Alan Smithers: Don't expect too much from your head teacher

Published: 26 April 2007

The Policy Exchange think tank dropped something of a bombshell last week when it published research apparently showing that headteachers have no discernible effect on school performance. It had commissioned the highly respected Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at the University of Durham to quantify "the leadership effect" - and was taken aback to be told there does not appear to be one.

The researchers had had the bright idea of adapting the methods used to study whether football teams can avoid relegation by changing the manager. This was appropriate in more ways than one, as headteachers feel that they too have become vulnerable to league tables - though without the mega pay-offs. In fact, the football study itself had found that the manager made little difference.

Now, we know this cannot be right. We can all think of instances where a new manager has had a dramatic effect. Harry Redknapp rescued Portsmouth from relegation to challenge for a place in Europe; Roy Keane took Sunderland from the bottom to the top of the Championship, and Paul Ince made up a huge deficit at Macclesfield when they looked doomed to drop out of the Football League altogether.

On the other hand, West Ham, Charlton and Leeds are still on the brink in spite of having new men at the top. A new manager has to cope with what is embedded in the club and, even for someone with a good track record, that may be too difficult in the time available.

As in football, so in education. Given its intake, Thomas Telford School in Shropshire achieves extraordinary results, and the Mossbourne Academy in Hackney is rated by Ofsted as outstanding. But the introduction of a new super-head has not always worked, as has been well documented for, among others, the Brighton Arts and Media College, the Islington Arts and Media School and the Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough. Again, there can only be change where the circumstances are amenable to change.

Not being able to demonstrate an effect is not the same as there being no effect. In the football study, it looks as though particular successes are not enough to affect the overall picture. In education, too, it may be that the exceptional cases are just that - exceptional. But, however useful the football analogy is, it is important not to carry it too far.

Results are the be-all and end-all of football and if a team are not winning it is fair enough that the manager's job should be on the line. But education is - or should be - about much more than test and examination scores. I have been in excellent schools where the results are nothing to write home about, but where the quality of the head shines through in the behaviour of the pupils, the morale and expertise of the staff, parental involvement, and the smooth running generally.

Looking for the effect of the head in terms of exam results is to look in the wrong place. More than half of a school's performance is down to the ability and background of the pupils. Early research could not find any school effect at all.

Michael Rutter made quite a name for himself at the end of the Seventies when he declared triumphantly in his book, Fifteen Thousand Hours, that yes, schools do make a difference. But it turns out that only about one-tenth of the variability in pupil performance is attributable to the school overall and, of this, about a quarter at most can be linked to the head.

It is not surprising, then, that impressions should differ from the statistics, and in this case the perceptions of parents, teachers and pupils are probably nearer the truth. But the research is a healthy antidote to the unrealistic hopes of the Government and the exaggerated claims of the National College for School Leadership as to what heads can do. A head has to work within the constraints of the particular circumstances. Expecting too much is one of the reasons it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract people to the post.

The Durham research also shows that it is clearly unfair to judge headteachers on exam scores. Under Tony Blair, schools have been reduced almost to exam factories, and from this perspective it may appear reasonable to hold the head responsible for the results. But, apart from ploys such as soft subjects and buying tips from examiners, heads can have very little direct influence in this respect.

In other ways, the right person in the right circumstances can over time make a huge difference. The negative findings of the Durham study provide a more valuable insight into school headship than the looked-for result would have done.

The writer is Professor and director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham

education@ independent.co.uk