The Role, Professional Development, and Challenges of Principals: Key Ingredients of School Leadership

The success of schools in the current era demands ever-increasing efforts from their principals. Professional development is an essential ingredient that enables them to work in diverse scenarios and deal with competing, complex, and unprecedented challenges and issues. The present study intends to explore principals’ professional development and its relationship with their roles and the challenges they face. Quantitative approach was employed to conduct this study. One hundred principals were selected based on the purposive sampling technique. Data were collected on a five-point rating scale from the principals of higher secondary schools in Lahore through a physically administered survey method. The questionnaire measured the participants' perceptions on three dimensions: professional development, roles, and challenges. Data were analyzed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. The impact of the professional development on the role participants’ play and the challenges they face in schools' leadership were calculated using the regression analysis technique. The study found that professional development was a significant predictor in school efficiency/improvement, and school success depends heavily upon the professional development and the role of schools’ principals. It also shows a need to reprioritize the roles that principals play in leading their schools. The challenges about students show that further professional development is required for principals to improve their efficiency in school improvement. The challenges due to financial resources also indicate the need for financial management. The study concluded that professional development should be monitored and kept updated to improve schools' leadership.

An Investigation of the Operational Efficiency of School Management through Innovative Teaching via Digital Mobile E-learning: DEA and Data mining Methodology

The goal of this research is to find out the factors or Determinants Affecting School Efficiency have the school to implement digital mobile e-learning and future tendency. The empirical results of this research indicate the following results: (1) In this study, we find that Importing digital mobile e-learning can really enhance the efficiency of school management. Furthermore, all these schools are located in Taipei City or New Taipei City. (2) Lastly, we also apply the data mining methodology to find that the teacher-student ratio, tablet PC numbers, technical teacher ratio, the total equipment expenses associated with tablet PC, School location and School attribute are important determinants for affecting the efficiency of school management. On the other hand, When the number of students decreases, too many teachers and technical teachers, as well as redundant equipment, etc., will become a burden on the school. Finally, these factors will affect school efficiency. The results of this research can also be the reference for educational authorities when formulating policies and regulations for promoting digital mobile e-learning. JEL classification numbers: C55, I28 Keywords: Technical efficiency, Digital mobile e-learning, Data envelopment analysis (DEA), Big data application, Data mining methodology.

Curriculum Leadership and Alain Badiou’s Ethics: A South African Experience

Several curriculum scholars have argued for an ethical turn in the study of curriculum based on concerns about the debunking of ethics in postmodern society. The notion of ethics in curriculum scholarship, with specific emphasis on curriculum leadership, is explored through a narrative of a school principal and contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of ethics. The data indicated several conditions (which are by no means exhaustive) for ethical curriculum leadership to transpire. These include a truthful aspiration towards curriculum excellence and deep transformation, a loving encounter as a truth procedure underpinning ethical curriculum leadership, a longing for the truth, developing a collective fidelity, and creating a reflexive aptitude. It is argued that ethical curriculum leadership begins with love, that is, the antidote to acting in one’s own interest. In addition, it is seen as a dialectic between managing school efficiency, building infrastructure and managing talent to enable optimal curriculum enactment, and a continual process of curriculum leadership. This article reports on one aspect of a larger research project titled “Women Leading in Disadvantaged School Communities”.

The nine year basic education policy and secondary school internal efficiency

This study examined the effect of implementing Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE) policy on secondary school internal efficiency. The study followed descriptive design. Data on students’ enrolments and repetitions for consecutive school years, cohort 2014/15 and 2017/18, were collected from all five lower secondary schools in Ngoma and Tumba Sectors using survey questionnaire. Besides, focus group discussions (FGDs) were used to collect views of head-teachers on the study variables. The reconstructed cohort flow analysis technique was used to determine indicators of internal efficiency. Summary statistics are presented in tables. Qualitative data from FGDs were analysed through thematic content analysis with consideration of similarities and differences. The findings revealed (i) a positive change in students' promotion and repetition rates, (ii) students’ survival rate to the last grade increased to 69.39% for the cohort 2017/18 from 50.72% for the cohort 2014/15 and (iii) wastage ratio declined from 1.62 for cohort 2014/15 to 1.33 for cohort 2017/18. Thus, school efficiency rose to 75.19% in 2017/18. Head-teachers attributed the positive change in internal efficiency indicators to the combination of 9YBE interventions including removal of school fees, school feeding, and flexibility in student progression and increasing day secondary school in proximity of home. However, persistent high dropout rates indicated that the implementation of 9YBE policy had not alleviated all disruptive forces against students’ participation rates. It was therefore suggested to relook at policy interventions to address individual students’ challenges at school and household levels and the management of older children in the school system.

The Intersection between School Efficiency and Student Individual Differences

School funding literature centers largely around how spending impacts student performance, but rarely examines how efficiently that spending takes place. This paper used Data Envelopment Analysis, to examine how efficiently Florida elementary schools spent funds to produce student gains in reading, finding that schools (n=1,446) performed on average at a 61% relative efficiency level for the 2009-2010 school year. Next, this paper examined the predictability of these efficiency scores, finding several demographic variables to be significant predictors of school-level efficiency. Finally, this paper used data from n=677,386 Florida public elementary students to measure the relation between these efficiency scores and student individual differences, finding the negative impact of students having an exceptionality to be larger in lower efficiency schools.

Need Analysis of School Management Information System for Public Schools in Punjab (Pakistan)

The research was designed to identify and analyze the need for School MIS at secondary and higher secondary school levels in Punjab. Three separate questionnaires were developed for school principals, teachers and parents. The population of the study was the principals, teachers and parent members of the school councils of public schools. Punjab has 36 districts and the study was delimited to 12 districts selected randomly. A 10% sample from each of twelve districts was taken. Findings of the study indicated that there is no type of school-based MIS available in public schools and there is a dire need of school-based MIS to easily record and retrieve information. It was concluded that school efficiency cannot be improved significantly without introducing school-based MIS in public schools of Punjab