State schools often better managed than private schools

State schools in Britain are often better managed than private schools, according to research from Professors Alex Bryson and Francis Green (UCL Institute of Education) to be published by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research next week. In recent years governments of all hues have urged private schools to sponsor state schools to help raise education standards, a policy which is based on the assumption that private schools' successes are founded in part on superior management. The UCL research is the first large-scale study to test the proposition that cutting-edge human resource management practices are more prevalent in private sector schools compared to state schools. Bryson and Green looked at 406 schools, including 79 that were private, and studied 48 human resource management practices that are known to be associated in many industries with high levels of staff commitment and performance. They covered 8 domains: incentives, record-keeping, targets, teams, training, total quality management, participation and selection.  "Although private schools were ahead of state schools in terms of record-keeping, on the whole it is the state schools who scored more highly across most domains, as well as in terms of our summary management score," said Professors Bryson and Green in a blog for the IOE about their research. As expected, the variation in management practice between schools is considerable, so it is quite possible to imagine that well-managed schools might have something to pass on to less-well-managed schools.