Relation between administrative policies and school policies in secondary education

Abstract

In secondary educational organisations, the distance between school boards and school leaders has been increased, which could lead to co-operation problems between them. The lack of co-operation could affect the relation between the administrative policy and the school policies within the educational organisation. This study focuses on the question to what extent the policies of both management levels are mutually related. This was examined by conducting a qualitative document analysis of administrative and school policies of six educational organisations in secondary education. The coding program MAXQDA was used to analyse these documents. The analysis showed that three core themes of the administrative policies are organisational fundaments and future planning, educational policy, and personnel policy. These themes were present in all administrative and school policies in each organisation. The way the content of these themes are described, however, often varies between policies on both levels. It is suggested that future research should focus in more detail on the content of the policies, in order to examine the consistency of the policies on both levels in an educational organisation.