XLRI - Xavier School of Management recently hosted ‘Teach India; Reach India’ — National Colloquium on School Education. The event launched a leadership and management programme for school teachers who are currently in, or moving into, leadership roles.
Conceived by CeRTEL (Centre for Research, Training, Education and Leadership), XLRI, one of XLRI's reach out programmes that aims at enhancing the teaching and learning experience Indian schools, the new programme, a PG Certificate in Applied Educational Leadership and Management in collaboration with Fordham University in the USA, aims at enhancing the effectiveness of the teaching community by improving their support structures and the domain and managerial competence of the caregivers.
Speaking about the programme, Reverend Dr. Francis Peter, S. J. Chairperson, CeRTEL, XLRI said, “Majority of the principals take over their roles as school administrators without any formal leadership and managerial training. They often only have their teacher diploma, and move on from hands-on managing and developing some practical ways a mind set to run their institution. In response to the request of the principals at a focused group discussion, CeRTEL has launched the PG Certificate in Applied Educational Leadership and Management for school teachers currently in or moving into leadership roles.”
Improving leadership admin
The specialised year-long online course has been designed to help improve leadership administration in the emerging educational contexts; acquire and adopt the right leadership style for managing change; keep abreast of research and educational practices that enhance teaching and learning; enable a deeper, critical understanding of the organisation, and the environment we operate in; and, grow and develop along with colleagues, organisation and stakeholders.
The programme's curriculum includes sustained input, job-embedded activities, collegial discussions, and hands on project and is designed to provide practical educational leadership skills. The course module spread across 12 months is divided into four modules and 15 courses. Ten of these courses will be delivered online in D2D (Desktop to Desktop) mode and the remaining five in workshop mode at XLRI campus. The training mode is to follow Blended Learning format, comprising Knowledge through lectures; Skill through workshops; and Competence- building through projects by experienced professors of XLRI and faculty from Fordham University.
“This blended learning is designed for those from any of the Boards of Examination who seek to understand and enhance the teaching/learning climate of their staff and students for improved organisational performance, quality, customer satisfaction, effective management and control, and therefore financial stability resulting from managing and developing people well,” Dr. Francis Peter, S. J. further added.
Colloquium
The day-long colloquium, which was held at XLRI’s Jamshedpur campus on April 29 saw around 50 educationists, practitioners, principals, various heads of chain schools, policy makers, representatives from NGOs, publishers and other stakeholders in school education brainstorm on key issues relating to education in an effort to find common ground where they can work together to bring about positive changes in school education in India.
“At the end of the colloquium, what emerged was the need for competent, qualified and focused teachers in order to reform and revamp the education system within the given context. Vocational training must be made an integral part of education to make it all inclusive. A level oriented education system was proposed as one of the possible future actions. Education should not be prescribed: on the other hand, it should allow a student to explore himself/herself,” observed Dr. Francis Peter, S. J. about the event.
The theme talk of the event was delivered by Ruchi Narenndran, Managing Trustee, Education Office, JUSCO at the inaugural session. AK Pani, Dean [Academics], XLRI delivered the welcome address.
The day-long programme comprised of various events including group works, panel discussions, and sharing of best practices by the participants. Dr Sanjeev Varshney, Professor, XLRI, presented a white paper on The Status of School Education in India Today.