Standards for Leadership : Gateway to a Stronger Profession?

Recruitment, preparation, continuing professional learning and recognition of school leaders are widespread concerns for policymakers and practitioners. Standards for school leadership are a notable development in Australia and overseas for addressing these concerns. In Australia, many quality sets of standards for teachers and school leaders have been developed but they are not profession-wide. This paper is based on a project ACER was commissioned to undertake by Teaching Australia in June 2005. Our brief was to review approaches to standards and options for a national system for assessment against school leadership standards for prospective and established school leaders. The review examined in detail five professional learning systems, one from Australia and four from overseas. A central component to these systems is the presence of standards for school leadership to guide professional preparation and the ongoing learning of school leaders. A key focus of this session is how the profession can play a much stronger role in providing a standards-guided professional learning system.