Preparation and development programmes. Leaders themselves and those who design programmes to educate them are often resistant to making such an aim central. Xxxxx et al. (2002, p. 4) found that only lip service is paid to preparation for leading diverse schools and that 'leaders had not been prepared with tools to analyse racial or ethnic conflict, or with specific strategies for building positive interethnic communities'. Similarly, Xxxxxxxx (2004, p. 5) suggests that: In the push toward credentialing, many faculties and curricula trip lightly on the ways in which education policies are framed without a critical, contextual, or historical understanding of social inequities, equity concerns, or desires for social justice. Many others reviewing their national system to prepare leaders have made the same point (Xxxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx xx Xxxxxx, 2007; Xxxxxxx & Xxxxx, 2008). Repeatedly, research has found that those who lead programmes feel that they do not have the time or skills or sometimes the necessity to address equality issues explicitly as a priority in leader preparation programmes and that leaders themselves see the issues as taken-for-granted, and not demanding specific attention (Xxxxx, 2003; Xxxxx, 2004). Strategies and practice related to poverty, gender, ethnicity, immigrant language or sexuality are often aggregated within a general rhetorical commitment to equality. Programme leaders and school leaders collude to accept token gestures towards equipping senior and middle leaders. This is only possible because, though they may protest to the contrary, the majority do not wish it to be otherwise. The premise for progress is therefore that leaders and those who prepare them should genuinely wish to equip themselves with the knowledge and skills that would allow them to tackle inequalities head on and to withstand the resistance they are likely to encounter in their school community. Policy makers also need to enable freedoms so that organisational level choices about resource distribution, curricula and pedagogy can be fitted to the needs of the whole school community.
