As Schools in Rivers State prepare to vacate for 2025/2026 Academic Session, Dr. Emmanuel Kaldick-Jamabo, an Education Leadership expert and a Public Affairs Analyst, writes on the need for School Heads to understand the concept of ethical School Leadership in contemporary school management practice.
The concept of School Leadership has been a subject of great debate among Scholars.
The question is what constitutes School leadership? What is identifiable leadership content and roles expected and are inherent in the concept, “School Leadership?
According to a British renowned Educationist and Writer Eleanor Wasserbery, the primary role of any leader particularly in a school context is the unification of people around key values”.
The core values she identified include: Schools are centered on learning- where all members of the school community are learners; where every member of the school community is valued as an individual. Besides, that school exists to secure its pupils and the local community, where Learning is about the development of the whole person and happens in and out of classrooms; where people prosper with trust, encouragement, and praise.
Thus, according to her school leadership is an aggregate leadership model aimed at unifying the common interest of producing and promoting lifelong learners that contribute to the development of the larger society.
In other words, School leadership is leadership for instruction and custodian of a brighter future, particularly for the learners. This is why Greenfield and Ribbins added that school leadership begins with the “character” of the leader expressed in terms of personal values, self-awareness, and emotional & moral capability.
School leadership is not only organizational leadership but also a moral and an embodiment of ethical leadership. School leadership is collective. It is a community of teachers and students led by a principal. It is a supportive and collaborative leadership designed to create a high expectation for teachers and students. It is a protective moral guide for the conscience, ethos, and cherished values and ethics of the larger society.
Indeed, the concept of school leadership is seen as a distinction between leadership, school management, and school administration, while also recognizing that the responsibilities of school leadership encompass all three.
According to scholars, irrespective of how these terms are defined, school leadership experience encompasses higher-order tasks designed to improve staff, students, and school performance beyond the routine maintenance of present operations-management and lower order duties of administration.
Thus, the three elements are so closely connected that it is unlikely for one of them to succeed without the others.
Nevertheless, one point is clear that the concept of the school principal ship is rooted in the industrial revolution model of schooling, where one individual bears the prime responsibility for the entire school organization.
On the contrary, School leadership in the contemporary school management context is rather a broader concept where the authority to lead does not primarily rest on one person, but can and is distributed among different people within and beyond the school.
Thus, school leadership encompasses people occupying various roles and functions such as principals, vice-principals, or HOD, (leadership teams and school-level staff involved in leadership tasks. It is indeed, a collective concept with particular reference to the supervisor, principal, the vice-principal, and possibly the Heads of Departments (HODs) in each secondary school.
Invariably, School leaderships simply refer to those in a leadership position who set the direction for the teachers and the students in a secondary school.
Other scholars often interchangeably used the term educational leadership for school leadership. But the concept of school leadership is used here as against education policymakers, whose duty it is to make policies for school leaders to implement or enforce to achieve general school academic improvement.
Furthermore, as it is used in this work, the concept simply refers to leading ethically. It is influencing teachers and students by the character disposition of the school leadership.
Ethical school leadership is supervisors, principals, vice–principals, and of course H.O.Ds. leading by following an approved set of values and rules and going beyond mere following rules, by actually acting out the approved set of rules at all times.
Ethical School Leadership is conducting the affairs of a school with the consciousness of morally right conduct. It is demanding, making a decision and setting the directions on what should be stirred up, how it should be stunned for, and how one should evaluate the pursuit of set objectives and goals of the school organization.
It is the school Supervisors, Principals, Vice Principals, and HODs providing ethical leadership by safeguarding and promoting approved moral values for schools.
Besides, as used in this work, Ethical School Leadership rests on certain fundamental pillars or components.
These are: The personal integrity of the leader that is the moral persona; The extent to which the leader can culturally integrate among his/her staff (teachers) and students consistently; The definite quality of the approved moral values for the educational system drawn from the aspirations of the society; The quality of the leader/follower relationship.
Expatiating further on this concept, William Hitt (1990), In his book Ethics and Leadership, established three basic points of connections or requirements between ethics and leadership.
These are:
I. Achieve an understanding of ethics.
II. Decisions made should be based on the leadership’s moral and ethical compass.
III. Developing and implementing a plan of action (rules, values) for promoting and demanding ethical conduct amongst teachers and students.
Again, it is important to spell out that the school system is the factory for the production of ethical leadership empowered with the knowledge of acceptable ways of behaviour, and conducting oneself. This is drawn from the platform of Godly and philosophical principles as entrenched in societal ethos and aspirations encapsulated in the National Policy on Education.
Therefore, school leaders are expected to be ethical leaders by the society and the government among other roles expectations as Oko (1998) said that the end product of education is the production of the “educated man”, who has the intellectual and moral strength to make the world a better place to live in. Ethical school leadership is therefore the art and practice of the production of the “educated man”. Indeed, School leadership matters.
In today’s world, the concept of School Leadership has now become a priority in education policy agenda internationally. It plays a key role in improving school outcomes by influencing the motivations and capacities of teachers, as well as the school climate and environment.
School Heads should therefore know that effective school leadership is essential in improving the efficiency and equity of schooling. As countries are seeking to adapt education systems to the needs of contemporary society, expectations for schools and school leaders are also changing. Many countries have moved towards decentralisation. They have moved to make schools more autonomous in their decision-making and hold them more accountable for results. At the same time, the requirement to improve overall student performance while serving more diverse student populations is putting schools under pressure to use more evidence-based teaching practices.
As a result of these trends, the function of school leadership across Nigeria is expected to now increasingly be defined by a demanding set of roles which include financial and human resource management, accountability and leadership for learning, and of course ethical leadership.
The truth is there are growing concerns across countries that the role of principals as conceived by the needs of the past is no longer appropriate.
Principals in Nigeria now have new workloads; while many are retiring and it is getting harder to replace them with effective hands. Potential candidates needed to know that roles are now more demanding and this is a source of concern, in addition to insufficient preparation and training.
These developments have made school leadership a priority in education systems across the world now.
As policymakers make efforts to enhance the quality of school leadership and make it sustainable, Scholars and System Actors have also identified four main policy initiatives that if implemented can improve school leadership practice:
Research has shown that school leaders can make a difference in schools and students’ performance if they are made to be up to speed and bridge the knowledge gap by clearly defining school leadership responsibilities
However, autonomy alone does not automatically lead to improvements unless it is well supported. In addition, it is important that as the core responsibilities of school leaders is clearly defined and delimited, School leadership responsibilities is being defined through an understanding of the practices most likely to improve teaching and learning.
Thus, as school prepare for the 1st term holidays, principals must resume with a fresh understanding of what is expected from them. And to say the least, what is expected from them is by no means less than this.
By Dr. Emmanuel Kaldick-Jamabo
An Education Leadership Expert
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