School Boards

STRENGTHENING SCHOOL BOARDS PROGRAM

Project Goal:

Strengthen School Board capacities to govern the school, as defined by the law, that will facilitate democratization and decentralization processes on the school level.

Project Strategic Objective:

	Provide information and knowledge on School Boards roles, rights and duties through training and mentoring activities and dissemination of School Board Manual.
	Empower School Boards to cope with their responsibilities through sharing the best practices and clearly defined procedures and practices.
	Encourage activities for improvement of close cooperation of all stakeholders in school governance for the best interest of the students and the school.

Timeframe:

Start Date: April 2009 / Completion Date: April 2010

Funding: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Human and Institutional Development Program managed by World Learning / Macedonia

http://www.usaid.org.mk and http://www.worldlearning.org.mk/

Project stakeholders:

Ministry of Education and Science, USAID, World Learning, ZELS, Municipalities, School Boards in all primary and secondary schools.

Project summary:

This project targets the school board as governing body of the school aiming to strengthen it to take over its legally defined roles and responsibilities in decentralized education system. School Boards, established as a decision-making body responsible for school governance to create checks and balances on the school level, are an essential part of school administration in decentralized education system in the Republic of Macedonia. MCEC, working closely with central and local education authorities, is targeting school boards in all primary and secondary schools in Republic of Macedonia to build their capacities in dealing with governing issues in their schools and building partnerships with local communities to support the schools in efforts to provide quality education to its students and improve their learning outcomes. Project activities are tailored to equip the school board members with necessary knowledge and skills to cope with newly defined functions covering school vision with strategic planning, selection of key personnel, financial supervision, quality assurance, students' well-being, local community involvement, and enhancement of the relationship with central and local authorities.

MCEC promotes School Board Manual, incorporating functions along with clearly defined procedures and samples of strategic documents and processes, as a very comprehensive tool to assist the school board members in their work. This Manual is the basis of the training and mentoring activities to be provided for the school boards throughout the country. Three cycles of training and mentoring activities will be organized with local trainers and mentors regionally. Training will be provided for three members of school boards, representing teachers, parents and school founder, plus school administrator. Municipality representatives as school governance stake holder supporting school on local municipal level will be invited to participate in the training. Mentoring organized for each school board on school level will follow the training with mentor guiding the whole school board in addressing issues specific to the school.

Planned Activities:

Developing school board members’ data base - MCEC will contact all primary and secondary schools to collect information on the actual members in the School Boards and school secretaries and use the list as a planning tool for training and mentoring activities.

Training for trainers and mentors - Three training sessions will be organized for training of trainers and mentors in specific school governance related content aiming to well prepare trainers for their work with school boards representatives as each training session will need to offer an unique approach in motivating SB representatives and raising their interest for active participation on the training sessions.

School Board Manual dissemination – The Manual developed as a comprehensive tool to assist the school board members in their work will be disseminated at the training and mentoring sessions to all school board members.

Training for school board representatives - Regional training will be organized as three non-consecutive training days for four representatives from school board including teacher, parent, founder-municipality or MOES plus one school secretary from all primary and secondary schools. Training in Macedonian and Albanian, in separate groups, will be offered in the areas with mixed population. The training program will comprise the following modules:

Module 1 - Roles and Responsibilities of School Board

Strategic Documents adopted by School Boards

Module 2 - Legislative procedures (case studies)

                                School Board and School Finances

Module 3 -     School Board Effectiveness and Quality Assurance
                     Communications - Key to Building Partnerships

Mentoring of school boards - Mentoring sessions will be organized after each training session to transfer the knowledge from the training sessions to all members of the school boards and to provide ‘real-time’ guidance and advice in addressing issues that arise during school board meetings.

Posters on school board roles and responsibilities - Informative poster will be designed in aim to raise awareness on the importance and the role of the school boards, and will be distributed to all primary and secondary schools throughout Macedonia.

Expected results:

	Increased nationwide awareness of the importance of school boards in governing the schools.
	School Boards empowered to govern the schools and take over their roles and responsibilities as defined by laws and bylaws.
	Strengthened capacities of School Boards to deal with school governance issues in the best interest of the students
	Enhanced cooperation of all stakeholders: parents, teachers, local and central education authorities, in school governance, in the best interest of the school and the students.
	School Boards promoting schools as learning organizations and centers of excellence serving its community.