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VIEWS


FROM THE PEN OF… STEVE MUNBY AND MARIE-CLAIRE BRETHERTON


Why school leaders should strive for imperfection


In most areas of life, perfection is a futile goal. Teaching is no exception to this. Zero- tolerance policies, the elimination of achievement gaps, the insistence that failure is not an option, and impeccable leadership – for most leaders, in most circumstances, these ends are all unattainable. The truth is that we are all imperfect. When the Covid pandemic first struck in


March 2020, schools across the world closed for the majority of their students. Overnight, school leaders had to become oracles of rapidly changing government guidance and they had to help teachers provide remote education to students as well as providing IT support and equipment to those most vulnerable. Many leaders reached out to the community, providing food hampers and checking in on vulnerable children and families. And then of course they had to cope with the losses that continue to affect families across the world, leading school communities through grief, and dealing with the continuing wellbeing crisis affecting students and staff alike. No development programme could possibly have adequately


prepared leaders for the issues and challenges that they faced. They were having to deal with problems that even the most experienced school leaders had never had to deal with before, and there was no rule book or mental map to fall back on. Although there is no manual for leadership in a crisis, we believe


there are some general principles of leadership that do apply in times of great uncertainty and that many of these have their roots in the principles of what we call ‘imperfect leadership’ (first coined by Steve in his original book of the same name). Being an imperfect leader means that we know we cannot do or


know everything, so we have a keen awareness of what is controllable and what is not controllable in the environment and context in which we find ourselves leading. This is particularly important when leading in a crisis or in times of great uncertainty, and in our new book Imperfect Leadership in Action, we outline a mindset that will both help school leaders to lead through a time of crisis and support them throughout their leadership journey. Being an imperfect leader is not something we can deliberately


accomplish, like being a transformational, inspirational or servant leader, for example. Imperfection will happen to us anyway. We cannot avoid it. Imperfect leadership, rather, is about how we handle our imperfections and learn from them, while eliminating or at least mitigating their harmful effects on others. Our book identifies some key attributes and actions that


characterise imperfect leaders. Some of these, such as the importance of trust, building relationships and admitting mistakes, are already very familiar in the literature of leadership. Other attributes are more novel – making public promises that could come back to haunt you, doing the right thing even when your career prospects are put at risk, and finding the right balance and relationship between power and love in interactions with others. Being an imperfect leader creates space for learning and growth;


it opens up opportunities for others to contribute when we humbly ask for help. It means we can acknowledge mistakes and failures without writing ourselves off. In short, being imperfect as a leader has huge advantages (and the truth is that there is no perfect leader anyway!).


https://www.crownhouse.co.uk/imperfect-leadership-in-action April 2022 BRITISH EDUCATIONAL SUPPLIERS ASSOCIATION (BESA)


Is Oak National Academy the long-term solution to the


workload crisis? This month we’re delighted to hear from CAROLINE WRIGHT, Director General of school suppliers’ association BESA, who discusses the ramifications of the DfE’s recent decision on Oak National Academy.


After months of speculation, the DfE finally came to a decision on the future of Oak National Academy. Speaking in Birmingham this month, the Secretary of State for Education announced that Oak is to become an 'arms-length body' of the DfE, operating with complete autonomy. The Secretary of State explained that the continued development of Oak will give broader coverage of the curriculum from KS1-KS4 and stop teachers from "reinventing the wheel". Oak National Academy and their partners have made some


fantastic achievements since its inception in 2020, supporting teachers and learners during the pandemic, along with other EdTech providers and publishers. More recently, their work on translating lessons into Ukrainian demonstrates EdTech's ability to solve unique challenges that would otherwise require insurmountable efforts. Because of this, I would strongly support the continuation of Oak in its current form as a 'snow day and home day’ resource. However, its continued development presents a significant threat to the thriving UK EdTech/Publishing sector, which I believe would significantly damage teachers' long-term interests in reducing choice and innovation within the industry. It has been no big secret that the workloads teachers face today


needs urgently addressing, and the department is correct to support schools' access to resources as a way of mitigating this. But the truth of the matter is that one of the top demands of school leaders is not the quality of resources on offer, but the finances available to them to acquire those resources and I fear that Oak is merely being used as a vehicle to introduce further backdoor cuts to school resource budgets - which have continued to shrink in real-terms since 2015. Furthermore, I struggle to see how Oak is bringing anything new


to the table which is not already available. The future development of Oak risks squeezing alternative providers out of the market. This would lead to less innovation in the market, less choice for teachers, and ultimately pupils - leaving only a curriculum prescribed directly by the DfE - something that just 14% of schools would be in favour of compared to 63% against according to BESA's own survey of over 1200 schools. Despite the enormous amount of financial resources this project is


likely to consume - Oak cost around £7m in funding last year alone - the DfE has failed to conduct any proper research into whether such a project would provide value for money. Instead, they've derived their conclusions from a four-year-old survey of just 39 schools, less than two dozen Ofsted reports and a handful of additional partisan evidence sources. It's as if the DfE is completely ignorant to how seismic a change the pandemic has had on education, believing we can just revert to how things were in 2018 with no acknowledgement to how teachers' practices have evolved throughout the pandemic. I would therefore implore the DfE to work with schools and the


wider sector to carry out a proper consultation, independent research and market analysis of the current problems and issues facing school leaders, particularly as education faces a critical juncture post-covid. I fear not to do so will lead to a decline in quality content and risk further perpetuating the increasing workloads of teachers for the foreseeable future.


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