School leadership

Dhirendra Prasad, Lautoka

Recently it has been seen that very young ones are being given school headship roles.

This is great if these appointees have experienced the various levels of leadership in our schools. School leadership means a lot especially when compared with leadership in others areas.

School leadership needs a high level of weighting on experience in public relations, policy management, curriculum management, leading professionals, learning and teaching pedagogies, school administration and research, finance management and many more apart from just teaching and assessment.

Just being computer literate cannot fulfil this requirement likewise subject knowledge is not sufficient enough. School improvement and planning needs experience in research and managing resources and skills as well.

The past school heads had to go through various headship levels before they could get the top leadership role unlike the most recent ones who have migrated from classrooms to leadership at the top level. Time will prove whether this new system of appointing heads of schools is effective.

But our teachers with certificates had proved that they were the best and cannot be replaced without repercussions by those with higher qualifications. There have been some with negative outputs but this does not mean that all school heads of the past were not effective leaders.

Many have proven records and have had a very significant impact but only to serve under new heads this year.

Change is necessary but any change without collaboration is doomed to fail as evidenced by the experiences of the past decades under similar conditions. Former heads of schools who have served for over more than three decades have gone home without any recognition of their input unlike workers in the private sector. What a system we have and surprisingly, some professionals love it.

This is quite a surprise.