The School Leadership Symposium (SLS) & International Seminar (IS) 2006 “Challenges in School Leadership” looks at the central role of school leadership for developing and assuring the quality of schools.

Its aim is to discuss recent topics and emerging issues in the field of school leadership, and to establish and support professional links and networks. The core idea is to share ideas, knowledge, and experiences, but also to develop networks.

Target groups are:

• school leaders/principals/head teachers
• vice principals/deputies
• members of the senior management team
• members of the school development team
• teachers interested in school effectiveness, school improvement, school management
• representatives of school leader associations
• representatives of training centres
• representatives of educational authorities
• representatives of ministries
• academics working in the fields of school effectiveness, school improvement, school
• management, education administration/management/leadership

Further target groups are:

• representatives of parents’ associations
• representatives of community authorities
• representatives of support institutions
• representatives of school and business partnership
• representatives of foundations
• representatives of publishing houses

The International Seminar – the Pre-Conference –on the one hand provides information about the German School System. The participants will also visit primary and secondary schools, local educational authorities and the Ministry of Culture and Education of Thuringia. On the other hand the participants have the opportunity to get to know one another. Practitioners from around the world will report on their work. Hot issues for schools and school leadership in the countries will be discussed.

The School Leadership Symposium – the Main Conference – will focus challenges in school leadership. German and international well-known colleagues will facilitate keynote presentations, paper presentations, symposia, workshops and panel discussions, plenary discussion, and poster presentations. Issues in the fields of school effectiveness, school improvement and school management will be explored.

Finally, the conference will also provide opportunities to share ideas for future cooperation: those of us who provide training and development or assess principals can think of how they could share their experiences or material to enrich their own work; those of us who conduct research in these fields can agree on a shared research project, and develop ideas to get funding for it (e.g. from the EU); those of us who are school leaders can start a helpful exchange of experiences in an international network.

Download the English information file

Download the German information file