Foreword

The publication you are holding in your hands contains the English tapescript and its Hungarian translation of the two-day seminar “Managing Schools for Lifelong Learning organised by OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) and the Ministry of Education of Hungary in Budapest in December 2001¹. Based on feedback and my own experiences I have reasonable ground for stating that we were participating in an exceptionally fruitful discussion, the rich ideas of which now we can share with all those who will read this book. Present were prominent members of the community of experts in international educational policy, who were extremely active in discussing the issues of educational management and governance.

The international experts invited by OECD Directorate for Education and the Ministry of Education of Hungary, the international and Hungarian delegates of the respective ministries of several OECD member states reviewed and discussed the challenges facing school managements and national governance of educational systems. The 14 talks given at the seminar were discussed in three consecutive, thematic sessions by 23 international and 23 Hungarian experts.

The seminar centred around three major goals: (1) to contribute to national and international dissemination of a comparative analysis of new school management approaches carried out by OECD CERI and also to put this reflection on management at institutional level into a wider perspective of system-wide governance; (2) to start off joint reflection on the role that educational management could play in realising key educational priorities of OECD countries; and (3) to familiarise the international community with educational management initiatives in Hungary and to get relevant international feedback on them from this community.

The first one of the three goals needs some explanation. The analysis was carried out as part of the OECD series “What Works”. This series aims at revealing and presenting national initiatives in certain areas considered important by the member states, which are supposed to be instructive for others, too. If a country decides to join this program, OECD experts assess it against a pre-defined set of indicators and these country reports are published together with a synthethised study based on them. In 2000 the member states decided on school management as the subject of “What Works” analysis. Hungary also joined this program by presenting three initiatives with important management aspects. These initiatives include the preparation of school-based strategic documents and curricula, the introduction of a new system of in-service teacher training, and the development of Comenius 2000 quality improvement programme at institutional level. The comparative OECD analysis covering nine countries was published in 2001 with the title “New School Management Approaches”². In the same year it was published in Hungarian by the National Institute of Public Education, thus making it available for the Hungarian reader, too.³

This publication drew attention to six challenges that institutional level management faces in the OECD countries:

• school-based management is emphasised, i. e. an increasing part of managing functions are delegated to schools,

• accountancy is emphasised, which is accompanied with modernising the systems of supervision and student assessment,

• institutional autonomy is strengthened, which is accompanied with the transformation of organizational and management processes at school level and the strengthening of organization-level consciousness and self-concept,

• relationships between schools and their social environment are changed and partnership is encouraged,

• new forms aiming at teacher assessment and teachers’ professional development are supported,

• changes aiming at school-level innovation, especially developing the use of information and telecommunication technologies at schools.

The programme of the 2001 December seminar had been formed by experts representing OECD and Hungary during months-long negotiations. The participants in these negotiations were Jan Bengston and David Istance representing OECD Secretariat and Gábor Halász and István Vilmos Kovács representing Hungary in CERI Governing Board and OECD Education Committee, respectively. As being familiar with the structure of the program may help the reader of the tapescript follow the discussions, it is worth providing an outline of it.

The introductory talks of József Pálinkás, then minister of education of Hungary and George Papadopoulos, former deputy director of the Educational Directorate representing OECD were followed by discussions in three thematic sessions. The first two concentrated on issues at institutional level. The first session “Creating and Sustaining High Quality Learning Environments” sought responses to the question how school management can contribute to developing a learning environment that would be appropriate from the viewpoint of a progressive approach to learning. The second session “Managing Schools for Complexity” discussed what organizational and management solutions are needed so that schools could function as organizations capable for adaptation and renewal in conditions of increasing complexity and rapid changes in the context of education. The task of the third thematic session ”Educational Governance and Public Management Reform” was to open up from institution-level management towards system-wide governance. A keynote paper and three related presentations, two of which were given by OECD experts and the third by a Hungarian one, introduced the thematic sessions. They were followed by a forty-five-minute debate in each case. Between the second and third thematic sessions there was a panel discussion serving to build bridges between the thematic sessions and especially between institution-level and system-wide governance issues.

Mats Ekholm’s keynote paper from Sweden introduced the discussion in the first thematic session concentrating on educational issues and problems of developing learning, which was followed by presentations of Zoltán Poór from Hungary, Bill Mulford from Australia and Alexandru Crisan from Romania.⁴ The discussion put high emphasis on the organizational and management conditions for creating a progressive learning environment and on the ways how these conditions could and should be formed so that successful and high quality learning take place at schools. The outcomes of the Australian research presented here provided empirical evidence for positive correlation between academic achievement and the features of school organization. Based on the papers and the comments it can clearly be stated that each educational reform aiming at improving learning should have a strong management and organizational development component.

The second thematic session moving from the individual and classroom processes of learning to those of organizations was introduced by the keynote paper of Dale Shuttleworth from Canada, who – as the author of the synthetising, comparative analysis comprising the first part of the publication “New School Management Approaches” – gave a comprehensive insight into the challenges that managements face at schools in the OECD countries and into the new initiatives attempting at responding these challenges. Three related presentations followed by István Vilmos Kovács from Hungary, Gaby Hostens from Belgium (Flemish Community) and Jan van Ravens from the Netherlands, all three being members of OECD Education Committee. The three presentations as well as the comments that followed described the exceptional richness of innovative initiatives related to school management revealing all the controversies accompanying the transformation of organization and management (for instance, the ones linked to the increasing role of the market and the public or to the consumer- or client-oriented quality reforms).

At the end of the first day a panel discussion was organised with George Papadopoulos (OECD), Guy Haug (European Commission), Jan van Ravens (the Netherlands), Péter Drahos (Hungary) and Alexandru Crisan (Romania) in the panel. The discussion animated by János Setényi focussed on three interrelated issues aiming at creating a bridge between the topics of the three thematic sessions. These issues included (1) relationship between organizational and management culture and learning culture; (2) managing increasing complexity and change at school level; (3) management and governance challenges accompanying the strengthening of the role of new partners including the private sector and especially supranational organizations. This discussion among the members of the panel representing various organizations and cultures brought up a multitude of divergent views, thus giving an insight into the intellectual dynamics that characterizes the current international debate on school management and governance of educational systems.

The third thematic session opening towards system-wide problems took place in the morning of the second day. Ron Glatter from the United Kingdom, one of the leading personalities of British Educational Management and Administration Society (BEMAS) gave a key-note presentation. In his paper he described among others four characteristic models of governing educational systems that may help understand the management or governance problems of any educational system. Three presentations followed by Gábor Halász from Hungary, Kari Pitkänen from Finland and Guy Haug representing the European Commission. One of the most exciting issues of the discussion afterwards was whether the notion of the “learning organization” open to changes and capable of adaptation can be transferred onto the whole of national systems. Within this thematic session the analysis of the new governance method based on mutual learning and peer assessment is worth mentioning, which was introduced by the European Union as the open method of co-ordination following the Lisbon Summit of the Heads of State of the member countries in 2000.

Closing the programme David Istance on the part of the OECD, and Gábor Halász on the part of Hungary formulated the conclusions that could be drawn from the presentations and discussions. Donald Hirsch, who was invited by the OECD as a rapporteur, prepared his evaluating report by the beginning of 2002, which was submitted to the CERI Governing Board in its spring session.

This publication contains both the full English text transcribed from the recordings of seminar and the Hungarian translation of the tapescript. Only minimal stylistic changes were made when readability required. The informal or intimate phrases were retained as well as addressing each other by first names and utterances that resemble everyday conversation rather than the formalities of scientific debates. In such a work minor or major inaccuracies connected to the clearness of the recordings may occur. Editors take full responsibility for these and in the case of such inaccuracies they apologize the participants concerned.

I hope that we managed to convey the full richness of the discussion and to share the professional experience of those present with the readers. I also hope that this publication will contribute to the development of professional thinking on school management and governance of the educational system in Hungary and to the fertilization of this thinking by international debates.

As part of this publication the reader will find the report prepared by the rapporteur, Donald Hirsch. This is a written text and its translation, not a tapescript. However, I would like to underline that such reports can never give back the full richness of discussions. To get this you will have to read the whole book.

I recommend this book to those working at different levels of education management and those who participate in public education management training, either as trainers or trainees. This publication can also be recommended to those who make efforts to renew school practice and welcome the inspiring thoughts of experts reflecting on it. This book can be a useful source for those interested in comparative education.

I would like to acknowledge all the participants of the seminar for their active contribution and Rózsa Juhász and Eszter Harsányi for organising the seminar.

Gábor Halász