Colebay:--- Twenty-six school principals, managers and future managers of FBE and PSVE schools started an 18-month post-graduate course in Educational Management on Tuesday February 22 at Carl's Unique Inn.
The initiative is part of the Youth and Education Program 2008-2012, a program for educational innovations that is funded by the Netherlands through USONA to support the implementation of the educational innovations on St Maarten.
The school managers will have a hectic and busy training schedule of two to three days per month, during which the 4 modules, Organization, Human Resources, Leadership and Financial Administration will be dealt with. For each module they will be required to make several practical assignments in groups as well as take a final examination. In September 2012 they will complete their post-graduate training course in Educational Management.
One of the objectives is "to strengthen and professionalize the school managers of FBE and PSVE schools in such a way that they can carry out the implementation of educational innovations and assume their responsibilities in doing so."
Several short training programs have been organized in the past years to reach this goal, but one of the main recommendations of Management capacity audits carried out by SOAB in 2010 was that more indepth training was needed specifically for the school managers.
The Division for Educational Innovation has therefore searched for an institute that could execute a recognized course in this field and found a solid provider in NACSI, which has executed the course Educational Management four times already on Curacao. They received recognition for their program from the Minister of Education of the now defunct Netherlands Antilles in 2006.
