Focus  In this article we investigate, from the perspective of senior and middle leaders, the ways in which some secondary principals in England had led their schools to achieve sustainable high performance in the face of intense reform efforts and policy shifts. The research upon which this article is based is not about policy or policy analysis, but about successful principal leadership in times of intensive and pervasive policy reforms. We argue that the political, professional, and accountability pressures created by incoherent, disjointed, and at times contradictory external policy initiatives are part of the broad environments in which “schools and education policy subsist” (Cohen, Moffitt, & Goldin,2007, p. 526) in many systems including England, and within which schools in our research managed to continue to make a difference to students’ academic performance. Put simply, policy shifts have become unavoidable political realities of education in many systems. However, whilst some schools not only survive but also continue to thrive in the face of challenging and changing environments, others struggle and falter.

Connecting leadership with policy   Although writing from different theoretical perspectives to understand and explain how people in organizations and schools make sense of policies and implement them, Weick (1995, 2005) and Spillane (2004) have both emphasized the situated nature of sense making in the policy enactment process and the importance of considering how people make sense of their environments in this process. Thus, making sense of policies is not a passive process of decoding the information in the policy texts (Von Glasersfeld, 1989). Rather, in this process people as social agents “construct, rearrange, single out, demolish many objective features of their surroundings” (Weick, 1979, p.164) and ultimately transform their environments (Spillane et al., 2002).

The conceptual and empirical connections that Spillane and his colleagues have established between school leadership and policy enactment are important because schools’ responses to external policies are the result of the “function not only of leaders’ identities but also the multiple contexts in which their sense-making is situated” (2002, p. 755). How these leaders interpret and make sense, rationally and emotionally, of what a particular policy means to their schools and then decide “whether and how to ignore, adapt, or adopt” this policy locally (Spillane et al, 2002, p. 733) influences not only how the policy is interpreted by their teachers and how effectively it is implemented in the school, but importantly, the extent to which the actions of “enactment” are likely to disrupt, constrain, or advance further improvement of the school. By extension, we argue that to create and embed coherence between policy and practice within the particular context of a school’s organization requires strong leadership.

Research Questions    This article draws upon empirical evidence from a UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) funded two-year bilateral research project on how “successful” secondary schools in England and Hong Kong mediated government policies in furthering their own broad improvement agendas. The research was guided by three broad questions:

(1) How do leaders in successful secondary schools across different contexts respond to government systemic reforms?

(2) What key challenges and issues do they face in sustaining academic standards for all whilst forwarding their broader educational success agendas?

(3) How and to what extent do school leaders at all levels in these schools maintain a strategic and operational focus on the leadership of learning and teaching whilst managing wider structural and cultural changes?

This article is based on the quantitative and qualitative research evidence collected from key staff in secondary schools in England only.

This article focuses on findings from structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses of a questionnaire survey of senior and middle leaders from 309 most improved and effective secondary schools in England and analyses of longitudinal interview data from a subsample of four case-study schools. (1) Quantitative evidence An analysis of national assessment and examination data sets on secondary school performance was used to identify schools that were effective in their value-added results (which take account of pupils’ prior attainment and background characteristics) and also showed significant improvement in raw results or stable high attainment over at least the previous three consecutive years under the leadership of the same principal. Approximately a third of the secondary (37%) schools (n=1,140) in England for which national data were available were classified as meeting our criteria as effective/improved over a course of 3 years. A total of 1,167 key staff questionnaires from 393 schools were returned, representing a response rate of 20% (out of 5,700). After deletion of missing data, the structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was conducted with data for 1,054 senior and middle leaders from 309 secondary schools. (2) Qualitative evidence The qualitative strand used four in-depth case studies of a subset of the original 10 secondary case study schools in the IMPACT study upon which this research was built (Author, 2011). These case studies represented schools in different levels of socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage (as measured through the low-income indicator percentage of student intake eligible for Free School Meals) and ethnic diversity. Data were collected through two visits over a two-year period with detailed interviews of principals and a range of key staff and stakeholders. The main methodological advantage of studying these schools was that we were able to build on and extend existing datasets from the IMPACT study and thus achieve longitudinal narrative and reflective accounts across a period of nine years (2005–2014). Through the eyes and experiences of senior and middle leaders, this article aims to forge new, productive directions for research on policy enactment by linking it more closely with the literature on school leadership and, through this, exploring how principals of high-performing schools strategically and purposefully engage with external policy demands for coherent organizational change and sustained improvement.

The findings of the research led to two observations. The first observation is about principal leadership. Evidence from our research suggests that building internal school capacity for improvement is not a simple, linear process. It requires directions from inspiring and visionary school leadership to create, develop, and sustain coherent and fit-for-purpose structures, cultures, and conditions to grow the knowledge, skills, and commitment of individuals and harness them to become the collective capacity of the school. This observation confirms what we already know from the research literature on successful school leadership. Investigating how successful principals had managed external policy demands from the perspectives of their key staff enabled us to learn more about leadership and change. The marked similarities between the principal and key-staff SEM models, together with the narrative accounts from the case-study examples, highlight—most powerfully—that establishing consistency and coherence in school structures, cultures, and improvement processes holds the key to engaging the heads, hearts and hands of the school community to achieve sustained and sustainable performance over time. Such consistency and coherence were reflected in understandings— between those who led and those who were led—of how and why their schools were able to become successful and, as importantly, to stay successful. The second observation is about how successful principals respond to, manage, and enact external policy demands. Policy enactment is, in essence, about change. Enacting policy successfully essentially relies on building and consolidating the capacity for further growth and development. Key in this regard are strong leaders who know how to design the social and intellectual conditions which engage the heart and mind of individuals in the school and, through this, harness their ideas, experiences, knowledge, and relationships to fulfil shared values and achieve shared goals.

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