Analysis Of The School And System Leadership Of British Schools

Leadership through the ages has been typically hierarchical where one individual is at the top of the figurative pyramid, leading the rest of the collective people, but like everything else in life, this too changed with time and is still busy changing. In recent years Leadership has become more collective in nature, allowing more than just one person the power and authority to make big decisions that affects many lives. This lessens chances of corruption and subjective decision making that could potentially have a negative effect on the people not in power. The collective leading way has been adopted by many, from countries like China, Vietnam and the Soviet Union to some major corporate companies. Some countries have even introduced collective
In this book she discusses the change from headship to system leadership, or in other words, collective leadership. One of the natural topics to follow is that it would be difficult for heads of schools to just relinquish their power and in a figurative sense just hand over their crowns; nevertheless change is sometimes necessary for the greater good. In South Africa, schools are still run in hierarchical fashion, with the headmasters at the top, leading. However that is not always in the best interests of the teachers, the facility or the students. “Heads weren’t letting go of power but putting in structures to lead from a distance but not lead less.” “A collective vision was often achieved through consensus but, nevertheless, because of the power of the head, albeit one removed, all the head teachers ultimately controlled the distribution of leadership and degree of autonomy…” (Robinson. 2012:168) Head masters are just human beings and humans are flawed. So often people have too much on their plates and in trying to accomplish everything alone, they fail, instead, to complete any of the given tasks, whereas with a system change, one individual does not have to solely be the carrier of that burden. Instead the workload could be divided evenly between a number of people, allowing for a more smoothly run operation. “Head teachers are being encouraged to distribute leadership as the system transforms. System redesign has led to new forms of system leadership across schools and an increasing complexity in the role of school leader.” (Robinson.