Abstract

Leadership skills among school administrators are essential for providing students with quality teaching and may, therefore, benefit from defining high impact educational strategies. This non experimental, cross-cutting and quantitative analysis was prepared to obtain more knowledge on developing leadership skills among the school administration in Chile´s Region V subsidized schools, considering gender, years of experience and enhancement. A total number of 568 classroom teachers answered questions in the survey: Assessment of leadership skills required by Principals and Administration Heads to Foster their Professional Development (Muñoz, 2012). Results show high levels of development with strong effective communication and institutional dissemination skills. Some aspects to improve include gathering useful information to make decisions and manage change. Significant gender differences were perceived with independent variables which favored females. These finding are relevant since there were no prior studies on leadership skills in subsidized Region V schools. The focus of the Ministry of Education is skill-strengthening among school principals in this particular school district which showed gaps in this area. Findings may contribute to development of an institutional educational policy at FODEC aimed at strengthening the skills of both school administrators as well as institutional management that may lead to developing evidence-based plans to enhance leadership leading and generate a positive impact on FODEC schools.

Keywords Skills; Leadership; School Administration