During my time as an economics and business teacher, “de-layering” was a buzzword in the corporate world. Hierarchical management structures were becoming relics of the past. Ironically, my school offered a perfect illustration of such a structure, and it is one the education system is evidently struggling to let go of.
This memory resurfaced recently when I met an ‘associate assistant headteacher’. It prompted me to question whether this multiplication of management layers is a peculiarly British phenomenon and whether it correlates with improved educational outcomes.
A conversation with a multi-academy trust (MAT) chief executive revealed an intriguing rationale: these elaborate job titles ‘serve recruitment and retention goals’.
Curious, I reached out to my colleagues in the Association for European Economics Education (AEEE) to explore how other countries manage their schools. Their insights paint a striking picture of diversity.
In the Netherlands, most secondary schools are organized into teams of teachers led by team managers (typically four or five per school), above whom sit a vice-rector and a rector.
In Austria, there is no middle management between the director and teachers. Teaching roles with added responsibilities, such as ‘language coordinator’, are informal and carry minimal authority.
In Denmark, teachers enjoy significant pedagogical freedom from day one. Each teacher is assigned a ‘nearest leader’, a leadership figure for communication and support with whom they meet once or twice a year.
In Italy, school management is straightforward, with a single layer of leadership beneath the principal: the office of the vice-principal.
And in Germany, the principal and vice-principal often continue teaching, and major decisions typically involve the full body of teachers. Formal roles like equality coordinator are filled by teachers who compete for reductions in teaching hours.
All these different approaches share one feature, and it is the one that marks out our system as an outlier: their simplicity. By contrast, our management structures are labyrinthine.
Ofsted is not the sole factor affecting job satisfaction
A business teacher, for instance, might report to a head of department, who answers to a head of faculty, overseen by an assistant headteacher. Below assistant headteachers are emerging roles like associate assistant headteachers. Above them are deputy headteachers, one of whom may serve as the senior deputy. At the top sits the headteacher, who may or may not teach, and is often accountable to a trust chief executive.
A school with 80 teachers could easily have eight tiers of management. By comparison, Essex Constabulary seems to cope with just nine ranks to organise its 4,000 officers. Even then, a 2015 review from the College of Policing concluded that “the service needed to address issues of hierarchy, culture and consistency” and suggested a reduction in the number of ranks (a “flatter system”) could lead to significant improvements.
So, while Ofsted dominates discussions about accountability and loss of teacher autonomy, it’s clearly not the sole factor affecting job satisfaction. Even if it evolved without deliberate design, the very structure of our system of school management implies a lack of trust in teachers.
At the very least, we should be asking ourselves whether this hyper-focus on accountability is a strength, ensuring quality assurance at every level, or an overly burdensome approach that stifles autonomy and job satisfaction.
It is possible that our plethora of leadership and management grades are the result of individual schools offering incentives to find and keep teachers. It’s equally possible that in turn this is concentrating attractive pay rates in relatively few hands, contributing to average teacher pay levels below what they might be otherwise be.
These seem to me to be fundamental questions as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill makes its way through parliament. Through it, the government aims ‘to make sure schools can continue to attract and retain the best teachers’.
Parliament should seize the moment to be even more radical and commission the Chartered College of Teaching to undertake an enquiry just like the College of Policing did.
We might finally catch up with the business curriculum – and de-layer education.
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