Putting Policies into Practice

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schools’ financial management, personnel management, students’ learning, and the use of information.

Key Takeaways

• Quality assurance systems can help improve school management and

ECE service delivery. • Quality assurance systems entail monitoring and accountability measures, including – Developing comprehensive and localizable standards; – Establishing an evaluation, support, and accountability system based on data; – Using data efficiently to promote compliance mechanisms and target support; and – Empowering and evaluating school committees.

This section puts forward the policy implications for diagnosis, implementation, and monitoring of effective ECE management and leadership. It draws policy implications from the evidence discussed in the previous section, but the main insights come from high-income countries and more developed school systems. Therefore, it is important to gather evidence as reforms progress in LMICs. This section presents a road map for decisionmakers to implement the principles outlined above to boost the effectiveness of management and leaders’ work in ECE centers to promote and support quality learning. The implementation plan is anchored in the development and support of the school leader as the fundamental element of effective management.

Diagnostics

To implement managerial, policy, and quality assurance reforms in ECE, the current situation and policies must be understood. Only then will it be possible to identify concrete opportunities to make changes that increase quality. To gain a complete picture of the ECE system from the managerial, policy, and quality assurance standpoints, the following types of studies would be helpful: • ECE national context diagnostic of policies. The first task is to thoroughly map existing national institutions to gain a clear idea of how they operate.

A key activity at this juncture would be to review evaluations (if they exist)

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to understand viable models for eventual scale-up. Mapping must also include a review of existing policies, regulations, and institutional supports in different countries. When beginning the design stage, the cultural characteristics of the country and the society’s beliefs in relation to ECE must be considered. • National context quantitative mapping. Given the diversity of ECE modalities, it is possible to find a wide array of school leaders in educational centers. For example, in ECE centers that are attached to primary schools, the position of an ECE leader is most likely filled by the general school head. Given that school leaders have so many responsibilities, they usually do not have the time or knowledge to manage ECE. In a few cases, schools with preschool, kindergarten, first grade, or second grade as the initial grade have a head who leads the educational cycle, focusing on ECE classes. In rural areas in LMICs, multi-age classrooms are common, and a teacher who is also the school leader attends to children between four and six years old, and sometimes as old as seven. In urban areas, public and formal ECE centers are most common; most of the time they have a school head. Therefore, it is necessary to collect reliable data about the national ECE situation, including number of centers and their diverse management and provision modalities; rural versus urban; private versus public; age and enrollment of students; number of teachers; and leaders’ attributes (data on age, education, recent inservice training themes, years of experience, and so on). Given the multidisciplinary focus of ECE, which ministry is responsible for it? The ministry of health, ministry of education, ministry of women, multiple ministries, or the community? • Public policy review in relation to teachers and ECE leaders. An important question for policy makers is whether there is a teacher career trajectory that includes school leaders, a management career ladder for school leaders, or both. This is important, given that incentives, not necessarily all monetary, will be needed to recruit and train school leaders. It is also important to review whether the teacher and school management policies are coordinated and coherent with the higher objectives of the system. This is not always the case; generally the higher education initiatives regarding teacher training, in-service training, and professional development policies established by the ministries are disjointed and often out of touch with the reality of the centers. Nevertheless, programs can be developed and, at the same time, visualization of a policy for a school management career can begin. It is important that the leader realize that, if he or she is required to undergo a change process, the work conditions will need to adjust to a certain extent. It is necessary to have political buy-in that translates into having the necessary funds to implement the policies.

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• Management teams’ and school leaders’ time-use study. It would be important to form a clear picture of the time demands for the management of

ECE schools or centers, making clear distinctions for different arrangements. • Assessment of training opportunities for ECE leaders. Key questions here might include the following: What training programs exist? Do they include intense practice, or are they only theoretical? What is the academic component? What incentives exist to attend? Are continuous support, guidance, and materials available to school administrators and managers? Do they know who should carry out activities, when, and how? It is important to identify standards or expectations for school managers and leaders, paying particular attention to the leader’s pedagogical role. These are important questions to be answered before moving into implementing stand-alone programs. • Tools, data study, and monitoring and evaluation. It is important to understand what data the country is already producing on management, enrollment, quality assurance, and any other aspects related to ECE.

It is also important to identify what tools, if any, have been used and adapted to measure inputs, their use, and learning outcomes at the school level. Moreover, it is important to identify what other tools (apps, paper questionnaires, informal networks) are used by supervisors to gather data, support management of schools, and disseminate policy and implementation information from higher levels of the ministry.

Implementation Plan: Enabling Conditions and Road Map

Implementation should be driven by two factors: (1) data from the diagnostics and (2) the goals of the ECE system that the country wants to put in place. Implementation must also consider funding envelopes and a time horizon. There are a few required conditions to improve the quality of ECE centers through management and leadership.

Political buy-in. Political buy-in is necessary to ensure investments are made in aspects of quality that may be harder to quantify but are as or more important than visible outcomes such as infrastructure or attendance. Political buy-in is also necessary to establish ECE as a long-term state policy, ensuring the necessary resources for implementation and evaluation.

Performance standards for ECE center leaders. The first section of this chapter highlights the importance of reference framework standards to lead the improvement of center leaders’ performance and effectiveness. To establish performance standards, it is first important for stakeholders to develop a common reference framework according to the specific context. This needs to be agreed on and communicated carefully. The more

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consultation that occurs, the easier implementation will be. Many countries have profiles for leaders’ functions, but these profiles refer only to their administrative functions. The need for leaders to also be pedagogical leaders is not specified in those profiles. Therefore, what is important is to have a clear, specific, and transparent agreement on the knowledge and responsibilities of school leaders (Anderson et al. 2008; Ingvarson and Kleinhenz 2006).2

Performance standards must be developed with the participation of several groups: management specialists, school leaders in practice, and teachers. The standards are an agreement about what each entity expects from its leaders, so they must have the widest possible approval. They must be clear, specific, attainable in their achievement, and relevant to the educational context, taking into consideration the local territory and the educational community. Once developed, investing enough time in the elaboration, discussion, and diffusion of standards is key. Upon completion, the leader is empowered, and the leader’s role becomes more valuable in the educational center. Leaders value having a common and clear framework and performance guide. They also value having pedagogical purpose in their administrative actions.

One of the challenges of setting standards for the management of ECE centers is that preschool education for children ages four to six years is increasingly incorporated into primary education establishments in many countries. Standards of leadership between preprimary and primary schools are not very different. However, one of the main differences hinges on the central role of ECE leaders in well-being and communication with families. Some countries aim to integrate the preschool leader and the management team. Others look to an in-service training program for school leaders that focuses on children’s educational development from the earliest stages to facilitate the transition from preschool to the first grades of primary education. Such a program provides an opportunity to train center leaders and families about the advantages of promoting transition mechanisms, yet it is not often addressed in LMICs.

Another challenge is reconciling different types of modalities and levels of education (from nursery school to kindergarten) in a single quality framework or among a set of standards. It is a pending issue, but the idea is to move forward with a general framework that is flexible enough to accommodate the different modalities of the centers.

It is recommended that standards be developed first, and then the diagnosis of in-service leaders’ competencies and knowledge can be carried out to give the study a stronger theoretical framework and develop the necessary data-collection tools.

Evaluation of competencies of current ECE center leaders. The next step to improve the quality of ECE centers is to evaluate the competencies of

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leaders, including those who lead stand-alone centers or who lead primary schools that incorporate ECE, in both urban and rural contexts. This evaluation must be based on standards, and its objective is to visualize, both for policy decisions and for the leaders themselves, the gap between current performance and performance standards. This is essential for training and to establish the competencies of leaders. The diagnosis requires knowledge of demographics, leaders’ work experience, types of education and training, salaries, working hours, and so on. Many LMICs do not have such upto-date statistics.

This evaluation informs decision-makers about the needs for in-service training. On the basis of the findings of these diagnostics, decisions can be made to prioritize the allocation of available resources to the neediest geographic areas or demographic groups: Do children in the most vulnerable sectors have fewer effective school leaders? Are there rural or urban areas where leaders are weaker? An additional benefit of evaluating the competencies of current leaders is that doing so can lead to the identification of effective directors throughout the country who could be engaged to support training efforts.

In-service training programs for ECE center leaders. When standards have been validated and a diagnostic has been carried out, the next step is to make a strategic decision: train leaders within the system, select new ones, or both. In LMICs, the most strategic decision is to bet on training, given that it is most likely that the diagnostic will show many shortcomings in the performance of current school leaders. It should also be acknowledged that few LMICs offer initial training processes for leaders, resulting in a limited supply of candidates. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to simultaneously train leaders in practice and recruit new candidates for training before selection and hiring.

Organizing an effective leadership training program for ECE centers presents challenges and entails a gradual process that includes an evaluation of results. In LMICs, developing a simultaneous national program for all school leaders would be complex. Experience in different countries in Latin America (Chile, the Dominican Republic, Peru) shows that initially conducting a pilot program in one region of the country benefits operations and quality of service.

Provide quality training programs for school leadership. Training for ECE leaders must be well planned. It is the responsibility of the ministry of education, along with professional and higher education institutions, to design coherent, cumulative, and integral training experiences, as well as to deal with the results.

The design should first include an assessment of the leaders’ competencies and knowledge based on established standards. The assessment’s results identify the gap between leaders’ current work and expected standards.

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This exercise allows adjustments in the training plan to be made that correspond to needs. For example, gaps faced by leaders in rural areas will be different from those in urban areas. Therefore, the programs must be tailored to each context, and training plans adjusted to the different ECE modalities.

The training program must develop pedagogical management and leadership abilities in center leaders. On the one hand, the objective of training is to develop abilities in leaders, including strategic vision, team building, the capacity to negotiate and effectively communicate, empathy, and a sense of self-sufficiency, among others. On the other hand, training should equip participants with certain professional knowledge, such as managerial leadership, decision-making based on real school data, early childhood inclusion and equality, and sensitivity to ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Leaders need to know and develop the necessary skills to incorporate the heterogeneity of the children, to use pedagogical practices in preschools, to conduct evaluations, and to lead with a strong understanding of the curriculum. This will allow leaders to support their teachers’ professional development, carry out project management, and so on. Nevertheless, studies show that some school leaders feel less prepared for administrative roles, such as financial management, and that they feel more prepared for roles as educators of ECE and in establishing relationships with staff (Hayden 1997; Muijs et al. 2004). Therefore, a good leadership training program should strengthen their administrative skills alongside their pedagogical management and leadership abilities.

The instructors in training programs need to be well-educated in management and educational leadership. This is perhaps the greatest difficulty in carrying out effective training programs. Most instructors in LMICs are academics from education departments that in general are removed from the real and concrete problems leaders face. They tend to focus more on theory than practice. Often, they are not up to date on the study of management or educational leadership. In turn, these countries look to districtlevel or regional leaders who lack the knowledge and experience in this kind of training program, given that their main focus has always been supervision.

Training needs to be focused and specific to the context of school leaders. One of the frustrations among adult students in training is the inevitable gap between theoretical ideas in their studies and their capacity to apply these ideas in their work. Successful training models are based on the premise that the immediate application of new knowledge to real-life situations strengthens lessons learned. For training to be effective, the examples used should relate to real problems and concerns that participants face in their work. The training should intertwine theory with the

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idiosyncratic problems that leaders face. Case studies, effective leader modeling, and program improvement plans are just a few examples of teaching strategies to make these connections practical. Active learning methods promote skills acquisition. Training programs that include modeling followed by role playing and performance feedback offered in an emotionally supportive atmosphere have been successful in several studies (for example, Dufrene et al. 2005; Sterling-Turner, Watson, and Moore 2002). Evidence also supports the importance of mentors who are instructors with leadership experience and who can accompany leaders in their daily work to monitor improvements and provide performance feedback. The inclusion of mentors increases the overall cost of training programs but ensures their quality.

Training should be focused on the leader as the agent of change. Effective leaders create a vision that serves to catalyze change. The leader needs to be prepared to overcome obstacles and encourage progress. Exposure to different models of change and the opportunity to develop abilities to ensure necessary reforms are successful are essential to training programs. Good professional development programs for early childhood administrators include both aspects: they take people to higher levels of knowledge and ability (what they know) while altering thought processes to deepen their understanding of their professional practice (how they do it).

Inclusion of an evaluation component is important. Training evaluations should include the leader’s learning results: new knowledge acquisition, skills and abilities learned, changes in behavior seen in new work practices, changes in the school’s organizational climate, quality of teaching practices, and parent satisfaction. In general, training programs include evaluations based on satisfaction with the service rendered but rarely provide an evaluation that measures the level of learning achievement in new practices. The second type of evaluation is essential to promoting real change in quality and a better understanding of the training’s effectiveness.

Participants’ career growth should be encouraged and supported. Wherever possible, training should translate into merit-based incentive systems and promotions in the leader’s career path. The idea is to make sure that what is taught in training is used in the classroom.

Leader networks can be created in ECE centers. The professional role of an early education leader is often lonely. As such, training experiences should include opportunities for peer support and to generate territorial networks.

The resources and pedagogical support required will depend on the type of training program, that is, whether it is only in-person or both in-person and online, and whether it includes shadowing and mentoring. Also, the length of the program is an important budget consideration. In general, a program that focuses on developing abilities and good practices needs to

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take into account the significant time required to absorb, develop, and consolidate new abilities. Leadership training is more intense and requires more time than management training because it implies fundamental changes in the way people envision their roles and solve problems. Therefore, although shadowing increases the cost of training programs, it makes them more effective. Well-written manuals for leaders are also an important tool for their day-to-day operations. The trainees should focus on developing good practices and how to face multiple challenges that come with effective school management.

Identify and select new ECE school leaders. Once the standards are established and an in-service training program for leaders has been created, the education system needs to improve its leadership selection system. There is little information about selecting leaders specific to the ECE context, but the experience of selecting school leaders can provide important insights. Ontario’s education system uses early and effective identification of future leaders within the organization, which ensures the development of their talents over time through leadership experiences from inside the existing establishment along with other similar strategies (Barber, Whelan, and Clark 2010). The Ontario school leader selection system is a valuable model because it includes an effective leadership identification, selection, and development system that is integrated into a harmonious and effective network that strengthens school systems (Barber, Whelan and Clark 2010).

Implement quality assurance and data-collection systems. On the basis of the previous discussion of standards, procedures, and definitions of roles and responsibilities, a quality assurance system can be developed to track implementation, measure improvement, and identify challenges. This system will serve as a quantitative measurement of ECE centers’ standards that leaders need to improve on every year. It should include measurable indicators, aligned with the standards, that serve as an easy way to develop improvement plans that school leaders can use to better manage the school and to compare themselves with other schools. Such a quality assurance system will also help policy makers identify where to deploy more resources to tackle dire conditions or the lack of improvement.

Monitoring of Implementation

Just as school leaders need to have clear roles, responsibilities, accountability, and tools that facilitate their work, the implementation of programs and reforms for ECE management and leadership must follow similar principles. Successful implementation will depend on the quality of available resources, planning, monitoring, and path correction to overcome challenges. Therefore, the existence of capable ECE departments in ministries