The ICP Executive is meeting in Singapore to prepare the agenda items and proposals for the ICP Council Meeting, to be held on the 2 days prior to the 9th ICP Convention at the Suntec Exhibition and Convention Centre on 6-11 July 2009.

The following article by Malcolm Dixon, Principal of Frimley School in Hastings and Chairman of the Central Region of NZPF, is reproduced here with kind permission of the New Zealand Principals Federation. The article was published in the March 2009 issue of their association's magazine NZ Principal.

Introduction
Congratulations to all of those in New Zealand who have been responsible for the development of formative assessment, leadership and teaching practice within New Zealand. We are right at the leading edge of these exciting developments and we will only stay this way with a concerted effort from all educators to keep the perils of national testing out of New Zealand schools. During my research I was continually being informed about the restrictions that were placed on teachers and students in countries where controls on students learning were in place through national testing and reporting, Summative Assessment – Assessment of Learning. To undertake my research I visited schools in Hawke’s Bay and the Central North Island, and had discussions with a range of other principals.

Sean Cottrell, the Director of IPPN (Ireland), writes that they recently had a workshop to "reflect on the OECD report (Improving School Leadership) and what it now means for school leadership in our own unique context in Ireland. We developed a list which captures current priority issues for school leadership in Ireland. The 14 points were arrived through a discussion between NAPD (2nd level), IPPN (primary) and Leadership Development for Schools, which is our ministry’s own development programme. The points are not in any order of priority."

Click here to download the list of priorities (28.5Kb pdf file).

A paper by Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson and Kyla Wahlstrom: How Leadership Influences Student Learning is mentioned in the IPPN paper. Click here to download the Executive Summary of that paper (1.49Mb pdf file).

The paper produced by ESHA in response to the OECD activity Improving School Leadership is now available on the Europe Region page on this website. Click here to go to that page. The paper provides the context in which ESHA works for school leadership in Europe and describes the priorities for future development.