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Ethical LeadershipCarolyn Roberts
Head, Thomas Tallis School
Honorary Secretary, ASCL
• What do we stand for?
• How should we behave?
• What have we become?
What character attributes do you
expect of your Leadership Group?
7 Principles of Public Life
ASCL has set up a Commission on Ethical
Leadership in Education. We’ll work for a year and
then report to our Conference in March 2018 with a
consultation draft.
What do we want to achieve? You’re part of the
discussion.
(We’re not talking about
character education)
Where to start?
• What matters to us?
• What should the taxpayer expect from us?
• How do we really hold each other to account?
• How do we act as a model for the communities of
large and small humans with whom we work?
Should we?
The Malpractice and Irregularity Department
• What’s your story?
• What have you been tempted by?
• Why?
• Why didn’t we know that was wrong?
• Why don’t we stop it?
What are schools for?
Schools are where society chooses to look after its
young during the prolonged childhood and
adolescence of the human being.
Teachers share a responsibility with parents for
keeping children and young people safe and helping
them to develop so that they may become
independent as they reach maturity.
Whose child?
The established principle of in loco parentis clearly
demonstrates this relationship: teachers are parents
to the children while they are in the school’s care.
That is not a responsibility delegated to the school by
parents, but one that is necessarily the teacher’s
role.
The child and the state
The focus of this relationship is education, but do we
know what education is for?
The relationship between the purpose of schooling
and the economic needs of the nation remains
uneasy.
Let’s write history
‘In order effectively to measure and evaluate this
public investment in the young, and protect economic
competitiveness, simplified measures were
developed to judge schools’ outputs in examination
results. That pressure led to perverse incentives for
headteachers to claim excellence in their schools by
focusing entirely on those results in the later years of
the 20th and the early years of the 21st century. This
brought competitiveness between schools which may
have undermined some unspoken assumptions of
the comprehensive consensus.’
After a while, some accountability measures were
changed with the curriculum and assessments upon
which they were based wile funding was reduced.
This led to a period of uncertainty about school
structures, curriculum, accountability and the future.
Further,
School leadership training had developed in a
context where bold and independent attributes were
highly prized at Secretary of State and Chief
Inspector level.
Moreover,
Finally, ideologically, the monochrome state
framework was systematically demolished and
schooling left open to evolutionary, if not market,
forces.
Little wonder therefore that some school leadership
became compromised confused.
However
Schools should promote the fundamental British
values of democracy, the rule of law, individual
liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those
with different faiths and beliefs. This can help schools
to demonstrate how they are meeting the
requirements of section 78 of the Education Act
2002, in their provision of SMSC.
So what kind of people are we?
• The literary tradition has expected Headteachers to
be public intellectuals.
• Current discourse fluctuates between the HT as
– child-centred sloppy liberal,
– zero-tolerance superhead
– television entertainer.
• Media simultaneously praise and decry teachers
as angels and sinners while
• Moral outrage about literacy, sexualisation and
social cohesion buffet the moral compass.
‘Autonomy isn’t apathy’
A code of ethics might be timely.
So where shall we start?
English schools seem to run on a mixture of devotion
to children, a love of learning and paranoid
accountability-driven competition.
Any underlying principles could best be described as
unwritten – perhaps itself a Fundamental British
Value. It is in the nature of the modern or post-
modern world, however, for unwritten rules to fade as
the former structures which created or enshrined
them are removed.
Ethical Frameworks
– Rights: human rights are a powerful tradition with particular importance for the vulnerable. Eglantine Jebbbegan a tradition of claiming rights for children and young people in refugee work after the First World War. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sums up current thinking now expressed in national and European legislation.
– Duties: how we act in relation to others is a strong ethical tradition following Immanuel Kant. A dilemma for professional Headteachers is captured in the argument between Kant’s insistence on doing the right thing for individuals and Mill’s utilitarianism. In setting out duties we encounter clashes between means and ends.
– Virtues: Aristotle’s approach to ethics invites us to consider the sort of people we want to be.
– Cases: what can we learn from lived experience?
Rights: UNCRC
Articles 28 and 29 specifically deal with education
and schools as rights of children:
‘In all actions concerning children, whether
undertaken by public or private social welfare
institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or
legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall
be a primary consideration.’
At the gates of Auschwitz
Extreme cases happen in western European schools.
In 2004 the French government recorded on the
outside of schools in Paris the precise numbers of
pupils on roll in 1939-1944 who were taken to
extermination camps ‘with the complicity of the
government, under the period of Nazi barbarism,
because they were born Jewish.’
Kant: Duties
Children do not choose to be born.
• Making children’s lives bearable is a consequence
of the adult act of procreation (Metaphysics of
Morals ~28).
• Kant develops the golden rule (Matthew 7:12) as
his categorical imperative.
(Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 4:421).
Rawls: Justice as Fairness
Equality is difficult to achieve.
• The veil of ignorance is used when we set up
social arrangements. (Theory of Justice #24).
Rawls’ 2 Principles
1. Each person has an equal right to the most
extensive system of equal liberties compatible
with a similar system of liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities must be
arranged so that:
• they benefit the least advantaged
• they are attached to offices and positions
open to all under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity.
Virtues: Aristotle
Courage (managing fear and confidence)
Temperance (dealing with bodily pleasure and pain)
Generosity (giving and receiving money)
Magnificence (giving and retaining money on a large
scale)
Greatness of soul (honour on a large scale)
Even temper (managing anger)
Friendliness (social relations, dealing with large
groups)
Truthfulness (honesty about oneself)
Wit (conversational skill)
Justice (distributing things fairly)
Friendship (dealing with individuals)
Cases
Case law in English Common Law demonstrates the
value of the particular in making better judgments in
unforeseen circumstances. Chatham House Rules
protect the subjects of cases to achieve learning.
Public Inquiries provide detailed examples to improve
practice. If HTs were to set up an ethical code, it
could be monitored through discussion of cases.
Don’t Panic
The development of this could seek to deter those
who end up bringing the profession and British
education into disrepute.
It would serve as a framework against which to
measure the desirability of future developments,
structural and educational.
The Principles for Public Life 1994
Selflessness
Honesty
Openness
Objectivity
Integrity
Accountability
Leadership
8 questions
1. What is the value of the child in contemporary British society?
2. What is the status or value of knowledge and learning in
contemporary English society?
3. What are schools for?
4. What kind of authority is given to headteachers and how are
they expected to use it?
5. How do the Nolan Principles compare to ‘incentivised’
‘exceptional’ leadership?
6. What professional risks are attendant upon accountability
measures?
7. What values may be assumed in an evolutionary system?
8. What leads to stability and trust?
What do you think?
