LEADERS from all levels of the education system are set to participate in the inaugural Educational Leadership and Management Conference from August 20-21.

The two-day event, under the theme: ‘Education Leadership and Management in Jamaica: from nursery to university,’ will be held at the Holiday Inn Resort in Montego Bay, St James according to the Jamaica Information Service (JIS).

The conference is being organised jointly by the Institute of Educational Leadership and Management-Jamaica (IEAL-J); the National College on Educational Leadership (NCEL); Catholic College of Mandeville; College of Health Sciences at the University of Technology (UTech); and the International University of the Caribbean (IUC).

Conference chair and vice president of the IEAL-J, Dr Carmel Roofe, said that the event was borne out of the November 2014 public lecture on ‘Successful and Effective School Leadership in Jamaica’, which was organised by the IEAL-J.

She said it will bring together teachers, principals, students, researchers, research students, policy-makers, educators and representatives from civil society “to engage in interactive discussions focussing on issues that are unique to Jamaica and deriving solutions that are unique for our context”.

President of the Catholic College of Mandeville in Manchester, Dr Laurett Bristol, who will be among the presenters at the conference, said the event provides “an ideal opportunity” for the college to partner with other institutions in Jamaica.

“It is critical, as a young teacher training institution in central Jamaica, in the rural context, for the Catholic College of Mandeville to engage in this partnership, to work towards developing an education system that is not just responsive to the particular needs of the Jamaican educational system but to develop an educational system that is becoming a vanguard for the delivery of quality education across the Caribbean region,” she said.

Keynote speaker at the conference will be Brunel University Academic and Director of IEAL-J, Professor Paul Miller.

Minister of Education, Rev Ronald Thwaites and Chief Education Officer, Dr Grace McLean will make presentations.

Other presenters are: Principal Director of NCEL, Dr Maurice Smith; Opposition Spokesperson on Education, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith; Associate Professor and Dean of the College of Health Sciences at UTech, Dr Ellen Campbell-Grizzle; Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer at Jamaica Tertiary Education Commission, Maxine Henry Wilson; Chief Inspector at the National Education Inspectorate, Maureen Dwyer; and Dr Ken Brien from the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management in Canada.