School Climate, School Improvement and Site-based Management

This article examines the relationship between school organisational climate and the school's preparedness to undertake restructuring and improvement. Over the last two decades, much research into school improvement and effectiveness has indicated the importance of school climate for a school's efforts to change. For school-level personnel, an understanding of the nature of the prevailing climate would seem valuable in determining the school's willingness and capacity to embark on school improvement initiatives and to evaluate the impact that such initiatives have on the nature of the school's climate. The research reported here was conducted in three phases. The first phase involved the assessment of the prevailing organisational climate in 30 secondary schools drawn from three State education systems in Australia. The second phase involved analysing and documenting the principles and school-level process associated with the establishment of site-based management in the three State education systems. The third phase sought teachers' perceptions about the impact of site-based management on school improvement planning, collaboration and curriculum leadership, and classroom practices. The research indicated the existence of an important relationship between organisational climate and the school's capacity to implement and sustain authentic site-based management. Where the prevailing organisational climate is negative, tailored ‘front-end’ strategies designed to improve the climate might be undertaken prior to the school embarking on substantial school improvement initiatives. Finally, assessing organisational climate can provide information about a school's preparedness to undertake change, and a re-assessment of climate following a change initiative can provide evaluative data about the extent of change within the school.