When there is a lack of Principals...

Nipuni Wimalapala

School is where we develop our personality, skills and abilities for more than ten years. It is the base of every individual's life which moulds their personality and character. A sound school based education is the right of every student. To make it a success, the Head of any school or the Principal plays a vital role.

Speaking to the Daily News, the National Coordinator of Principals' Training in 1000 Schools Project in Sri Lanka and the former principal of Sirimavo Bandaranayake Balika Vidyalaya, Colombo, Pushpa Kalubowila expressed her views on the role of school principal to help uplift a country's education by making the school a major institute of education.

Complexity

"I believe that being a principal of a school in Sri Lanka is some thing complex and stressful. But if the person is well qualified and backed by proper training, it is not difficult to play the role of a principal facing all the challenges. An attitudinal change is required among the teachers and principals to make qualified people interested in becoming principals," Kalubowila mentioned.

"It is a considerable weakness that there is a lack of principals in Sri Lanka. One of the main reasons is, even though the principal appointments are given, most of them are not ready to accept since they do not want to work as principals. In my point of view, I believe that most of them are afraid or they feel that it is an extra responsibility or an unnecessary burden to be a principal since a principal has to take a huge responsibility and there are a lot of challenges to face. But it should be stressed that if they are given a proper principal training to make them more confident and change their attitude, it would result in creating more talented principals", she further said.

According to Kalubowila, it is clear that most of the qualified people do not want to face challenges. Lack of good training is the main reason and their mindset is not prepared to face challenges. And also they are not enthusiastic enough to face the problems and overcome them.

A challenging task

According to her, being a school principal is truly a challenge. A well balanced personality should take the responsibility of the future of students. Dealing with parents of the students too is a complex issue. Also the principal should be able to maintain cordial relations with the staff.

A principal should be confident, qualified and well trained. He or she should be conversant with every part of the prevailing education system. It consists of students, parents, teachers which are the main parts of a school community. To handle all these parties, a principal should be very intelligent and supported by all of them in a positive manner.

One of the issues, a principal faces is the high number of students in schools. Especially in popular urban schools, sometimes there are 4000 to 7000 students which is a very high number. It is hard to handle such a large number of students due to many reasons. Whenever there is an issue in a school, the principal becomes the main character who is supposed to handle it.

The support a principal gets from every necessary party is not sufficient to carry the role properly. And the critical views of society towards principals is another issue. These things should be changed for the better to create good school principals.

A student based system

"My point is children should be the ultimate focus. Whatever we do, it should benefit children. Parents, teachers and principal together should working towards upgrading children's status is our main objective. Everything should be done in a child- based vision", Kalubowila said.

The project which she is involved in consists thousand secondary schools. She undertakes the task of training 1000 principals for these thousand schools throughout the country. This task has been entrusted to her as she has been a member of the National Education Commission from 2012. She has been given two training sessions as a principal both locally and internationally. Personally she believes that a good training could change one's attitude towards anything. She is a quite valuable academic, an educationist who has worked hard for many years to upgrade the country's education.

She remains a towering figure in school education as she was awarded the "Vidhya Niketha Keerthi Sri" Presidental award as the best Principal when she was the principal at Nugegoda Samudrra Devi Balika Vidyalaya. She earned her first degree from the Peradeniya University and completed her Masters at the Colombo University.