What is a successful school principal within the global policy context of No More Failures? What is a successful school head as seen from the vantage point of school heads (principals)? These are key questions within contemporary school leadership practice and research and the answers depend not only on who is responding, but also when, where and by whom the questions have been asked. Grounded in new managerialist ideas and practices school heads (principals) in many countries around the world have been repositioned as emancipated change agents and entrepreneurs over the last two decades, expected to implement and deliver educational priorities set within centrally defined resource frameworks. Recent international studies of successful headship provide examples of how the documented complexity (tensions and dilemmas) of principal leadership can be explained by core aspects of successful school leadership such as communication, community building and decision making, sustained by a combination of essential leadership skills, qualities and values. This paper aims at mapping and comparing differently positioned school heads’ notions of being a successful head within the first few years of school based management being introduced, drawing on research interviews with experienced Russian, Norwegian and Scottish heads. The heads’ stories of change were analysed and compared drawing on narrative picture-drawing and story telling approaches, calling on critically oriented perspectives on the management of change, extended by post-structural notions of discourse, power and change. The findings from these historical snap-shots covering the mid 1990s are discussed in light of the recent “No More Failure” policy initiative enhancing equity in education launched by OECD and new knowledge emerging from some recent large-scale comparative school leadership studies of successful school principalship.

Case studies and qualitative research interviews.

Notion of success is linked to persons, place and time, and grounded in dominant school development policies circulating locally, nationally and internationally.