MANAGERS of sixth-form colleges protect their staff more from external pressures than those in hard-pressed further education colleges, say researchers.
Differences in leadership styles can be explained by internal differences in staffing, students and cultures, according to Professor Jacky Lumby, of the International Institute for Educational Leadership at Lincoln university.
Most research has focused on external factors, such as government policies, to explain the “macho management” style of the sector since 1993 when colleges left local education authority control, she told a conference in Birmingham. A second wave of “light touch” managerialism has “merely replaced overt control of lecturers by subtle manipulation”.
But her study showed marked differences in leadership - despite both FE and sixth-form colleges having similar external pressures in the shape of government policies, inspection regimes, tight budgets, and “quasi-market” competition.
Middle managers in FE colleges spend increasing amounts of time on finance. But in sixth-form colleges, senior managers make more effort to protect middle managers from such pressures in order to maintain their “intense” focus on teaching and learning.
In FE colleges, much of the increasing responsibility for managing budgets and recruiting students - and the attendant pressures - was passed down the line.
“In some colleges, people get what they earn. If they don’t get income (by recruiting students) people are laid off,” Professor Lumby told the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society’s annual conference.
Several factors combined to influence senior managers in these different ways, she said. Sixth-form colleges were generally smaller, with a more able student body, more stable staffing, and a narrower range of (usually academic) courses that help to ensure shared values across the institution.
FE colleges tend to be larger, with a wider range of ability, and a high turnover of staff divided by craft, vocational and academic lines.
