The research into School Governance is one of the most widely anticipated topics in the long history of the Effective Practices research project. Schools have been struggling with the questions of how best to organize themselves and manage their affairs so that the young human beings in their care can receive the best possible Waldorf education. “Just give us the organization structure, the policies and the practices of the successful schools so we can put them into place. We want to get on with the real work of educating children,” has been the unspoken plea of many a leader in our school communities. And yet, having completed a detailed study of the ways in which schools with strong and successful governance cultures approach this issue, I was struck by the wide variety of approaches the well governed schools have put into place. There does not seem to be a single approach, structurally or procedurally, that works well in the best schools. There is no fixed, perfect form or approach to governance in our schools. A number of different forms and a variety of policies and procedures are in place in well governed schools, and these differing forms are each effective and appropriate for the schools which employ them. Biography, size, and the stage of a school’s development all play a role in suggesting the best form for a particular school at a given time, yet even here there is no one-approach-fits-all-schools solution. More ...
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