The National Professional Qualification for Middle Management?

Recently I had cause to contribute to a 360 audit tool for what the DfE call the National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML). It has been a while since I had much to do with the National Professional Qualifications, and doing the 360 audit reminded me of some of the uglier faces of our national effort to educate children. In some respects the National Professional Qualifications for leadership in schools have improved. The publication in 2015 of the revised national standards for headteachers made it easier for us as heads to focus on children, and not merely on their outcomes, and the NPQH changed a little for the better as a result.

Some context. This time last year I was writing a long essay about the impact on school leaders (in church schools especially) of neoliberal globalisation and the way that a certain language and a certain perspective on human nature was being promulgated through the education system. I proposed a “shalom-critique” based on the work of Rebecca Todd Peters and Miroslav Volf that addressed certain aspects of church school life that I believed (and still believe) are directly threatened by the premises behind the dominant, neoliberal/managerial imaginary of education.

In an ideal world, I would take the NPQML tool apart, using critical discourse analysis (CDA), as has been done here for the NPQH by Nicola Crossley in her Ed.D. thesis. It concerns me that we are foisting these things on leaders to make them think in a particular way and to value what it values. CDA can reveal the power sources that lie behind the words and being able to do this (what Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner called crap-detecting) is a skill that I would want to put on any leader’s 360 audit.

All that needs pointing out here is that far from being reflective of the “new stance” on data and standards that seems to be coming from Ofsted since September 2019, we are back in the bad old world of data obsession, of managerialism and a distinct lack of inspiration. The values of love and affection, so critical to leadership, are nowhere to be seen. When the Head of Settings and School Effectiveness for Milton Keynes Council criticised my middle leaders in 2018 for not being data managers, I found myself in a profound quandary, having given them a very different scope to their task. But the NPQML audit tool does at least explain why she thought it was important.

What is fascinating about the document, reflecting the NPQML “host document” on the DfE website, are the disconnects and slightly tentative efforts to turn management into leadership. The first part is just a long bunch of competencies that read like a bad 1970s management manual:

He/she develops proportionate and sustainable approaches to managing data to ensure an effective balance between data collection and teacher workload, especially when analysing performance data to evaluate progress, identifying trends, defining team priorities and developing improvement strategies (for example, in relation to disadvantaged pupils or those with particular needs)

or, alternatively:

He/she uses resource and project management tools and techniques, including integrated curriculum and financial planning, budgeting, forecasting and project plans

This kind of thing, though precise and perhaps (from a McKinsey and Co perspective) just what is needed, does not sound like me to be the heart of education. Last week somebody asked me the characteristics of an outstanding teacher: I replied that they love children and love learning and know how to lead and build the one into the other. That was short and overly simplistic, but I want middle leaders to be motivated by love before anything else. Serving each other is so much harder if you are not motivated by love.

The disconnect in thinking comes toward the end of the audit tool, where the reviewer is asked to comment on the candidate’s “leadership behaviours.” The behaviours are listed as:

• Commitment: he/she is committed to his/her pupils and understands the power of world-class teaching to improve social mobility, wellbeing and productivity
• Collaboration: he/she readily engages with, and invests responsibility in, those who are best placed to improve outcomes
• Personal Drive: he/she is self-motivated and takes a creative, problem-solving approach to new challenge
• Resilience: he/she remains courageous and positive in challenging, adverse or uncertain circumstances
• Awareness: he/she know himself/herself and his/her team(s) well, he/she continually reflects on his/her own and others’ practices, and understands how best to approach difficult or sensitive issues
• Integrity: he/she acts with honesty, transparency and always in the interests of the school and its pupils
• Respect: he/she respects the rights, views, beliefs and faiths of pupils, colleagues and stakeholders

Why a disconnect? Well, these statements take a first turn towards leadership. They appear to be more than simply “middle management” or maintenance. If we can get rid of the appalling value-free terminology (“world-class teaching to improve social mobility, wellbeing and productivity” or “invests responsibility in those who are best placed to improve outcomes” or “takes a creative, problem-solving approach to new challenge“) then we might reflect on the seven qualities above and find in them a moral purpose and a way of leading in difficult circumstances. The definitions are poor, and limited by the neoliberal imaginary, but they are at least a start. I imagine they could be imbued with some moral scope and used to grow leaders.

But compare these with the immeasurably richer 24 Leadership Practices that David Ford and Andy Wolfe have put together for the Church of England Foundation for Educational Leadership:

Andy Wolfe has spent the summer and early autumn fleshing these out for school leaders, with podcast interviews, reflections, examples, songs, prayers and readings arriving in school leaders’ inboxes each Monday. It has been a truly inspiring piece of work that has blessed many, many CofE school leaders, and kept them going with work that is as close to being prophetic as the CofE has ever got in the world of education. Apart from anything else, it mines and expounds a wealth of vocabulary that is simply ours – a vocabulary of the church, to which the neoliberal imaginary may borrow but never truly flesh out.

Not only has Andy and his team shown real leadership in doing this piece of work, but he has enabled hundreds of CofE school leaders to find the courage and hope they needed in an appalling summer, to serve their schools and their beloved communities.

NPQML, no matter how you manage to pronounce it, won’t achieve that.