Leadership through the lens: images of headteachers in three television documentaries

Contextual Background Inviting television cameras into a school is fraught with difficulties. There are issues of editorial control, particularly regarding the interviewing of minors.There is a question about whether the presence of cameras will upset the running of an organisation, particularly if the organisation is already under strain.The outcome of the programmes for each of the three maintained schools was very different, as shall be demonstrated. The ‘fresh start’ scheme in the UK relies heavily on ideas on school improvement imported from the US. It places great emphasis on the role of the head, suggesting almost that one person, alone, can turn round a school, hence the notion of the ‘superhead’. The particular US scheme on which 'fresh start' is based is known as school reconstitution and it had already fallen into some disrepute in the States at the same time as it was being introduced into the UK.The idea behind reconstitution is to jump-start dysfunctional schools, many of them in poor urban areas, by bringing in a fresh, new, committed staff. Heralded by many in San Francisco, which has reconstituted more than a dozen schools since the early Eighties, the practice has been adopted in various forms over the past several years in Chicago, New York, Cleveland and other US cities (Hardy 1999). There is little definitive research on whether reconstitution actually improves student achievement, though early reports on San Francisco's first four reconstituted schools were positive. Yet even proponents of reconstitution concede that it can be a wrenching process that can take years to yield positive results. Rozmus (1998) states that if it is done T his article looks at approaches to leadership through the lens of three sets of television documentary programmes.Two on ‘fresh start’ schools and one in which the headteacher of a private girls’ school took up the challenge to work in an inner-city school in London as a classroom teacher. These documentaries have afforded interesting opportunities to see heads at work over a number of months, albeit filtered through an editor’s perspective. The documentaries about ‘fresh start’ schools were firstly Head on the Block, produced by BBC2, which looked at the Islington Arts and Media School (IAMS formerly George Orwell School).The then principal, Torsten Friedag, gave the BBC free access to the school between September 1999 and March 2000; and secondly, Making the Grade produced by Channel Four in 2000 which looked at Firfield Community School in Newcastle Upon Tyne (formerly Blakelaw Comprehensive High School). Much publicity was attached to being a pioneer ‘superhead’ of the 'fresh start' schemes, particularly in the case of IAMS which was officially re-opened in front of the television cameras by the then Education Secretary, David Blunkett.These two schools became some of the most visible examples of how the Government hoped that struggling schools could be turned around. Both of the series were considered to be controversial on account of some of the material shown and the paper will examine such issues, through focusing on the leadership characteristics and performance of each ‘superhead’. In contrast the documentary in the series Back to ➤ Leadership through the lens: images of headteachers in three television documentaries