School Leadership and Quality Management

The curriculum schools offer, the way that curriculum is taught and assessed needs to be constantly examined to ensure it remains fit for purpose to advance the values we want to promote as a society and to shape the vision we have for our society.

Investing in School Leadership will be a key driver for innovation in schools. The quality of the teacher in the classroom is paramount and building the competences and capacities of our teachers to cope with changing methodologies, lifestyle and societal expectations will be equally important. In most countries, the school head will have to enable change by making strategic decisions, setting strategic goals, involving teachers, parents and students, dealing with resistance to change, implementing people reviews, etc etc.

Distributed Leadership

Leadership in education is knowing where you’re going. With which people, and what difficulties you can meet. But leadership is more than that. Leadership means listening to people. Inspire people. Take responsibility. Give responsibility. But above all you need to have a passion for learning.

Managing change

The adoption of innovations involves altering human behaviour and the acceptance of change. Managing this change professionally is one of the school leaders main tasks. The two main obstacles to a successful innovation are:

1. Maintaining high quality standards.
The Quality for Innovation project, which started in December 2012, aims to develop, test and mainstream a quality development approach for schools that includes a strong commitment to innovation. Q4I is a project designed to ensure high quality education while innovating educational practices. Using the innovative Q4I processes will lead to higher quality education and the ability to adapt to constant changes

2. Resistance to Change
The adoption of innovations involves altering human behaviour and the acceptance of change. There is a natural resistance to change for several reasons. People resist change when: the reason for the change is unclear, the proposed users have not been consulted, the change threatens to modify established working relationships, benefits and rewards for making the change are not seen as adequate. The Iguana project works on delivering a free of charge course to manage resistance to change.