The 21st century is the century of knowledge society with the feature of global, private, liberal, and more complexity. Now our socio-economic scenario is completely changed, the new generation will be ready to face a very different future from previous generations. Information communication Technological (ICT) advances and scientific discoveries are significantly accelerating the amount of knowledge and information. Life has become more dynamic. Now we live in a complex multicultural, more open and liberal, digital, interdependent global knowledge society, where individual and professional success is depended on persons learning abilities and digital skills. In short, the 21st century has brought many challenges and opportunities as well. An important responsibility of education is to create a future generation that will meet these challenges and become global citizens.
The major shift in the role and responsibilities of school heads or principals
School leadership matters all the time and all over the world for student learning achievement and overall development. There is a growing concern that the role of a school principal, designed in pre-independence time and based on British model which was designed for the industrial age, after independence there were minor changes done but were not evolved to deal with the complex challenges that schools are preparing children to face in the 21st century. As expectations of what school leaders should achieve change, it is a must to redefine school leadership roles and its distribution. Preparing proficient, skilled school leader’s is also a high priority in order to ensure high-quality school education for the future. This rapidly changing context for schools gives rise to a series of issues to which policy and practice on school leadership must respond.
Let’s see the major shifts in conventional role, approach and responsibilities:
| Conventional role and responsibilities | In the 21st century role and responsibilities |
|---|---|
| A good school administrator | A visionary leader of the school |
| Rigid and defensive head of the school | A more open-minded, flexible and bold leader of the school |
| The controllers of human resources | The catalyst of integration and learning culture |
| Mediator between school and government | School representative leader |
| Officer / Boss | Collaborator /Team leader |
| Centralized leadership approach | Shared Leadership Approach |
| Exclusive autocratic working style | Inclusive democratic working style |
| Sustaining the school system | Transforming the school system |
| Implementing government decisions | Take decisions and execute the same |
| keeping accounts, updating and preserving school documents, supervise the teacher’s work | monitoring the teaching-learning process, and creating a conducive environment for learning, giving developmental feedback to teachers |
| Accountability to Government | Accountability to learners and community |
| Limited autonomy | More autonomy and responsibility |
In rapidly changing society and everyday School headteacher or principal have more complex challenges and responsibilities which I tried to figure out as follows:
Figure-1: Roles and responsibilities of the school leader
Why does school leadership Matter a lot?
Teaching and learning need to improve
As per the last few ASER report, our standards of teaching and learning need to improve and improve continuously if schools are to ensure that students can be successful in the 21st century personal and professional life. We have to take more comprehensive efforts to reach out to expected learning outcomes. As school leaders, you should play a key role in improving learning outcomes by influencing the motivation and capacity of teachers and affecting the school learning environment in which they work and learn.
To increase your influence, as school leader needs to play a more active role in instructional leadership by:
- monitoring and evaluating teacher performance continually;
- creating a learning culture in school and conducive school environment;
- promoting collegiality
- conducting and arranging for mentoring and coaching;
- planning teacher professional development; and
- promoting teamwork and collaborative academic work.
Pedagogy is changing
To be successful in today’s knowledge society, our students need to engage in more powerful forms of active, constructivist learning that teach critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and innovation. There is also a constitutional responsibility and increasing demand for individualisation and personalisation that can offer inclusive and multiculturally sensitive learning opportunities for increasingly diverse groups of students. With this advancement in information communication technology is rapidly changed our pedagogical practices now techno pedagogy is becoming integral part of our education. During this COVID-19 period we are facing various techno pedagogical challenges. After COVOD-19 technology-based pedagogy become a new normal. School leaders need to master these new forms of pedagogy so that they can monitor and evaluate their teachers’ practice. Principals as leaders of learning can establish communities of effective practice in which continuing professional development becomes more relevant and is embedded into the fabric of the school learning culture.
Centres of autonomy and accountability are shifting
School leaders can only have an impact on student outcomes if they have sufficient autonomy to make important decisions about the curriculum implementation and teacher recruitment process and development and if their major areas of responsibility are focused on improving student learning. Our national and state-level policies are increasingly opting for decentralised decision making, community participation in decision and balancing this with greater centralisation of accountability regimes such as outcome-based testing. Decentralisation has advantages as well as disadvantages. For example, school-level control over devolved budgets creates opportunities for school leaders to allocate resources to priority development areas, but it increases the burden of financial administration, leaving less time to focus on teaching and learning. School leaders are now often accountable for learning outcomes for teachers and students, where previously their accountability was for input into learning processes.
Policy and practice need to work better together
Government policy designed to change practice in schools can only work when it is coherent with school-level processes, systems, and priorities. Effective implementation depends on the motivation and actions of school leaders. Policymakers need to engage school leaders in meaningful and continuous dialogue and consultation on policy development and formulation. Private school are not following polices in their practice for example policy of inclusive education and RTE.
Schools are confronted with an increasingly complex environment
In rapidly changing societies, the goals for schools and the means to achieve them are not always clear and static. NEP 2019 has recommended school cluster it means schools are under tremendous pressure to change and school leaders must enable teachers and students to deal effectively with the processes of change. Leaders of the most successful schools in challenging circumstances are typically known to, engaged with and trusted by both parents and the wider community. They seek to improve achievement and well-being for students by involving skill-based activities, digital learning activates, sports, cultural and innovation centred activities, and community organizations. School leaders are also increasingly collaborating with leaders of other schools and with the district to share the resources and skills needed to deliver a diverse range of learning opportunities and support services.
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