my speech
Explanation:
School leadership is now an education policy priority around the world. Increased
school autonomy and a greater focus on schooling and school results have made it
essential to reconsider the role of school leaders. There is much room for improvement to
professionalize school leadership, to support current school leaders and to make school
leadership an attractive career for future candidates. The ageing of current principals and
the widespread shortage of qualified candidates to replace them after retirement make it
imperative to take action.
Improving School Leadership, Volume 1: Policy and Practice explains why school
leadership has become a key policy priority and sets out four policy levers which, taken
together, can contribute to improve school leadership and school outcomes. The book is
based on an OECD study of school leadership around the world, with the participation of
Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flemish and French Community), Chile, Denmark, Finland,
France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Korea, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,
Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland
and Scotland).
Each of these 22 education systems prepared a detailed background report analysing
national approaches to school leadership. In addition, five case studies on school
leadership focusing on system improvement and training and development complement
the comparative work by providing examples of innovative practice (published in a
companion volume, Improving School Leadership, Volume 2: Case Studies on System
Leadership). In this way, we were able to collect the information necessary to compare
country developments and adopt an innovative and forward-looking approach to policy
making.
The Improving School Leadership activity produced a significant body of knowledge
on this issue in the form of country background reports and innovative case study reports,
all of which are available on the OECD website at www.oecd.org/edu/schoolleadership.
Many people shared their expertise and knowledge to make this a successful activity and
there have been many opportunities for exchange. Three international conferences and
three workshops brought together national coordinators, representatives of international
organisations and a network of research experts.
The authors are indebted to the countries who took part in the study, to the extremely
engaged national coordinators, to the expert teams who participated in the country visits
and provided valuable comments on the report and to the countries that hosted
conferences and workshops. We are grateful to HSBC Education Trust and David
Hopkins for supporting the case studies and to Judith Chapman, Andrew Hargreaves,
Tony Mackay, Robert Schwartz and Fani Stylianidou for their expert contributions to the
activity.
This activity was carried out by the Education and Training Policy Division of
OECD’s Directorate for Education under the leadership of Abrar Hasan (until his
retirement) and Deborah Roseveare (since June 2007). Peter Chambers and Susan
Copeland edited the report and Judith Corcoran, Jennifer Gouby and Ross Wilkins
provided administrative support.