SHOULD WE TALK MORE ABOUT MANAGEMENT?

Abstract

In January 2021 I published an article in the journal ‘Management in Education’ entitled ‘Whatever happened to educational management? The case for reinstatement’ (Craig, 2021) which challenged the dominant use of the word ‘leadership’ in education over the past 20 years at the expense of the word ‘management’, even when it was the latter issue that was being discussed. This article repeats much of what I said in my earlier article, but updates some or it, particularly the statistics on which it was based.In 2008, in the journal ‘Educational Management, Administration and Leadership’ (EMAL), one of the best known and most often referenced journals of its kind in the world, Professor Tony Bush (2008:272) commented that: ‘My review of papers in this journal in 1988 revealed only one mention of leadership, at the end of an overview paper by Tim Brighouse’.In the years that have followed, ‘leadership’ has become one of the most used terms to be found in school the literature, so much so that it is now difficult to find mentions of ‘management’ and ‘administration’ anywhere. In his article Bush suggested that this focus was given a particular boost by (the then) New Labour’s emphasis on schools having more responsibility for their own futures, a new focus on head teacher training, and in particular the establishment in 2000 of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL).