Improving School Leadership

As countries strive to reform education systems and improve student results, school leadership is high on education policy agendas. But in many countries, the men and women who run schools are overburdened, underpaid and near retirement. And few people are lining up for their jobs. What leadership roles contribute most to improving student learning? How best to allocate and distribute leadership tasks? How to develop the right skills for effective school leadership? How to make the profession attractive to high-quality candidates? This book is based on an OECD study of school leadership practices and policies around the world. Offering a valuable cross-country perspective, it identifies four policy levers and a range of policy options to help governments improve school leadership now and build sustainable leadership for the future. Companion Volumes Improving School Leadership, Volume 2: Case Studies on System Leadership examines innovative approaches to sharing leadership across schools in Belgium (Flanders), Finland and the United Kingdom (England) and leadership development programmes for system improvement in Australia and Austria. Improving School Leadership: The Toolkit is designed to support policy makers and practitioners to think through reform processes for schools and education systems in their national context. It is available as a free download at www.oecd.org/edu/schoolleadership. Effective school leadership is viewed as key to education reform worldwide. These books will be of interest to policy makers, school boards, school administrators, principals, teachers and parents.