Education Services Australia has offeredCurriculum and Leadership Journal to education leaders across Australia and internationally since 2003. We wish to advise that the current issue is its final edition.
Over 400 editions of the journal have been produced since its commencement in February 2003, based on the generous support of the Education Services Australia Board, the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Education Services Australia wishes to thank the readers and social media followers of the journal for their interest and support over those years. Many thanks are also due to the authors who have contributed material.
Readers are now invited to explore a range of other information services, including Scootle, ESA News and the wide range of resources available on theAITSL website.
Please feel free to direct any queries about the closure to enquiries@esa.edu.au.
On behalf of Education Services Australia we thank you once again for the support you have given to the Curriculum and Leadership Journal.
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
The role of the school principal is complex, and still evolving. Principals require a broad repertoire of skills and the confidence and acumen to deploy those skills with impact. At present, the average age of principals in Australia is increasing, and too few suitable candidates are stepping forward to take the place of those who will soon retire; it appears that many potential candidates are put off by perceptions that the complexity and demands of the principal’s role lead to high stress and low wellbeing. A new report, Preparing Future Leaders: effective preparation for aspiring school principals, highlights the key challenges in preparing principals for current and future school needs and provides an up-to-date and comprehensive picture of the current state of play across Australia. The current article provides edited excerpts from the report.
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
In 2010, the Australian Government asked AITSL to work with the profession to develop the Australian Professional Standard for Principals, which was completed and endorsed by Ministers in July 2011. In 2014, the Leadership Profiles were developed to provide more detailed support for principals and were published in a new document that combined the Standard and the Profiles. Both the Standard and the Profiles are accessible and written in plain language, aiming to make sense of what is a highly complex and important role. This article summarises key elements of the Profiles, after first describing some of the research findings that informed them, and their relationship to the Standards. The article is adapted from the text of the report 'Leadership on the Edge: Big Ideas for Change and Innovation': Exploring the Leadership Profiles.
Since 2003 Curriculum and Leadership Journal (CLJ) has had the charter of providing high quality and relevant information to school leaders, in short form, in plain language and in a clear format; linked to further resources wherever possible. In playing this role the journal has been part of three trends in the world of information. One trend has been the increased use of filtering, as readers sift out what they need from the overabundance of information on the web. Software makes it easy to store and organise the selected information, while social media makes it easy to share it with colleagues. Another trend has been to rely on summaries of longer texts. The lead articles in CLJ have usually been summaries of longer works, and in its Abstracts section efforts have been made to distill into one paragraph the key information in pieces published elsewhere. By diving into a very wide range of sources for education literature and news, CLJ has also been part of a third trend, to free up the flow of information between academic researchers, educators, policy makers and the public.