Down to business

By VIKKI BLAND

It's known as the Peter Principle - the idea that employees keep being promoted until they're in a job they're barely adequate at, and there they stay.

All too often, that's because those who are highly skilled in their trade or profession are promoted to management, in which they have no experience, little skill and too few opportunities to gain them.

Not in education - not anymore. Teachers promoted out of the classroom and into the managerial role of principal now get specific training for the job.

Ninety-eight per cent of them give up 12 days of holiday leave and enrol in the First Time Principals Programme, a course designed to ease the transition between teaching and leading.

Run by the University of Auckland and funded by the Ministry of Education, the programme involves four three-day courses, provides mentors for each new principal and monitors them at their schools for one year.

Carolyn Marino, principal of Auckland's Westmere Primary School, can testify to the difficulties facing new principals.

"In my first year I would have found it hard to say to anyone that I was enjoying the job. Some days were euphoric while others were a mass of red tape and frustration.

"People who don't get satisfaction from the potential to change young people's lives would never stand for being a principal. It's a really hard job."

Rightly or wrongly, schools are increasingly required to provide life skills and values-based education and may spend a lot of time dealing with their pupils' social problems, Marino says.

"I've had to deal with children coming to school who have been beaten up and children who haven't had breakfast. Some children need to have significant amounts of time spent with them before they feel ready to start an academic day."

A self-confessed perfectionist, she enrolled in the programme because she wanted to keep learning and needed to maintain her confidence.

"I was confident in my abilities, but daunted by entering a new school with staff that didn't know me. The previous principal had been there 16 years and I needed to learn the school culture, build relationships, gain the respect of the staff; learn about property management.

"I knew I would lose focus on educational leadership if I didn't have help."

And while the course was rigorous, the networking, practical workshops and ongoing mentoring were invaluable, she says.

"My head was bursting with the ideas and information I'd amassed. One morning I sat down at 2am to work out exactly how I was going to apply it to our school."

Programme project director David Eddy says course is tailored to challenge principals and move them beyond comfort zones.

"We challenge their notions of leadership and get them to think through an educative vision so they are not consumed by compliance and management issues. Educational leadership must always be the first priority."

Launched in 2002, the First Time Principals Programme caters for those in primary, secondary, Kuru (Maori language immersion) state and independently funded schools. It has five fulltime staff, while retired and working principals are employed part time as mentors.

Eddy says the university has conducted a significant amount of research into how well the programme is being received and what impact it has had among principals and their practices. Other countries, including the United States, Australia, Ireland and Britain, are showing interest in what it is achieving.

The programme's main goal is to produce principals who are confident in all aspects of the job, he says.

"Research reveals there is a strong relationship between the quality of a principal's leadership and the teaching quality of a school."

The inevitable conclusion is that the programme will eventually raise the level of educational achievement among young people.

Such expectations place considerable pressure on principals like John Heyes.

Enthusiastic and expressive, Heyes is the principal of South Auckland's Mangere College. The decile one school has 800 students, 90 per cent of whom are Maori or Polynesian. The Ministry of Education defines decile one schools as belonging to "the 10 per cent of schools with the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities".

Heyes has never run a business, but sees several parallels with running a large school.

In addition to staff training and management schemes, Mangere College is heavily involved with the community; has sponsorship and marketing initiatives has to answer to the ministry as its "parent company"; must manage assets; has a "corporate membership" to the Aimhi group (a co-operative of schools with similar proportions of Maori and Polynesian students); and, just like The Warehouse, offers a money-back guarantee.

Pupils who do not achieve a certain level by their final year at Mangere College have all their school fees refunded. It's slightly unorthodox, but meant to be a sign of how seriously the college takes its commitments.

Like a new chief executive, Heyes says the most common feeling for first time principals is one of being overwhelmed.

"The day-to-day organisation of a school can submerge you. The course allowed me to keep some perspective and focus on keeping teaching and learning the priority.

"I gained finance and property management skills and used work prepared for mentoring in reports delivered back to the Mangere College board of trustees."

Ongoing support, coaching and training for principals and teachers should not be undervalued or measured unfairly, says Heyes.

"Last year, the ministry cut funding for our staff coaching scheme so we now fund it internally. It costs $25,000 a year so we had to say well, do we buy half a teacher, redecorate a classroom that looks like it comes from outer Bangladesh or do we keep the coaching? That we kept the coaching shows how important we consider it to be."

Heyes says it's frustrating if people focus on final year achievements when any strategy or course is implemented for the good of education or the educators.

"To measure how well a school has educated a child, you have to look at the personal and educative level the child was at when they entered the school, and the personal and educative level they were at when they left it.

"We have a very transient population in South Auckland, so it's the only accurate way to assess how well our programmes and strategies are working."

Marino muses over how being in business must be easier than being a school principal.

"Both businesses and educators are focused on a quality end product, and are both picking up all the skills and training they can to deliver that quality product. But while a business can say we need to improve the colour of this or the cost effectiveness of that, the concept of a quality education is more elusive.

"It's the job of principals everywhere to decide what quality education looks like and how their school will deliver it."

If going back to school helps principals to achieve that goal, the First Time Principals programme can expect a few shiny red apples from its students.