BY INGRID BROWN

Associate Editor – Special Assignment

browni@jamaicaobserver.com

A recent assessment of 304 primary and secondary schools islandwide has found that 46 per cent of these institutions are under the leadership of persons whose performances were graded as unsatisfactory, according to the National Education Inspectorate (NEI).

“For leadership we found that 46 per cent of our schools have leadership that we have rated as unsatisfactory, as we find that they were not sufficiently focused in many ways on how to get their schools and their students to improve through the system, chief inspector at the NEI Maureen Dwyer told the Jamaica Observer Press Club at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue offices in St Andrew last Wednesday.

According to the November 2013 Chief Inspector’s Report, the school-based leadership and management teams in these schools were unfocused on the core function of learning and in many instances lacked the cohesiveness that would inspire their school communities to buy into the school’s vision and mission.

“For example, in many of them senior and middle leaders did not share the vision for success and much time was spent trying to resolve relational issues to the detriment of school improvement activities,” the report stated.

Many middle managers, according to the report, operated in ‘silos’, divorced from the schools’ overall improvement plan.

“In these schools, there was limited vision for the students’ successes, insufficient attention to instructional practices and weak accountability systems,” it said.

The report further noted that 13 schools were rated as needing immediate support in leadership and management.

“In these schools, senior leadership lacked drive and did not enjoy the respect of a significant number of staff and students,” the report stated. The schools were, however, not named.

Meanwhile, Dwyer explained that the assessment was not only of the principal but the entire leadership team in these schools.

“We looked at the board, senior teachers; we access our vice principals; we look at the office of principalship; we look at how they self-evaluate and plan and we look at how they incorporate members of the community into the school family so the school can be led and managed in the interest of the teaching and learning and the progress of the students,” she said.

However, in addressing some of the relational issues identified in the report, Dwyer said that schools are human environment.

“Teachers relate to students, principals relate to boards and parents and you have to think about it that way. You will have power issues and disagreements but in order to get people on board the maximum leader will ensure that people are seeing eye to eye with his vision,” she told the Press Club.

Director of the National College for Education Leadership Dr Maurice Smith maintains that the current Effective Principal training programmes being offered to principals and aspiring principals are designed to address the challenges unearthed by the NEI.

“Any issue you can identify in the report is linked or aligned to a particular standard, so the training is informed by the standard. So whatever the NEI reports we work together to ensure there is coverage and that we provide for those specific issues,” Dr Smith told the Press Club.

As for the findings that at least 13 schools are in need of immediate leadership and management support, Dr Smith said these particular schools were identified and the decisions taken on what modules these principals would need to be exposed to.

He further explained that in the first quarter of this year NCEL will be launching its coaching programme and this is designed to provide specific support to principals who are not performing at the level that is required.

“So those are ways in which the central ministry through its constituents arm works with some of these principals,” Dr Smith said.

The research, he said, has found that ” if you want to turn around a school you look at the quality of leadership and the quality of teaching.

“And so when you juxtaposed our database against the NIE’s database it is very clear that the issue is leadership, because very many of those schools who were deemed to be under-performing also have principals who in our books are non-compliant,” he said.

Several principals have failed to complete critical components of the Effective Principals’ Programme.