Abstract:

Small schools in remote areas (SR-Schools) are an integral part of the national education system (68.9% of all schools). This is the main personnel reserve for agricultural production and small business. The state and level of work in these schools has a huge impact on the socio-economic development of villages and small towns in Russia, on the cultural and educational level of the population, and the solution of demographic problems. In order to preserve the village and small towns, education in them must meet the social expectations of people, the socio-value order of the community, each family and a specific person. School is an important part of society and cannot develop in isolation from it.

In Russia, there are regional systems of material and technical providing, various approaches to the organization of the pedagogical process at SR-Schools. The presence of a digital infrastructure in a school is a basic characteristic of the modern educational process. SR-Schools are often in conditions of limited resources, both financial and material, and territorial remoteness and logistical inaccessibility often become a barrier to the preservation and development of unique SR-Schools.

As in the case of infrastructure, there are significant interregional differences in the staffing of rural schools. A higher need for managerial personnel is typical for schools in the Kamchatka Territory (the share of vacancies in the total number of positions is 3.8%), the Republic of Adygea (4.1%), the Sakhalin Region (4.9%) and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (5.9%). The shortage of teachers in rural schools is more vital in the Kamchatka Territory (3.2%), Novgorod Region (2.7%), and the Republic of Karelia (2.4%).

The specifics of SR-Schools require specific additional competencies from managers, for example, the need to act simultaneously in different roles: as a leader, teacher, organizer of the digital educational environment (DEE), etc. This allows us to assume that the theoretical basis of the competence of the leaders of small-scale schools can be the concept of G. Mintzberg, in which ten roles are distinguished that the leader performs in various situations. These roles fall into three classes: interpersonal roles, information roles, and decision-making roles.

All these roles are interdependent and interact with each other to create a single whole. Informational roles are the main ones in this scheme. In a digital society, informational roles are complemented by technological components. The organization and operation of the DEE, which is a key educational and organizational link in the SR-Schools, requires the unification of a variety of digital means used in the creation of DEE. The digital equipment was supplied by SR-Schools at different times, in different configurations. At the same time, such equipment very often belongs to different generations of digital technology, which creates great difficulties in connecting various devices into a single system. In the conditions of small-scale schools, all these problems become one of the main concerns of the head. Accordingly, he must have the necessary competencies, not only informational, but also technological.

Keywords:

Leadership competencies, small schools in remote areas, digital educational environment, managerial roles.