOs in the public sector. A better understanding of what makes a good public sector manager is crucial to inform decisions on leadership and management in key public services, such as education. A growing number of studies in


education have tried to assess the impact of school heads during the compulsory stages of education. Perhaps surprisingly, far less research has been devoted to understanding the impact of principals in post-compulsory settings. Our research analyses the impact of college principals in English post-16 institutions on their learners’ educational outcomes. We also investigate some potential mechanisms that might explain the link between principals and outcomes, notably their staff recruitment and wage policies.


DATA AND METHODOLOGY We have created a dataset of principals in further education (FE) institutions in England over the period 2003 to 2015, and built education performance measures using databases held by the Department for Education. Other institutional level variables related to recruitment and wage policies come


RESOURCES


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Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela is research coordinator at the Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER), part of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).


Camille Terrier is a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII) and CVER.


o collee rncals affect learner otcoes  an or ob


Principals tend to figure low on the pecking order in educational debates. But research shows


these leaders of the pack can make such a positive difference to a college’s performance By Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela, Camille Terrier and Clémentine Van Effenterre


from the Education and Training Foundation’s staff individualised records (SIRs). To estimate the importance of principals for the outcomes of younger learners, we make use of the fact that we can observe the same principals and colleges over time. We therefore see a given principal in different institutions, and a given institution managed by different principals. This allows us to compare, for instance, different outcomes in an institution led by different principals.


OUR MAIN RESULTS We also control for student characteristics (prior attainment, socioeconomic background and so on). This takes into account that students from different backgrounds enrol in institutions that might differ considerably. As a consequence, our analysis focuses on younger learners because of the need to link early educational records to FE outcomes (even though adult learners represent a sizeable proportion of students in FE colleges). For each outcome we obtain a measure of the principal’s contribution towards reaching it. Having estimated the performance of college principals on learner outcomes, we rank them. Our main results reveal that principal


quality matters for educational performance. We find that switching from a principal who is in the bottom quarter of the quality distribution to one who is in the top quarter increases students’ probability of achieving a qualification at Level 2 by 15.9 percentage points; of achieving a Level 3 qualification by 14.1 percentage points; and of enrolling in a qualification at Level 4 or above by 3.7 percentage points. To interpret these numbers, it might


help to have a benchmark in mind. In our sample, 56 per cent and 58 per cent of students achieved a Level 2 and 3 qualification, respectively; and 38 per cent of students enrolled in a qualification at Level 4 or above. Our results indicate that differences in educational outcomes do not seem to be explained by principals’ gender, age or salary. We also find considerable differences between the staff recruitment and wage policies under different college principals. Using the methodology described


above, we find that switching from a principal who is in the bottom quarter of the distribution to one who is in the top quarter increases the share of teachers on a permanent contract by 12.9 percentage points (for a mean of 63 per cent in the sample). Likewise, the proportion of female


18 ISSUE 31 • SPRING 2018 INTUITION


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