A day with the Leaders

“The most important rule of educational leadership is to always remember that it is not the policy or program but it is the people who drive schools\’ effectiveness”

We at Vidhya Vidhai strongly believe that for a school to reform, the quality of teachers must be of priority and the immediate step is to ensure effective School Leadership which will drive the impact in classrooms and motivates teachers to nurture the minds of their students. This belief has lead to a Leadership Circle in our schools in Tondiarpet Cluster.

Located in Chennai, the Tondiarpet Cluster has completed its year-long journey in exploring Teaching – Learning strategies and effective management of the classroom. It was that time when leaders came together to look back on the journey traveled, reflect their learnings and plan for the next academic year.

On 16th March 2019, Leaders from four schools in our Tondiarpet Cluster came together. The session started with a small energizer called ‘Pictionary’ which gave them an understanding of what was the objective of the session followed by which Leaders shared their journey in the last one year, focusing on the different change stories from their schools.

“We were able to see the changes in our teachers and their teaching, this has improved our student\’s tests results.” – said a School Leader. These views gave confidence to the whole team about the program and the transformation journey that each school is going through.

This confidence resulted in building more trust among the people in the circle which led to the conversation of challenges in the leadership struggles and practices. For which Cluster Transformation Leads from Vidhya Vidhai team had researched on effective practices of Leaders in schools which might support Leaders dealing with challenges in schools. This discussion was supported by three claims for successful leadership in schools:

1. Leaders are the biggest influence in school for the delivery of quality education
2. Leadership style impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the school
3. Distributive Leadership in schools impacts the student\’s outcome more compared to a single person’s leadership

These claims for successful leadership in schools influenced leaders to brainstorm on their individual level changes that they need to bring in for School’s reform and so each school leaders was facilitated to craft a transformation journey for themselves as well as for the school.