Transforming School Leaders into Agents of Social Change and Learning Improvement - Lessons from Investing in building School Leadership in India

• In Event: Educational equity and improvement

Proposal

A Head Teacher (HT) does not simply run a school - they manage, govern and lead.

In the public school system in India, an imprecise understanding of the HT’s role as maintenance as opposed to leadership negates the potential of powerful impact an empowered school leader can have on school and student outcomes. This is evidenced in the approach to identifying and training school leaders. Selection is largely based on seniority and comes with limited or no training for the new role - being a trained teacher is often considered sufficient (Chauduri, 2002). Trainings are sporadic, lecture based, with little onsite support and follow up with HTs to support fulfilment of system and school level goals.

This absence of preparation and the unplanned appointment and allocation of schools to school heads’ imposes a huge opportunity cost for the students, teachers and school system in India. According to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) in 2020-21, only about 52% of schools had head teachers in place which includes “acting” Head Teachers, a further drop from 55% in 2019-20. The impact of these gaps is aptly summed up in India’s National Center For School Leadership (2014) in their curriculum framework - “unplanned head teacher succession is one of the most common sources of schools’ failure to progress.”

HTs own understanding and expectation of their role and their delivery show similar dissonance. Transform Schools’ consultations with school leaders found that HTs primarily learn about their role through the demands made by the system, which is largely limited to aspects such as data collection and sharing. The system-driven narrative of HTs as administrative heads is internalised.

Transform Schools works closely with school leaders as part of its Innovation Hub and Technical Advisory to State governments on improving learning outcomes for students in post-primary, at scale. Transform Schools has often found that the difference between a successful school partnership and a challenging one is the Head Teacher’s ability to ensure fidelity to quality efforts. Need to complete the syllabus in time, paucity of teachers and their time to oversee and support in-school programming, a fear of having their schools being seen as needing support are some of the reasons HTs decline to work with our programmes.

Copious evidence exists that points to the school leader being the lever for change. In fact, research shows it to be second only to classroom teaching as an influence on pupil learning (Leithwood et al., 2008). There is an acknowledgement of this in National Education Policy 2020, that says decisions important for improved school governance should be left to Principals (Head Teachers) along with other stakeholders at a school level (Ministry of Education, 2020)

The role of school heads also has significant impact in difficult situations and the potential to address issues of marginalisation, equity and social cohesion in a concerted way (National Centre for School Leadership, 2014). This aspect of school leadership has deep value in India where the public school system caters to more than 250M students, majority of whom are from the poorest sections of society and first generation learners with minimal academic support outside of school. A Head Teacher who is adequately trained, and is empowered can ensure the realisation of education as a tool of empowerment.

Seeing the field realities of HT leadership and/or lack of it, as well as Transform Schools’ whole school approach inspired a model for head teacher professional development. The Future School Leaders Programme (FSLP) focuses on building management and leadership capacities of head teachers. It equips HTs with the knowledge, tools, and skills to unpack and address issues that impinge on their leadership journeys, as well as the excellence of and equity in their schools.

FSLP focuses on the individual and developing their leadership abilities, situated within their aspirations and contexts. As well as their role i.e. job-based skills and knowledge. A school is by no means homogenous, within the same block (state administrative unit) two schools with similar material realities can have different challenges or opportunities. A layered approach allows the programme to counteract the one size fits all approach common in systems, while also developing empowered local actors aware of their context, its enablers and barriers.

As our first cohort of 51 HTs is ready to graduate from the programme we are rolling out a partnership with the State of Chhattisgarh impacting 4,640 HTs who are leading 712K enrolled children. Initial programme reflection and data analysis finds that students from schools led by Future School Leaders performed better in Transform Schools’ learning programme as compared to the state average. HTs also reported seeing general increase in the involvement of girl students in day to day school activities.

This paper will identify aspects of the design that are transformative and share experiences, from building a journey of growth, empowerment and potential for social change. It will explore the implicit and explicit tenets of a good leader that is present in the model, using qualitative and quantitative data from the programme to analyse the impact and effect of these tenets on the participants, and explore how it has impacted school and student-level outcomes. The paper will also look at how school leaders perceived and addressed issues faced by vulnerable communities.

We will review the FSLP approach using the lens of Situativity Theory (ST) or Situated Learning Model to gauge effectiveness, areas of growth and areas of potential innovation. There will be a focus on building these methodologies for at-scale implementation such that it does not compromise on the individual leaders’ journey and growth. Finally the paper will outline strategies for collaborative systems change, research and practice.

Authors

• Shraddha Jha, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Neetu Sahu, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Richa Goswami, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Pankaja Balaji, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Pankaj Vinayak Sharma, Transform Schools, People For Action

• Anwesha Das, Transform Schools, People For Action