School based management: the principals' perspective

This study details the background to the establishment of Parish School Boards in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, and reports and analyses the perceptions of all ACT Catholic, systemic, primary school Principals who operated with a Parish School Board in 1993. The movement towards Parish School Boards finds its genesis in the Second Vatican Council where the Church was invited to collaborate in decision-making based on the belief that all the faithful have gifts, knowledge and a share of the wisdom to bring to the building of the Church. The nature and structure of Catholic education was seen as a suitable vehicle for encouraging communities to engage in shared decision-making and in participatory democracy under the Church model of subsidiarity, collegiality and collaboration. The introduction of Parish School Boards into the Archdiocese can be seen as the implementation of a radical change to the educational mission of the Church and the educational leadership of the faith community. Reflecting 'new management theory' in both the secular and Church worlds, a key stakeholder is the school Principal whose role and relationships change as he or she learns to work within a team, sharing leadership. This study examines the responses of nineteen Principals who were interviewed by the researcher in order to determine how they work with a Parish School Board and what effects the board has on their work. Research studies in the area of School-Based Management and Shared Decision-Making have informed the review, and the Principals' responses from this study have been analysed in the light of secular and Church literature on leadership, devolution and change. The respondents of this study, the school Principals, report the benefits of collegiality and collaboration but their unresolved tensions relate to work overload, lack of clarity of the roles and responsibilities of the various local level decision-making groups, increased administrative complexity, community demand for ever widening consultation and the challenge of consensus decision-making. All Principals report an urgent need for professional development for themselves and for the system to provide a more explicit focus on parish and community formation with the commitment of the necessary resources to sustain this radical change.