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Redifining school leadership responsibilities
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- 2. • Brings togethertheory and practice to provide recommendations for countries to clarify the core responsibilities of school leadership. • This (re)definition of responsibilities is one of the key policy strategies to improve school leadership. • Presents evidence on the specific leadership roles that can positively influence teaching and learning and argues that school leadership responsibilities should be redefined to focus on teaching quality, goal setting and implementing intelligent assessment systems, strategic resource management and collaboration with external partners. • It looks at ways in which leadership definitions or frameworks can be designed and improved to support recruitment, training and evaluation of school leaders.
- 3. Leadership is not wielding authority – it’sempowering people. Becky Brodin
- 4. “School leaders canmake a difference in school and student performance if they are granted autonomy to make important decisions. However autonomy alone does not automatically lead to improvements unless it is well supported.” • Core responsibilities of school leaders should be clearly defined and delimited. These should be defined and designed to improve teaching and learning.
- 5. COMMANDMENTS FOR POLICYMAKERS: Provide higher degrees of autonomy with appropriate support School leaders need: T- ime C- apacity S- upport M- otivation to focus on the practices most likely to improve student learning
- 6. • Looking atcross-country relationships, analysis from OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicates that school autonomy in the areas surveyed is positively correlated with student performance. The data suggests that in those countries in which principals reported, on average, higher degrees of autonomy in most of the aspects of decision making surveyed, the average performance of students tended to be higher (OECD, 2007a). Provide higher degrees of autonomy with appropriate support
- 7. • School autonomy– if alone, does not automatically lead to improved leadership. What will happen if school leaders failed to have an explicit mandate to focus on those domains that are most conducive to improved school and student outcomes? • School autonomy may lead to the following: • role overload, by making the job more time-consuming; • increasing administrative and managerial workloads and; • deflecting time and attention away from instructional leadership. Provide higher degrees of autonomy with appropriate support
- 8. It is thereforeimportant that the devolution of responsibilities comes with: • provisions for new models of more distributed leadership; • new types of training and development for school leadership; and • appropriate support and incentives. Provide higher degrees of autonomy with appropriate support
- 9. COMMANDMENTS FOR POLICYMAKERS: Redefine school leadership responsibilities for improved student learning Aim of Policy makers and practitioners: • To ensure that the roles and responsibilities associated with improved learning outcomes are at the core of school leadership practice.
- 10. 1. Supporting, evaluatingand developing teacher quality: Strengthening school leaders’ responsibility for adapting the curriculum to local needs • It is the school leader’s job to implement school curriculum and instruction within these policy boundaries in a manner that achieves the policy makers’ intent effectively and efficiently.
- 11. Providing trainingfor school leaders in teacher monitoring and evaluation • Teacher monitoring and evaluation - an important responsibility carried out by school leaders. • Woessmann et al. (2007) using econometric analysis of PISA data showed that student achievement seems to be higher when teachers are held accountable through the involvement of principals and external inspectors in monitoring lessons.
- 12. In reality: • Schoolleaders do not always have enough time and capacity to focus on this important responsibility. • Principals and other senior staff often lack the tools or training to perform teacher evaluations satisfactorily.
- 13. Enhancing therole of school leaders in teacher professional development so that it is relevant to the local school context • School leadership - plays a vital role in promoting and participating in professional learning and development for teachers. • Countries where there is more autonomy at the school level also have greater funding capacities to develop more individualised training programmes for teachers.
- 14. LEADERSHIP FOR ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNINGAND STUDENT OUTCOMES (LOLSO) • showed the importance of ongoing, relevant professional learning opportunities (Mulford et al., 2004). • It emphasised not only organizational learning, but a trusting and collaborative climate, a shared and monitored mission, the capacity to take initiatives and risks and ongoing relevant professional learning opportunities.
- 15. Encouraging school leaders teamworkamong teachers to promote • Leadership focused on supporting, evaluating and developing teacher quality is widely recognised as a core component of effective leadership. Leading Learning Organizations in Sweden - Illuminate the relationship between the work of the school leader and the way in which the school acts as an organisation. - School leaders in more learning-oriented schools stimulated the teachers to organise time during which learningdirected discussions could take place.
- 16. Policy makers canpromote and encourage teamwork among school staff by the following: • Explicitly recognising the core role of school leaders in building collaborative cultures; and • Sharing and disseminating best practice in this domain.
- 17. 2. Goal-setting, assessmentand accountability: Policy makers need to ensure that school leaders have discretion in setting strategic direction and optimise their capacity to develop school plans and goals and monitor progress, using data to improve practice.
- 18. Ways onsupporting goal-setting, assessment and accountability: • providing school leaders with discretion to set the school’s strategic direction and develop school plans in line with national curriculum standards but also responsive to local needs • promoting “data-wise” leadership through support and training opportunities for school leaders • encouraging school leaders to distribute assessment and accountability tasks to people within schools capable of using data to design appropriate improvement strategies
- 19. The dynamic aspectsof managing curriculum and instruction: • Aligning instruction with national standards • Setting school goals for student performance • Measuring progress against those goals and making adjustments in the school programme to improve individual and overall performance
- 20. “DATA-WISE” SCHOOL LEADERSHIP •Make a external accountability beneficial for student learning • involves school leaders developing skills in interpreting test results and using data as a central tool to plan and design appropriate strategies for improvement.
- 21. 3. Strategic financialand human resource management: Policy makers can enhance the financial management skills of school leadership teams by providing training to school leaders, establishing the role of a financial manager within the leadership team, or providing financial support services to schools. In addition, school leaders should be able to influence teacher recruitment decisions to improve the match between candidates and their school’s needs.
- 22. Enhance strategic financialand human resource management by: • strengthening financial management skills of school leadership teams through training, appointing a school bursar with budgeting qualifications or financial management support to schools • involving school leaders in teacher recruitment decisions
- 23. Human resources • Appointmentand dismissal of teachers – a vital decision in the school’s strategic resourcing. • School leaders’ ability to select their teaching staff - Important aspect to establish a school culture and capacity conducive to better student performance.
- 24. • Lack ofschool leader involvement in recruiting and dismissing teachers - may reduce their capacity to respond and it is difficult to hold school leaders accountable for learning outcomes when they have no say in selecting their staff. “If I cannot choose the members of my team, I cannot be responsible for winning on the field.” (Stoll et al., 2008)
- 25. • Strategic resourcemanagement - refers to a leadership dimension that involves securing resources and ensuring that their use is aligned to pedagogical purposes (Robinson, 2007). • Budgeting - is a central element of leadership for improved school outcomes. • Lack of training and lack of focus in the field - the hindrance towards the capacity of school leaders in shifting financial and human resources strategically may be limited due to. • Dismissal of teachers and whole school budgeting - limited depending on the number of students enrolled in the schools.
- 26. 4. Collaborating withother schools: This new leadership dimension needs to be recognised as a specific role for school leaders. It can bring benefits to school systems as a whole rather than just the students of a single school. But school leaders need to develop their skills to become involved in matters beyond their school borders.
- 27. Adopt a systemicapproach to leadership policy and practice by: • encouraging school leaders to cooperate actively with surrounding schools and local community • distributing leadership responsibilities within schools so that school leaders can engage in activities beyond the school
- 28. • System leadership(Hopkins, 2008) - a systemic approach that integrates the classroom, school and system levels in the pursuit of enhancing student achievement” - It refers to thinking about the system as a whole as the basis of change management and requires interrelationships and interdependence between different levels of the system. The trend today: • Schools and their leaders are strengthening collaboration, forming networks, sharing resources, or working together. • School leaders are becoming more broadly engaged in activities beyond their schools, reaching out to their immediate environment and articulating connections between the school and the outside world.
- 29. SCHOOL COLLABORATION INDIFFERENT COUNTRIES Country Characteristics Belgium School communities have been created as voluntary collaborative partnerships between schools. They aim to have common staffing, ICT (Fl.) and welfare resources management. Co-operation in post-compulsory education has been promoted by Denmark way of the creation of administrative groups that can be set up locally or regionally between self-governing institutions to optimise their joint resources. A variety of approaches to co-operation are stimulated by the England government – federations of schools, national leaders of education, school improvement partners, etc. 2003 legislative reform has enhanced school co-operation aiming to Finland ensure integrity of students’ study paths. France “School basins” have been implemented to ensure collaborative partnerships between schools to work together in student orientation, educational coherence between different types of schools, common management of shared material and human resources.
- 30. Micro-regional partnerships basedon economic and professional rationalisation were created in 2004 and have resulted in the spreading of common school maintenance in Hungary almost all Hungarian micro regions. These networks for cooperation are the scenes of professional and organisational learning in a way that can function as new forms of education governance and efficient frames of innovation Small schools cooperate to overcome problems of size in Korea teacher exchange, curriculum organisation, joint development activities and integrated use of facilities. In primary education, “upper management” takes Netherlands management responsibility for several schools. About 80% of the primary school boards have an upper school management bureau for central management, policy staff and support staff. School clusters based around geographical communities and New Zealand communities of interest have been facilitated.
- 31. Northern Ireland Norway Portugal Scotland Sweden Post-primary schools shareprovision of courses with other schools and further education colleges. “School Collaboration Programme” focuses on school co-operation for increased curricular access on the local level. “Specialist Schools” model requires post-primary specialist schools to partner with primary schools and at least one other postprimary. Tendency to merge several schools to form an administrative unit governed by a school principal. It is quite common for principals to network in the municipalities. Common patterns of school governance are that schools are grouped together with a collective management structure. Executive, pedagogical and administrative councils are responsible for their areas. Important political promotion of collaboration. “Heads Together” is a nationwide online community for sharing leadership experience. Integrated community schools. Municipal directors of education steer principals. Most of them are members of directors of education steering groups where strategy, development and results are discussed
- 32. “Communities of schools”in Belgium (Flanders) Communities of schools for primary and secondary education have been promoted by the government, starting in 1999. Objectives: a. To make schools work in collaboration by sharing resources, to rationalise supply of courses and to promote cost savings across schools. b. To enable the enhancement of student guidance systems, particularly in relation to their educational career trajectories; c. To lessen the managerial-administrative burden on principals so that they become pedagogical leaders d. To increase the use of ICT e. To rationalize resources both in relation to staff recruitment, functioning and evaluation and in relation to co-operation in curriculum. Source: Day et al. (2008)
- 33. • Connection withlocal or municipal education authorities - achieve better connectedness to other public services and community development, as well as to improve student outcomes for all students in the local educational system.
- 34. SCHOOL-MUNICIPALITY CO-OPERATION INFINLAND A pilot programme in which five principals are also working as district principals, with onethird of their time devoted to the district and two-thirds to their own schools. Objectives: a. To improve schooling for the municipality children by ensuring that principals are responsible for their own schools but also for their districts and that there is shared management and supervision as well as evaluation and development of education planning. b. To align school and municipality to think systemically with the key objective of promoting a common schooling vision and a united school system. Conclusion: For individual school leaders to be able to take on this larger system role, there needs to be distributed leadership at the school level, with more involved deputy heads and leadership teams who cantake on some of the tasks of principals when they are taking on larger roles. Source: Hargreaves et al. (2008).
- 35. Highlighted benefits from co-operation (Pont, Nusche andHopkins, 2008): • Lessen the school leaders’ administrative workload and can devote more time and attention to leadership focused on improved learning outcomes. • Develop leadership capacity and attending to succession and stability by increasing the density of and opportunities for local leadership in the school and at the local level. • Increase professional learning
- 36. CHALLENGES OF CO-OPERATION: •When having to make decisions on whether to focus on the school programme or having to work outside, most principals will choose the first, as it is their key concern and the focus of their performance evaluation. • Leadership may not be well prepared to take on the challenges of leading collaboration with the outside world.
- 37. SYSTEM LEADERSHIP INENGLAND Vision: Collaboration can contribute to make “every school a good school”. Concept of system leadership: System leaders are those principals willing to contribute and care about and work for the success of other schools and communities as well as their own. Source: Hopkins (2008)
- 38. III. Develop schoolleadership frameworks for improved policy and practice • School leadership frameworks - can help provide guidance on the main characteristics, tasks and responsibilities of effective school leaders and signal the essential character of school leadership as leadership for learning. - basis for consistent recruitment, training and appraisal of school leaders.
- 39. • Principles: Build oncommitment, not compliance, with representatives from the school leadership profession involved in the formulation and development of the frameworks Provide definitions of school leaders’ major domains of responsibility based on effective leadership practice and concrete needs of national education systems Use frameworks to provide coherence to different domains of school leadership policy, e.g. recruitment, training and appraisal of school leaders
- 40. SCHOOL LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORKS ACROSSCOUNTRIES New Zealand Chile Northern Ireland Scotland Korea Netherlands Professional Standards for Principals Good School Leadership Framework National Standards for Headteachers Teaching Profession for the 21st Century Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) Professional Standards for Educational Leaders in Primary Education
- 41. IMPORTANCE OF SCHOOLLEADERSHIP FRAMEWORKS BY INGVARSON ET AL. (2006): 1. Way of setting boundaries and making it clear what school leadership does not include. 2. Make certain conditions need to be in place for school leaders to be able to perform effectively. 3. Provide a reference to evaluate its effectiveness.
- 42. Maxwell, John C.(2004). New Leadership 101: Inspirational Quotes and Insights for Leaders. Lighthouse Inspirational Books and Gifts: Manila, Philippines. pp. 101; 135. Pont, B., Nusche D., Moorman, H. (2008) Improving School Leadership VOLUME 1: POLICY AND PRACTICE. Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/44374889.pdf; Date Accessed: January 26, 2014; pp. 41-68
- 43. May this bea challenge for all of us to continue QUIT