ABSTRACT
Perhaps the first question that needs to be asked is: ‘Why does a school opt for grant-maintained status?’ Although individual schools will provide their own rationale, there appears to be no simple answer, either for the schools as a group or indeed, for any one school, as Cecil Knight explains in Chapter 3. However, for many of the early schools to opt out there was one predominant ‘reason’. As the AMMA report on their questionnaire survey (Appendix D, pp. 156-64) points out: ‘The main reason for seeking grant-maintained status was the fear of closure or re-organisation’ (11 (i)). This is increasingly less likely to be the motivating force; at the time of writing (August 1991) only 20 per cent of the approved or up-and-running schools were subject to conflicting section 12 or section 13 proposals. The desire for self-management and the opportunities it brings is increasingly likely to be the dominant motivating force. Cecil Knight states that it was the challenge of self-management that was the motivating force and ‘in changing times it was time to change’. What does this change mean in the 1990s?
This chapter initially reflects on some of the components of an effective self-managing school in the 1990s. It then goes on to consider the management perspectives necessary to manage human, financial and physical resources in this new environment. It is only by reassessing and adopting new approaches that the challenge of self-management will be met.
