Strand 2: Capacity Building
With the understanding that School Head is seen as a prime mover of change processes in school and needs support on a long term basis, the capacity building programmes of the Centre are far from the conventional models of training. Instead, these programmes have been designed with a long term developmental approach that address real life challenges in schools. To extend its reach across the country, the Centre has expanded in States with its programmes that cover all the levels of school education. A State Resource Group (SRG) has been formalized in those States where leadership development activities have been launched.
This strand of work covers capacity building programmes both at the national and state levels. The Centre is consistently engaged with capacity building of school heads at the national level, and capacity building of state resource groups across the states. The state resource groups in the states carry the programme forward with the school heads, building their leadership capacity. The Centre provides academic support to SRGs in their endeavour.One Month Summer Programme on School Leadership and Management is one of the major initiatives of the Centre in the direction of building leadership capacities of school heads to transform schools. This programme is a one month residential programme at NUEPA, with the objective of building a perspective on school leadership and developing vision for change and improvement. It also aims at acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes and management skills inbuilt in the seven key areas outlined in the curriculum framework. The programme was started for the first time in the Centre in June 2014 for secondary school heads from the Hindi speaking states (Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Delhi) of the country. Recently, the Centre has conducted the second One Month Summer Programme in June 2015.
One Year Post-Graduate Diploma Programme on School Leadership and Management is another initiative undertaken by the Centre in the direction of transforming school heads. The programme aims to bring about a shift in the current role of school heads as functional managers to proactive and innovative leaders. The objectives of the programme are to develop the ability amongst the school principals to critically reflect upon their personal and professional self, develop a perspective on school leadership, and build skills, attitude and knowledge in areas of team work, partnerships and teaching learning processes for improving student learning. To translate this vision into real school experiences, the programme adopts many practices coupled with theoretical understanding of concepts.
It incorporates sessions based on writing reflective journals, tracking changes in self and in school during the entire course period; workshops for skill building, and special sessions by experts.
Capacity Building of State Resource Groups has been conducted on the Curriculum and Handbook on school leadership development for 22 states till the end of 2014-15. In the current year, the Centre would reach out to the remaining states and union territories.