Africa-Press – Lesotho. THE Institute of Development Management (IDM) last week held a workshop at Cenez High School in Koalabata, Berea, to empower school principals with leadership and management skills.
The workshop was ignited by the realisation that principals require a combination of leadership, management, communication, and decision-making skills.
The IDM is an education and training organisation with a mission to educate and train people for development. The principals spoke about the challenges they often encounter in their push to improve the performance of their schools.
The principals narrated how the ever changing behaviour of students, dealing with teachers with different backgrounds, and trying to spur them to be more productive can be frustrating.
What is more frustrating, according to the principals, is having to work with low budgets especially for schools that entirely depend on government funds.
The IDM said it saw this as an opportunity to work with the association of teachers and principals to improve the capacity of school principals in managing school finances and improve their leadership skills.
Thibeli Molapo, the acting Lesotho Country Director for the IDM, said it is important for school leaders to have skills that will assist in enhancing the quality of education in Lesotho.
The workshop, he said, was meant to improve the principal’s daily work as leaders and managers of schools to build productive communication. “A good leader leads by example and also listens to what other people have to say because a positive mind-set allows the ability to work with others,” Molapo said.
The IDM Business Development consultant, Tšo Sechaba, said leaders have to be emotionally intelligent and apply system-thinking to their activities. “To succeed in today’s environment requires whole leaders who use both their head and heart,” Sechaba said.
Sechaba said leaders have to use their hearts to understand human issues, support and develop others. “Using both head and heart includes issues like giving people a sense of meaning and purpose when major changes occur almost daily,” Sechaba said.
He said leaders have to master thinking independently, be open-minded, and develop system-thinking and personal mastery. As much as the principals said they were thrilled with this initiative they still want the government to reconsider more things in regards to their work.
’Matšoanelo Lichaba, chairman of the Lesotho School Principals’ Association (LESPA), said the training would help them inspect themselves as principals and give them tips on how to handle challenges.
Lichaba said the training will help them deal with challenges they meet with on a daily basis in a calmer manner. “We will inspect ourselves before the people we are leading, that will assist us to understand them too,” Lichaba said.
Although they are willing to have a positive mind as leaders, she said, leadership is not easy more especially when you are in charge of old people who can speak for themselves.
Lichaba said that the biggest challenge is that most of the schools have very few teachers which makes it difficult to manage such schools. “Teachers end up teaching subjects they are not trained for and as a result we often meet resistance from such teachers,” she said.
She is also worried about the lack of teaching equipment which makes their work more complicated. “In terms of helping schools we often see the government focusing more on government-owned schools more than any other yet they are all in need,” Lichaba said.
She said the major challenge that affects the leadership and management role of principals is the fact that most of the principals are working in an acting capacity. The principals are not being confirmed to be permanent and pensionable.
She said it is not nice at all because they do not get the kind of respect from the teachers who they are leading because they do not see them as the rightful owners of the positions they are holding.
Lichaba said they are not even paid for holding such positions in an acting capacity and they see the government dragging its feet when it is supposed to pay them the acting allowances.
“We do not know how they do it because others still suffer,” she said.
She said they want all the acting principals to be hired permanently and be pensionable because the pain they go through without payment makes them not to do their work with all their heart.
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