Human resource management: the Achilles heel of school governance
| Date | 01 February 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450510569292 |
| Published date | 01 February 2005 |
| Pages | 20-46 |
| Author | Jim Grieves,Peter Hanafin |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Human resource management:
the Achilles heel of school
governance
Jim Grieves
Scarborough Management Centre, University of Hull Business School,
Scarborough, UK
Peter Hanafin
Teesside Business School, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, UK
Abstract
Purpose – Aims to examine current debates about the recruitment and retention of teachers and
explore the views of Local Education Authority Human Resource Advisors, governors and teachers.
Design/methodology/approach – Addresses the issue of whether the Government is actually
achieving its stated aims of best value in selecting, recruiting and retaining the most effective teachers
in primary and secondary education.
Findings – The conclusion for the appointment of teachers in schools is that structured panel
interviews, with trained panel members, and preferably including an HR professional, would represent
best practice.
Originality/value – Raises serious concerns about the delegation of HR practice.
Keywords Human resource management, Management roles,Selection, Recruitment, Teachers
Paper type Case study
Introduction
The principle research interest of this paper is the impact of government policy on the
recruitment and selection of teachers. Although recent initiatives were of interest it was
the legacy of the Educational Reform Act of 1988 that contextualised the research into
how teachers were selected and recruited to achieve best value. While the 1988 Act was
designed to give greater representation to parents in the education of their children it
was also contentious at the time of its passage through Parliament in the manner in
which it handed over scrutiny and control of public authority. Since transparency of
actions is clearly essential and in theory sanctioned by law in any public service in the
UK, we wanted to know how decisions about the process of recruiting and selecting
teachers was undertaken. Essentially, we were interested to know how strategic
human resource management (SHRM) and strategic human resource develo pment
(SHRD) were managed in a public educational system in which line management had
been passed on to the governing bodies of schools through the process of local
management of schools (LMS). Essentially there are two tasks. The first was the
primary task of recording how teachers are recruited. The second was to assess the
effectiveness of the LMS process in relation to how it discharged its responsibilities by
acting as the guardian of a public and professional service. This information is related
to concerns expressed in the HR literature about the delegation of human resource (HR)
expertise to non-professionals. Our interest in this emerged because of recent
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
ER
27,1
20
Received September 2003
Revised April 2004
Accepted May 2004
Employee Relations
Vol. 27 No. 1, 2005
pp. 20-46
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450510569292
government policy attempting to attract the “best” teachers into the profession and
because of the similarity of the arguments emerging today in relation to Foundation
Hospitals in respect of the delegation of professional decision making to lay people.
Recent debates about the current “crisis” in the recruitment and retention
of teachers
This section sets out the contextual background to the research by reviewing
contemporary discourses about the role of governance and the attempt to select and
recruit teachers in line with the goal of identifying best practice.Although our principle
concern is with selection and recruitment of teachersit is important to situate this in the
wider role of the HR professional. In other words, we needto establish how professional
practice is undertaken today in schools and how governing bodies oversee the process
of checks and balances to a public service. Our sources inevitably include newspaper
articles and official reports since these are more recent than most journal articles. The
topicality of these debates is unavoidable and particularly challenging for the HR
profession. Equally, the debates are no less important as questions about the nature of a
democratic process charged with the task of upholding principles of virtue by
demonstrating the quality of governance of one of the most important public services.
The crisis of recruitment and retention
Recent government initiatives have sought to maximise the potential of teachers and
schools in the pursuit of enhancing the nation’s knowledge base. Initiatives include:
.the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body to give a £4,000
“welcome back” payment to teachers who return to the profession; and
.a fast-track career path which aims to create an e
´lite cadre of the brightest
recruits every year with £5,000 “golden hellos”.
These initiatives place the government in the driving seat in the new recruitment
market since they represent the biggest shake-up in the recruitment market since the
late 1980 s, with the DfEE appointing a contractor to vet the selection of up to 1,000
teachers a year. In September 2003 a new £10M advertising campaign was launched to
attract mature professionals away from their humdrum jobs and into teaching yet
paradoxically it appeared that 1,000 teaching posts had been lost and 800 teachers
made redundant in England and Wales (The Guardian, 2 September, 2003).
These initiatives apply to specific geographical areas where there is acute teacher
shortages or to failing schools and where it is difficult to employ teaching staff. The
reasons for this vary but two predominant problems prevail. The first refers to wage
levels in London and the south generally. The second refers to problems of discipline
and low achievement. This means that “star teachers” will somehow be identified and
recruited before they have entered the classroom through a mysterious assessment
process. Elsewhere, normal recruitment remains the prerogative of a school’s
governing body.
Against the current background of teacher shortages little attention has been given
to the inconsistencies and contradictions of LEA selection and recruitment policies for
teachers. For example, despite the fact that teachers who start training later in life are
more likely to stay in the profession and have a greater affinity to the care and teaching
of young people, governing bodies of schools appear to demonstrate a remarkable
Human resource
management
21
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