You have been given the responsibility of writing a speech about your school in the school’s annual event. Write a short speech (500 words) that talks about your school’s legacy, strengths, and achievements.

my speech

Explanation:

School leadership is now an education policy priority around the world. Increased

school autonomy and a greater focus on schooling and school results have made it

essential to reconsider the role of school leaders. There is much room for improvement to

professionalize school leadership, to support current school leaders and to make school

leadership an attractive career for future candidates. The ageing of current principals and

the widespread shortage of qualified candidates to replace them after retirement make it

imperative to take action.

Improving School Leadership, Volume 1: Policy and Practice explains why school

leadership has become a key policy priority and sets out four policy levers which, taken

together, can contribute to improve school leadership and school outcomes. The book is

based on an OECD study of school leadership around the world, with the participation of

Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flemish and French Community), Chile, Denmark, Finland,

France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Korea, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,

Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland

and Scotland).

Each of these 22 education systems prepared a detailed background report analysing

national approaches to school leadership. In addition, five case studies on school

leadership focusing on system improvement and training and development complement

the comparative work by providing examples of innovative practice (published in a

companion volume, Improving School Leadership, Volume 2: Case Studies on System

Leadership). In this way, we were able to collect the information necessary to compare

country developments and adopt an innovative and forward-looking approach to policy

making.

The Improving School Leadership activity produced a significant body of knowledge

on this issue in the form of country background reports and innovative case study reports,

all of which are available on the OECD website at www.oecd.org/edu/schoolleadership.

Many people shared their expertise and knowledge to make this a successful activity and

there have been many opportunities for exchange. Three international conferences and

three workshops brought together national coordinators, representatives of international

organisations and a network of research experts.

The authors are indebted to the countries who took part in the study, to the extremely

engaged national coordinators, to the expert teams who participated in the country visits

and provided valuable comments on the report and to the countries that hosted

conferences and workshops. We are grateful to HSBC Education Trust and David

Hopkins for supporting the case studies and to Judith Chapman, Andrew Hargreaves,

Tony Mackay, Robert Schwartz and Fani Stylianidou for their expert contributions to the

activity.

This activity was carried out by the Education and Training Policy Division of

OECD’s Directorate for Education under the leadership of Abrar Hasan (until his

retirement) and Deborah Roseveare (since June 2007). Peter Chambers and Susan

Copeland edited the report and Judith Corcoran, Jennifer Gouby and Ross Wilkins

provided administrative support.

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