Life on Mars

In the hit BBC TV drama Life on Mars Sam Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Is he mad, in a coma or actually back in time? As the drama unfolds he experiences a world without performance audits but also one without the safeguards for arrest, detention and the interviewing of suspects mandated by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984). The acclaimed series has led to flights of nostalgia, not least for a world in which police could get on with 'real policing' without 'unnecessary' paperwork. In this article, we will metaphorically go back in time to contemporary and historical practices of headship in English schools. If a headteacher from 2009 were to wake up in 1973 what would they understand about their work, what would be the same, what would be different? What taken‐for‐granted current practices might get them into trouble, what might frustrate them – and what might delight them that they would bring back to the current job if they could? Mobilising Bourdieu's thinking tools, we will examine these questions through an analysis of published and unpublished texts produced by heads about their work. Keywords: headshipleadershipeducation policyBourdieu Notes 1The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) was set up in 2000 to provide succession planning through training and accreditation of middle and senior leaders and headteachers. The remit now includes Children's Services with the new title: National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services. The term 'National College' is being adopted as a shorthand descriptor and so we will use this through the paper. 2The Education Reform Act of 1988 introduced site‐based management where schools took control of their budgets, could hire and fire staff, and were funded on the basis of open enrolment of pupils. 3For example, the long‐running drama Dr Who depends on time travel as did the 1980 drama The Flipside of Dominick Hide, and its 1982 sequel Another Flip for Dominick Hide, where a time traveller from 2130 goes beyond his remit to observe and so generates complex tensions between his life, identity, and family in two time zones. 4Details of the series can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/lifeonmars/. The BBC series has been sold internationally, and ABC in the USA has televised an American version. 5More details about this reform can be found at http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/operational-policing/powers-pace-codes/pace-code-intro/. 6For example, C. Harold Barry and Fred Tye, Running a School (London: Temple Smith, 1972). 7For example, R.S. Peters, 'Introduction: The Contemporary Problem', in The Role of the Head, ed. R.S. Peters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. 1–8. 8For example, Michele A. Bowring, 'Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the Masculine–Feminine Dualism of Leadership', Gender, Work and Organization 11, no. 4 (2004): 381–405; Sharon D. Kruse and Sandra Spickard Prettyman, 'Women, Leadership and Power Revisiting the Wicked Witch of the West', Gender and Education 20, no. 5 (2008): 451–64. 9Helen M. Gunter, Rethinking Education: The Consequences of Jurassic Management (London: Cassell, 1997); Helen M. Gunter and Patricia Thomson, 'The Makeover: A New Logic in Leadership Development in England?', Educational Review 61, no. 4 (2009): 469–83; Patricia Thomson, School Leadership, Heads on the Block? (London: Routledge, 2009). 10Cyril Poster, School Decision‐making (London: Heinemann, 1976), 147–8. 15Gerald Grace, School Leadership: Beyond Educational Management (London: The Falmer Press, 1995), 35. 11The 1944 Education Act set up a tripartite structure of secondary schools: grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. Chitty identifies that what emerged was six grades or levels of schools 'serving different classes or groups within society'. The six are: (1) public schools or independent/fee paying; (2) direct grant grammar schools which offered free places to children in return for a central grant; (3) grammar schools based on the 11+ examination; (4) technical or trade schools; (5) secondary modern schools for those who did not pass the 11+ or secure a place at grammar school; (6) elementary schools which were abolished in 1944 but which took 20 years to disappear. Clyde Chitty, Education Policy in Britain (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 20–1. The debate about the structure of schooling focused mainly on the state system and the binary division between grammar and secondary modern schools based on the 11+ examination as a means of sorting children. 12E.L. Edmonds, The First Headship (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), 2. 13Poster, School Decision‐making, 148. 14Elizabeth Richardson, The Teacher, the School and the Task of Management (London: Heinemann, 1973). 18Roger Dale, The State and Education Policy (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1989), 131. 16Maurice Kogan, Educational Policy‐making: A Study of Interest Groups and Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975). 17Ibid., 38. 19Chitty, Education Policy in Britain. 20Richardson, The Teacher, the School. 21C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson, eds., Fight for Education (London: The Critical Quarterly Society, 1968); C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson, eds., Black Paper Two (London: The Critical Quarterly Society, 1969). 22Cox and Dyson, Fight for Education, 1. 23Jim Callaghan, 'Towards a National Debate' (1976), http://education.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4277858-109002,00.html (accessed June 22, 2009). 24Valerie Hall, Hugh Mackay, and Colin Morgan, Headteachers at Work (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1986), 1. 25Carlo Raffo and Helen M. Gunter, 'Leading Schools to Promote Social Inclusion: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Analysing Research, Policy and Practice', Journal of Education Policy 23, no. 4 (2008): 363–80; Helen M. Gunter and Tanya Fitzgerald, 'The Future of Leadership Research', School Leadership and Management 28, no. 3 (2008): 263–80. 26Geoff Lyons, The Administrative Tasks of Head and Senior Teachers in Large Secondary Schools (Bristol: University of Bristol, 1974). 27Bryan Allen, ed., Headship in the 1970s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), 88–109. 28Meredydd Hughes, 'The Role of the Secondary School Head' (PhD thesis, University of Wales, 1972). 29For example, Edmonds, First Headship. 30For example, Barry and Tye, Running a School; Poster, School Decision‐making. 31See Edmonds, First Headship, ix. 32Ibid., vii–viii. 33Barry and Tye, Running a School, 1. 34Hughes, Secondary School Head. 35Meredydd Hughes, ed., Administering Education: International Challenge (London: The Athlone Press, 1975); Meredydd Hughes, 'The Professional‐as‐administrator: The Case of the Secondary School Head', in The Role of the Head, ed. R.S.Peters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 50–62; Meredydd Hughes, 'Leadership in Professionally Staffed Organisations', in Managing Education, the System and the Institution, ed. M. Hughes, P. Ribbins, and H. Thomas (London: Cassell, 1985), 262–90. 36See Barry and Tye, Running a School. 37Edward Boyle, 'Preface', in Headship in the 1970s, ed. Bryan Allen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), vii–xii. 38John Watts, 'Sharing it Out: The Role of the Head in Participatory Government', in The Role of the Head, ed. R.S. Peters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 127–36. 39Peters, Role of the Head. 46Ibid., 36. 40G. Bernbaum, 'The Role of the Head', in The Role of the Head, ed. R.S. Peters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 9–36. 41Poster, School Decision‐making; Edmonds, First Headship. 42Ronald King, 'The Head Teacher and His Authority', in Headship in the 1970s, ed. Bryan Allen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1968), 105. 43George Baron, 'An Overview', in Headship in the 1970s, ed. Bryan Allen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), 5. 44Poster, School Decision‐making, 6. 45Richardson, The Teacher, the School, 36. 47For example, Meredydd Hughes, ed., Secondary School Administration (Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1970); William Taylor, 'The Head as Manager: Some Criticisms', in The Role of the Head, ed. R.S. Peters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 37–49. 48Barry and Tye, Running a School. 49William Taylor, 'Training the Head', in Headship in the 1970s, ed. Bryan Allen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), 150–2. 50Helen M. Gunter, 'An Intellectual History of the Field of Education Management from 1960' (PhD thesis, Keele University, 1999). 51Hughes, Secondary School Administration. 52Barry and Tye, Running a School. 53William Taylor, Heading for Change (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). 54Barry and Tye, Running a School, includes a bibliography on the sociology of education. 55George Baron and William Taylor, eds., Educational Administration and the Social Sciences (London: The Athlone Press, 1969). 56Poster, School Decision‐making, vii. 57Ibid., see Foreword by Michael Marland. 58Barry and Tye, Running a School. 59Taylor, 'Head as Manager'. 60H.A. Colgate, 'The Role of the Secondary Head', in The Role of the Head, ed. R.S. Peters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 125. 61These are of course contested notions today, but we refer here to dominant policy discourses at the time. 62Ken Leithwood, Christopher Day, Pam Sammons, Alma Harris, and David Hopkins, Seven Strong Claims about Successful Leadership (Nottingham: NCSL, 2006). 63Barry and Tye, Running a School. 64Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). 65Helen M. Gunter and Gillian Forrester, 'Institutionalised Governance: The Case of the National College for School Leadership', International Journal of Public Administration 32, no. 5 (2009), 349–69. 66Gunter and Thomson, 'Makeover'. 67Bourdieu, In Other Words. 70Ibid. 68See Gillian Forrester and Helen M. Gunter, 'School Leaders: Meeting the Challenge of Change', in Radical Reforms: Public Policy and a Decade of Educational Reform, ed. Christopher Chapman and Helen M. Gunter (London: Routledge, 2009), 67–79; Helen M. Gunter and Gillian Forrester, 'Education Reform and School Leadership', in The Public Sector Leadership Challenge, ed. Stephen Brookes and Keith Grint (London: Palgrave, 2009). 69Bourdieu, In Other Words. 71Peter Clark, Back from the Brink (London: Metro Books, 1998); Phil McNulty, Extreme Headship (Victoria, Canada: Trafford Publishing, 2005); Marie Stubbs, Ahead of the Class (London: John Murray 2003). 72David Winkley, Handsworth Revolution, The Odyssey of a School (London: Giles de la Mare Publishers, 2002). 73For an account of how New Labour sorted people as in and outside the tent, see Peter Hyman, 1 Out of 10: From Downing Street Vision to Classroom Reality (London: Vintage, 2005). 74Taylor, 'Head as Manager'. 75Helen M. Gunter and Gillian Forrester, 'New Labour and School Leadership 1997–2007', British Journal of Educational Studies 55, no. 2 (2008): 144–62. 77Hunt, Modern Policing, 1973 Edition, 7. 76Gene Hunt, The Rules of Modern Policing, 1973 Edition (London: Bantam Press, 2007); Gene Hunt, The Future of Modern Policing, 1981 Edition (London: Bantam Press, 2008). 78Wikipedia, 'Sam Tyler', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Tyler (accessed February 25, 2009). 79Glenda Cooper, 'Why Women Love DCI Hunt', 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3632103/Why-women-love-DCI-Hunt.html (accessed February 25, 2009). 82Cooper, 'Why Women Love DCI Hunt'. 80Olwen Namara, Andrew Fryer, Helen M. Gunter, and John Howson, Gender in Leadership. Report to the NASUWT (Birmingham: NASUWT, 2010). 81Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death at a bus stop in Eltham, South London in 1993. Enquiries have revealed problems with the policy enquiry. For more detail see http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/feb/23/lawrence.ukcrime9. 84Ibid., 48. 83Thomson, School Leadership, 47

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