| Following the World Conference on Education for All in
Jomtien, Thailand in 1990, education ministries, international
agencies, and NGOs have agreed action plans to improve the
capacity and performance of schools. The plans recognise that
the school principal carries prime responsibility for creating
an effective educational environment. Without the necessary
skills, many heads are overwhelmed by the task.
In Africa, the situation is particularly acute. In rapidly
expanding systems, experienced and skilled teachers are customarily
appointed to run complex schools without adequate preparation
and back-up support. Alex Dadey and Clive Harber improved
our understanding of school management by describing the unique
work patterns of heads in Africa in Training and Professional
Support for Headship in Africa. Their work proved that management
techniques appropriate elsewhere cannot be imported unmodified
into African systems, with their very intricate demands. They
also demonstrated that strategies for training and supporting
school heads were generally inadequate throughout Africa.
The Commonwealth Secretariat/Unesco/SIDA/GTZ Training and
Support Programme for School Heads in Africa was initiated
by the Commonwealth Education Programme in 1991, following
a plea from the Inspectorate in Uganda to find ways of assisting
school heads to do their job better. In Africa, it was apparent
that local or national workshops, the traditional way of providing
training for a relatively small proportion of heads, were
clearly inadequate: they were expensive, and could cover only
a few heads. (There are perhaps 18,000 school principals in
Kenya and Uganda, for example, and over 40,000 in Nigeria.)
New strategies were needed. Investigation also highlighted
the lack, across Africa, of good quality, comprehensive and
user-friendly resource materials on school management. Such
materials as were available tended to be outdated, in short
supply, and in many cases written in language ill-suited to
busy heads. Nevertheless, several countries (Zimbabwe, Uganda
and Botswana, for example) had begun to prepare manuals for
school principals.
The joint Programme undertook to work with English-speaking
African ministries, to analyse the way they trained school
heads, given available resources. At the same time, writing
teams in seven countries, with the support of their Ministries
of Education, began drafting resource materials covering the
primary aspects of running a school in Africa. Problems of
producing and distributing training materials were also addressed.
Three regional workshops were held, attended in the main
by a regular core of Chief Inspectors, Directors of Schools
and teacher educators, as well as heads and representatives
of associations of school heads. The workshops provided opportunities
to share experience, to critique the work of the writing teams,
and to hammer out clearer and more effective strategies for
training, and for materials production and distribution. The
meetings are described in three reports, available from the
Commonwealth Secretariat, which outline the Training and Support
Programme for School Heads more fully, and give details of
related publications on teacher management.
The training modules were written, trialled, edited and designed,
and made ready for presentation at the final Commonwealth
Africa workshop in Botswana in March 1993. They constitute
a remarkable testimony to the possibilities for effective
co-operation among education professionals across the sub-continent.
In practical terms, the work has been co-ordinated by the
Commonwealth Education Programme. But nothing could have been
achieved without the very generous contribution of participating
Ministries of Education. Permanent Secretaries have assigned
senior ministry staff and school heads to work on the materials;
they have committed funds from overstretched budgets to support
the writing teams; they have made trialling and testing of
the materials possible; and they have released their staff
for the regional sessions. My thanks go first of all, therefore,
to the Permanent Secretaries of education ministries in Botswana,
Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe for their
co-operation and unfailing support.
We are of course particularly grateful to the team leaders
from those countries for adding an additional assignment to
their already heavy schedules, and persisting against very
tight deadlines: Mr Reuben Motswakae, Deputy Director, Teaching
Service Management, Botswana; Mr John Atta-Quayson, Deputy
Director-General, Ghana Education Service; Mr John Lodiaga,
Director, Kenya Education Staff Institute; Mr Len le Roux,
Deputy Director, Rossing Foundation, Namibia; Professor Etim
N E Udoh, Deputy Director, Institute of Education, Ahmadu
Bello University, Zaria, and Alhaji Garba S Kuta, Deputy Director
(Teacher Education), Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria;
Mr James Nkata, District Education Officer, Mpigi, Ministry
of Education, Uganda; and Mr R G Sisimayi, Deputy Chief Education
Officer, (Standards Control Unit and Professional Administration),
Ministry of Education and Culture, Zimbabwe.
The Programme has demonstrated the practical advantages of
working co-operatively. Participating ministries were supported
throughout by generous financial contributions from the Swedish
International Development Authority, the German Agency for
Technical Co-operation (GTZ), and Unesco. Joint funding has
made possible the development of a regional strategy to address
the needs of school heads, and laid the foundation for bilateral
support for national initiatives. We are confident that such
partnerships set the tone for future collaboration.
Finally, in the background, three consultants have provided
expertise in bringing our work to completion: Richard White
of Moray House Institute of Education; Bob Smith of Bristol
University's School of Education; and Suzie Rodwell. We thank
them all. Responsibility for this work within the Education
Programme has rested with Carol Coombe and Jakes Swartland.
Peter Williams
Director
Education Programme
Human Resource Development Group
Commonwealth Secretariat
January 1993
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