State to set up schoolleadership academy

February 10, 2017 06:35 pm | Updated 06:35 pm IST - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:

Kerala has decided, in principle, to set up a State School Leadership Academy to provide leadership training and effect capacity building in school administrators, primarily school principals.

The academy would be modelled on the National Centre for School Leadership set up three years ago by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) and would be funded primarily by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. This was decided at a meeting chaired by Education Secretary Usha Titus here on Friday.

NUEPA Vice Chancellor Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, who was present at the meeting, told The Hindu that the academy would either be set up as a free-standing institution or as part of an existing institution under the Department of Education. NUEPA has already readied the curriculum for providing leadership training to school administrators and this has been translated into various regional languages. Already 12 States have set up such academies.

The academy would work to provide school administrators with an academic outlook in managing educational institutions. The Right to Education Act sought to ensure community involvement in the running of schools by introducing the concept of School Management Committee (SMC). Wherever the SMCs are functioning, they have been a huge success.

The SMCs often act as a watchdog ensuring a range of best practises from student attendance to teacher sincerity. This was particularly true in the case of Kerala, he pointed out.

Two years ago, the NUEPA had put in place a framework — School Standards Evaluation — for gauging the performance of schools across seven indices, including academic performance, teacher development, learning outcomes and inclusion.

The varsity also put in place 46 core standards using which schools would assess themselves and custom-design remedial action plans based on perceived shortcomings. The programme dubbed ‘Shala Sidhi’ has been taken up with vigour in Kerala which is readying to submit its first State-level self-assessment report to the NUEPA in March, 2017.

Kerala has also achieved great success in implementing the Unified District Information on School Education (UDISE) intended to create a national database on children in schools.

From this year, the UDISE would link each entry on a school student with his Aadhaar number. This programme would enable education planners to track learning outcomes and educational parameters of every child who is enrolled in the nation’s schools.

In Kerala, this programme is almost complete save in some schools in remote tribal areas and in the case of children of migrant workers who do not have Aadhaar card, he said.

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