Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

PREPARING AND SUPPORTING LEADERS IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES59• Shaping the future• Leading learning and teaching• Developing self and working with others• Managing the organisation• Securing accountability• Strengthening the community.The NPQH has three stages as follows:1. Access; including induction, training and development.2. Development; training, development and school-based assessment.3. Final; 48 hours residential programme plus a final skills assessment.Experienced leaders, for example deputy heads, may be able to proceed directto the development or final stages without taking the preceding stage. Someapplicants may have only 48 hours of ‘training’ before being awarded NPQH.Bush (2006) says that this shows the tension arising from a mandatory programme.It is vital to ensure that there are sufficient qualified applicants toenable school governing bodies to have a choice of potential headteachers.However, the drive for scale may be at the expense of quality:While requiring all heads to be qualified is a step forward, the NPQHmakes only limited intellectual demands, and it is rare for any candidateto ‘fail’ (Bush 2006: 511).The NPQH is under review during 2007. A fuller discussion of the work of theNCSL appears in Chapter 6.In Estonia, school directors must have completed a school managementcourse (240 hours) before being appointed. These programmes are offered byseveral higher education institutions (HEIs), via distance learning (Isok andLilleorg 2003). Similarly, possession of a ‘headship licence’ is a legal requirementfor appointment as a headteacher in Slovenia. The approved programmeis provided by the National Leadership School and comprises six modules.Assessment is based on ‘active participation and attendance, along with six satisfactoryassignments’ (Erculj 2003: 227).South Africa is in the process of introducing a principals’ qualification, theACE: School Leadership, which is intended to become mandatory in 2010. It isbeing piloted in 2007–08 and the pilot has a comprehensive evaluation. Theevaluation report will inform the Minister of Education’s decision aboutwhether to make the ACE a mandatory requirement for new principals. Thepilot is being delivered by six universities but is primarily a practice-basedqualification, with site-based assessment, local networking and mentoring byexperienced principals (Bush et al. 2007a).