Date: 25 of February, 2011

Venue: Radisson BLU Hotel Lietuva, Vilnius,Lithuania

Organizer: Education Supply Centre (ESC)

Participants: ~400

25 February 2011 was the last Friday of winter and the date of a large-scale event to present the book “Distributed School Leadership: Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders” by Alma Harris in Vilnius. The book was translated and published by order of the Project “Lyderių laikas” (“Time for Leaders”) in the course of project implementation.

Note: You are free to use any material originally published on the web site. The following should be included as a footnote: Alma Harris/Project “Lyderių laikas” (“Time for leaders”). Information bearing relation with the arranged event and the Project should also include the logos (all are available at the bottom of the page) of the European Union, European Social Fund, Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania, School Improvement Programme Plus and Education Supply Centre.

The presentation given by the author of the book, an outstanding expert in educational leadership, convened more than 400 representatives of the education community: these were education policymakers, active educators of the general and higher education system, representatives from education and regional centres of municipal administrations, expert, leading, beginning and young teachers as well as any person taking interest in educational leadership. Lithuania is the first country that has translated the book “Distributed School Leadership: Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders” from English.

Dr Alma Harris, Pro-Director (Leadership) and Director of London Leadership Centre, Professor of Educational Leadership at the Institute of Education, University of London, Associate Director of the “Specialist Schools and Academies Trust” and the editor of “School Leadership and Management”, also currently seconded to the Welsh Assembly Government as a Professional Adviser, made a presentation of the translated and published book in Lithuania.

Michelle Jones, Headteacher of Twynyrodyn Community School in South Wales, UK, joined Dr Alma Harris to share her experience in school leading among the Lithuanian education community. She has held teaching positions at Secondary, Primary and International Schools in the UK and India. Besides her educational activities, Michelle Jones has worked for the Local Education Authority (District Level) as a School Effectiveness Adviser. In 2006 she gained the award of “Inspirational Headteacher of the Year”. She is currently seconded to the Welsh Assembly Government as a Professional Education Adviser.

The event was opened by Tautvydas Salys, Director of the Education Supply Centre Affiliated with the Ministry of Education and Science Ministry. In his opening speech, he invited everybody to get away from the daily routine and to get charged with new emotions and ideas for further work.

“…We need schools to be places where young people from all backgrounds have the best outcomes and achievement. We only do that, if we focus very much on improving our schools, all our schools in all our settings, to ensure that every young person learns. So the key question then is: “How do we transform all our schools so that every young person gets the best educational outcome possible?” These were the introductory guidelines for further presentation composed of delivering the theoretical background and discussing practical issues of distributed leadership in schools as well as why distributed leadership is needed.

According to the author of the book, some schools have changed the roles of leaders and areas of responsibility in order to give an opportunity for a larger number of people to try what the practical leadership is, since one can get the idea of it only through practical involvement in leadership and becoming leaders in practice.

The Headteacher Michelle Jones shared her practical experience in distributed leadership with the audience. She spoke about how distributed leadership can be implemented in schools and what is its relation with practical teaching and learning.

Dr. Alma Harris pointed out that there exists no distributed leadership model to be operated anywhere and that models can differ from country to country. It is important to have a clear vision, a very clear sense of direction and purpose. It is also about building good relations in effective and ineffective schools. Ultimately that is all schools are built on: they are not built on bricks and mortar, they are built upon relationships – between teachers, between teachers and students, between teachers and wider community.

The author of the book concluded that we must focus on closing the gap: one can achieve an optimized level independent of the social–economic background one comes from. Thus it is important to invest in leadership at all levels of the system, developing leaders at all levels of the system.

Participants of the presentation were an active audience. They reacted immediately and emotionally to any more expressive idea presented by the author or a more impressive picture demonstrated on the screen. The participants easily and readily involved in discussion groups during the short breaks made by the main speaker. They asked questions, communicated their own opinion and valuations, and shared experience. They were fast to participate in a quiz. Everyone who gave the right answer on the topic of distributed leadership won an educational book as a prize. The audience was highly impressed by the presentation given by the author of the book. A long and winding queue testified that fact: there is a huge number of the Lithuanian education community members who take interest in distributed school leadership, books written by the famous educational leadership expert Alma Harris and who acknowledge and highly appreciate her contribution in the area of education.