S1 E3 - Who Makes Decisions in Your School?

Today's episode forcuses on school leadership, exploring who truly holds decision-making power in school improvement... and why it matters. Jocelyn unpacks how even capable leaders accidentally hand over authority through outsourcing to consultants, blindly following system guidance, or over-delegating to staff. 

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to the Leading Learning Podcast. I'm Jocelyn Seamer, and today I want to ask you a question that sits underneath almost every school improvement journey I've seen go sideways. And that question is: who makes decisions in your school? Not on paper, not in the strategic plan or the policy documents, but in reality. When the rubber hits the road and teachers are pushing back and you're tired and uncertain, who is actually making the decisions that impact your school improvement journey?

Speaker 0:33

And here's what I want to talk about today. You can have the best programs in the world, the most evidence-informed approach, the clearest vision. But if the question of who is driving your school's improvement journey isn't settled, then nothing is going to stick. And I promise you, those wheels are going to come off, and I've seen it happen way too many times to count.

Speaker 0:58

So this episode is going to do three things. First, I want to revisit a metaphor that I've used before on the Structured Literacy podcast because it matters even more in a leadership context. Secondly, I want to talk about three ways that experienced, capable leaders accidentally give up their decision making, often without realising that they've done it. And third, I want to share a snapshot of practice from a school that our team has worked with because the principal there has done the opposite of what we're going to be talking about today. And their case study will be available to you to download from our website. So let's begin.

Speaker 1:42

So some of you will have heard me talk about this image before, and if you have, just stay with me because we're going somewhere new with it today. A school on an improvement journey is like a bus heading for a destination. There's a driver, there are passengers, there's an itinerary that says where the bus is going, when it will arrive and how it plans to get there. So I want you today to picture two buses. On the first bus, the driver is in charge. Now they didn't necessarily build the itinerary all by themselves, they consulted with experienced guides, they took advice from people who travelled the road before. But they hold the plan, they know the route. When something goes wrong, they call on others for help, but the ultimate buck stops with them. The passengers on that bus don't have to wonder what's happening next because they have a copy of the itinerary. They can focus on what they need to do, and yes, sometimes there are collaborative discussions around what to do, but everybody has certainty.

Speaker 2:48

On the second bus, the driver makes a nice speech at the start of the journey and then they sit down, but not in the driver's seat. They sit down and someone else takes the wheel for a while. Then, because they're not in charge, the route gets debated where the loudest voices win. Decisions get made by whoever happens to be standing closest to the steering wheel at that particular point in time, and the actual destination sometimes gets forgotten somewhere along the way. That bus is moving, but nobody can quite tell you where they're going, how they're going to get there, or how they know that they've arrived.

Speaker 3:26

So in a school, the principal or the head of school, if you're in a P -12, is the driver. Staying in that driver's seat is genuinely hard, especially when you are leading work in an area where you don't feel that you are the most experienced. It's especially hard because every decision in school leadership these days feels public high stakes and like it could be your career-defining mistake. And that's where we're going to walk today. And it's a little messy and it's a little uncomfortable, but I think we need to have this chat.

Speaker 4:03

So let me describe a feeling that I suspect is familiar to most school leaders, even the ones who never fully say it out loud. You've been asked to lead the improvement agenda, and it could be literacy, but it could be maths, it could be anything. And you know that the work you're doing matters. You know that your students need it. You also know, in that really honest bit of your brain, maybe that you don't yet have all of the technical knowledge you'd like to have to feel confident. Now you've read some things, you've been to some PD, and you have smart people on your team, but you maybe don't have the deepest expert knowledge in the room, and you know it. And because you know it, every decision feels enormous and scary. We are all aware in leadership that someone above is watching, someone below is judging, and that parents have opinions. Social media has thoughts about everything, and you're meant to make a confident, evidence-informed call about something you're still learning. Now, this is the moment when imposter syndrome comes calling the loudest. And I often call imposter syndrome Mildred, that voice of doubt that says, you know you don't know enough, you know you're not doing a good enough job. And that voice is sometimes sneaky, sometimes it whispers, and sometimes it's really loud. And where we're sitting in that will depend on our experience, our personality, and so many factors. So, as a leader who's supposed to be driving the bus, who is plagued by Mildred and imposter syndrome, sometimes what happens is the driver gets out of the driver's seat.

Speaker 5:50

Leaders hardly ever openly and overtly do this. Nobody wakes up and says, "Oh, I'm deciding to abdicate decision making today." Instead, we do this in really small, plausible ways. And those handoffs are what I want to spend this next little moment unpacking. I want to help you see the pattern so that you can identify it and take steps to stop it.

Speaker 6:16

There's two main ways that this happens. The first one is outsourcing, the second one is delegating. And they may look similar from the outside, but they're quite different on the inside. So let's start with outsourcing. There are three forms of outsourcing that I see leaders fall into. Now, none of the decisions that are made are silly ones, and all of them are understandable, but all of them, if we're not conscious, can move us out of the driver's seat. So the most obvious one is to bring in a consultant to tell you what to do. Now, let me be clear: a good consultant can be a brilliant source of coaching, knowledge, and structured support. And our team works with schools every day in exactly that capacity. So I'm not going to pretend that outside expertise has no place in school improvement, it does, and the research supports that. It shows that having an outside source can be incredibly useful. But here's the line that matters: a good consultant supports your decision making, they do not replace it. If you are an experienced teacher and leader and you have a track record of student success, then we should not be overriding our professional judgement because a consultant has told us what to do. The consultant's job is to bring evidence, frameworks, perspective, and sometimes challenge, and then give you the tools to make the calls about what needs to happen in your school context because your knowledge of your community, your team, and context are all irreplaceable, an outside consultant can never have that, and nobody should pretend to. A consultant should also be able to help you break things down to figure out what's going to work for you. There are no one size fits all versions of school improvement that say just do exactly this in every single context and all will be well.

Speaker 8:24

One of the markers of genuinely evidence-based external support is that the school retains the decision-making authority throughout the relationship. And that's not a soft principle, it's in the research. Schools should retain control over timing, focus, and how external work integrates with the broader plan. This should never be an added burden. Any work you do with a consultant should be about helping you achieve the goals that you have set. It should be a mechanism of reaching those goals, not something extra that you now have to think about. And one more thing on this.

Speaker 9:05

I've used the word consultant, and we may think about someone who does the sort of work that I do, but a consultant can also be someone provided by your system. They might be on a paid contract, or they could work in the system and have a role in a regional office, for example. The dynamic is still the same. Having the title or the funding source change doesn't change the principle that you are the leader of the school, and your professional judgement has to count.

Speaker 9:36

The second form of outsourcing is a little more subtle, and because it's subtle, it can trip us up without realising. Because it doesn't feel like outsourcing at all, it feels more like compliance. It can feel like being a good professional, and sometimes it is, but not always. So here's what I'm talking about. So many guidelines, practice guides, frameworks, and policies are perceived to be grounded in evidence because of the body that has produced them. The system has said it, the agency has said it, or somebody has said it, so it must be evidence-based. So we'll follow up without question or critical evaluation. And I really think that history should give us pause here. Because think of all the years our profession spent implementing balanced literacy practices to the letter with absolute conviction, because that's what the system -level guidance said. And we were so sure and certain about our approach, and then we weren't.

Speaker 10:38

Now, I would love to think that we as leaders and professionals in this space would never go back to that same kind of unquestioning acceptance. But history says that we can, and so we need to be vigilant. So when guidance lands on your desk, such as guidance that says for fluency, every single student in every classroom should just really be having the same text. So your whole Year 4 class should have the exact same text for fluency reading. That is something that is being said all over the place, but there's so much nuance to that discussion that we can have a talk about that another time. So when guidance like that lands on your desk, even from a respected source, it is healthy and professional to ask questions before you commit to doing the thing that has been outlined.

Speaker 11:27

So when someone says, well, this is research-based, we need to be asking questions like: in what context was that research conducted? What were the conditions that produced the outcomes? Do we have those conditions in our school? Which elements of this advice are backed by the most robust replicated research? And which are suggestions from limited trials that we could be mindful of but need to consider carefully? What support is there to make this approach work in our context? What indicators should we be watching for to tell us that our chosen approach is actually working? And how will we evaluate the impact of this in the short, medium, and long term?

Speaker 12:10

Because often research is conducted in a small group setting with five or six students, maybe fewer, by the researcher themselves, with a particular kind of student with a particular kind of learning profile. And we're trying to implement that practice in a whole class setting with a general education classroom teacher with a whole range of student needs in the room. And so we have to be critical and evaluate all of these decisions that we make.

Speaker 12:42

And the final question we can ask here is based on the success we have already seen in our work, as in our data shows we're getting strong outcomes. Does what we are being told make sense? These questions are not subversive, they're not about you going rogue. I think they're about being a professional, a leader who asks them is doing their job. And if we're not asking these questions, we could be unintentionally outsourcing our professional judgement to whoever wrote the document.

Speaker 13:16

And there's another layer to this that I want to bring up, but I want to do it really carefully. Sometimes when we follow system level advice, we're not actually doing it because it's grounded in all of the evidence that we think it is. We're doing it because someone's watching. We're making what can be called political decisions, which are decisions to lean into an action to win the approval of people who can positively influence our careers. Or on the flip side, we're making a decision to do something because we sense, or it's been overtly said, that if we don't, then there'll be some sort of negative repercussion for us. These decisions are compliance-based decisions. And sometimes it's just the way it goes, and other times we need to gently push back. I'm not suggesting that schools should go rogue at all. And I'm also not naive, I've been a school leader, I've sat in the same seat as a principal and a deputy and the curriculum leader. And there are times when everybody has to just say, you know what, we've been asked to do something that isn't immoral, illegal, unethical, or dangerous, and so we may think it's silly, but we're going to do it. And we could name it up as a JDI item (just do it), and mitigate any risk from it and move on.

Speaker 14:43

But here's where I personally come a little unstuck. It's that if I'm being asked to do something that I know is not best for student outcomes and not just one learning profile in terms of students, but universal student outcomes, if I know that we're disadvantaging someone, then that's for me sits in the unethical column. And I think that most of us have this. And knowing when to go with the flow and when to stand the ground is part of the work we do as leaders. And as Kenny Rogers put it, you have to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Every leader at some point decides which hill is worth dying on and which one isn't. We can't fight every battle, so we need to save our energy for the ones that truly matter.

Speaker 15:35

Outsourcing form number three is in changing what we do in schools based on what people who've never done the work are telling us. And again, we need to be really careful because I don't want to come across as being gatekeeping or precious. So let me say this up front. I'm not arguing that unless someone has been a school leader for 20 years, they have nothing to add, that would be childish and it would be silly. And there are people from outside the school experience who can bring genuine value to the conversation, particularly in that interpreting of research space and in the academic space. What I am saying is that the work of implementing explicit teaching, of getting to universal student outcomes and sustaining that over time, takes more knowledge than just the research knowledge, because we have to be able to make nuanced decisions that are all about contextualising, keeping the elements that are universal, that are not negotiable, and knowing how to adjust to meet the needs of our context.

Speaker 16:47

The work of leadership in general is so deeply rewarding, but it is always more complex than it looks from the outside. So unless someone's actually sat in the chair, unless they have led that team, actively led the team of 30 or 40 people, day in, day out, where the buck stops with them, I don't think we could fully appreciate what that job actually entails. Even in a school where our team is on the bus, where no one's undermining the work, where there's no one calling the union over a meeting that ran three minutes long, even then, the cognitive and emotional load of leadership is enormous. And practically what that means is that solutions for schools have to be simple and they have to give us bang for our buck. They also have to actually work, not just work in someone's imagination, but they have to work in real life.

Speaker 17:43

So be mindful of where information is coming from. And trust your judgement. If you have proven experience in shifting data and getting outcomes, trust your judgement and don't override that because Mildred or Imposter Syndrome came for a visit.

Speaker 18:02

That's it for outsourcing. Now let's talk about delegating. In some ways, delegating can be a little worse than outsourcing, because at least with outsourcing, the leader knows they're handing something off. But with delegating, leaders often do this in the name of being collegial, respectful, and trusting. And the consequences can really stack up from this. Now, I'm not here to say we shouldn't be collegial, respectful, and trusting, of course we should. The challenge comes when we want our teams and our middle leaders to own decisions, to be a part of it all. But they probably at this point in where our profession is don't have the knowledge and experience to be able to make those decisions confidently. So when principals or heads of school aren't the key decision maker on matters of school improvement, here is what can happen. And we, in the work that we do, see this over and over.

Speaker 19:08

Firstly, instructional leaders and middle leaders end up in a battle of wills and opinions. Without a clear decision maker, every disagreement about what to do becomes personal. The next thing that can happen is one person's approach, often someone who's new to the school who presents very confidently, comes to dominate the whole discussion. So the whole school is now following one person's preference, not really understanding it fully, just trusting that they know what they're doing. Now that person may or may not stick around. And when they leave, or when their experience runs out, things can fall apart.

Speaker 19:49

Third, middle and instructional leaders can end up being the scapegoat for strategic failures that were never theirs to own in the first place. Next, staff who don't support the improvement direction figure out pretty quickly that the middle leader has no real positional authority, so they push back. They just ignore what's asked of them, they undermine, knowing that no one will ever really follow it up. I've also seen it happen that different year levels end up using different programs, approaches, and systems because decisions have been left to those year level coordinators, whatever their title, in the name of respecting their role. You cannot build a whole school approach when every grade or part of the school is doing something different.

Speaker 20:37

We also see words like trust, collaboration, and autonomy being used to abdicate strategic responsibility. So we want to trust, we want to give autonomy to our teachers. That becomes a really polite way of saying, you know, hot potato, here it is, it's all on you, have a nice day. New initiatives probably won't last when we don't have somebody in the driver's seat. Because when a whole school approach actually has to be whole school, everyone knows that nobody will follow up, really, if we just push back a little bit. And that breeds this cycle of cynicism and it contaminates every initiative that you have. We also see it happen that principals can take credit for the excellent work of instructional leaders below them. They win promotions, contracts, and reputations that they haven't actually earned.

Speaker 21:34

Finally, the principal themselves ends up living in a world of low grade uncertainty because they haven't done the work to build the strong knowledge base they can rely on. So that just makes imposter syndrome, that very thing they're trying to avoid, even worse. And I know that's a doom and gloom list of what can go wrong, but I also think that if we're honest about ourselves, we have worked in settings where one or many of these things has been in evidence.

Speaker 22:06

But we don't do doom and gloom and leave it there on the Leading Learning podcast because none of that is inevitable. We can retain our voice and influence as leaders in a way that is not about being authoritarian. We do not have to abandon collegiality and collective action planning. We don't have to override the skill and experience of our team when they've been able to demonstrate outcomes. What it does mean is that we, as the leader, need to be the best learner in our school community. We have to keep building the knowledge that our team can rely on, and that will help us make more confident decisions.

Speaker 22:52

And so I want to lean into an example of a school we've been working in and with in a snapshot of practice. So we have this principal's permission to share her name and her school, and you can download a full article that is the full snapshot of practice from the show notes of this podcast episode on our website at jocelynseamereducation.com.

Speaker 23:17

The school we're celebrating today is Moana Primary School in South Australia, and the principal who we're celebrating is Kelly Patch. So Kelly's school has around 400 students. About 65% of those students sit in the bottom two quartiles of socioeconomic advantage. So this school is doing the real work in a real community with the kinds of pressures and responsibilities that many of you listening will recognise straight away if you work in a similar context. Now, when we met this school, they had already done significant work on their literacy approach. Their reading data was moving, lots of debunked practices were gone, staff were in alignment, and by most measures, the school knew what they stood for instructionally. But Kelly noticed something. She noticed that writing was being taught differently in every classroom. Now there was awareness of the research on the reading-writing connection, but it wasn't translating into consistent practice. And Kelly had built a team of capable, committed teachers. Kelly and her team at Moana didn't have a people problem. They had a systems problem when it came to building consistent practice. So Kelly and her leadership team had already been drawing on resources from what we offer in the Structured Literacy Podcast, different Professional Learning that we'd run, and the Resource Room. And they'd used these tools to shape the early shifts at the school. What was missing was sustained implementation support for writing. And so here's where they brought us in.

Speaker 24:59

Now I'd just like to say that we rarely step into a school to do one-off work because we know that one-off work only gets you dipping your toe in the water of school improvement. But Kelly's school had done such a magnificent job so far that we felt confident that we were going to be able to help them with not a one-off PL, but certainly PL and coaching, and so we went in and partnered with them.

Speaker 25:26

And here's what really matters for this conversation we're having in this podcast episode. Kelly didn't just hand the work over. She said, it can be difficult as a site leader to find professional development that actually develops you as a leader so that you can develop your staff. Kelly stayed in the driver's seat the whole way through. And when we did the work that we did with Moana Primary, the implementation of this work was deliberately designed so that the principal and literacy coach would end up with a deeper understanding of the planning practices and the coaching practices that were going to help the teachers into the longer term. This is not about just "let's deliver some PL," it's about capability building both for teachers and for leaders. And that was the goal from day one.

Speaker 26:22

So practically it looked like this. Kelly, as the principal, was present for all aspects of the professional learning. She was in the room for the whole staff PL sessions. She did that thinking alongside her team, and she didn't just observe from the edge. She joined in. She was in it. And when teachers had questions or there was something they wanted to discuss, she was able to co-facilitate with me to help her team to come along in their understanding because she had done so much of the learning herself beforehand. And here's what she says about that experience now.

Speaker 27:02

"We didn't realise the importance of having leadership driving the process for the whole staff until we worked with Jocelyn Seamer Education. If it had been Jocelyn working directly with the teaching staff alone, not including the leadership, I don't think it would have been anywhere near as successful."

Speaker 27:22

And this to me just speaks volumes about where we're getting to with this particular episode. The work that we did with Moana did involve whole staff PL. It then involved team coaching to teach them a process for planning and thinking about writing instruction from a number of avenues. By the end of that process, the leadership team had not just participated but co-constructed in a I Do, We Do, You Do for the big people version, so that when I walked away when I left, they were able to continue the work.

Speaker 28:04

So the improvement that Moana Primary experienced didn't happen just because someone external came in and told people what to do. It happened because the leadership team was deliberately developed to carry the work on. They stayed in the driver's seat the whole time. And when it came time for that follow-up work by the leadership team, because they had been there for the whole process and they knew the cohort and the data, then Kelly had the knowledge to say, well, if your students can already do this, perhaps the focus should be that. And she was able to help them to redesign the units they were creating and really think about instruction. And from that, student engagement lifted and students who had checked out came back to the work. Teachers started inviting leadership into their classrooms to celebrate what the students were doing. And several years down the track of this work, Kelly's reflection is, "I realised I'm not driving this by myself anymore. The improvement is being done by teachers as well," which is just wonderful. And that's what it looks like when leadership stays in that driver's seat long enough to build their own capability and the capability of the team. Because eventually the team becomes a co-driver in different areas. But that doesn't happen right away. It only happens when leaders are there from the start doing the work and holding the wheel. Then, when the team's capability is at a point where it's reasonable and feasible, they're able to say, hey, why don't you take the wheel in your own classroom?

Speaker 29:54

At the start of 2026, Kelly made another decision that I think is worth naming, and it's one that we're seeing several schools were working with make, and I think it's great. She told her staff there would be no new learning initiatives that year. This whole year for them, 2026, would be about consolidating what they had already built. Now, that kind of disciplined restraint can be rare in schools because we feel like we're not doing enough, so we're perpetually chasing the next thing. It also happens to be exactly what the evidence on sustained implementation tells us to do.

Speaker 30:30

And I want to be clear about why I'm sharing this story. It's not because I want you to buy professional learning from us, it's because there's so much to be gained from the wisdom of colleagues who are doing this work well. Moana and Kelly's story illustrates that something that no framework or guidance document can really communicate as clearly as that. What it actually looks like on the ground for a leader to stay in the driver's seat of their school's improvement journey.

Speaker 31:00

So let's finish up with some takeaways. And there are six of them. It's ok, they're not very long, we're almost there. Number one, you are the driver. You're not a passenger with a microphone. You, as the driver, are in the role and you need to stay in the seat, even when it becomes uncomfortable. Doesn't mean we're not collaborating with our teams and bringing them in and engaging in shared action planning, but it means that you are their GPS to give them the certainty they need to move forward.

Speaker 31:33

Number two, external expertise supports and builds your judgement. It doesn't replace it.

Speaker 31:41

Number three, question guidance that's given to you, even when it comes from the system. And if you are someone working within the system who is charged with helping schools to make their improvement journey stick, do the same questioning, ask the same questions so that you can help the schools really understand where your advice is coming from.

Speaker 32:04

Number four, know the difference between delegating and abdicating. Delegating means that you are handing over decision making to somebody else. There are times when that is absolutely appropriate. And the appropriate time for that is when the people we're delegating to have the knowledge, skills, and experience, and that they've been able to show that they can get results. That's when delegating is appropriate. Before that point, it's unfair on everyone. Abdicating means handing the work over and then disappearing. Our team can tell the difference, so can our students.

Speaker 32:43

Number five, be the best learner in your school. And I know that so many of you already are. There are so many rabbit holes that you are still going down, even five, six, seven years into the work.

Speaker 32:55

And number six, really, really important, build evaluation of impact into the journey from day one. The point is not to do things, the point is to ensure that every student is learning and thriving. Activity is not the same as impact. Initiatives are not the same as outcomes. Data is our friend here. It tells us whether we're on the right track and whether changes are still needed. So decide up front what you will measure, when you will check in, and what you'll do if the data says that our approach isn't getting us precisely where we want to go.

Speaker 33:31

Leading a school, I believe, is one of the most demanding jobs in public life. Cognitive load is enormous, I don't have to tell you that. None of that is a reason to step out of the driver's seat, though. It is a reason to build the conditions that let us stay in it. Knowledge, coaching, and honest colleagues help. Our team works alongside school leaders who are doing exactly the work that you are doing. We don't have every answer for your school. We're not the expert in your school. What we can do and what any solid external support can do is help you understand the context in which you're operating, help you understand the ways to adjust any initiative to make it work for your school. Remember, I feel it in my heart, does not replace a data set, but we can use our professional judgement to make decisions.

Speaker 34:24

If something in this episode has landed for you, if it's helped you name something you've been feeling but you haven't quite had words for, share it with a colleague because these conversations are better when we have them together. I'll see you next time on the Leading Learning Podcast. Take care of yourselves, everyone. See you next time. Bye.