Abstract:

During the last years, most governments worldwide support the use of ICT in their education systems, aiming to the modernization and efficiency of the educational and administrative processes. In this context, the role of school leaders is fundamental, since they act as the main agents for the administrative and educational development of the school unit and they are asked to use ICT in the units’ everyday activities in order to achieve quick access in both quantitative and qualitative data, flexibility and efficiency. Since 2013, the Greek Ministry of Education has developed a new information system called “MySchool”, which addresses to all the school units of the country and its decentralized administrative structures, aiming to their everyday IT support and improvement of the educational process. Through “MySchool”, all the data of the students and the teaching staff are accessible and can be managed easily by the Administration and the school leaders in order to facilitate the decision making and the achievement of the predetermined objectives of each school unit. So, it is easy to understand that the public school in Greece is changing progressively, through the modernization of some of its most important processes, and it is adapted to the new needs of the society, which require digitally competent staff and, particularly, school leaders who will manage this change for the best of the students and the school unit. This research aims to identify and analyze the opinions, perceptions and attitudes of the school leaders towards the use of ICT in Greek Primary Education, as well the application of the “MySchool” information system in the units’ management and administration. The research took place in the prefecture of Imathia with the participation of 56 primary education school principals and combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies. More analytically, after the realization of an exhaustive literature review on the topic, the data were collected through a survey, which was sent to all 56 participants. In order to obtain some more qualitative data, a semi-structured interview was conducted to a part of the above-mentioned population. The obtained results demonstrate that the School Principals strongly support the use of ICT in their schools’ management and administration and that they are quite strong as far as their digital competence is concerned. The 56 participants also expressed their overall satisfaction on “MySchool”, since they believe that such information system can facilitate their work and decision making when they are asked to perform as human resource managers. The findings of the present study, despite the fact that they cannot be generalized, do open a new window for further research on the profile of the school leaders in Greek Primary Education, which can demonstrate the change that takes place in public schools towards the use of technology in their management and administration.

Keywords:

ICT in Primary Education, ICT in school management and administration, school leaders, digital profile, Public Primary Education, MySchool.