Principals Getting More Support

Principals could soon be getting the help they need to strengthen their roles as educational leaders.

Balancing educational leadership with their management duties has been a struggle for many principals, but a handful of pilot programs designed to ease administrative burdens are showing promise.

Principals will get their first look at steps being taken by the Department of Education and school boards to address the issue at a two-day conference underway in Halifax today, April 20.

More than 400 principals are attending Principals In Focus to learn more about the future direction of education in Nova Scotia and to discuss areas of concern facing public schools.

The event is being hosted by the province. It is only the second time the Department of Education has met directly with elementary, junior and high school principals as a group.

One of the key issues on the agenda is helping principals regain their role as educational leaders.

"Principals have an extremely challenging job," said acting Education Minister Judy Streatch. "The day-to-day demands of running a school building take a lot of time away from their primary responsibility, which is education. That's why we are taking steps to restore that balance."

Principals, school boards and government recognize that too much of a principal's time is being taken up by school operational issues, such as building cleanliness, fire and safety regulations, and other facilities issues.

Based on concerns raised last year by principals, the Department of Education launched three pilot programs to help principals focus on education. The preliminary results have been positive. There have also been ongoing consultations with principals and a principal educational leadership advisory group has been established.

Jeff Lewis, the principal at Charles P. Allen High School in Bedford, said a pilot program involving four metro high schools, including his own, is having an impact.

C.P. Allen, Millwood, Sackville and Lockview high schools are sharing an administrative assistant who handles much of the home-to-school communication duties and responsibility for collecting school data.

"It really seems to be making a difference," said Mr. Lewis. "It's only been two months, but it's fair to say that the time I now have available to visit classrooms and talk to teachers about instructional matters has increased by about 170 per cent."

Two other pilot programs, one in Chignecto-Central and one in Annapolis Valley, may also prove to be helpful in freeing principals from some of their on building management duties.

Twenty-two schools in Chignecto's Celtic family of schools are using a web-based software program to automatically find and place substitute teachers. In the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board system a family of three schools has hired an administrative assistant to look after ordering supplies and hiring substitutes.

Over the two-day meeting, principals will also discuss teacher professional development, support of high needs students, ways to use assessment data to improve achievement, healthy eating and a range of other topics.