5DiscoverNEWSBrunei’s School Leadership Program (SLP) The School Leadership Program (SLP) is an initiative of Universiti Brunei Darussalam through its Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Advancement (ILIA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. The SLP aims to equip leaders in Brunei‘s education system with the capacity to lead an emerging body of reform initiatives and help establish a new culture of proactive, entrepreneurial school leadership. This collaboration is supported by the Action Learning Associates (ALA) team led by the esteemed Professor in Management and Organisation from the Ross School of Business, Professor Noel Tichy.The mission of the program is to help develop more effective leadership capable of meeting the social, technological, and political challenges of creating change in Bruneian education. Graduates of the SLP are expected to have the skills to implement transformational projects in their respective schools. The Ministry‘s goal is for the SLP to train all school leaders in government schools in Brunei by the end of 2011. A number of factors contributed to the development of the SLP in Brunei and these factors include the changing economic landscape in Brunei, SPN 21, Brunei’s Vision 2035 and the McKinsey Report.The SLP Brunei was first launched in March 2010. Since its inception, the SLP has worked with schools in Brunei through a series of action learning based workshops. In addition to these workshops, participating school leaders and teams are required to implement transformational projects that will help to raise their students’ academic achievements. The program is designed by the ALA to simultaneously develop leadership capabilities while driving significant school performance improvement. Since March 2010, a total of 193 schools in Brunei have participated in the School Leadership Program. The 6th Cohort, launched in April 2011, was graced by the participation of SEAMEO and CLMV countries. It is hoped that the participation of these countries will create a productive network within which collaboration on school developments can be fostered. Since the implementation of the SLP, a number of achievements in the area of numeracy, literacy, parental involvement and other collaborative engagements have been observed and recorded.The SLP has become a catalyst in helping school leaders make quantum changes in their respective schools and produce results, particularly in raising students’ academic achievements.It is hoped that the SLP will be able to address identified challenges and limitations and produce better results in helping to improve the quality of Brunei’s future generation of leaders. The SLP hopes to further strengthen its collaboration with various departments in the Ministry of Education to ensure the success of the program, particularly in providing quality education for all children in Brunei through School Leadership.SLP participant presenting to his colleagues his school’s achievements carried out after Workshop 1.The Minister of Education, Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Kerna Dato Seri Setia Haji Awang Abu Bakar bin Apong, answering questions raised during a Q&A session with participants of SLP Cohort 6.
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