Gloria Agyemang
CPSO Seminar Presentation
RHUL 19 October 2005

Education Reform Act 1988
• Local Management of Schools
(LMS)
• Budgets devolved to schools
• Changed roles for Local
Education Authorities
• Loss of financial and management control
• LEAs left in a quandary
• Was there a role for them?

• Ongoing NPM…modernisation
• School Standards and Framework
Act 1998
• Fair Funding replaces LMS
• Further devolution to schools
• Choice in where schools purchased services
• Partnerships and Collaboration
• More DfES regulations on management, funding and pedagogy

• LEAs allowed to retain funds for 5 named functions
• Strategic management, School Improvement, Access,
Special Education Needs and Non School Activity
• Raise education standards …or else
• Code of Practice: LEA/School Relations 1999
• LEAs contingent status
• On school performance
• But schools are self-managing
• Lifeline but tightly controlled by the DfES

• Theoretical framework
• Broadbent, Laughlin and Read (1991)
Organisational Development of
Habermas’s Theory of Steering Media
• 2 case studies
• Data gathered through semistructured interviewing, documentary analysis and observation at meetings
• Qualitative analysis using theoretical framework as a language

Theory of Steering Media (Habermas 1987)
• Lifeworld
• Repository of societal norms and values
• Systems
• Functional arenas of activity
• Steering media
• Guiding, directing and controlling organisational systems towards “lifeworld” concerns
• Communication…ideal situation
• Money, Law and Power replace communication as steering media
• Possibility of colonisation of the lifeworld
• Broadbent, Laughlin and Read (1991)
• Steering media can take organisational form
• Interpretive schemes
• Organisational design archetypes are developed to facilitate steering

• Two levels of steering in education field
• Societal Steering
• Department for Education and Skills
• Main Societal Steering Medium
• Use of legislation and funding to direct management processes of educational organisations
• The school standards and framework act 1998 and
LEAs
• Organisational Steering
• How two education authorities respond to the
DfES
• How the two authorities attempt to steer schools
• LEAs intermediary level of steering

Figure 5.1 The education sector analysed using the BLR (1991) framework
DfES as a Societal Steering
Medium
Use of law, money and changing power relationships
LEAs are
Organisational Steering
Media
How do LEAs respond to
DfES?
How do LEAs steer schools?
Schools are Organisational Systems

Regulative steering
• Embedded in the life-world or interpretive schemes
• Comprehensible
• Freedom guaranteeing
• Capable of substantive justification
• Regulates the preexisting behaviour
Constitutive steering
• Freedom reducing
• Less comprehensive
• Guided by administrative control
• Legitimised through procedure
• Constitutes new forms of behaviour

• “LEAs no longer control schools but they have a key role in challenging and supporting them…”
DfES 2001 White Paper
“ Schools’ Building on Success”
• What does this mean?
• How do two LEA case studies interpret their roles and undertake their management processes?

Langham
• Long history of education management
• Labour controlled borough
• Sizeable…many schools
• Socially, ethnically, and economically diverse area
• Reasonable
OFSTED Inspection
• Financial constraints
Borrowdale
• Post ERA 1988
LEA
• Labour controlled borough
• Small… not many schools
• Socially, ethnically, and economically diverse area
• Very good OFSTED
Inspection
• Very strong mission statement

• Non hierarchical relationship emphasised by the DfES
• Inter-organisational relationships
• School autonomy
• Interdependence between LEA and schools
“ It does not control schools, but is held accountable by government for the standards of those schools which is a curious arrangement” ( an officer at
Langham)

• We cannot tell schools “you must”
(Langham officer)
• The thing we are absolutely clear about is that we don’t control schools. We do not have the power”
(Borrowdale officer)
• Similar views about control
• Control as hard ,domineering and authoritative

• “Our work with schools these days depend crucially on influence which in turn rests on credibility, diplomacy, cunning at times, political judgement and professional expertise” (Langham officer)
• “ We have influence and influence rests on credibility”( Borrowdale officer)

Langham
• Symbiotic
• Non-paternalistic
• Them (DfES) and us
• Schools take the lead
• Build partnerships
• Close liaison
Borrowdale
• Family metaphors
• One entity
• Symbiotic relationships
• Spooning
• Scaffolding
• Piggybacking
• Packaging

• Communication
• Consultations
• Financial Expertise (Langham)
• Educational Expertise (Borrowdale)
• Consensus building
• “ Working with schools”
• “ We explain the pros and the cons and help schools to get there”
• Partnerships and working groups
• LEA officers directing and leading

• Informal Control
• Unobtrusive control (Reed 1996)
• Persuasion (Parker 1986)
• Social Control (Hopwood 1974)
• Political Control (Hofstede 1981)
• LEAs need the schools to purchase their services
• LEAs must demonstrate performance accountability to the DfES
• Control based on shared values
• Interpretive schemes
• Regulative steering

• Societal steering impacts on organisational steering
• Law, Funding and Power are steering media at the societal level
• Legislation has stunted formal control processes for the
LEAs
• Communication is an important steering mechanism at the org level
• All that is left to LEAs
• LEA intermediary position
• Accountability to DfES
• Accountability to schools
• Legitimation
• Survival
• Positional power