Principal preparation and development: a Malaysian perspective

This chapter examines the preparation of school principals in Malaysia and the aspiration of the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025 to ensure high performing school leaders in every school. The chapter looks into the National Principal Qualification for Educational Leaders (NPQEL), an improved version of the NPQH and its later revised version of NPQEL 2.0, used for leadership training by the Institute of Educational Management and Leadership (IAB). This chapter also looks at other leadership and management programmes implemented by the MoE. It is interesting to note how these training programmes achieve the ambition of the government to improve its school ranking in the PISA league table. Principal preparation for those who aspire to be principals has such significance and yet little is known about the effectiveness of these programmes, the candidates selected to be trained, and the responses of the teachers, officers and the principals themselves to such preparatory programmes.