Career aspirations and succession planning of potential applicants for leadership positions in Australian Catholic schools

The process was repeated in a number of Catholic State jurisdictions and the results are reported below. Before presenting these results, it is useful to consider the context of Catholic education in Australia

Catholic education is a system based on a specific philosophy with a clearly identified set of values that are reinforced by practice, and role modelling, and supported by the authority of a world-wide organization based in Rome.

Almost since the beginning of European settlement in Australia, Church schools and in particular Catholic schools which are the major contributor to the non-government education system, have been an identifiable component of the Australian cultural landscape and have contributed to the national identity since that time until now.

Since many of the non-government, non-Catholic, schools represent systems (The Anglican schools, the Lutheran schools, the Christian schools – although these too are by no means seamless operations) the issues raised in this paper relating to Catholic schools, are of interest to these enterprises too. As an example, the Lutheran Church in Australia (LCA) has embarked upon an important project – the Millennial Principals’ Project (MPP) to identify aspiring leaders in their schools and establish a program that will encourage these persons to develop their leadership skills with a view to taking more senior leadership roles in the future. This process of identifying and encouraging emerging leaders has also been taking place in a project funded by the Australian Government Quality Teaching Program (QTP) and developed by the Australian Principals Associations Professional Development Council (APAPDC) in their new program, Learn: Lead: Succeed. (2004). The program is based on five propositions:

• Leadership comes from within;

• Leadership is about influencing others;

• Leadership develops a rich learning environment;

• Leadership builds professionalism and professional capability;

• Leadership inspires leadership actions and aspirations in others.

Today I would like to take particular note of Proposition #5:

Based on this Proposition, succession planning is the business of everyone engaged in the enterprise and particularly the principal. Under this heading, effective educational leaders ‘are strategic about building leadership in the school, to sustain the school and education generally into the future’ (APAPDC, 2004). It is this proposition that leads into ,a discussion of succession planning

It should be noted that some of these dioceses are small and have few vacancies – Wilcannia-Forbes had one vacancy and there were two applicants – whereas the much larger dioceses such as Sydney (24 vacancies) and Parramatta (12 vacancies) should especially be noted. The overall ratio for NSW was 3.2 applicants for each advertised principal position.

Why is this study so important? At the beginning of the 21^st century, there is growing evidence that the role of the school principal in Catholic schools, is becoming less attractive as a career option. There is a shrinking pool of candidates and fewer ‘appointable’ persons are applying for the vacant principal positions in schools than previously. Based on our studies, media reports and the research literature, it is evident that this situation that will only get worse if steps are not taken to seriously address the problem (Di Girolamo 2002, Myton 2002). A recent wage determination by the State Industrial Commission to increase the salary levels of principals and school leaders has been a significant move. It is interesting to note that this move was initiated by the Catholic employers in NSW.

Succession planning is the strategy that an organisation establishes to ensure that within that organization, there is an adequate supply of appropriately trained personnel from which to make a selection, to guarantee a smooth transition of authority when the leader moves of either by retirement or movement to a similar position at another location or to a more attractive position.

For many organisations, this transition often to a person from outside the organisation, provides new skills or a background that brings energy to the situation or organization and for success, the transition is one that is best planned for rather than hoping for the best. At a time when there was a good supply of applicants, there was no need to consider succession planning, but in recent years, this lack of applicants has become a matter of serious concern. When discussing the situation in Catholic schools, Canavan (2001) said:

It was from this concern that the Catholic Education Commission of New South Wales (CECNSW) initiated a research project to seek answers to the question of why more persons were not applying for leadership positions in Catholic schools in New South Wales and the results of that enquiry are reported later in this paper.

While many organizations need to have a recruitment policy that looks for certain skills and background in potential applicants for leadership, it is in education that there is a special demand of an understanding of the contexts and needs of pupils, teachers and the communities they serve. It is also a generally accepted position that school principals come from the ranks of school teachers and that education is, like the majority of human service organizations, a life-long career pathway (Holloway, 2000).

The importance of succession planning for Catholic schools and indeed for any faith-based schooling system is the need for persons who not only have the requisite capabilities to be principals, but also have the confidence of the faith group that they have the necessary background, motivation and commitment to ensure the values of the system are faithfully transmitted. If not, there is the possibility of a situation, similar to that predicted for the UK (Pyke, 2002) where he claims that: ‘Catholic schools may move towards a model of having a Catholic superintendent directing strategy for a group of schools while the day to day running of individual schools is in the hands of a Christian non-Catholic’.

To give out enquiries focus, there are three questions to be addressed:

• What is the depth of the pool of potential applicants for the position of principal?

• How many in the pool of potential applicants are interested in applying for a principal position?

• What are the special needs of Catholic schools that makes this such an important question for them?

So let us look at the research data and have some reflections on what it means and finally let us have a look at some ways of addressing the issue.

The survey instruments for each aspect of the overall project, as well as dealing with the incentives and disincentives perceived about the principal role, also contained a question that invited a response to the career aspirations of those being surveyed, with respect to the principalship. The aspiration question was modelled on research conducted by James and Whiting (1998) in the UK, and the responses to this question from each of the State projects, are the subject of this paper.

The broad results of the leadership aspiration question are given below (Table 2).

Using a modified James and Whiting model, three groups of respondents were identified:

The result that 53 percent of those who responded to the survey were unwilling to apply for a principal position, (the Unavailed and the Settlers), was the first time that any reliable figure had been put onto a situation that many had felt was the case but not to any detailed extent. There were diocesan variations and responses varied according to gender and position in the school hierarchy, but overall, there was a significant data to provide benchmarks for reflection and strategic planning.

These results have been subjected to statistical analysis using cross-tabulations and a number of these tables are given below.

At the same time, other writers have made a special study of gender implications of the aspirations of similar groups (Lacey 2004).

A similar analysis focused on ‘school type by leadership aspiration’. The findings are set out in Table 3 below, and they indicate little variation in leadership aspiration between primary and secondary senior leaders.

A cross-tabulation of ‘gender by school-type by leadership aspiration’ was performed to confirm the results set out in Tables 9 and 10. These results are shown in Table 4.

In addition to the low percentage of ‘willing’ respondents, here are reports of teacher supply and demand that show that there is a developing shortage of teachers and consequently a diminished supply of potential applicants for principal positions.(Preston, 1998, MCEETYA, 2003). In addition there is an increasing leakage of qualified teachers and principals from the schools (Ingersoll, 2001, Butt, 2003), making it imperative that suitable succession planning strategies be implemented.

Through the surveys into leadership succession and career aspirations being conducted by the Flagship for Creative and Authentic Leadership at Australian Catholic University, the overall picture of the leadership aspirations of leaders in Catholic schools, and the perceptions of incentives and disincentives of the persons applying for principal positions, is being built up and evaluated.

Now that there are data from a number of sources to indicate the numbers and proportions of persons willing to apply, and these numbers appear to be low, despite this, the situation for the future leadership of Catholic schools in Australia remains hopeful. There is now a growing awareness in Australia, of the special need for an ongoing supply of high quality leaders for these schools and the necessity for a strong formation program to ensure that the special nature of Catholic leadership is understood and fostered by appropriate formation and support programs. The terms leadership succession and succession planning are now firmly embedded in the vocabulary and practices of the strategic planners in the CEOs in Australia. In this way they will ensure that Catholic school of the future will thrive under the direction of an ongoing supply of well-qualified and highly motivated Catholic educational leaders.

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