Honoring the future builder of education

During a discussion at a high school, I asked the principal: “Are you busy these days?” She smiled: “Still busy, but less so. Thanks to student management software, attendance is no longer taken in notebooks.”

The answer may sound benign, but to me it is a sign of an important change: the role of school leadership is shifting – from primarily administrative management to more systemic coordination, from wearing multiple hats to activating and connecting the resources around you.

This change is not happening in isolation. Vietnam is implementing many educational innovations such as free tuition for all public preschool, primary, secondary and high school students, expanding full-day schooling nationwide, and recently passing the Law on Teachers – an important legal milestone to enhance the status and development path of teachers and education managers.

These are all welcome steps. But to translate policy into real change in individual classrooms, I believe we need a new approach to school leadership: lean administratively, strategically focused, focused on quality teaching and learning; shared responsibility, and using technology and data to make timely decisions.

UNESCO has just released its Global Education Monitoring Report 2024/25, titled “Leadership in Education”. The report shows that effective leadership can improve student learning outcomes by up to 27%. However, in middle-income countries, principals spend up to 68% of their time on administrative work – much of which could be digitized or decentralized.

As Vietnam is streamlining its apparatus, the expectations placed on principals have never been higher. For principals to lead learning, they need to be trusted and empowered in a meaningful way. This requires a clear degree of autonomy, and especially the right tools for decision-making.

Digital transformation can play a key role in this process. When data about students, teachers, budgets, and instructional activities are integrated and presented visually, principals will not have to “feel it by the skin of their teeth” or rely on disparate reports.

They can proactively monitor progress, detect problems early, provide timely support to teachers – and most importantly, focus their time on observing, monitoring and improving teacher teaching quality and student learning outcomes.

Principals also need to be adequately prepared for their leadership role. School leadership is a specialized profession, with competencies that cannot be acquired through personal experience alone.

According to UNESCO, there are four pillars of competence that need to be focused on in training for educational leaders: building a shared vision for the school, promoting the quality of teaching and learning programs, effectively managing resources and administration, and creating a positive cultural environment. These are skills that need to be systematically trained, with a clear career development path.

The Teacher Law can contribute to institutionalizing these core competencies by integrating them into the leadership development framework and professional standards for principals.

And finally, no one can innovate alone. An effective principal does not need to do it all, but rather needs to create a network of shared leadership. This approach empowers teachers to lead in their classrooms, students to take an active role in leading their peers, and parents and the community to participate. Policy makers and intermediaries at the grassroots level also play an essential role in making the innovation process more seamless and sustainable.

On World Teachers’ Day (5 October), we celebrate teachers and principals who are shaping the future of education. The new Teachers’ Law provides a timely legal basis to recognise them not only as policy implementers, but also as learning leaders.

UNESCO is proud to have accompanied the Ministry of Education and Training in the process of developing this important law – and will continue to commit to supporting its effective implementation in practice.

From applying management software that helps the principal reduce time spent “manually processing” reports, to a new legal corridor – small and large changes are gradually paving the way for more effective leadership in schools.

Source: https://giaoducthoidai.vn/ton-vinh-nguoi-kien-tao-tuong-lai-giao-duc-post751178.html