Page 27 - EducationWorld June 2020

Eager-to-learn children & youth: visionary institutional leadership prerequisite

and visionary institutional leadership. Unfortunately, as in to flower are rare in the country’s education institutions.
all walks of life in this ill-fated nation dominated by the Instead teachers and professors are usually promoted to
ubiquitous neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood leadership roles based on their years of academic experi-
that controls and commands every sector of the economy ence. Rarely is leadership training given to senior teachers
including school and higher education, independent, pro- prior to their being elevated to the principal’s office, and
gressive education leaders are a rare species. after that they are seldom given the operational freedom to
The bald truth is that the vast majority of principals, develop their leadership competencies. The consequence is
directors and vice chancellors who head the country’s 1.2 that India’s best schools, colleges and universities suffer in
million government primary-secondary schools, 39,931 comparison with the world’s best,” says Capt. (Retd) Raj
colleges and 935 universities are individuals whose main Mohindra, promoter-director of Raj Mohindra Consul-
qualifications are high capability to manage great and small tants, Mumbai, one among India’s most respected educa-
politicians and bureaucrats, rather than effectively nurture tion consultancy firms which has conceptualised, designed
and develop great institutions. This explains why so few, and operationalised some of India’s top-ranked primary-
if any of India’s universities — some of them of over 150 secondary schools, including the Mahindra United World
years vintage — figure in WUR league tables of QS, THE, College, Pune, and Ecole Mondiale and the Dhirubhai Am-
Shanghai Jiao Tong or any other globally respected rating bani International School, Mumbai.
agencies. Pervasive disinterest in training and preparing bright-
“It’s substantially true that there’s a leadership deficit est and best academics with administrative capabilities
in Indian education at all levels — primary, secondary and for institutional leadership roles apart, the practice of
tertiary. But it’s also true that leadership skills cannot be separating teaching from management/administration is
developed without adequate support by way of immersive conspicuously absent in Indian education. The outcome of
training, clear policies and procedures, and well-remuner- this structural flaw is that over-burdened principals and
ated teachers and faculty. Moreover school leaders must be vice chancellors tend to fall between two stools, and are
accorded respect and freedom of operations by their man- neither good academics, nor efficient administrators. The
agements. These practices and conditions for leadership few schools in which the roles of academic heads and chief

JUNE 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 27