Journal of Education Policy

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Leading schools to promote social inclusion:

developing a conceptual framework for analysing
research, policy and practice

Carlo Raffo & Helen Gunter

To cite this article: Carlo Raffo & Helen Gunter (2008) Leading schools to promote social
inclusion: developing a conceptual framework for analysing research, policy and practice,
Journal of Education Policy, 23:4, 397-414, DOI: 10.1080/02680930801923799

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Published online: 14 Jun 2008.

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Journal of Education Policy
Vol. 23, No. 4, July 2008, 397–414

Leading schools to promote social inclusion: developing a conceptual

framework for analysing research, policy and practice
Carlo Raffo* and Helen Gunter

School of Education, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

(Received 20 April 2007; final version received 22 August 2007)
Taylor and Francis
TEDP_A_292545.sgm

Journal
10.1080/02680930801923799
0268-0939
Original
Taylor
402008
23
carlo.raffo@manchester.ac.uk
CarloRaffo
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Francis
Education
(print)/1464-5106
Policy (online)

Although much research has focussed on how various educational policy initiatives have
attempted to improve problems of social exclusion, little research has systematically
examined, categorised and synthesised the types of leadership in schools that might
assist improving social inclusion. Given the importance of school leadership in New
Labour educational policy for bringing about education change and improvement, it
seems rather strange that this is the case. This article attempts to set out an analytical
framework for undertaking such research by exploring the various links between social
inclusion, educational policy and school leadership. At one level the framework
develops questions about the nature of the conceptualisations of social inclusion that
educational policy, schools and its leaders might have, and in particular what knowledge
and view of equity might be privileged by such conceptualisations. The framework then
suggests the need for a school leader’s perspective on social inclusion to be examined in
relation to three suggested leadership rationales that emanate from both policy and
practice on school leadership – delivery focussed, localising and democratising. Finally
the framework argues for a need to understand the narratives adopted by school leaders
in pursuing particular leadership rationales vis-à-vis social inclusion. By charting the
various educational policies and practices that are theoretically and empirically possible
with regard to school leadership and social inclusion, we suggest the framework might
enable policymakers and practitioners to develop an educational theory of change on
social inclusion that both explicitly and critically explains and justifies the position being
taken at any particular time.
Keywords: social inclusion; leadership narratives; equity; knowledge; leadership rationales

Introduction
The concept of social exclusion has been within theorising about contemporary social
policy for some time (Byrne 2005). Although a contested term, at the root of the concept
are multi-dimensional socio-economic processes that exclude particular groups of individ-
uals, in particular places and in particular ways, from mainstream society (Mandipour, Cars,
and Allen 1998; Hills, Le Grand, and Bartlett 2002; Byrne 2005). Within England the
concept became embedded in numerous discourses at the same time as the Social Exclusion
Unit was set up by New Labour to examine some of the processes and possible causes of
social exclusion. The Social Exclusion Task Force was then empowered to suggest policy
developments that would counter the processes of social exclusion and enhance its corollary
– social inclusion. One of the key areas of priority for developing social inclusion centred
on improving education attainments for all children, regardless of personal circumstances

*Corresponding author. Email: carlo.raffo@manchester.ac.uk

ISSN 0268-0939 print/ISSN 1464-5106 online

© 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02680930801923799
http://www.informaworld.com
398 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

and family background. Through the removal of barriers to engagement and achievement
young people would be able to participate, engage and succeed in various aspects of main-
stream life. Over the last ten years there have been numerous attempts to assist this process
(e.g. Education Action Zones, Excellence in Cities, Connexions, Sure Start, Educational
Maintenance Allowances to name but a few) but perhaps of late developments such as Every
Child Matters (DfES 2003) and the subsequent launch of a range of extended services such
as Full Service Extended Schools (FSES) has now resulted in schools being more outward
looking with a focus on working with partners to provide a range of services to support
children, families and communities.
Although much research has focussed on how these various initiatives have impacted on
the educational attainment for young people categorised as most ‘at risk’ (see e.g. Hoggart
and Smith 2004; Cummings et al. 2005; Kendall et al. 2005; Melhuish, Belsky, and Leyland
2005; Middleton et al. 2005) little research has systematically examined, categorised and
synthesised the rationales for leadership in schools that might assist improving social inclu-
sion for those young people and their families. Given the importance of school leadership
in New Labour educational policy for bringing about education change and improvement
(DfEE 1997, 1998; DfES 2004, 2005a, 2005b) it seems rather strange that this is the case.
What research there is appears to be both disparate and yet at the same time fork along two
distinct lines of enquiry that either (1) take for granted a somewhat vague and normative
understanding of social inclusion linked to instrumental school leadership practice; or (2)
develop a social justice approach to schools and school leadership that are generally critical
of current educational policy and bureaucratic forms of school leadership implied in that
policy. In particular many studies in school leadership neither provide a rich understanding
of what forms of social inclusion are given primacy by schools and school leaders through
their school policy and practice nor how these practices are both localised and linked into
the national agendas. Likewise there appears to be a lack of awareness in the literature about
the leadership rationales that appear to underpin particular conceptualisation of social inclu-
sion and school leadership practice. Finally it is also difficult to discern in the literature what
school leadership narratives seem to best sum up the various rationales of school leadership
that reflect particular versions of social inclusion.
In this article, we take seriously the need to develop an appropriate conceptual frame-
work that will help to articulate, categorise and synthesise different approaches to inclu-
sion, policy and leadership practices, and through which a future research agenda in this
important area can be appropriately developed. In order to undertake this task we have
found it helpful to draw on an ‘equity and knowledge problematics’ developed by
Popkewitz and Lindbland (2000) and a typology of school leadership approaches devel-
oped by Gunter (Ribbins and Gunter 2002; Gunter 2005). These approaches provide a
way of understanding not only how social inclusion/exclusion can be defined in terms of
access, recognition and meaningful participation issues (‘equity’) but also how particular
inclusion/exclusion perspectives and practices are defined, developed, privileged and
used by educational policymakers and practitioners (‘knowledge’) with regard to equity
issues.
This article has two main sections: the first presents a rationale for a conceptual frame-
work for understanding social inclusion and how governments draw on particular knowl-
edge claims to determine strategy; the second, uses three questions to examine what
conceptualisations of social inclusion are being used by governments, and the New
Labour governments in particular, before going on to examine various approaches to
educational policy and school leadership and their supporting narratives. Our argument is
that New Labour strategy is predominantly based on functionalist knowledge claims
 Journal of Education Policy 399

regarding social inclusion policy. This approach normally generates a ‘standards agenda’
that is backed up by delivery-focussed forms of leadership which are underpinned by
instrumental narratives regarding practice. There is some evidence of broader educational
outcomes being linked to localised leadership and underpinned by biographical narratives
but these are not given prominence by New Labour unless they are furthering a function-
alist social inclusion perspective. In addition, we show that there are socially critical
possibilities in aspects of the general New Labour project that might enable more demo-
cratic leadership approaches to develop and that reflect a more bottom-up control of the
education and social inclusion agenda. However, the dominance of functionalism and its
leadership rationale and narrative does mean that these can at times be marginalised.
Where they are given recognition there is evidence to suggest that they can lose their radi-
cal edge when scaled up, largely because delivery-focussed leadership takes over as the
means of achieving national standards and targets. Although we suggest particular narra-
tives of school leadership and social inclusion seem to predominate in policy and practice
we also highlight the possibilities of more nuanced and critical approaches that reflect
localised practice and that may provide alternative paradigms of school leadership. We
finish the article by making suggestions for how a new research agenda for the study of
school leadership for social inclusion can be developed that reflects this potential breadth
and that might provide different ways of both understanding and developing policy and
practice in this area.

Developing a conceptual framework for social inclusion, education and leadership

In this section we intend to examine the meaning of social inclusion and present a concep-
tual framework for how government approaches can be grouped and explained.

An overview of social inclusion and education

At one level social inclusion can be viewed as the extent to which various practices/
activities/mechanisms promote or limit cultural and economic integration and the mean-
ingful participatory access of social groups and individuals into mainstream society. At
another level it can also mean the way different individuals and groups are given recog-
nition for who, and what, they are. This latter perspective shifts the lens from a fixed
situation where there is an interest in fairness in representation to a dynamic process of
how diversity is recognised and valued. Hence at one level issues of inclusion and exclu-
sion are related to the equity issue of representation and, in particular, how meaningful
participation/non-participation of social groups and individuals in institutional practices
and process can be understood and explained. At a different level equity issues relate to
levels of recognition given to individuals and groups. These concerns therefore requires
an examination of not only those activities that control and direct the inclusion or exclu-
sion of specific groups such as women, the working class and particular ethnic groups
but also that give recognition to the values and perspectives of those groups. Equity
issues about social inclusion with regard to education therefore suggest the need to focus
specifically on the extent to which educational policy and practice can ameliorate both
the recognition given to disadvantaged groups and at the same time provide representa-
tion and participatory access – socially, economically and culturally. More directly,
school leadership approaches to the equity issues then becomes one of developing,
orchestrating and leading localised school practices that maximise the representation,
participation and recognition of disadvantaged groups and individuals.
400 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

The equity problematic, social inclusion and education

A review undertaken by Popkewitz and Lindbland (2000) on social inclusion and education
suggested that there is a potential equity problematic. Here we focus on two aspects of
social inclusion: (1) economic inclusion, and (2) cultural inclusion with regard to gender,
race and ethnicity.

Economic inclusion
Equity problematics from this perspective examine the extent to which education can bring
about economic inclusion as a proxy for social inclusion. Policy-orientated literatures from
the OECD strongly relate labour markets to education. The argument presented is that
schooling should promote access and success in the economic field thereby delivering
greater levels of social inclusion more generally. Inclusion is enhanced by enabling more
people to achieve credentials that will act as a passport to improved labour market opportu-
nities. The tensions for education in such literatures is that schools at one level act as a
sorting function for the delivery of a differentiated credential system (i.e. not everyone can
equally achieve) and yet at the same time need to find ways of equalising an unequal playing
field through eliminating potentially exclusionary practices that create differentiated educa-
tional outcomes for particular groups, including particular social groups and groups with
particular special educational needs. A different perspective on the link between education
and the labour market suggests that new forms of post-industrial economic activity increas-
ingly require new forms of knowledge work that place a greater emphasis on social and
cultural capital than on ascription and merit. Class distinctions in such labour markets
appear to becoming ever more marked as the middle class with appropriate capitals reap the
benefits (Ball 2003) in these new labour markets. This suggests that those most disadvan-
taged need to be provided with bridging ties through education into opportunities for
enhanced social and cultural capital development (Raffo 2006).

Cultural inclusion
Here the equity problematic relates to both representation and stereotyping, and the institu-
tional rules and processes that may culturally exclude some groups from mainstream social
life. Equity issues for education vis-à-vis cultural inclusion focus on questions such as, first,
the nature of the representation of gender, class and ethnicity in the curriculum; second,
teachers’ discourses about cultural plurality in classrooms; third, the gendering of roles in
classroom and school practices; fourth, inclusion in mainstream classrooms of young people
with special educational needs and, fifth, the affordances given to the educational values
and norms of different families and communities with diverse class and ethnic backgrounds.
From our reading of the research on social inclusion we present a useful way of framing
the knowledge problematic through two broad headings – functionalist and socially critical
(Raffo et al. 2007). The ‘functionalist’ position takes it for granted that social inclusion is
an important part in the proper functioning of society that brings benefits both to society as
a whole and to individuals within that society. The major gains of increased levels of inclu-
sion are exemplified by improved economic development, social cohesion and enhanced
life chances for individuals. The problem is that these benefits often do not materialise in
the case of individuals and groups from disadvantage backgrounds. This failure results in
varying forms of social exclusion and calls for explanation and intervention. Commonly,
explanations tend to be offered in terms of dysfunctions at the level of the individual learner,
 Journal of Education Policy 401

the social contexts within which the learner is placed such as schools, families and neigh-
bourhoods, the underlying social structures such as class, race and gender out of which
those contexts arise, or some interaction of these. Crucially, however, the assumption is that,
if specific (albeit complex) problems in the way social and economic policy works within
society can be overcome, enhanced social inclusion will indeed materialise. Education
policy is seen as central to overcoming problems of social exclusion and enhancing social
inclusion.
The second position, which we label here ‘socially critical’, likewise assumes that social
inclusion is potentially beneficial. However, it doubts whether its benefits can be realised
simply by overcoming certain exclusionary forces implicit in the social arrangements expe-
rienced by disadvantaged groups. Those social arrangements are themselves seen as being
inherently inequitable, and levels of inclusion/exclusion reflect unequal distributions of
power and resource. The failure of society to produce benefits for people living in disadvan-
tage is not simply a glitch in an otherwise benevolent system, but is a result of the inequal-
ities built into society. It follows that, if social inclusion is to be realised, a form of social
and economic policy, including education, is needed which is critical of existing arrange-
ments and which can both challenge existing power structures and inequality and enable
democratic development.
In defining these two broad positions one can see how the knowledge problematic is
concerned with the way the problem of equity and social inclusion is named and hence
understood. Silver has identified this as one of ‘symbolic politics’, as ‘the power to name a
social problem has vast implications for the policies considered suitable to address it’ (1994,
533). Following an approach developed by Ribbins and Gunter (2002) in their review of the
literature on school leadership, our own approach to examining links with social inclusion
requires us to consider three extended critical questions that will shape our analysis. First,
what do we know from a functionalist and socially critical position about how socially
inclusion is defined? Second, what position – and particular approaches underpinned by
such a position – is privileged as knowledge, particularly under New Labour? This will
allow an examination of how particular conceptualisations of social inclusion become domi-
nant and therefore influence or underpin policy on education school leadership. Third, what
agenda might be developed for new theorising and research with regard to social inclusion,
education and school leadership? This provides researchers, policymakers and practitioners
with a way of both juxtaposing and synthesising concepts and ideas in such a way as to
suggest different ways of thinking about developing educational policy and implementing
school leadership practice for social inclusion.

Putting a conceptual framework to work in understanding and explaining social

inclusion, education and learning
This section uses the two broad positions and the three main questions developed in previ-
ous sections of the article to present how school leadership can be related to government
policies on social inclusion and education.

How is knowledge of social inclusion defined and produced through functionalist

and socially critical perspectives and what are the implications for education?
As we have seen, social inclusion and its links to educational policy can be examined from
an economic and cultural perspective.
402 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

Economic inclusion
There are a number of approaches to defining economic inclusion and its implications for
educational policy. Alexiadou’s research (2002) provides a useful way of differentiating
between (1) taken for granted, and descriptive perspectives of economic social inclusion
that focus on discourses of public sector modernisation, globalisation, economic competi-
tiveness and raising standards of achievement and that emphasise a functionalist integra-
tion of varying groups, including those with special educational needs, into the labour
market and paid work to (2) other socially critical perspectives that focus on issues of
social justice and suggest that a functionalist and integrating discourse emphasises educa-
tional credentials and standards that obscure questions of structural unemployment, income
polarisation and differential access to the labour markets, the divisive nature of ‘magnet
economies’ (Betcherman 1996, 261), the differentiation of educational achievement on
the basis of class, ethnicity, special educational needs and race (Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe
1995; Lauder et al. 1999) and the ‘positional conflict’ in the competition for educational
credentials (Brown 2000).
The functionalist perspective suggests that educational provision must be modernised in
order to contribute more effectively to economic recovery and increased competitiveness.
For example, the changing global economy and mobility of multinational capital requires
people to have transferable skills that can be set against standards of educational achieve-
ment that compare favourably against standards in other leading economies. In addition, and
linked to this discourse, is the view that poverty is no excuse for educational failure. Hence
the separation of academic performance from conditions of social deprivation, and the direct
link of such performance to economic prosperity result in a discourse whereby education
bears the burden of national economic success (cf. to studies emanating from school
improvement and effectiveness perspective). Given the importance of education in such a
discourse, schooling and other public sector services that may aid the delivery of
educational credentials need to be appropriately harnessed to overcome any barriers that
particular young people may have in achieving such outcomes.
The socially critical perspectives suggest that social exclusion is just a contemporary
form of capitalist exploitation, and inherent in the system rather than a mere by-product
(Anyon 1997; Lipman 2004). New forms of economic and business re-structuring have
created polarised communities that have few resources and opportunities of engaging with
evolving forms of mainstream post-industrial business activity. The lack of ensuing
economic well-being for such groups is not the fault of individuals because of their lack of
human capital but a natural by-product of an exploitative economic and political system run
by the powerful for the powerful. Underpinned by such a perspective, education is hence
viewed as barely able to compensate for such arrangements. Educational policy and
practice, per se, therefore needs to appreciate its inherent limits and must work alongside
redistributive, democratising and socially just economic and social policy in order to bring
about social inclusion.

Cultural inclusion
Again there are two broad ways of exploring cultural inclusion and what that might mean
for education. At a functionalist level cultural inclusion is suggestive of appropriate cultural
integration strategies that value the assets of difference and cultural diversity for the benefits
of the mainstream and that, taken together, will enhance social cohesion. A lack of social
cohesion might therefore be viewed as lack of aspiration for diversity reflective of a cultural
disaggregation and separation. Educational policy may be developed to encourage social
 Journal of Education Policy 403

cohesion by encouraging culturally integrated schools whose intake and curriculum reflect
and respect diversity. This may include, for example, supporting the use of the first
language in school and appropriate strategies for English as an additional language or main-
streaming young people with educational disabilities. Headteacher and teacher standards
will reflect the need for understanding, respecting and valuing diversity in order to encour-
age school cohesion, appropriate integration and educational success for all. This may also
include working with minority parents and community leaders to enable them to support
and encourage their children in school.
A socially critical analysis of cultural inclusion may suggest that this can only come
about if minority groups are provided with opportunities for reflecting on and acting against
discrimination that are evident in aspects of a divided society and which education through
schools reflects. It assumes that those at local level are policymakers (Ozga 2000) and that
alternative improvement strategies can be developed (Hollins, Gunter, and Thomson 2006),
not least with the inclusion of children as policymakers (Smyth 2006; Thomson and Gunter
2006, 2008). Educationally this may mean providing space within the curriculum to develop
critical pedagogies (Thomson 2002) where minority young people and their communities
are provided with an opportunity to develop an empowering critical capacity for engage-
ment and change (Smyth and McInerney 2006). It may also be about the extent to which
schools engage with democratic forms of governance that reflect and represent varying
cultural values of the community in the mission and strategy of the school (Dean et al.
2007). In other cases it might be to critically examine the way the disabled are included in
mainstream schools but within an educational climate of standards and performativity that
might differentiate and exclude those individuals even further (Armstrong 2005).

What particular perspectives of social inclusion are privileged by New Labour

and what have been their impacts on education policy?
New Labour, through particular ways of explicitly or implicitly positioning and defining the
problem of inclusion/exclusion for particular groups (the knowledge problematic suggestive
of a functionalist and socially critical perspective) and then for developing governance and
intervention strategies of equity (the equity problematic) to resolve the problem, continue to
attempt to define and deal with issues of social inclusion/exclusion as they see fit. In terms
of education this is being attempted through the particular organising of funding, regulating
education through policy and law, and defining the provision and delivery of education that
may aid social inclusion. As we have argued above, these bureaucratic measures, will
however, be underpinned by various underlying definitions of the knowledge problematic
and the equity issues being addressed. We, therefore, need to explore the varying perspec-
tives on social inclusion advocated by New Labour and also articulate a hierarchy of
importance attached to such perspectives and associated policy interventions.
Works by Alexiadou (2002), Levitas (2005), Ozga (1999), Prideaux (2005) and others
suggest that New Labour’s belief about social inclusion is in many respects shaped by a
functionalist perspective. These assumptions according to Prideaux (2005) have also legiti-
mised US socioeconomic policy that holds a benign view of capitalism and is underpinned
by a conservative understanding of social relations. Social problems of exclusion for New
Labour are hence viewed as stemming from welfare dependency and personal behaviours,
where the answer to such problems are linked to social integrationist strategies of getting
the excluded into paid employment. Paid work is put first, to the neglect not just of other
caring roles or cultural issues but also of a broader understanding of some of the social
processes that generate poverty and inequality. This particular discourse sees economic
404 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

inclusion as a route out of social exclusion and education’s role is one of emphasising skills
acquisition and life-long learning as a way of guaranteeing employment. The maximisation
of the acquisition of these skills, as measured through human capital credential indicators
that are then linked to employment, becomes the key indicator of a socially included
society.
Schools are therefore about radically improving the achievement of qualifications for
those social groups currently lacking employment and whose lack of employment is creat-
ing a set of cultural values antagonistic to schooling and work. Although there is a recog-
nition that families face barriers to employment and that cultural diversity and being
disabled potentially also create barriers, the solution is to examine those strategies that will
enable individuals overcome these barriers so that they can take full advantage of main-
stream opportunities. For example educational barriers for certain groups are seen as the
result of economic deprivation that leads to a cultural malaise in particular neighbour-
hoods manifested in a variety of ‘risk factors’ and pathological behaviours such as poor
parenting, anti-social behaviour and crime, problems with drugs and high levels of teenage
pregnancy. Since the problems are individualised and personalised, the solutions tend to
be individualised and personalised as well. These focus on improving the self-esteem and
aspirations of families and young people in such situations, developing parent skills and
providing various access routes into education so the possibilities of educational success
can become a reality. In terms of education, there is a growing recognition that a focussed
standards agenda to increase educational performance in schools located in neighbour-
hoods associated with the greatest levels of social exclusion needs to be backed up by
educational strategies that help to overcome the multiple barriers to educational engage-
ment. This means multi-agency working, collaborative working within and between
schools and between schools and their communities, with an eye to improving educational
outcomes, enhancing economic inclusion and developing social inclusion through social
integrationist policies.
Although this particular knowledge on social inclusion and equity is privileged there are
also signs of other discourses within New Labour policy that, although not as fully devel-
oped, appear to provide possibilities for different approaches to social inclusion and educa-
tion: approaches that reflect a more critical approach to social inclusion and that emphasise
democratic engagement and citizenship. For example, the Every Child Matters (DfES 2003)
agenda articulates how schools might go beyond standard educational outcomes associated
with credentials and economic well-being to one that also emphasise being safe, healthy and
making a positive contribution particularly with regard to the community and the environ-
ment. In addition there is a strong push from outside education that makes reference to
public services responding to a new localism agenda that focuses on democratic engage-
ment and citizenship (Aspden and Birch 2005). However, there is a track record of respond-
ing productively to local innovation, such as student voice and participation, but the radical
possibilities can be lost in the scaling up process as targets and performance take over
(Thomson and Gunter 2006).

What agenda might be developed for new theorising and research with regard
to social inclusion, education and school leadership?
The analysis so far has shown that social inclusion (with its economic and cultural dimen-
sions) has two main knowledge dimensions within research: functionalist and socially crit-
ical. We have argued that under New Labour that functionalist knowledge claims are
privileged, though within research and practice socially critical claims are evident. While
 Journal of Education Policy 405

there is evidence of local policymaking and innovative practice, and there is the potential
for this to be stimulated further through extended full service schools and the Every Child
Matters initiatives, it is the case that policymaking that is not directly controlled by central
government policy strategies can be deliberately hidden by those resisting the standards
agenda, or marginalised and ignored by those who do not wish to recognise it. This raises
important issues about leadership, particularly in relation to what are officially preferred,
trained and required approaches, and what might be developed through practice and
personal models. Based on the research by Dean et al. (2007) on school governance in areas
of disadvantage, we intend in this section to provide three rationales for leadership in play
within policy, but also within practice and research findings. These three rationales are
identified as:

Delivery focussed
School leaders have their work and purposes developed to ensure the efficient and effective
management of the school and public resources. They are known as transformational leaders
who can build the commitment of others to the New Labour vision, and deliver national
reform locally. They concern themselves with setting broad strategic directions and endur-
ing the delivery of this strategy. These strategic directions are in many respects underpinned
by educational policy that reflect government perspectives and rationales for education for
example, the reduction of social exclusion through a focus on credentials and cultural inte-
gration. School leaders see the delivery of particular and policy privileged educational
forms of economic and cultural inclusion as the sole remit of schools and their systems,
structures and processes.

Localising
School leaders develop their work and purposes as being about ‘making things work here’.
Whitehall is beginning to abandon its attempt to totally control the design and delivery of
public service provision directly and is instead fostering a ‘new localism’ which makes
services more responsive to local conditions. School leaders bring to bear, therefore, their
detailed knowledge of the school and its communities in ensuring that national frameworks
are customised and elaborated in ways that meet local needs and priorities. Social inclusion
is about school leaders understanding some of the cultural and economic factors impacting
on the local community and how these might be ameliorated through particular educational
practice. This practice may include working on reducing barriers to learning that emanate
from outside school and that may require multi-agency work with other professionals and
community organisations.

Democratising
People have become alienated from traditional democratic institutions which seem remote
from their lives. A democratising rationale is, therefore, a means whereby people can once
again engage with decisions which affect them directly. In this case, school leaders under-
stand their work and their purpose as stimulating opportunities for local democratic partic-
ipation, and ensuring that the school is run in ways that involve and meet the wishes of local
people. Social inclusion is about giving recognition to and empowering local people to take
charge of the educational project for their own needs. It may also be about actively allowing
socially critical voices to be recognised and represented.
406 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

New Labour governments have attempted in various ways to intervene in promoting

functionalist and economic versions of social inclusion through educational policies. Its
main focus has been on standards, the reform of educational structures and practices, the
growth of the private sector in the design and delivery of public education, and the creation
of a culture of performativity. Put simply, if the education system can be made more effec-
tive through outcome measures, if in particular ‘standards’ can be driven up in those parts
of the system serving variously disadvantaged groups, and if this improvement can be
accompanied by other policies to address the range of barriers experienced by these groups,
then there is no reason why social exclusion should not be overcome. The focus has been
on the functioning of schools generally, with extra attention paid to those serving disadvan-
taged areas and disadvantaged communities of learners. These schools have been targeted
with extra resources and support, they have been subject to incentives and penalties and
their leaders have been given autonomy, encouragement and training on the assumption
that, at some point, they will be able to make the breakthrough with their students. These
previously disengaged, underachieving children and young people will, under the right
circumstances, begin to switch on to learning, re-discover their ‘will to win’ and go forward
to a brighter future.
In many respects this policy approach to improving schools in disadvantaged areas is
suggestive of our first rationale of school leadership that has as its core rational notions of
efficiency and effectiveness and where the school, generally in isolation, can make the
difference through strategies of continuous improvement. We have termed this delivery
leadership and it reflects in many ways what is currently the status quo with regard to the
roles and responsibilities of school leaders. Leadership in these terms is both functionalist
and instrumental and is about ensuring effectiveness of the organisation regardless of local
conditions and for ensuring that central government policy on maximising credentials and
cultural integration are translated into effective and efficient local practice. The instrumental
styles of leadership adopted however may vary from heroic and transformational
approaches (the school leader as hero in times of difficulty) to forms of distributed leader-
ship where the school agenda for reform delivery is shared between role incumbents at all
levels of the school. The reform agenda, however, is restricted to developing leadership and
managerial systems, structures and processes within the boundaries of the school as a means
of managing the operation of the quasi-market.
There is no doubt that this view of the role of education in relation to social inclusion/
exclusion has proved immensely energising, not least to education professionals working in
what were previously seen as hopeless situations. There are also, without doubt, success
stories to tell – the initial hike in primary attainment sores, for instance, some indications of
the lowest-performing schools doing better at GCSE level and multiple accounts of such
schools’ being ‘turned round’ by energetic and charismatic headteachers. However the
evidence that the historical links between social exclusion, low educational achievement
and limited life chances have been definitively broken is hard to come by.
As we have already highlighted, other aspects of government policy are suggestive
that a more holistic approach to education is required which acknowledges questions of
learner identity, cultural expectations, the nature of teacher–learner relationships and the
nature of the school’s context. The Every Child Matters agenda, operationalised in the
Children Act 2004, promises to take a holistic view of the needs of children and families
and to create integrated structures and services aimed at meeting those needs in a coherent
and co-ordinated way. At the same time, the development of Extended and Full-Service
Extended Schools (DfES 2005b), offering a range of services to children, families and
communities, and acting as the base for other community agencies, seems to offer a new
 Journal of Education Policy 407

model of schooling which will be much less narrowly focussed than its immediate prede-
cessors and which may require different forms of school leadership.
In the early stages of the evaluation of the latter set of initiatives (Dyson, Millward, and
Todd 2002; Cummings et al. 2005) there are indeed signs of things beginning to be done
differently. Some school leaders have set up an impressive array of activities and services
for children, their families and communities. They have developed, in some cases, a sense
of how their work with these three constituencies interacts. Typically, they claim that they
are aiming to change attitudes towards learning and wider cultures of aspiration and
achievement in families and communities as a means of changing attitudes and levels of
achievement amongst their students. They recognise that a uni-dimensional focus on ‘stan-
dards’ is not in itself able to impact sufficiently. Unlike them, however, they have systems
and strategies for addressing wider issues. Indeed, in some cases, the work of these schools
and its leaders is set within the context of local strategies for the regeneration of neighbour-
hoods or even whole towns which align their work with policies in housing, economic
development, crime reduction and community development. Where this is the case, schools
commonly work not as isolated educational institutions, but as part of a network of other
schools and community agencies supporting each other and pooling their resources in a
sustained effort to address disadvantage in the areas they serve.
In many respects this type of schooling points to leadership approaches that attempt to
contextualise the work of schools in order to meet the needs of young people and the
community. We have termed this localising leadership in that school leaders are seen as a
means of ensuring that the service is fitted to the local context. Here the argument is that the
delivery of education through schools cannot be left to central government because they
have to be shaped to local conditions and role of school leaders in such contexts is to make
this happen which implies that school leaders need to know about the local context. This
does not necessarily imply local democractic leadership but it does suggest that the way
schools should be run is nested in the interplay between professionality and realities of the
context. Leadership strategies may therefore include consulting with the communities
serving the school to ensure that provision and the needs of local people are central to
dialogue. It is also likely to include working collaboratively with other professionals
through multi- or inter-agency partnerships. In many respects leadership styles linked to a
localising agenda might be reflective of both instrumental approaches (e.g. the need to
collaborate to improve school performance) and/or reflect the biographical realities of
school leadership in such situations that are suggestive of tensions, challenges and nuances
of working with a variety of educational agendas and stakeholder communities. The
perspective underpinning this rationale and style of leadership is also most likely to be
generally functionalist with hints of a socially critical perspective depending on how
localising the school leader and school agenda becomes.
Other aspects of government policy, particularly with regard to citizenship, neighbour-
hood renewal and community empowerment are suggestive of the need for local people to
be consulted and have a direct say over the approaches and type of public service provided
at the local level. And in a sense this brings us to the new localism agenda suggested by the
Office of Deputy Prime Minister. In their report for the ODPM, Aspden and Birch (2005)
focus on the way local government can work with service users to look at ways of improving
the design and delivery of services so that they can take into account decentralised and better
local decision-making, revitalised democracy and enhanced civil and community renewal.
In essence their report is fundamentally interested in the extent to which local people
participate in and have, or feel they have, control over the services and environments which
have a direct impact on their lives. The authors examined evidence that focussed on ways
408 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

of effectively working with local people, ways to improve partnership working, the different
models of participation and perhaps most radically an examination of the impact of more
direct partnership initiatives that linked to notions of capacity building, mainstreaming and
maintaining representativeness. Although improved forms of consultation and sounding out
of communities by local authorities were explored perhaps the examination of direct
participation provided some of the strongest evidence of levels of user engagement, delivery
and decision-making. What Aspden and Birch (2005, 8) found was that:

Overall satisfaction and performance levels in situations where users are delivering a service
tend to be at least as high, and often higher than local authority provision …. There are broader
community benefits from more direct user involvement, for example, Tenant Management
Associations acting as a local focus for social and community development activities and
successfully promoting improved security …. There is evidence that closer working between
local authorities and users, and the latter being more actively involved in both consultation and
delivery, can be positive in delivering better quality and value for money services.

They also recognised that in order to engage local people with service design and delivery
there was a need for service users and other partners to develop key skills and competencies
in a variety of areas including managing performance. In addition there was a requirement
to enhance capacity not just at the level of the individual but also at an area and authority-
wide level to ensure continuity, coverage and representation.
Aspden and Birch also suggest the need for initiatives to be mainstreamed to avoid the
possibilities of sidelining opportunities. In order to achieve this there was a suggestion that
users get involved at the early stages of planning and decision-making in relation to the
service delivery with requirements for a coherent strategy of promoting the organisational
development of service user groups/forums across a local authority. There was an additional
task of enhancing representativeness so that forums and boards were appropriate and not
recruited from too narrow a band of people. All of this suggests an active engagement by
local people in more radical forms of school leadership that not only deal with efficiency
and effectiveness issues and the need to take into account local needs but have at their core
the notion of democratic renewal through user engagement in service delivery and decision-
making. In many regards it represents aspects of co-production that is becoming every more
developed in the literature on public service delivery. As Stoker (2006, 177) argues:

Local devolved institutions need to build around an often complex and layered sense of
identity: we need a local government system that enables us to act in our neighbourhoods and
that has the strategic capacity to frame our local response to globalisation.

This is therefore suggestive of our third rationale as a public service that has the central
notion of co-production via user engagement in service delivery and decision-making. We
have termed this democratising leadership.
Democratising suggests the participation of local people in decisions where local people
are resourced and decide on all aspects of rationale, strategy and definition of what the
school should offer. As Ranson argues there is evidence from ‘Learning Cities’ where ‘the
key to regeneration lies in creating the conditions for … reflexive and dialogic learning
communities to emerge’ (2000, 266). In such situations school leaders may recognise that
an inability to improve standards may only be achieved if the community democratically
control the school to bring about this agenda. However a more common manifestation might
be that giving democratic control to local communities may result in the delivery of differ-
ent types of educational outcomes. These outcomes may be reflective of more biographical
and complex forms of leadership, or perhaps approaches to leadership that are critical of
 Journal of Education Policy 409

mainstream educational policy. Whatever the style adopted the rationale for this democratic
approach is about issues to do with the power gap and the desire to ensure more local control
over public services. It is therefore about empowering disadvantaged groups to engage more
fully with education and to control its direction in order to meet particular needs. This
suggests a relational and communal form of leadership (Foster 1989) and one where those
working to resolve problems understand that they are not their problems alone and they may
not be directly responsible for causing them. Problem posing is vital to the process of
‘answering back’ to the wider systemic causes of advantage and disadvantage.
These three approaches to school leadership act as a heuristic device for conceptualising
the types of skills and knowledge that link to those rationales. In addition they provide a
way of examining how these rationales link to issues of power and definitions of education
quality. We can begin to understand this by examining how cutting across these leadership
rationales are varying leadership narratives. Gunter (2005) shows that such narratives are
inter-related with knowledge production regarding research and practice: first, delivery
questions about what works and how to secure change at local level, and so the narratives
are instrumental focussing on evaluation, measurement and evidence; second, humanistic
questions about how people experience being and doing leading and leadership, and so the
narratives are about biography and how people learn to practice doing leading and being
led; third, radical questions about social justice and the type of change being worked for,
and so the narratives are socially critical about the here and now, and provide arguments
about the good life and possibilities for the context to be different. Often these narratives
are conceptualised by the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of school leader-
ship research, where particular epistemic communities locate their knowledge claims, and
where issues of truth, validity and evidence are controlled (Gunter 2001).
One way of giving meaning to these leadership narratives is to use the terms instrumen-
tal, biographical and critical (Gunter 2001). Instrumental narratives generally focus on
prescribed educational outcomes and in particular examine and detail the effective ethos,
values and organisational systems and change approaches the school and its leaders require
to bring about those outcomes. Here the person who is leader is trained according to
national standards to deliver government policy. They are then credentialised according to
how well they demonstrate the right knowledge, behaviours and attributes that reflect the
lexicon and the strategies of transformational leadership. Hybrid forms known variously as
‘instructional’, ‘teacher’, ‘distributed’, ‘shared’ and ‘total’ leadership have been added to
the narrative as the means by with others in the school as a unitary organisation can be
directly involved in delivery (Gunter 2005). This type of narrative is located in stories
about a ‘high reliability learning community’ (Leithwood, Jantzi, and Steinbach 1999, 70)
in which a school must be like air traffic control where goals that must be achieved ‘all of
the time’ (213). It is prevalent in epistemic groups around school effectiveness and school
improvement, with a strong epistemological claim to processes that deliver and measure
change interventions. This is evident in work, for example, that focuses on the effective
organisation (together with the effective leader, teacher, student) (e.g. Sammons, Thomas,
and Mortimore 1997; Teddlie and Reynolds 2000). There is work on reconstructing profes-
sional practice as leadership and measuring impact, and so there are those who focus on
headteachers (e.g. Leithwood and Levin 2005; Leithwood et al. 2006); and, there are the
perspectives of those who have leadership distributed to them (e.g. Spillane 2006), and
those who have leader attached to their role as ‘middle’ or ‘teacher’ leaders (e.g. Harris
and Lambert 2003). We associate this narrative mainly with delivery-focussed leadership,
and is seen as essential to securing the implementation of functional strategies for dealing
with social exclusion.
410 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

Biographical narratives suggest that leadership is more about the characters rather
characteristics of leadership and hence details the ambiguities, tensions and challenges
reflective of the multi-dimensional reality of school life. Improvement is about a ‘messy’
synthesis of various stakeholder viewpoints and perspectives. Here the person learns from
doing the job (and traditionally did postgraduate master’s work to develop their understand-
ing) and how they want to practise it. Greenfield in conversation with Ribbins challenges
the instrumental narratives produced by quantitative methods:
… I would argue that while experience may not in and of itself be sufficient to understand
reality, it is a crucial building block for such an understanding. Any worthwhile explanations
of social reality must not contradict it. (Greenfield and Ribbins 1993, 250)

This type of narrative is located in epistemic groups surrounding educational leadership

where knowledge claims are based on the validity of professional practice and how careers
are constructed over time and within context. It is evident in work that reports on the actu-
ality of the job such as Hall (1996), Ribbins (1997), Pascal and Ribbins (1998), Rayner and
Ribbins (1999) and Southworth (1995). Practitioners themselves write about their work in
various accounts (e.g. Tomlinson, Gunter, and Smith 1999), notably with survivor stories
from headteachers who have turned round a failing school (e.g. Clark 1998) and from New
Labour insiders who have examined the realities of local leadership (e.g. Hyman 2005).
Here notions of distribution and/or teachers as leaders do not necessarily begin with the
headteacher as the causal stimulus to practice, but instead researchers describe and examine
the dynamics of interactions and relationships (Gronn 2000). We associate this narrative
with localising leadership, where there are opportunities for agency and collective activity
to provide accounts of what is happening and how the person has critiqued requirements and
made necessary adjustments to how they want to operate.
Critical narratives are about the questioning of educational policy and its impact on
school life, and about developing alternative, more socially just approaches to education and
inclusion. It is also about being critical of taken-for-granted approaches to hierarchical
school organisational structures and leadership approaches that are focussed on delivering
particular types of educational outcomes. The starting point is less about what do we have
to do, and is more about what is it that we want to do in order to work for a more socially
just educational experience and outcomes. Here the person begins with their values and how
they want to make a socially critical difference to the school and wider community. This
type of narrative is located in epistemic groups such as policy sociologists who are
concerned to relate local practice with the wider structural contexts constructed within and
by global, economic, political and economic interests. Knowledge claims are concerned
with communicating experiences through conceptual frameworks about power relationships
which create explanations for how the world is as it is, and generate options for action. As
Grace (1995) argues such a narrative is less about measuring how the headteacher is effec-
tive or replicating accounts of life within the market, and is more about understanding how
the market is creating the conditions in which s/he is working and enabling them to work
for a better context. There is research that examines the life and work of headteachers and
teachers within the modernisation agenda (e.g. Ball 1994; Blackmore 1999; Smyth et al.
2000), and work that proposes other ways of approaching practice, for example, Ozga
(2000) argues that teachers are local policymakers. Apple and Beane (1999) and Smyth
(2001), begin with learners and learning within context, and build approaches to organisa-
tional arrangements that are owned and enable active participation in learning. Here leader-
ship and leading is disconnected from automatic association with leader roles in hierarchies
and is conceptualised as communal and relational (Foster 1989). Notions of distribution are
 Journal of Education Policy 411

less about formal delegation or team work cultures, and are more about how teachers and
students can engage in socially critical and activist relationships (Smyth 2001). We associ-
ate this narrative with democratising leadership, where the opportunities for socially just
participation and recognition are integral to practice.

School leadership and social inclusion: a future research agenda for researchers,
policymakers and practitioners
We have summarised some of the academic and policy texts on education and social inclu-
sion. From these readings it is possible to categorise research studies on social inclusion
under two broad explanatory perspectives – functionalist and socially critical (knowledge
problematics) – that are based around two levels of social analysis – economic inclusion and
cultural inclusion.
Central to our argument is that under New Labour the dominant approach to social inclu-
sion is functionalist with a strong economic focus and this has generated delivery-focussed
forms of leadership where the narrative is predominantly instrumental, and with some
biographical possibilities, particularly heroic stories of ‘turning a school round’. We recog-
nise that within this there are accounts which are critical of national policies and reform
strategies, and so localised approaches can ameliorate the worst excesses of instrumental
compliance. There are possibilities for more socially critical approaches within New
Labour, and democratising forms of leadership could be identified and encouraged. Prag-
matism combined with confidence has enabled some headteachers to become localised in
order to ensure that reforms have happened at all. Here biographical narratives help to put
such stories into the public domain, but it is unlikely that democratic leadership will develop
without highly confident and political activist local leadership. Recapturing participation in
dialogue and policymaking about educational purposes requires teachers to, in Smyth’s
(2001) words ‘confront strangeness’, through which they refuse ‘to accept customs, rituals
and the familiar world unquestioningly’ (171–2). While there is some research evidence of
this approach it is the case that it is likely to operate undercover in order to prevent criticism
and new forms of professional ‘rendition’ of heads being removed or paid off for not being
on message.
It is hoped that the analytical framework developed in this article provides a tool for
exploring various links between social inclusion, educational policy and school leadership.
At one level the framework asks which conceptualisations of social inclusion a school and
its leaders tend to favour in terms of equity and knowledge problematics. It then asks ques-
tions about which leadership rationale and narratives are being adopted to bring this about
and for what reasons. The framework therefore suggests research questions that might be
framed in the following way:
Extended research question 1: What forms of social inclusion are given primacy by
school leaders through school policy and practice? What secondary forms of social inclu-
sion are supported by the school, if any? To what extent are these forms of social inclusion
expressed in functionalist and/or socially critical ways?
Extended research question 2: What leadership rationales appear to be given primacy by
the school and school leaders with regard to their conceptualisation of social inclusion? In
what circumstances does there appear to be an overlap between rationales?
Extended research question 3: What school leadership narratives seem to best sum up
schools and their leaders? How do these differ at times? What are the links between leader-
ship narratives and rationales adopted by school leaders and the visions of social inclusion
promoted by schools?
412 C. Raffo and H. Gunter

We suggest, however, that research data generated through this type of questioning will
not provide researchers, policymakers or practitioners with generic leadership strategies for
improved social inclusion. What the data could provide are particular cases of how schools
and their leaders position themselves with regard to social inclusion and, perhaps as impor-
tantly, how these perspectives then link to particular rationales and narratives for engaging
with issues of social inclusion. What this then potentially suggests is a range of possibilities
and yet at the same time a range of questions as to why and how schools and their leaders
position themselves in the way that they do. In many respects it is hoped that the framework
and future emerging case studies will enable policymakers and practitioners to develop an
educational theory of change on social inclusion that both explicitly and critically explains
and justifies the position being taken within context. Perhaps more specifically the model
may help school leaders reflect more explicitly on: (1) the values that underpin their
understanding of social inclusion and hence the interventions developed to enhance social
inclusion; (2) the leadership rationales they utilise in the implementation of specific
interventions; and (3) the narratives they develop in order to explain and/or justify both the
strategies and processes adopted.

Acknowledgements
The reading and intellectual work by Gunter for this paper was funded by the ESRC through the
Knowledge Production in Educational Leadership Project. RES-000-23-1192.

Notes on contributors
Carlo Raffo is a reader in Equity in Urban Education in the School of Education, University of
Manchester. His main area of research is in the area of education and poverty and educational equity
in urban contexts. He is grant holder for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation project: Education and
Poverty – a critical review of theory, policy and practice and is currently researching issues of place
and space and their impacts on young people’s agency vis-à-vis educational capabilities.
carlo.raffo@manchester.ac.uk

Helen Gunter is a professor of Educational Policy, Leadership and Management in the School of
Education at the University of Manchester. Her main area of research is in knowledge production in
policy studies and educational leadership. She is grant holder for the ESRC project: Knowledge
Production in Educational Leadership, and she is researching the origins and development of school
leadership in England. Helen.gunter@manchester.ac.uk

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