Making schools count

Today’s principals cannot get caught up in the minutia of building operations and logistics”. This means that school principals must get their priorities right and ensure that they spend a lot of time on instruction regardless of the many challenges seeking their attention. Schools are confronted with many issues and at times could find themselves preoccupied with peripheral matters. The core business is instruction. Now and then school principals must watch the triangular relationship between the teacher, learner and content.

Focusing on anything else amounts to tinkering on the surface. However, to successfully wrestle with the culture of academic underachievement, presently bedevilling our secondary schools, principals would nonetheless, benefit from external support. Regional Principal Education Officers (PEOs) with oversight of schools have a pivotal role to play, both in supporting individual principals and in disseminating good practice.