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Monday, December 30, 2013 | 9:58 PMKINGSTON, Jamaica — Board chairmen of public primary and secondary schools Monday (December 30) gave an undertaking to ascertain why principals of their schools have not been responding favourably to capacity building interventions being led by the National College for Educational Leadership (NCEL).The interventions form part of NCEL’s Effective Principals’ Training Programme and are aimed at improving outcomes at schools, several of which are deemed to be underperforming.At a meeting at the Golf View Hotel in Mandeville, Manchester Monday, school board chairmen from more than 30 schools across the country expressed disappointment with the actions of their principals and gave a commitment to conduct their own investigations to determine what may have contributed to their non-compliance. They also indicated that they would be providing feedback to NCEL in the coming days as it is expected that their principals will become compliant by the end of January 2014.The board chairs were summoned to the meeting following Education Minister Ronald Thwaites’ recent declaration to Parliament that the ministry would take steps to ensure that principals were compliant with required NCEL training programmes.Addressing the school leaders, Principal Director of NCEL, Dr Maurice Smith asserted that the Board Chairmen had a crucial role to play in improving student achievement and emphasized that they must insist on accountability at all levels. “The voice of the Board Chairs is critical to the process. We must make sure all of us are accountable. We cannot go back to our schools and classrooms doing the same thing,” said Dr Smith.Since the middle of 2012, NCEL has been offering its Effective Principals’ Training Programme to leaders of primary and secondary schools, the ministry said. However, a significant number of principals have not been completing the programme of work.According to Dr Smith, 107 of 196 principals as at September this year had not satisfied the requirements with respect to either the Leadership Development Action Plan or the Portfolio. Despite several attempts, including letters from the Chief Education Officer only 30 of the 107 principals had complied. Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/jamaicaobserverFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamaicaObserver
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School Board chairmen to investigate noncompliance of principals in training programme
