In The Guardian newspaper on 8 July 2017, Savage (2017) reported that of the 27,500 teachers who had qualified since 2011, almost a quarter had already left the profession. The retention (and indeed the recruitment) of teachers pose major challenges for education systems across the world. This article attempts to identify what may be a major contributing factor – an increase in toxic leadership.
Education in the marketplace
There have always been examples of toxic or destructive leadership in schools. However, the concern is that many of the examples we are now seeing are a result of recent governments’ attempts to ‘modernise’ school systems, particularly in England, which is stimulating leadership styles that are not conducive to good professional working, and impact on teacher morale.
The last few decades have seen a major movement , to restructure public services, promoting minimal state involvement in their delivery and an extension of market principles to them - particularly within the United States and UK. In theory this has been done to make these services subject to the efficiencies, entrepreneurialism and other benefits that it is claimed operate in the private sector. In education, this ‘neo-liberal’ approach has arguably been developed further in England than elsewhere in the world.
We saw this this first with the outsourcing of support services, and more recently the wholesale outsourcing of the running of schools themselves, to non-democratic (sometimes commercially-based) organizations and charities working within a competitive ‘quasi-market’. Central to this movement, Whitty (2002) tells us, is ‘the belief that competition produces improvements in the quality of services which in turn enhances the wealth producing potential of the economy, thereby bringing about gains for the least well-off as well as for the socially advantaged’.
This ‘neoliberal’ policy model, which is also described by some (not totally correctly) as ‘Americanisation’, is now being pursued to a greater or lesser extent across most developed and developing countries.
There has also been a major shift since the 1980s in the management of all public services, including education, away from a focus on the professional discipline to an emphasis on business, economic effectiveness and value for money. This article is less concerned with the educational rights and wrongs of this than on its effects. It suggests that the changes are putting great pressure on school leaders to act in ways which they believe will ensure that their schools conform to what is being required of them by governments and their agencies.