Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, on Friday, launched the National Educational Leadership Institute (NELI) to provide specialised professional leadership and management development training for individuals holding or intending to hold leadership and management positions in institutions of learning across the country.

A total of 400 leaders from all parts of the education sector, including regional directors, district directors, School Improvement Support Officers (SISOs), school heads, Ghana Education Service (GES) headquarters staff and officers from the Ministry of Education (MoE) agencies have been selected to be trained for the piloting phase for five months (one weekend a month) starting from November to March 2024 before being rolled out nationwide.

Certification
All participants who complete the course satisfactorily will receive Continuous Professional Development (CPD) points and professional certification in Strategic Leadership.

Launching
The Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, stated that the institute would go a long way towards equipping the participants with the requisite skills to ensure that they understand good leadership skills to bring about transformation in their administrative and teaching jobs.

He explained that the education space needed a new generation of leaders who could transform their operations to bring about a great change in their working environment and the nation as a whole.

Transformation Assurance
Dr Adutwum said,” We are committed to transforming the nation through education and one of the ways to get the requisite results is to get people with good leadership skills to be at the helm of affairs to bring about the change we want”.

He indicated that good leadership affects the quality of work done in the school and hoped that the introduction of the institute would help sharpen the leadership skills of the participants.

The National NELI Coordinator, Dr Paul Kwadwo Addo recounted the various preparatory stages and initiatives put in place towards the establishment of the institute.

He pledged to work very hard to ensure that all participants and people who would get the opportunity to be trained by NELI would have the right skills needed to lead in the transformation of the nation through education.

Dr Charles Yeboah, a representative of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) stated “that the second most important factor in children’s success in school is leadership quality and that is second only to classroom instruction.

It is, therefore, in order that the day after celebrating teachers across the country we should be here talking about school leadership”.

He praised Dr Adutwum for his vision and direction, support and eagerness to see to the effective training of people in the education space.