The potential role of headmasters in providing academic leadership to their schools has yet to be adequately realised. At present, they are seen largely as the administrative authority within the school, though they lack the necessary control to exercise this authority, or even to ensure regular school functioning. Often they are equipped with neither the capacity nor the the authority to exercise choice and judgement relating to the school curriculum. Headmasters (and teachers) need to be able to identify the specific supports that they require for their schools, articulate their expectations regarding the content of training and school visits from the cluster and block personnel, and participate in the process of monitoring and supervision. Currently, they are not differentiated enough from teachers with regard to their academic roles. The role that the headmasters, and indeed the community of headmasters, can play within a cluster of schools must be highlighted. Capacity building for this must receive attention.
Schools are now the focus of an increasing number of programmes aimed at enhancing quality and spreading awareness about societal concerns relating to the environment, health and so on. Headmasters are often besieged by the numerous programmes they are called upon to conduct and participate in. Programmes often lack clarity regarding their objectives and methodology, and their activities tend to overlap. It is important that as part of the process of school-level planning, they should be able to participate in decisions about the programmes they need and how they should be integrated into regular school activities. These programmes could then be coordinated at the cluster and block levels.
Conventionally, monitoring of schools has been through the inspectorate system. This system has served largely to exercise authority and control rather than provide academic support to teachers. The school inspectors perform a number of functions, one of which one is to visit schools under their purview. Their visits are usually few and far between, during which the students and teachers tend to present a positive picture of the school regardless of the ground realities due to fear of punishment. This reduces monitoring to a 'policing' function. Monitoring for quality must be seen as a process that enables and provides constructive feedback in relation to the teaching and learning processes within specific classroom contexts. The monitoring system put in place must be carefully analysed in relation to its objectives, and the norms and practices that are to be institutionalised to achieve the objectives. It must provide for sustained interaction with individual schools in terms of teaching-learning processes within the classroom context.
