Evidence over decades has established that the overall quality of a school almost never exceeds the quality of its leadership. In India, specifically, while School Leadership development is still at its infancy, there is an increasing support from the policy and civil stakeholders.
Government support for school leaders
The National Centre for School Leadership (NCSL), and National University of Educational Planning and Adminstration (NUEPA), has laid down guidelines for School Leadership training in India, and has created a package of resources in the form of a handbook “to promote and institutionalise a culture of participatory peer learning offering abundant opportunities for reflective dialogue among the participants”. In addition, NCSL is also training State Resource Groups to roll-out the program across all school principals in the state.
However, to further strengthen this work, and to ensure sustained impact, School Leadership needs to be viewed within a more holistic framework. By focusing on School Leadership development across the value chain.
Despite having a concept of the value chain in mind, there is currently a lack of conclusive evidence on the most effective strategies to address these factors in their entirety.
However, several civil society organisations are playing an active role to build the capacityof School Leaders across the value chain. In fact, there are various trends emerging across high-quality School Leadership development programmes:
Acknowledging the criticality of developing effective School Leaders, the panel on “Leadership Training in Schools” at the AVPN India Summit 2017 is an exciting platform to discuss best practices, and leverage on the opportunities, and challenges already briefly highlighted in this blog.
