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Prologue Schools and school-organisations have for the past years been subject to many reforms and innovative activities. Yet it seems that fundamental and systemic change in this field is difficult to provide - making things happen takes time we are told; but how long time can we afford to wait ? Many ways in which schools and teachers used to work are obsolete and since education has turned into a high policy area it has become necessary to speed up the reform process and enhance innovation. The organisation has been put under a significant pressure in the media and a quest for a new type of leadership and new ways of interaction between the administrative and the political core are put on the agenda. In our country this process has been rapid and dramatic because the entire paradigm of school-development in Denmark is put into question. Can sufficient school-development take place as "down-up" processes ? We have
begun to doubt about that. The programme "Folkeskolen year 2000" is meant to be an alternative. It was indeed inspired by the thinking of "a learning organisation". To realise "Folkeskolen year 2000" without practice similar to the disciplines described in Peter M. Senge’s book "The 5th Discipline" is hard to imagine. And if the programme is to become the success that we need so desperately - the 5 disciplines in the learning organisation and the 8 chapters in the programme must turn into more than words. We have indeed a lot of hard work ahead of us. Recent school-reforms in Denmark. We tried in our country to change schools by reforms that gradually was supposed to give substance to the name of our school-system. "Folkeskolen" means "the people’s school". As a headline these reforms could be described by "target and framework control" and decentralisation. The local administration act 2 was changed by a set of new regulations so that decision-making was turned over from the central government to the 275 municipalities in order to bring forward a decentralisation in the school-system and enhance parents’ influence in the school-management. The agreement on teachers’ pay and duties 3 was changed. One of the ambitions was, that we wanted to provide a dynamic use of the teachers’ man power, so that it was possible to make changes in the traditional time-schedule that teachers as well as head-teachers believed to be an obstacle to real change. Then the school-act 4 was changed in order to bring teaching in our schools up to date by reforming the content and of reaching and learning. "The folkeskole shall - in co-operation with the parent - further the pupils’ acquisition of knowledge, skills, workings methods and ways of expressing themselves, and thus contribute to the all-round personal development of the individual pupil." The quoted is an important statement in the act. Emphasis is on the individual pupil - which means that the school must provide challenges and opportunities for all - and the expression "in co-operation with the parents" is expected to be taken serious and put into practise - as well in the new school-boards and in the everyday-life in the class-room. The reforms are based upon our basic cultural values that might be characterised by high degree of equality and a principle of subsidiarity - decisions should wherever possible be taken by those who will have to live with the decisions which means at the lowest possible level. But the results have been disappointing. In the summer of 1997 schools and teachers’ reputation were at the lowest. In the central administration we were deeply concerned and made steps to analyse the situation and do something about it. We realised, that "target and framework control" had turned out to being only "framework control" in terms of budget- and resource-control, while the authorities seemed to care little about the outcome of the activities in the schools. Decentralising became a mantra in the 80es, but decentralising also meant that many schools were left on their own - and it seemed as if nobody reallly felt responsible for the schools - the state level, the municipalities, the teachers’ union pointed at one another blaming the other for the bad situation in the schools. Control and regulation from the central administration almost disappeared during the early ´90es, but the co-operation and support from the state level disappeared as well. Links between the state level, local government and the individual school became weaker. The system seemed to undergo a process of atomisation. In many aspects we in the beginning considered this to be a positive and productive evolution that would strengthen the school as a local cultural centre, and we were not aware of what we lost in the process. It was obvious that the decentralisation had led to a high degree of diversity in terms of different ways to organise the administration and management of schools and give schools different priorities in the budgets. This was anticipated, and it was considered that if diversity was kept within limits it could be accepted. But it was a frightening surprise that the pedagogical innovation slowed down, and the debate on pedagogical issues seemed to dry out in the staff-rooms. Conformity and traditionalism seemed to dominate the pedagogic thinking and teaching in the schools in most regions of the country. Maintenance and reconstruction of school-buildings seemed to hold a very low priority in the municipalities, and this too came to us as an unpleasant new experience. Pedagogical innovation was needed and ahead of the making of the school-act in 1993 went a large scale development program financed by the state by 400 mill. kr in the period 1987 - 1991. Reports and statements from this program were the main contribution to the pedagogical intentions and aspirations in the act. It was the finest hour of the down up strategy. Everybody was happy when new act was made public, the act contained all the right words. But only few schools took part in the development of a school for the 21st century, which in fact was the main objective of the new act. Turning the right words into right action in the class-room was harder than anticipated. A survey made in the winter of 1997 disclosed, that 80 % of the time in the class-room was classic teaching - the teacher speaking and the pupils listening. This confirmed the impression we had that the intentions and aspirations in our school-act from 1993 were not turned into reality in the class-room. School-leaders’ planning of the school-year and the use of teachers’ man-power obviously did not benefit from the new possibilities in the agreements on teachers’ pay and duties. In stead of a dynamic use of the new possibilities in the new agreement - it seemed as if many school-leaders "translated" the new agreement to a traditional planning and management of staff - often by the use of complex and time-consuming administrative systems. In many case it was left over to the individual head-teacher to invent a system that made it possible to manage staff under the new conditions - and many felt that life had become significantly more complex and troublesome. Victim of the orientation towards tradition and conformity was the most wanted and needed pedagogic innovation and implement of the intentions and aspirations in the new act. In fact the basic Danish paradigm on school-development was put into question - not to say - our idea on how to develop schools was facing a crisis. For long we believed, that development of schools must be down-up development. That the teachers and the school-leaders, who are those to make the good intentions into reality, should be those pointed out the right direction and those who set the right pace in the process. But now it became clear, that a consequent use of down-up strategy gave some teachers and some schools the right not to develop and even the right to ignore the intentions and aspirations in the act. We found evidence that some schools were remarkably deaf when spoken to, and remarkably blind to the writing on the wall, when the media turned hostile to schools. And we even experienced that schools not fully understood their obligations according to the new act. In many aspects we believe, that in many ways the evolution of the Dnaish school-system is in the right path. However it is obvious that mistakes have been made and that the reorganisation of the menagement and adminsitration has given new roles for the three main agents in the system - roles thta they have not learned to play in a productive interaction so far. What we need is to put the system together again in a new order. We do´nt want to reestablish a centralised system, that already proved it’s malfunction but we need the diffrent levels in the system to recognise one another as a legitimate partner with specific functions on behalf of the future of our children and society. Making the system work across levels. There are three decision-making levels in the Danish school-system -
In the period we have experienced, that the local authorities were given more and more responsibility in school-matters. Every school has now - due to the changes in the local administration act - established a governing board with parents in majority. So far Denmark is the only country where parents are given the majority in the school-boards, and despite our difficulties we believe that we are on the right path. A general election for the board is held every 4th year. The school-board consists of 7 parents, 2 pupils and 2 teachers, the school-leader takes part in the meetings; but he/ she is not given the right to vote. The school-leader acts as secretary of the board. Giving the pupils the right to vote in the board caused a debate. Since the pupils due to their low age cannot be held responsible like adult members of the board i.e. for economic decisions made in the board. This was one but not the terminal reason why it was decided that the boards’ role were to establish aims, objectives and policy directions for the school, while managerial and administrative issues have been handed over to the head-teacher. The makers of the law were concerned about parents ability to take part in the specific administration of the school. Parents in Denmark are in most cases both working full time, and it was considered that it would be impossible for parents to offer the school-board activities a significant number of hours every week. So it was decided to grant the parents a significant influence in the school’s everyday life and further development without bothering them with the day to day management. The expression in the act is, that the board decide "principles" for the school. The school-leader is the only one to be held overall responsible for what is happening in the school. He is however obliged to bring a principle decided by the school-board into practice in his management of the school. However if a principle conflicts with the law, the municipal policy or decisions made at higher level it is his duty to inform the board on this conflict and ignore the principle in his management - if the board insists on its decision. Of course this has triggered another debate - what is a "principle", and under which circumstances is the school-leader entitled not to turn the general principle in to action in the everyday life of the school. Until now we have not had many disagreements between the school-board and the school leaders - mainly because Danes are discomforted by conflicts - and it is not common that any issue in the agenda of the school-board is decided by vote. It is far more common that cases are settled in consensus or by compromises. Voting are in many places considered to be an immature way to solve conflicts in a democratic environment. By the changes in the local administration act the school-leader was given more formal power. The teachers’ council was before the changes entitled to make decisions in some matters i.e. concerning the pupils and the division of labor between staff. Now the teachers’ council has got only advisory functions. But then again - the teachers are the ones to carry out all the decisions of the board and the management and make all good intentions into reality in the class-room. It would not be wise to ignore the thoughts of the teachers, but on the other hand experience show us that leadership totally dependent on the opinions in the staff lacks strategic power, and the organization is left drifting like a ship without a compass or a rudder. So in this aspect it is up to the school-leader to maintain a complex balance. He must respect the legislation and decisions made by the municipality, give room for the influence of the board, make sure that the teachers give respect to the decisions made and make sure that the school are led by a strategic coherent concept. This is not an easy task and it seems that the most successful are the experienced and patient leader, while newly employed leaders that want to demonstrate their potentials as soon as possible often face huge problems. Dansih schools are beyond any doubt no place for "gung-ho" leaders but on the other hand no place for laissez-faire people either. The school-board is given some, but not terminal influence in the employment of staff. School-boards cannot hire or fire teaching staff, but they are usually given a great deal of influence at the municipal level. They can interview prospective head-teachers, and their recommendations are usually followed. However many members of school-boards believes that this is not enough. Danish teachers hang on to their school and it is not unusual, that teachers are pensioned from the school they attended as graduates. In the period where birth decline in the 70es led to small number of new pupils in our schools the consequence was, that very little "new blood" entered the teaching staff in our schools. Teaching staff in Denmark are significantly less mobile than their colleagues even if they are compared within the Scandinavian countries. So far efforts made to stimulate mobility of teachers (and other segments of public staff) has been remarkably fruitless. Of course not all teachers are skilled and committed, and getting rid of bad teachers are by many parents considered to be the most serious problem that confronts school-management in Denmark to day. Being unable to do anything about this problem has caused some disappointment and frustration among members of school-boards, and that might be one of the reasons that the interest in the elections and the work of school-boards has declined. In the last election only 20 - 25 % of the parents voted, if an election was held at all. In a few regions it caused some trouble to find candidates at all. It is obvious that most Danish parents gives a higher priority to work concerning their own children and the classes they attend. Very little criticism is in fact expressed with the work that the class-counselors do with the parents. We have held a long tradition of co-operation and contact at class-level - especially when children are younger. This tradition seems to be continued in a fruitful way. In this period of intense legislative reform dramatic change in the administration of schools and municipal school-systems has occurred - with remarkably less public notice. Until this period it was a good custom, that the municipality would have a specific school-department in the local administration, and the head of school-department would have a teacher’s background and thus be recognized as a professional in his organization. Trends have been for the past few years, that - as a matter of fact it is a paradox - while the local responsibility was enhanced, the administration in the municipalities suffered significant cutbacks. Number of staff was cut and often the specific school administration was organized in larger departments together with i.e. kindergartens and other social tasks. It is no longer evident, that the head of the department, that organizes administration and management of schools, has a professional background as a teacher or headteacher. Everyday management of the schools have in some municipalities been decentralized to the extent, where each school is funded by "a bag of money" - the size of the "bag" depends on the number of pupils registered in the school. Without any interference - or apparent interest - from the local authorities it is left over to the headteacher, the school-board and the teachers at the individual school to decide how to run the school. This of course gives strong school-leaders the sweet sense of autonomy, but schools under pressure or loss of legitimacy suffer from being left alone, and it is obvious that many schools and many municipal systems are left without tools to solve internal conflicts. Today it is also clear that money saved by cutbacks in the municipality school administration now must be spend at the individual school - in many cases the administration costs have increased due to this. In this process we have recovered other problems. Problems that most likely have an older origin than the decentralization but now they have come to surface. Conflicts between teachers are in many schools left unsolved for years harming the needed co-operation in the organization and making team-teaching impossible in the schools suffering from this. Conflicts between teachers and parents has become more common and still harder to solve. In extreme examples we have experienced that individual teachers were left on their own in conflicts with parents. At a school in a small municipality south of Copenhagen a group of parents during the autumn of 1997 arrived at the school every morning in order to "supervise" an individual teacher’s work in the class-room. In a few weeks the teacher had a nervous breakdown and was forced to leave the job. It is obvious that this teacher was left on her own - where were the school-leader and the local authorities ? - and how could it be accepted to let this conflict take place in the class-room, in front of innocent children ?? I don’t know the substance of the conflict, and it is likely that the children and the teacher as well are better of with her out business, but the handling of the conflict was unethical and immature - a sign of weak leadership and an organization with lose structures. We are talking about an organization, where the individual members are doing their job on their own - private and separate - and the individual member might suffer from heavy problems without this affecting the of the other. This is the opposite of what we want schools to be. In this extreme example it is reviewed that the "private" teacher is out of time, and that teachers for their own sake must ask for leadership. The changing in the local administration act has also led to an increasing diversity in the school-world in Denmark. In some municipalities schools have a high priority on the local political agenda and many municipalities fund their schools generously in the budget. In other municipalities schools are main targets in budget cut-backs, and the politicians seem to care little about, what is happening in the everyday life of their schools. At the moment the most expensive schools - in the northern outskirts of Copenhagen hold budgets that double compared to the most inexpensive - in the western part of Jutland and the south-west part of the islands. (kroner/pupil). Building maintenance and modernization of the physical learning environment seems to be of very low priority all over the country, and we at the ministry consider this to be a serious problem and a threat to the pedagogical development and innovation. When giving speeches to local authorities we always emphasizes this aspect and it is a fact that we in this aspect of school-development is far behind other countries like Sweden and Finland - we are very discomforted by this. Apparently there are no links between budgets and the citizens satisfaction in school-matters - as matter of fact it seems, that the more money the municipality spends the more dissatisfied the citizens are with the local schools - but of course this is a complex matter - I will comment on this later. As mentioned the public interest in the work of the school-board has decreased - the number of people taking part in the work and the voters’ rate have gone down to meet a point beyond the acceptable. Seen from a democrats point of view it is very dissatisfiing when most boards are elected by asking who’s interested and it is hard to find enough candidates to fill the seats. School boards elected this winter can barely claim that they hold a mandate from the people - in many regions they represent themselves only - since no election was held at all so they hold a seat in board only because they volunteered. It also seems as if the changes at school-level is harmful to the school-leader’s position. Fewer teachers want to become head-teachers. Average number of applicants for a job as school-leader has declined and was in the spring 1998 as low as 2,7. In the middle of the 80es the average number of applicants were about 20. It is needed to add to this picture that in this period the pay of a school-leader has improved, and the number of lessons a head-teachers is obliged to teach has decreased in fact many head-teachers do not teach at all. At the same time the number of cases in which head-teachers get fired are increasing - mostly due to problems in the staff-management - hardly ever due to failures in the traditional management. We have also experienced that school-leaders so to speak throw the towel in the ring and voluntarily give up the position in order to become an ordinary teacher again. What can the ministry of ed. do to provide better leadership in the schools. In the fall 1997 my division in the ministry of education organized conferences throughout the country in which more than 700 school-leaders took part. The aim of these conferences was to get a precise picture of the everyday problems of the school-leader of to day. We organized the debate in a way so that the school-leaders were given an opportunity to give words to their everyday experience - to one another and to us.
The immediate result of the conference was a huge amount of data, which we have been analyzing during the winter and further action will be taken in the program "Folkeskolen year 2000" based on this analysis. It is obvious that many school-leaders spend too much of their precious time on administration that might as well be carried out by a skilled clerk. It also clear that the administration of the teachers’ duties and the division of labor among staff causes troubles, conflicts and time. Too little time is spend by the school-leader on strategic issues and aim-setting processes. School-leaders finds it hard to identify themselves as members of a political organization and their functions in the relation to the local authorities and the ministry of ed. suffers from this. School-leaders find it difficult to cope with the loss of legitimization. They are not used to and find it discomforting to describe and evaluate the activities in their school - especially if it has to be done in public. However most school-leaders agree that it is necessary for schools to be offensive in the public debate, and that the debate at the moment is based on myths and specific extreme examples and not on facts - facts only they can provide. They need the tools and the time to run aim-setting processes and evaluation. Our conclusions are that school-leaders need to be educated in at least three perspectives;
At the moment all you need to become a school-leader in Denmark is a teacher’s background and a certificate of good conduct. Many teachers become heads because they are good teachers not necessarily good leaders, and due to the culture in the present schools it is very hard for them to prepare themselves for the job and basically get an idea of what the job actually requires from you. So we will take steps to organize a specific school-oriented pre-leader education and we will recommend, that it is made an obligation for school-leaders to be, that they are properly educated before attending the job. If we succeed in establishing a pre-leader education this might cause significant change in the organization’s culture and even provide change for the leaders already in service. If you as a regiment leader have a well educated lieutenant in your regiment you need to be a good captain yourself. Many school-leaders have bad habits and spend their time doing the wrong things and doing them in a wrong way. We believe that the reason why so much time is spend on basic administration is that many school-leaders simply are bad administrators. It is necessary for the school-leaders to leave the simple book-keeping to somebody else, and it is necessary for them to build in delegation and to position themselves as overall responsible in a delegated system. They need to know the basic principles of administration and bookkeeping, and be able to supervise the staff - but they should not carry out the work themselves. At the moment many school-leaders do not know how to administrate, they improvise and spend tremendous amounts of time and energy in doing this job and correct their failures before a controller or the revision detects their mistakes. School-leaders need to be trained in strategic leadership, and the organization needs to change. Danish schools are usually extremely "flat" organizations - with a head and a deputy in top and then the rest of the staff at an average number of 40. I have for years criticized this arrangement. First of all the so-called "leader team" - headteacher and deputy. Many school-leaders and teachers believe this to be the best and most efficient arrangement of school-leadership; but I don’t believe them. The system simply does’nt work as it is believed to do. Obviously teachers are satisfied if the school-leaders spend their time in the office so that everybody can mind one’s own affairs without disturbing interference from leaders. Many school-leaders find it convenient to have someone to "share the responsibility", but in my opinion we need to clarify the responsibility and make it clear for the teachers and the leaders who is in charge and who is responsible. I would like to get rid of the functions of the deputy and have him/ her replaced by a well educated administrator - in larger schools at executive level. Still the leader of the school must indisputably be the leader that holds the pedagogic background. I use to say: We need to change the situation - now school-leadership is considered to be unnecessary and unwanted; but we can’t make any progress if leadership is not considered necessary and wanted in the organization. It has for long been possible to change this, and a few schools have build a more hierarchical structure. The challenge of regaining legitimacy. The image of our schools suffers from harsh criticism in the media - a criticism that is often expressed inconsistently, out of proportion and unfair. One of our major newspapers presented within few weeks the following headlines as front page stories:
At the same time international surveys show us, that we might have problems with the basic training in our schools - reading, spelling, science and math. However the massive and often unfair criticism has made it extremely difficult to talk to teachers about problems. In order to defend themselves, teachers of today often deny any approach containing critical insights. All in all the system suffers from loss of legitimacy, and it seems as if the system is more or less helpless in this dangerous situation. Like in many other countries we experience, that our schools suffer from the loss of legitimacy. Schools are no longer mainly an area dominated by authority, laws and regulations from the central administration directed towards the population. Schools have turned into public service institutions and as they are funded by the tax-payers’ money they need to gain public legitimacy and their activities must be carefully adjusted to the rapidly changing needs of the society. When Denmark came out with moderately good results in the international surveys - reading, spelling and math - we felt confronted with disaster. Up till now the teachers and school leaders have been self-confident and believed that we - the Danes - had the best school-system in the world. And we felt it justified that we at the same time had one of the most expensive systems. The international surveys torpedoed the self-confidence and the illusions of the best school-system in the world - so far so good - but the professional system also seemed paralysed and we were caught without proper answers to the questions raised or a strategy to cope with the problems. We in the ministry of ed. realised, that our knowledge on what is actually happening in our schools is insufficient. We also realised, that we could not make any progress without changing the widely accepted paradigm on how schools develop and how pedagogic innovation is implemented. In a time when decentralisation and down-up strategy is accepted as "the way to do it" it is of course a delicate matter for the state level to start talking about leadership, management, state-level evaluation and development of quality in relation to national and international standards. However that was what we did - taking one step at a time and solving one conflict before triggering the next. In the winter of 1996/97 we released a large scale public survey on expectations to the schools in our nation. Not surprisingly it was testified, that schools’ reputation were bad. However it was clear, that many myths and a disproportion existed in people’s image of the school. The closer people’ relations got to the matter, the better image they had. Elderly people and young people had the worst impression of our schools while parents to pupils were more confident. Many parents believed, that schools and teachers in general were bad, but actually they themselves were lucky - their children’s school was significantly better than average and furthermore their children in their opinion had some of the best teachers in the entire country. This of course leads to the conclusion, that part of the school-system’s problems are problems with the image of schools as it is created and presented in the media. One of the results of the survey that concerns us mostly is the fact, that the population in general believe that schools are closed, self-confident and indifferent to the opinion of outsiders. This is unbearable for us since it for decades have been our aspiration that schools are cornerstones in the building of our democracy. Since the 60es and the 70es debates on democracy it has been pointed out explicitly in the school acts that schools cary out their mission in co-operation with the parents and the schools structure and everydaylife should be characterised by democracy and the spiritual freedom. The survey also made clear that the people most discontent with the school system live in the northern outskirts of Copenhagen while people in the western part of Jutland were significantly more satisfied with their schools and teachers. This is a paradox since the municipalities in the Copenhagen region spend twice as much on schools as their counterparts in the western part of the country. The explanation of this is based in sociodemografic parameters such as analysis of life-modes showing, that the Copenhagen-area is dominated by career-oriented people - and we know that career-oriented people have an appetite on public service in same extent as they dislike to pay tax. The basic conclusion of the survey was, that schools and municipal school-departments need to face the fact, that it is now necessary for them to confront the image of their activities in the media. The image in the media may be unfair and out of proportion - but this image is part of their reality, and they will - like it or not - have to confront this reality. Schools and municipal school-departments must describe their activities, and they have to get into dialogue with parents, politicians and condition-makers at the local level. At the same time they need to testify, how the outcome of their activity corresponds to national as well as international standards. Evaluation and quality-development At the time we made the results of the survey public we launched our most ambitious project so far. We ordered a private consultant company to deliver a system by which it is possible to describe and evaluate the activities in the school-system at
And by this enhance quality in the Danish school-system as such. |
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