Professional Development Priorities

Abstract

A questionnaire survey of secondary school middle managers within one LEA was conducted in 1997 to ascertain how far their professional development priorities reflected their changing role. The author argues that the results indicate a growing acceptance of middle management responsibility for departmental performance measured by the results of SATs and external examinations. Thus there is an acceptance of the need to carry out managerial tasks of monitoring, evaluating, addressing problems of pupil performance and teaching competence, and of the need to plan departmental developments within the framework of whole-school priorities. However there is no widespread feeling that the middle manager should provide leadership by contributing to the shaping of whole-school policies or taking responsibility for the overall professional development of subject staff. How far the subject leader will be able to fulfil this leadership role will, it is argued, depend upon a changing senior management perception of the middle manager’s role; how far the teaching and administrative burden of the middle manager is lessened; and whether appraisal can remain a tool of genuine professional development rather than becoming a device for teacher assessment.