Public or Private – Does It Matter? How School Leaders in Public and Private Schools Perceive Their Roles

Abstract

This article takes its stand in an international discussion about how NPM reforms affect public servants’ notions about core public values. More specifically, it analyses how school leaders relate to the values of political control, rule of law, economic efficiency, professionalism and users’ influence. It raises the question whether it matters, in terms of how they embrace these values, their organisation is public or private. 975 school leaders (481 working for public schools and 472 for private schools) have completed a written questionnaire containing 15 postulations linked to the five core values. The study’s main finding is that the differences between the two categories of school leaders are quite small although differences exist. The similarities could reflect a development in recent decades where private schools have undergone politicisation and public schools companyisation. The study indicates that school leaders on both sides try to defend all values simultaneously, in some way. Furthermore, when trying to handle value conflicts they seem to avail themselves of other strategies than those connected to dominating models of rationality, which often conceptualise public actors’ response to value conflicts as a matter of balancing or striking trade-offs.