This article reports upon research investigating the rapid rise to prominence of distributed leadership in schools in England. Distributed leadership is located within wider structural reforms of education in England as part of the New Public Management movement in public service delivery and the marked discursive shift to leadership which took…

The Education Reform Act 1988 increased the scope of headteachers' work and led to an emphasis on "management", often interpreted as the implementation of government policies, checked through the Ofsted inspection regime. Following the election of a Labour government in 1997, the discourse changed to "leadership". Leadership…

Contrary to the claims of its critics, the introduction of self-managing schools under the ERA and its counterpart in other countries did not lead to the privatization of public education. Self-managing schools have been one manifestation of a general trend to decentralization in public education in many countries since the late 1960s. The…

Twenty years after the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA), BELMAS (British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society) held a discussion forum for academics, teachers and all those interested in education policy and practice. Was the ERA a success or a failure? The one-day forum of presentations and…

Educational management, which has had a short, tumultuous history, may be described as a practical form of knowledge. Recent seminars attempted to redefine educational management in light of major changes in practice since the 1980s, highlighting effects of England's 1988 Education Reform Act. Themes of eight seminal papers are discussed. (28…

Our focus in this article is on the lessons learned about effective change from international experience with large-scale reform over the last 20 years. The central lesson now evident is that sustained improvement in student outcomes requires a sustained effort to change teaching and learning practices in thousands and thousands of classrooms, and…

The 1988 Education Reform Act and subsequent legislation sought to impose on English and Welsh educational services a form of site-based planning called "school development planning." This paper identifies key problems with this approach and instead proposes strategies for managing change and school improvement based on North American…

In England, governing bodies continue to be responsible for the conduct of publicly funded schools. This article compares the governing of publicly funded primary schools (for 5-11 year olds) and secondary schools (for 11-18 year olds). The research analysed policy documents and the governing of 16 primary and 14 secondary schools. The main…

Case study data from six primary schools are drawn upon to examine the reality of primary headteacher leadership. Three alternative theoretical models of leadership are used to analyse the ways in which it has changed since the Education Reform Act (1988) and the implications of these changes for leading teaching and learning. Prior to 1988…