Wisdom in school leadership: Introducing the Framework for Ethical Leadership in Education

CAROLYN ROBERTS, CO-DIRECTOR, THE PTI, UK; SECRETARY, THE ETHICAL LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE, UK

Is decision-making particularly hard in schools? Is it possible to make academic, pastoral, financial, community, leadership or any other kind of decision without a deep consideration of associated values, virtues and potential consequences? How do teachers and leaders know what to do? Is experience or compliance enough?

Schools are where society looks after its young until they’re old enough to take on the mantle of adult citizenship. Every choice that a school leader makes, therefore, is doubly scrutinised – first, because of our public service duty to provide excellent learning for all, and second, because potentially every decision is made under the scrutiny of the sharp, interested, critical and malleable children whom we serve. School leaders, however, are at the mercy of competing demands from different directions.

A leader at the time of writing (July 2024) could be forgiven for conflating public service and scrutiny with obeying government and pleasing the regulator. Failure in either adds potential employment insecurity to the job’s considerable demands. These make leaders fearful, cautious and likely to seek to establish their credentials simply through the metrics of inspection and examination.

For example, a school leader with a Year 6 or 11 cohort who, despite best efforts, might neither meet nor exceed national averages is already under pressure. If that leader serves in a context where circumstance makes it harder to meet inspection norms, they may be forgiven for obsessing about and focusing solely upon prescribed requirements. Perhaps the same leader with a falling roll might be tempted to develop advertising materials subtly disadvantageous to neighbouring schools. Such compliance or chutzpah, however, is an ethical choice: what is right and good?

An odd language of ‘moral purpose’ has developed in such contexts. Where children and their communities are already under-resourced or disadvantaged, then measurable educational success for the child and the school is especially important for both futures. Therefore, focusing on a narrow definition of success and achieving it by any means necessary is presented by leaders as right and good. This, too, is an ethical choice.

In 2017, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) brought together a group of leading educationalists in the Ethical Leadership Commission (ELC) to help school and college leaders to consider the ethical foundation of their work. It reported in January 2019, with ‘Navigating the educational moral maze’ (ASCL, 2019). This introduced the Framework for Ethical Leadership in Education (FELE), designed to support school leaders’ decision-making. The Framework begins with an adaptation of the 1994 ‘principles of public life’ (Committee on Standards in Public Life, 1995) and adds seven virtues: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership (ASCL, 2019).

Schools and colleges serve children and young people and help them to grow into fulfilled and valued citizens. As role models for the young, how we behave as leaders is as important as what we do. Leaders should show leadership through the following personal characteristics or virtues identified by the ASCL (2019): trust, wisdom, kindness, justice, service, courage and optimism.

The Commissioners had three immediate and practical aims:

1. To change the nature of education discourse by devising, publicising and using the FELE’s language for decision-making rather than the language of outcomes. We hoped that consequently school leaders might be enabled to think about the deeper motivations of their decisions, and the right, wrong, good and bad effects of their choices, rather than feeling bound to expedience. We wanted the values and virtues to be known and used both by school leaders and in discussions about the direction and future of education. 
2. To promote the FELE’s inclusionAn approach where a school aims to ensure that all children are educated together, with support for those who require it to access the full curriculum and contribute to and participate in all aspects of school life in the redevelopment of national education training materials, from early career teacher (ECT) to National Professional Qualification for Executive Leadership (NPQEL), so that teachers and leaders at all levels of decision-making were equally familiar with a common language of values and virtues. This way, they might be more likely to identify ethical issues and dilemmas and discuss them together. 
3. To establish a safe Ethics Forum where leaders could consider leadership dilemmas together, seek to resolve them collaboratively and develop case studies to act as guidance for others.

Between 2019 and 2021, the FELE was disseminated by Commissioners’ many speaking engagements. It was spread and shared most significantly by the National Governance Association’s Pathfinder Project (NGA, 2023), which reached over 300 boards of governors and trustees. These voluntary groups undertook their own ethical audit and a series of planned exercises to consider their decision-making using the FELE. Their evaluation discovered that the Framework: 

• is adaptable to a school or trust’s context without creating extra work 

• establishes a common language to direct governance 

• shapes culture and gives leaders confidence 

• helps recruitment 

• influences curriculum decisions 

• develops robust conversation and common understanding 

• supports consistency in MATs (multi-academy trusts) 

• is also useful in developing shared language with pupils, parents and staff.

Other success was harder to find. Several Commissioners served on the reference group for headteachers’ and other standards, but the Framework was not included in the final document. The Ethics Forum was difficult to establish and COVID disrupted progress.

Nonetheless, the FELE and Pathfinder Project were cited as examples of good practice in the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s annual report ‘Leading in practice’ in January 2023. Later that year, the Chartered College of Teaching called together a high-level successor body. This is the Ethical Leadership Alliance, which includes teacher unions as well as leadership organisations. 

The Alliance is reviewing the FELE after five years and will seek to: 

1. promote its language across education
2. embed the FELE in teacher training, including the ECT to NPQEL journey
3. suggest revision to the teachers’ standards to support precise ethical thought
4. enable teachers and leaders to share ethical dilemmas 
5. advocate the five challenges of the ‘Leading in practice’ report (CSPL, 2023), which are: 

• • to communicate values and lead by example
  • to encourage a ‘speak up’ culture 
  • to embed ethical principles in training, discussion and decision-making 
  • to embed ethical principles in governance 
  • to embed ethical principles in recruitment and performance management.

Has the landscape changed since 2019? Will the Framework still be useful? At the time of writing, school leaders live among two crises. The first is a deepening crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, and budgets tight to strangulation point. For example, the Department for Education’s curriculum-based financial planning tool gives a clear picture of the narrowing parameters within which decisions are expected to be made. If a school struggles to find teachers and balance its budget, the first and simplest remedy offered is to rebuild curriculum and staffing from first principles. So, the diligent secondary school leader may decide to meet government budgetary imperatives by offering only a basic curriculum of simple classroom-based subjects, which also don’t need much specialist kit or facilities. This is carried through from Key Stage 3 by necessarily and deliberately limiting student options at Key Stages 4 and 5. The result? A basic education in accordance with nationally prescribed norms, offered within budget. If recruitment and retention continue to be problematic, online ready-made government-approved curriculum materials can be used where specialist teachers are scarce and finances require reduced planning and preparation time. The budget may balance, but some serious ethical choices have also been made.

The second is the range of post-COVID-19 problems, which include behaviour and attendance. Both are evidence of a disrupted social contract, which may take time to reset. Schools struggling with disaffected children and families can choose to invest heavily in support and therapeutic services, or they can choose to take a path closer to zero tolerance. This might mean that difficult children leave their schools. Similarly, while attendance may be improved by diverting sparse funding to support services, it is more economical – and was more in line with Department for EducationThe ministerial department responsible for children’s services and education in England suggestions – to choose to use legal processes. Which is the right choice?

Help is at hand. A school leader who turns to the FELE will not find an easy answer, but they will find a way of thinking. Honesty requires them to explain their actions; openness expects them to collaborate with staff in choosing pathways and priorities. Their selflessness puts the needs of the children first, and accountability – whose metrics are never far from a head’s thoughts – forces them to articulate their reasoning. But trust makes selflessness bite a little harder: are decisions really made for the children and the school or for their own career prospects? Do justice and service give room for argument against a narrow curriculum or an inflexible behaviour policy that might not meet the needs of all the children? When wisdom requires them to think about the purpose of schooling, will courage stiffen their resolve to look coolly and rationally on the swirling zeitgeist and put the children first?

Help is at hand again, using the Framework to address those local and immediate issues, so tiresomely time-consuming to a leader. Parents are less likely to be litigious if they trust the school to be honest as well as kind and believe its leaders to act with integrity. Even a uniform change is less likely to be controversial if leaders have been open about its reasons. A tightened detention policy will be less likely to attract defiance if its objectivity and justice are explained, and even more likely to succeed if families have had the chance to comment during consultation.

As the Ethical Leadership Alliance pursues its aims, we want all professionals to join us. If you’re new to this area of professional thought, read Roberts (2019) for more detail on the Ethical Leadership Commission. The long-term work of Shapiro and Stefkovich (2022) in the USA, using case studies and tricky educational paradoxes, is absorbing. Viviane Robinson (2023) likewise includes recorded decision-making and coaching conversations. Indeed, she observes that where decision-making is decentralised and delegated to so many thousands of school leaders, ‘the professional better be virtuous’ (p. 80).

Contact the ELA through the Chartered College and join our work. There is much to be done, as we make choices for the good of all our children.