Educational official highlights importance of leadership in education

Chandler Hyacinth. File photo

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, Chandler Hyacinth has highlighted the importance of leadership and leadership performance within the education sector.

She was delivering remarks at a two-day National Leadership Forum held at the Goodwill Parish Hall on Wednesday.

The forum includes a panel discussion with representatives from key sectors and organizations as well as sessions related to leadership and management within the education sector.

  “As we reflect on leadership over the next two days, we recognize the importance of leadership and leadership performance in creating opportunities to develop others,” she said. “Moreover leadership at school level is important to improving students’ outcome.”

Hyacinth described the forum as timely and said she hoped that by the end of the exercise, the role of leadership in building positive relationships would have been recognized.

“Relationships is important for organizational development..,” she said. “We hope that one of the discussion items will be the role of positive leadership.”

The Education administrator identified female leadership as a phenomenon within the Ministry of Education that has to be dealt with.

“How is that impacting on our education system. What are the challenges of female leadership?” she asked.

Hyacinth identified the need for accountability, emotional resilience as leaders and the use of coaching to develop leadership.

“Performance motivation is important to us as leaders,” she stated. “We can make a difference in our role as education leaders.”

Melena Fontaine. File photo

Meantime, Chief Education Officer, Melena Fontaine said at present the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development is the process of developing the education sector plan, “at the same time working on our new strategic plan.”

“For us this is a very important exercise since it is a fact that success depends on you knowing where you are at present, where you were and where you plan to go,” she noted

She said the Ministry of Education has been working with a vision that says, “Every learner succeed”

The Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development has, over the past three years, worked with the OECS Education Reform Unit to manage the OECS Education Support Project (OESP) funded by the Global Partnership in Education (GPE) organization of which Dominica is a member.

The project was implemented through four components, namely, Curriculum and Assessment, Teacher Professional Development, Leadership and Accountability and Monitoring and Evaluation.

 The forum will end with an Awards ceremony for primary school principals who have concluded leadership training as part of the programme with the University of the West Indies, Mona.

It is being held under the theme: “Education in the 21st Century-Leadership, Making a Difference.”

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3 Comments

  1. candid
    June 13, 2019

    Beautiful subject and well delivered but, it is not only at school we need to be educated, at home, in public and in the workplace as well. You are going to need supervisors, Auditors to ensure the safety and responsibilities of everyone in position if we have to maintain our resilience title.

  2. Roger Burnett
    June 13, 2019

    I hope that the “new strategic plan” will give prominence to all aspects of creativity. In our education system the visual arts, music, dance and drama remain on the back burner turned down low. Yet within these fields of endeavor lie the solution to many of our social and development problems.

    By the very nature of its uniqueness, creativity cannot be measured by examinations that are largely reliant on set answers and memory retention.

    • Ibo France
      June 16, 2019

      Perfectly right! Our education system is mostly based on recall and regurgitation of information. Teaching the students to be creative is not a high priority. School has become monotonous for many students who cannot cope with the same lengthy, daily, boring lectures. The curricula need to be reconfigured. More prominence should be given to vocational education and the visual, performing, textile arts. Our children should be made well rounded. We need a more holistic approach to education if we are to secure our children’s future.

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