Mason Durie: School leaders of tomorrow will need more than charisma

Mason Durie

In 20 years' time, if not earlier, New Zealand is likely to face a leadership crisis in secondary schools. One third of teachers are aged over 50, and almost 10 per cent of teachers left the profession between 2003 and 2005.

If we don't radically rethink the way we look at the leadership of secondary schools, our education system will struggle to keep up with the rest of the world.

At present, leadership is strongly linked to age. Teachers are expected to do their time in the classroom, and wait for promotion.

But there's no reason why a good chemistry teacher, for example, necessarily makes a good principal. In fact, a bad chemistry teacher may well be better at the job.

We shouldn't rob classrooms of the best teachers, or write off teachers who have management potential but aren't popular with students.

The solution may be to make management a specialist area for teachers. Leaders could be identified at an early age, taken out of the classroom to prevent them getting set in their ways - or inflicting boredom on learners - and started on a high-powered leadership programme.

A teacher might decide to train for a leadership role a year or two after completing training, rather than waiting for promotion 20 or more years down the track.

New Zealand's health sector has already been through this change. Up until the 1980s, most managers were doctors or nurses.

Now, the sector is led by professional managers able to handle a complex and dynamic environment. Some have a clinical background, but many, if not most, do not.

The change has been controversial, but the new generation of management leaders have a broader range of skills than the old-style clinicians.

Some teachers may believe it's important for principals to have extensive classroom experience, but perhaps we should ask whether this is still relevant. In the future, school leaders will have to be able to establish connections internally, with other schools, and internationally.

They will have to look outward, not inward. In the face of global competition, schools will have to be much more skilled at negotiating their environment than they are now.

The tools of the trade for the next generation of school leaders will not necessarily be a high level of community support, or political acceptability, or popularity with students - although these qualities may be helpful.

Many schools are now run by charismatic leaders who may use hunches, intuition and their own individual vision to make decisions.

But charisma will not be the most important quality for tomorrow's leader: leadership is a learned process that involves being able to form strategies after analysing whatever evidence is available.

Traditionally, schools and the wider education system struggle to look three to five years into the future. Most of us have no idea what schooling might be like for the children of students who are now in year seven or eight.

One response to this uncertainty is to provide a smorgasbord of educational options. Another is to work hard to maintain the status quo. But, given the scale of the changes expected, we need a more deliberate approach to exploring the future and a more forward-looking type of leadership.

Perhaps the answer is an academy of educational leadership. England has a National College for School Leadership, and a similar national institute has been proposed for Australia.

If we don't consider setting up a centre of our own, the result may be secondary schools that flounder because they have no strategic direction nor any sense of futuristic leadership.

Schools may change beyond recognition in the next 20 years. Students will be able to learn anywhere and at any time.

E-learning could be much more common: schools as we know them may become obsolete and learners may enrol in a number of learning centres at the same time.

New Zealand has many successful students, but it also has a large percentage of students who do not do well. Instead of exploring other styles of learning that may suit them better, we've assumed everyone should be able to benefit to the same degree under a similar system.

Perhaps those students would learn more in an informal situation, out of the classroom. The best way to reach students who care more about sport than studying, for example, may be to build the curriculum around their sporting activities.

To encourage people to take a more long-term view of education, Secondary Futures has drawn up four scenarios, based on OECD work, for schooling in the future.

In the first scenario, schools are social centres that not only have a complex curriculum but provide health services, recreational opportunities, counselling, careers advice and community information.

In the second scenario, schools concentrate on delivering a narrow curriculum with an emphasis on academic excellence benchmarked to international standards.

In the third scenario, schools are part of a networked society. They may be based at a shopping centre, marae, alongside an industry, within sporting academies or in art galleries and museums.

Students have a learning adviser who brokers the best courses for them: they may go to one school for maths, another for English, another for rugby, and do the rest of their learning at home in front of the computer.

The fourth scenario is about individual choice, with students planning their own programmes and gaining international qualifications on the internet.

This model would help New Zealand cope with a national shortage of teachers.

Many New Zealand schools already have elements of each of these four models.

Community colleges would say the first model sums up their core business, while grammar schools largely emphasise the second model. Many school leaders are actively exploring the different models, and deciding which elements of each best suit the areas they serve.

Whether we like it or not, schools of the future will be part of a global community. Already, league tables increasingly compare Auckland schools with schools in London or Tokyo rather than in other parts of New Zealand.

The shrinking globe will result in growing numbers of students who aim to study overseas, either because their families work offshore or because they see themselves competing internationally for jobs and academic, sporting, artistic or musical opportunities.

Parents will ask why they should send their son or daughter to a local high school when there is a school in the United States that achieves better results in their child's chosen subjects.

We could well send our children overseas to study in the same way that Samoans, Koreans and Japanese now send their children to study in New Zealand.

We'll expect students to be able to transfer to overseas schools with minimal disruption and maximum cross-credits, and we'll expect schools to have made the process easier by forming global networks.

International enrolments are already the norm for many New Zealand schools, and are predicted to escalate.

But while we've accepted Asian students for economic reasons, we may have to ask ourselves whether we have an ethical responsibility to ensure the qualifications they gain are relevant when they return home.

Schools will be under more pressure to meet other countries' educational benchmarks and equip them to be ready to take up higher study or work in their homelands.

Education is likely to become a valuable export earner for New Zealand.

The flow of teachers to overseas schools is seen as a negative development - part of the brain drain - but it doesn't have to be. New Zealand teachers have a great reputation around the world, and if leaders become similarly sought-after it would give people an incentive to start a career in educational leadership here.

As well as exporting teachers and educational leaders, we will export ideas.

There will be more opportunities to develop courses that are portable and can be sold overseas for use in foreign classrooms.

The Kiwi talent for innovation will help us meet some of these challenges, but No 8 eight wire can't be relied on to fix everything.

If we want New Zealand students to continue to hold their own internationally, we need to urgently look at giving our educational leaders the level of professional training they need to cope with a world that is changing at an unprecedented pace.

* Professor Mason Durie is Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Maori) of Massey University and chairman of the four Guardians who lead Secondary Futures, a project set up by the education sector and the Government to create a national discussion about what education might be like in 20 years' time.