Abstract:

The paper actualizes the issue of the differentiation of the hard skills of school principals. The key research idea was to background the aspects of the managerial competences in order to:
(1) invest into the quality assurance in secondary education in Russia by means of the enhancement of the school performance through the improvement of the quality of the managerial decisions that are taken by the education authorities in the Russia’s regions,
(2) to develop a model for the evaluation of the managerial competences of school principals (in terms of the hard skills), and
(3) to further disseminate the relevant professional experiences in education system management.

The project is carried out in accordance with the Russian federal project ‘Modern School’ that is a part of the Russian national project ‘Education’; though these issues appear vital for the international education community as well.

The practical value of this research project associates with the need in the differentiation and development of the professional knowledge and skills that, taken holistically, shape the professional competencies of school principals. As a meaningful sub-product of the project, the conceptual apparatus of the thesaurus of the realm of the managerial competence of school principals is also planned to be presented in the paper.

In accordance with the objectives of this research, a methodological sampling toolkit has been developed for designing a model for the differentiation of the hard skills of school principals, i.e. the model which will potentially be harnessed for the evaluation of the managerial competencies in secondary education. The sample of the research is built on the population clustering principle. So, the authors studied the cluster of the 21 regions from 8 federal districts of the Russian Federation with the largest number of the resilient schools, the latter being preselected according to the results of the Russian PISA-2020 research. The sample of the study was aimed at evaluating the level of the managerial competence of school principals and the degree of their need in improving those competences; and the principals of the resilient schools were a particular focus group here.

Thus, a model for the differentiation of the skills of school principals has been developed on the basis of the professional functions that the school principals perform. Those functions have been borrowed from both the sociological research conducted in 2021 (2,865 school principals), and the content-analysis of the Russian Professional Standard of a school head (accepted in 2021).

The developed model may be used for the accumulation a digital bank of school management cases based on the use of the hard skills of school principals to solve situational problems within school management. In a way, it will contribute to the development of a digital ecosystem of the professional development of school heads, alongside with and certification procedures that are inseparable of the competence evaluation.

The research outcomes may be recommended to the international colleagues as a solid base for the development of the guidelines for the evaluation of the managerial competencies of school principals, that evaluation being on the grounds of the differentiated hard skills. Thus, the authors mean to disseminate internationally their research findings, share their evaluation experience and the best education management practices from Russia

Keywords:

School principal, skill differentiation, hard skills, managerial competence evaluation, education experience dissemination, research model, resilient school.