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National standards for head teachers:some conceptual problemsJohn Wilson aa University of Oxford , United KingdomPublished online: 19 Dec 2006.

To cite this article: John Wilson (1999) National standards for head teachers: some conceptualproblems, Journal of In-Service Education, 25:3, 533-543, DOI: 10.1080/13674589900200092

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National Standards for Head Teachers:some conceptual problems

JOHN WILSONUniversity of Oxford, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT In trying to specify the job of head teachers or other teachers,we run into some conceptual problems. These are explored, using theTTA’s National Standards for Head Teachers as an example. The keyconcepts are those marked by ‘success’, ‘standards’, ‘skills’, ’management’and ‘leadership’. Some general problems with the making of suchtaxonomies sre also discussed, and the importance of conceptual analysisas part of research is demonstrated.

I want here to raise some of the conceptual or logical difficulties whichconfront us when we try to specify the job, or explicate the role, of headteachers or other teachers, or to spell out the demands which we expectthem to meet. (One of the difficulties, as we shall see, is to get clear aboutjust what we are trying to do; my last sentence offers more than oneoption.) In doing this, I shall take the Teacher Training Agency’s NationalStandards for Head Teachers (TTA, 1998) as an example. I shall be verycritical of it and, hence, need to make it clear in advance that I do notintend such criticism as purely destructive: the task is a necessary oneand almost any attempt to perform it is worth making. However, to getthings right it is necessary to appreciate fully how easy it is to get themwrong; and I shall offer some more positive or constructive suggestionslater on.

We may begin by asking what this kind of document is suppose to befor. Suppose I am a tribble-farmer and am not already clear just what thatentails. Then (1) one thing that would be useful for me is a set of what mayfairly be called ‘standards’, laid down and monitored by the CentralAssociation of Tribble-Farmers or whoever. I am told that, whatever else Ido, I must ensure that each of my tribbles has x square metres ofliving-space and y kilograms of food per week, and so on. These will bepublic and verifiable demands, analogous to the demand made on

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sausage-makers that pork sausages contain at least 51% of pork – that isthe ‘national standard’. Another useful thing (2) might be a break-down ofthe actual task of tribble-farming, a detailed list of what tribble-farmershave to do if they are to do their job well: they have to keep their tribblesclean, feed them, exercise them, and so forth. Different again would be (3)a list of qualities that I need to be a good tribble-farmer: in performing thetask I may need enthusiasm, conscientiousness, a sense of humour, orwhatever.

The TTA document is entitled ‘National Standards’, but in factcontains little or nothing that could reasonably be called a ‘standard’. It is,rather, a mixture of (2) and (3). So it is, or ought to be, a serious exercisein taxonomy or categorisation: an attempt to break down the general ideaof ‘being a head teacher’ into discrete and clearly-defined categorieswhich might otherwise have escaped our attention. That is, on anyaccount, a difficult business. We have to eschew banality or trivialnear-tautology – it is no use to me as a tribble-farmer to be told that I must‘secure success and improvement’, or ‘ensure high-quality’tribble-farming; and we must also be careful not to misdescribe the task –talk of ‘leadership’, ‘management’, ‘inspiration’, ‘vision’ will be appropriateonly if tribble-farming does actually involve these features: do tribblesneed to be led or just guided, do I need a vision or just some kind ofrealistic plan?

Of course, a document might aim at something rather different. Theauthors might assume that we know (2) what tribble-farmers are supposedto do, and (3) what qualities they need, and go on to tell them (4) how todo it. Here they would rely on some expert knowledge, acquired byresearch and experiment: in the way that we might communicate theresults of medical research to doctors who already know pretty well whatthey are trying to do (to cure their patients), but need more knowledge inorder to do it better. The document would be, as they say,‘research-based’. However, this particular document is certainly notpresented as such (there are no references to research at all), and therewould indeed be insuperable problems in attempting (4) in this case. Thatis not so much because we may doubt whether there is in fact any suchexpert knowledge, but rather because any relevant knowledge would haveto ride on the back of (2) and (3). For unless we first know (to put itbriefly) what the task consisted of, and what counted as success, we couldnot know whether this or that method or practice was relevant to the taskand engendered success.

To enlarge briefly on this point: in running a business I know prettywell what counts as success – the business booms, I make a good profit,my employees are happy, and so on, at least I do not go broke. Then someexpert may tell me: ‘Look, we have done some research on this, and ourfindings clearly show that if you do XYZ – spend more money onadvertising, or arrange the shelves in your shop in a different way – youwill double your sales’. But, in some enterprises – running a mentalhospital, or a parish, or a family – I may have, at best, only a very murky or

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intuitive idea of what counts as success. My patients (heavily sedated)may be more trouble-free, my congregation may double, my children allwin places to Oxbridge – but is that the kind of ‘success’ that I really want,even if ‘research’ can tell me how to achieve it? In this situation I have firstto get clearer about the enterprise in general: about its ultimate aims, andabout the particular tasks and qualities – (2) and (3) – which it requires.And that brings us back to the whole business of taxonomy orcategorisation, to some coherent attempt to break down the enterpriseand lay out its component parts for inspection.

That might indeed be called a kind of ‘research’, and a verynecessary kind. However, it is quite different from strictly empiricalresearch, which aims at producing ‘findings’ or ‘conclusions’ above thelevel of commonsense, well-established recommendations of the form‘Give them a fat-free diet, and their symptoms will disappear’. Indeed, it isnot empirical at all: it is, rather, an attempt to organise the taskconceptually, not to discover new empirical facts about it. That is whybanality or near-tautology is valueless, because the task is not organisedor broken down, but just re-stated in general terms and different words.

In this light what the document calls ‘the core purpose of the headteacher’ (‘core purpose’ is an extremely odd phrase in itself) comes offbadly: ‘To provide professional leadership for a school which secures itssuccess and improvement, ensuring high quality education for all itspupils and improved standards of learning and achievement’. Most of thisis banal, not so much wrong as toothless (does any head teacher not wantto ‘secure success and improvement’?); and one element in it,‘professional leadership’, is open to the charge of partisanship ormisdescription (particularly in the light of the document’s later talk of‘management’ and ‘appropriate leadership styles’). To see that this is notjust carping criticism, imagine how some highly successful head teacher –Thomas Arnold, for instance – might react. He might say ‘Professionalleadership’? ‘Management’? Well, perhaps in a sense ... but really I don’t seethe job under that sort of description at all. I am not or not primarily abusiness manager or a ‘professional’ leader, any more than Socrates orAbelard or St Bernard was’.

The point here is that by the mere use of certain words (‘leadership’,‘management’ and so on) we already import – from the world of business,perhaps – a certain model or picture of the task. Perhaps that picture doesfit the task, or some of it; but we cannot know whether that is true or notunless we first give a clear account of what the words mean. What is it to‘lead’, ‘manage’, ‘organise’, ‘arrange’, ‘direct’, ‘supervise’ – and,subsequently, to ‘inspire’ or have a ‘vision’? Only when we are clear aboutthis can we then go on to see whether success in running a school (if‘running’ is a sufficiently general and harmless term) actually requiresthese activities, and in what measure. Otherwise, we simply use the wordsblindly, and import their connotations uncritically.

Even then, we have to be careful, because the criteria of application(if not the meaning) of these words will vary very widely, depending on

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just what institution we are concerned with. Consider ‘running’ a farm, anorchestra, a dating agency, a battleship, a parish church, a factory, anArctic expedition: what is to count as ‘good leadership’ or ‘management’(or any other such term) will be largely a function of how we conceivethese institutions, what we take them to be for or about. Not much may beable to be said across the board except banalities (we must be clear aboutour aims, communicate properly, be enthusiastic yet also cautious, and soon). Even if I do in fact need ‘leadership’ to be a good tribble-farmer,almost everything turns on what kind of ‘leadership’ I need; and that, veryobviously, turns on my basic conception of tribble-farming. So too ineducation; without a clear specification of what schools are for, ourdescriptions, even if appropriate, will be empty: and general talk of‘success’, ‘improved learning’, ‘achievement’ and so on will be largelytautological and give no real guidance.

I come now to some standard difficulties in taxonomy (of which thisdocument seems entirely oblivious). If my wife gives me a shopping list, itsmerits will depend chiefly on whether the items in it are (a) clearlyspecified, and – even more vital – (b ) discrete and not overlapping. ‘Peas,potatoes, leeks, asparagus’ is helpful, a proper break-down of discreteitems which I can attend to in turn. ‘Peas, potatoes, vegetables, food forthe weekend, food with plenty of Vitamin C’ is just a muddle. That, too, is ahard criterion to satisfy. The document sets out a list of ‘key areas ofheadship’: they are ‘Strategic direction: teaching and learning: leading andmanaging staff: efficient and effective’ (if there is a distinction here, itneeds to be explicated) ‘deployment of staff and resources:accountability’. The overlaps are very obvious; and the point is not justthat the categories are logically untidy, but that they offer me as a headteacher no separate items to focus on. I ask myself ‘Am I managing my staffproperly?’, and put in some work on that item; then I turn to the next itemand ask myself ‘Am I deploying my staff “efficiently and effectively”? Buthang on a minute, haven’t I just ticked off that item already? Or is“managing” somehow different from “deploying”?’ Then I am in a muddle.

The same goes for the list of ‘Skills and Attributes’. Here, the title isalready a muddle, because ‘skills’ are themselves ‘attributes’. (The realwork that needs doing in this area is to distinguish clearly between kindsof qualities or attributes: the use of ‘skills’ to cover more or less anyground masks this, it is a kind of conceptual laziness. ‘Skill’ in ordinaryEnglish is a pretty restricted notion – is our chief need for a skilful headteacher? – and we need to distinguish between skills, abilities, capacities,attainments, characteristics of personality, moral virtues and no doubtother things besides.) The document lists ‘Leadership skills:decision-making skills: communication skills: self-management [sic]: andattributes’, the attributes including ‘personal impact’, ‘adaptability’,‘energy’, ‘enthusiasm’, ‘intellectual ability’, ‘commitment’, ‘reliability’,‘integrity’ and so on. These too grossly overlap; and we are certainly veryfar from ‘standards’ (‘Head teacher, your standard of energy is ...’).

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Let me now revert to a point made earlier: that, in hard practice andnot just in theory, our conception of the ‘role’ or task of a head teacherwill turn on what we think schools, and perhaps education in general, arefor. That is already too wide a question, because (under any educationalsystem) different schools serve different clientèles and age-groups, towhom different aims or ‘philosophies’ or ‘visions’ will be appropriate; andin any case different head teachers and governing bodies will haveeducational theories or philosophies of their own. What can this sort ofdocument sensibly set out to do in this situation?

It cannot, of course, set out an educational philosophy of its own,which would inevitably be controversial. It may insist, I think rightly, thathead teachers should have some ‘vision’, and even ask them to ‘secure thecommitment of parents and the wider community to the vision’. However,that hardly helps, because one can have bad visions (Hitler had a veryclear vision of Europe under Nazi rule). The alternative is to be much moredown-to-earth and say ‘Look, there are all sorts of philosophies andtheories and visions; but in practice, whatever your personal vision, thereare certain duties you have to perform. Many of these are laid down bylaw: you must keep a proper record of attendance, ensure that your stafffollow the National Curriculum, do not molest the children, and so on. Thisis your job as a paid functionary of the state; and we will now add somevery specific instructions about how to perform these duties and measureup to these standards: you must give the pupils so many hours ofteaching, hold staff-meetings at least once a fortnight, etc. These featuresare non-controversial and verifiable: they apply to any school in the statesystem: this is, as it were, the book of rules’. But this is not the alternativewhich the document adopts. Rather it tries, but fails, to give a taxonomicbreak-down of the task of any head teacher (whatever his/her ‘vision’) inany school (whatever its clientèle). That attempt could only succeed eitherif schools and educational philosophies were, or at least ought to be,entirely homogeneous: or if it could be shown that there were somerespectable body of theory (‘management theory’, perhaps) which appliedacross the board and which all head teachers should master. If neither ofthose conditions is met, all we can ask head teachers to do is to thinkharder about their own ‘visions’ and their practice, to welcome criticismand experiment, to keep up their level ofenergy/enthusiasm/reliability/integrity ... and so on; perhaps worth saying(certainly head teachers need encouragement), but hardly a seriousadvance in our knowledge of an admittedly complex area of enquiry.

That may, indeed, be all that we can do, at least at long range: thoughat closer range there are advisers and critics and others who can helpmuch more, by working within the head teacher’s ‘vision’ and offeringadvice and suggestions on that basis. That is in effect a kind ofconsultancy, and consultants may always be useful. However, that is totocaelo different from any attempt to impose some kind of theoreticalstructure on head teachers – in particular, an attempt to force their ideasand practice into a particular set of concepts (‘Leadership’, ‘management’

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and the like), unless and until those concepts have been made clear andshown to be relevant.

If I may offer a final and deliberately extreme example:‘accountability’ for ministers of the church depends more or less entirelyon particular sectarian conceptions. There are churches or sects wherethe minister is accountable in great detail, from one Sunday sermon toanother, and if the congregation does not approve what he or she says,they may fire him or her. Other churches (perhaps the Roman Catholicchurch) make the minister accountable only to higher authority,ultimately perhaps only to his conscience or to God: they entertain a quitedifferent conception of what a church is supposed to be like, hence a quitedifferent conception of the minister’s authority and autonomy, of his orher task or ‘leadership’, and hence of his or her accountability. It is a veryimportant question how far, and for what, and to whom head teachersshould be accountable: that too will be a function of how we are toconceive their tasks. In this case we know pretty well what ‘accountable’means, and know also that pretty well everyone must be accountable insome way, for something, and to someone. We know that the conceptapplies; but how it applies in practice is another matter, so that anygeneral talk about ‘accountability’ will be of no help to anyone.

All this has some severely practical aspects, of which I will mentiononly two, that the document does not touch on at all. The first and moreobvious is this: it is common knowledge that head teachers may (or maynot) have a number of tasks to perform which are comparatively easy todistinguish. They may, for instance, actually teach (and if that is not animportant part of their job, we do better to abandon the title ‘headteacher’ and use some other – ‘principal’, perhaps): they may beresponsible for public relations between the school and the outside world:they may have financial responsibility, more or less wide-ranging, for theschool budget: they may have to work out the school timetable and so on.It is also common knowledge that different schools may allocate these jobsto different people, not only the head teacher: they employ bursars tohandle the finance, use a deputy head or a director of studies for thetimetable, etc. Any head teacher will want to know the answers toquestions like ‘Is it my job to balance the budget, or can I ask someoneelse to do that?’, ‘Am I responsible for discipline, or can I delegate that tomy deputy head?’, or ‘Are public relations an essential part of my role, orshould I hire a public relations expert to do that for me?’.

In the light of this (boringly obvious) fact, any general account interms of ‘leadership’, ‘management’ or ‘skills’ is bound to fail in two ways.First, the concepts will simply not apply to some of these sub-tasks(balancing a budget is not a matter of leadership). Secondly, and moreimportantly, the vital questions of which sub-tasks are central and whichperipheral, and of how they connect with each other, will not even beraised, so that the head teacher’s questions remain unanswered. Yet thesequestions are crucial to what a head teacher in fact does, where he or sheputs in most of his or her time and effort. At least some discussion of

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priorities is needed, and it is hard to take seriously any document whichfails to face these issues.

A further, somewhat less obvious, issue is this: as a head teacher, Ineed to know what kind of community I am supposed to be running. ‘Aschool’ or ‘a learning community’ is no answer: I know that already. What Ineed to know is (for instance) whether the community is based on certainpredetermined moral or religious values and beliefs, or (at the otherextreme) more like a secretarial college which aims simply to dispensecertain skills and bits of knowledge, without worrying too much about theinner lives and characters of its students. I also need to know how potentor self-contained the community is supposed to be: is it to be like anextended family, which requires the inspiration (and perhaps ‘leadership’)of some very visible father- or mother-figure, or is it to be more like abusiness which may require only efficient ‘management’ by someone whokeeps himself or herself in the background? Is it to be more like amonastery, the values and practices of which may have to be sustainedeven against (in the teeth of) the outside world, or is it somehow to reflectthe outside world, ‘integrate’ with the local community and to take its cuefrom its clientèle and their parents?

There is a very profound difficulty here which needs a briefdiscussion. Liberal and pluralistic societies (not only the United Kingdom)are ex hypothesi not committed to any very clear or positive set of valuesor beliefs: they do not have a ready-made picture of a ‘culture’ or ‘ethos’which is appropriate to all schools, in a way that a thoroughly Christian orIslamic or Communist society would have. So, quite understandably,no-one (certainly not the authors of this document) wants to pronounceon this: there will be talk of ‘vision’ or ‘inspiration’ or ‘leadership’, butnothing said about what the contents of the vision should be, or whatstudents and staff should be inspired about, or where they should be ledto. Yet there will still (again, quite understandably) remain the feeling thatsome kind of vacuum has been left: that schools ought to be ‘effective’ or‘meet standards’ – only not now in terms of any particular moral orcultural or religious ideals. What then is left? The only thing left is toregard the school, as it were by default, as some kind of business or, sansphrase, an organisation; and that, of course, is the overwhelming attractionof management and leadership theory. It seems to offer a way forwardwithout our having to face any basic questions of value or ideology at all –and hence also no questions of the nature of the school community. (Touse an extreme and, of course, grossly unfair parallel, it is as if we were tosay ‘Well, we cannot pronounce on whether we ought to haveconcentration camps or sweat-shops, but if we are going to have them atleast they must be efficiently managed’.)

I am not arguing here for any kind of initial ideologicalpronouncement (though in fact the whole style and language ofmanagement theory carries a tacit ideology with it); and there is in fact abetter alternative. The concepts of education and learning themselves, of‘a learning community’, carry certain logical and practical requirements

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with them. There must for instance be a certain kind of (quite demanding)discipline, clear methods of evaluation to determine what has and has notbeen learned, a proper understanding of the basic forms of thought(including morality and religion themselves), due attention to students’character and emotions (one cannot intelligibly educate only part of aperson, the ‘cognitive’ part), and a very potent community which offerssufficient psychological security for students to engage in the (verydemanding) business of learning. Without here going into further detail(see however Wilson, 1972), all these need to be explicated if we are togive any kind of serious answer to the head teacher’s questions.

We all know that a good school will meet certain obvious standards(success in public examinations, for instance), but we also know that theseare not the only important standards to be met. Any document whichpurports to describe standards in general is obliged to say somethingabout these: not only because failure to do so leaves a glaring gap, butbecause what head teachers do in practice, even in relation to the obviousstandards, will depend very much on what they think about the lessobvious ones. The thought ‘We can get head teachers to meet the obvious,publicly verifiable standards – that will be something, at least; and we canjust leave the rest aside without a word’ is ultimately an incoherent one,because the two are intimately connected. That connection must at leastbe acknowledged and to some extent explicated.

It may be said, not without justice, that documents such as this arenot intended to do more than set out some general ideas, and to act as astimulus for further enquiry. We may hope, for instance, that professionaleducational researchers will be stimulated to enquire more deeply andseriously into the task of head teachers: they may act as practicalconsultants as well as researchers, and put some proper flesh on the barebones of notions like ‘leadership’ or ‘management’ (perhaps even on‘vision’). However, from a pragmatic or political viewpoint, that hope islargely vain: educational researchers are funded and briefed in a muchmore down-to-earth way, which will not encourage them to attempt thekind of serious taxonomy that is required – just as, in teacher-traininginstitutions, the staff are so pre-occupied in meeting the actual demandsand criteria of the TTA (or other similar bodies) as to have little time orinclination to produce a more intellectually respectable, and practicallyuseful, set of criteria for ‘what makes a good teacher’. I do not at all denythat researchers and teacher-educators may, as it were per accidens, sheda good deal of light on the subject, but practical and political pressuresmake it hard for them even to address the (very considerable) difficulties.

How should such difficulties be addressed? What I have said abovemay give some idea of the pitfalls; and it is worth remembering that moreor less serious attempts to describe or specify the task of being a teacherare not just a recent phenomenon. We have such descriptions from Platoonwards, and no doubt in a few years’ time there will be other documentsto supplant that of the TTA, perhaps based on some other ‘model’, if‘management theory’ falls out of fashion; sometimes it seems that we are

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doomed to repeat our mistakes, and at least we can hardly be content withour progress to date. As with educational enquiry in general, it appears(and is) very hard to establish anything like a corpus of solid knowledge,something which has some claim to be authoritative. And that makes us aneasy prey both to fashionable climates of opinion and prevailing ‘models’and also to the (often very severe) pressures of government or otherexternal agencies, who have axes to grind that may or may not, be wise toapply – without a proper intellectual base or understanding, we cannottell. Meanwhile both research and practice are geared only to our current,and on any account inadequate, conceptions.

Those (admittedly still negative) points are important, because (as Isaid at the beginning) we need to recognise our condition in order toimprove it. If we are to do better, we have to take the whole business oftaxonomy or explication much more seriously. That seems to requiresome heuristic principles or practices, which I can state here only briefly:1. It would be wise to look at some easier cases in which we attempt tobreak down or explicate some task, before, or at least as well as, tacklingthe complex ones. What is involved in being (for instance) a taxi-driver, ora shop assistant, the manager of a sweet-shop, or (already a little morecomplex) an orchestra or a team of actors? Here, we have some hope ofgetting it right, even perhaps of covering all the ground; and that will bothgive us a clearer idea of the problems and some encouragement in solvingthem. It would be nice to know what was required of a school janitor, forexample, before proceeding to the more high-flown realm of being a headteacher.2. It would be useful to look at what might be parallel or analogous cases:what is required of tasks which all involve dealing in some way withpeople. What is it to be a good priest, or social worker, or medicalpractitioner, a good army officer, a good football coach? Here, similar butalso different problems appear; and these comparisons will shed somelight on the particular object of our enquiry.3. We need (as I have hinted) a much more thorough conceptual analysisof the very different ideas marked by different words: ‘leadership’,‘management’ and so on. Nor must we assume that we have all therelevant words before our eyes; for instance, what about the idea ofsomeone who simply animates a group of people without necessarilyleading or managing them or even inspiring them? (The French have aword for this, animateur.) Distinguishing these activities is a long anddifficult task, which is in large part just a matter of reflection on the exactmeanings of words, which otherwise we use uncritically (as in the exampleof ‘skills’ above).4. That kind of reflection, the attempt to match descriptions tophenomena, can be partly done in an armchair; but – particularly if welack imagination or practical experience – it helps enormously if it ismarried to on-the-ground observation. We look at what we call a ‘teacher’,and ask what exactly he or she is doing at this or that time: when he or she

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is actually teaching, and when motivating or organising or managing, orjust cheering the pupils up, or noting their absence, or lots of other things(and even these items are not properly discrete: cheering pupils up is aspecies of motivation). This kind of phenomenology (to use a pompousword) is an essential foundation to serious taxonomy: there is a usefulparallel in animal or zoological taxonomy, in which (after a long history ofenquiry, observation and reflection) we have, in fact, succeeded inestablishing a clear and useful set of categories. Educational researchneeds to do much more of this.

J. L. Austin (1962) describes this whole process as ‘linguisticphenomenology’, the making of clear distinctions and categories. We havemany or most of these distinctions and categories available to use inordinary language, if only we will attend to it properly, and not regard it astiresome philosophical nit-picking. Sometimes perhaps we may need, asAustin puts it, to ‘make clear distinctions rather than make existingdistinctions clear’: that is, to invent a new and specialised terminology inorder to deal with the phenomena (as we might have to invent such termsas ‘mammals’ or ‘reptiles’). However, that has to be done with great care;if someone wants to give a special, as it were institutionalised, sense to(for instance) ‘management’ or ‘vision’, then it is his or her responsibilityto make it very clear what that sense is; otherwise we no longer share acommon language and can make no common progress.

All that is a task very well worth undertaking: the sad thing is thatthere seem to be few, if any, arenas in which it is actually undertaken. Adhoc committees or working-parties cannot do it, the complexities are toogreat; universities and institutions of educational research seem not towant to take it on; it is certainly not a matter for government or publicopinion. It is itself a highly professional task. All I hope to have done hereis simply to draw attention to its difficulties, and perhaps given somerough idea of just what sort of task it is: that may at least offer astarting-point.

Finally, if I can try to remedy what must inevitably be a very negativeimpression of this particular document (and, indeed, of most similardocuments issued by governmental or other agencies), without soundinggrossly patronising, I should add that the actual use of such a documentmay well have some very positive spin-offs. At least it focuses seriousattention on the topic; and it may lead (perhaps has led) to practicaltraining-courses for head teachers and others which they may findprofitable, if only because such attention is seriously given (perhaps forthe first time). There are moods in which we may feel tempted to saysomething like ‘But education is such an impalpable, unmeasureable thing,it is no good trying to break it down or categorise it or subject it to‘standards’, we must just leave it in the hands of individuals and hope theywill do their best’. That is throwing in the towel; and, as I said at thebeginning, almost any serious attempt is worth making. It is easy tocriticise from an armchair, and such criticism may also easily arouse someindignation and lead to polemic, to what Plato calls ‘eristic’ (rather than

JOHN WILSON

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dialectic). That would be a pity: we may all at least unite in recognising theimportance of this task and in facing its difficulties with appropriatehumility.

Correspondence

John Wilson, Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford,15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY, United Kingdom.

References

Austin, J.L. (1962) Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Teacher Training Agency (1998) National Standards for Head Teachers. London:

TTA.Wilson, J. (1972) Practical Methods of Moral Education. London: Heinemann.

CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS WITH NATIONAL STANDARDS FOR HEAD TEACHERS

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