Chapter 3: System Leadership in England 2003-2018

Susan Cousin

School reform in England has, since the early 2000s, focused mainly on governance and structural changes (Glatter, 2017; Greany, 2017, p. 6). Structural reform has been a feature of successive governments since Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government (1979–1990), reaching a peak with the Academies program of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (2010–2015) which resulted in 27% of primary schools and 72% of secondary schools (with an estimated 47% of pupils) operating as academies, outside of the control of local authorities (National Audit Office, 2018, p. 4). These changes have come about with the engagement of system leaders (defined as school leaders operating across more than one school, in order to bring about change and improvement at a systemic level (Cousin, 2018). The radical change in the governance landscape of the English education system has been achieved by ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ (after Ringen, 2013) policies.