All headmasters need a touch of the tyrant

Charterhouse’s new man is right to become an enlightened despot to push through change

Public schools are among the most conservative organisations in Britain. No other bodies can be so prickly and resistant to change. So the trouble at Charterhouse, the boarding school in Surrey which the headmaster Richard Pleming is trying to modernise, comes as no surprise to me. The new man has been accused of having a “draconian” style; numerous staff are said to have resigned in recent months and “Pleming out” is reportedly the slogan of choice among some pupils.

Well, Pleming has my sympathies – and I’m not just saying that because I know and respect him. Schools really do need strong leaders. Indeed, if they are taking over an institution that has avoided change in the past, headmasters should really be rather tyrannical if they want to bring about fast and effective action.

I have seen schools that are desperate for change be deflected from their course by the opposition of stubborn alumni and teachers who dig their heels in. These are forces that must be overcome.

Former pupils who most want to involve themselves with their alma mater, in my experience, are precisely the ones that need to be avoided. These people are concerned only with the past.

As for teachers, the best of them welcome and embrace modernisation, while the worst can create all kinds of difficulties. The litmus test is always this: are such figures talking about their own interests, or are they thinking about the place they purport to love?

Schools, like all institutions, need change. I know. I carry the battle scars gained from re-engineering two great schools – as I had to cajole and persuade all stakeholders to accept profound innovations. It wasn’t always easy, but when the resisters saw the rewards coming through – an increase in numbers and a sprint up the league tables – their hostility fell away. Being a good head means having the courage to drive through change. Take Dr Thomas Arnold, the celebrated headmaster of Rugby School from 1828-1841, who turned around the fortunes of the school and transformed the face of education in England. He introduced subjects such as modern languages and mathematics, and empowered older pupils to keep order through the prefect system.

In Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Thomas Hughes spoke of the generation of boys who feared the Doctor “with all our hearts”. And Arnold’s reputation suffered a blow from Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians, who wrote about his “awful grandeur”, and how he “ruled remotely, through his chosen instruments, from an inaccessible heaven”. Despite his successes, even he was not universally popular among pupils nor without detractors.

Heads are not unlike other education leaders, as I am discovering at the University of Buckingham. Strong and dynamic leadership is essential. They need to consult, certainly, but in the end they will always be more enlightened despot than pure democrat. Otherwise, pressure groups will forever pull them in one direction or another, and stasis will result. The word “enlightened” is key.

In any field, a successful leader must acquire a thorough understanding of the thing they seek to change. As Edmund Burke said: change must go with the grain of the institution, or else the innovations and the leader will be rejected.

The best leaders, in other words, are both voice and embodiment of their institution, and must stick to their guns even when forces within seek to overthrow them.

That is precisely why Margaret Thatcher proved such a great political leader. She understood what Britain required in the Eighties, and relished vanquishing those who sought to thwart her and her policies, unlike her successors who have relied more on the opinions of focus groups than their own convictions.

Ultimately all leaders, from headmasters to prime ministers, are lost without wisdom. It is the quality that distinguishes true leaders from popinjays. No leader can be wholly tyrannical for long, as even Lady Thatcher found to her cost.

Anthony Seldon is Vice-Chancellor at the University of Buckingham and author of ‘Cameron at 10’