School Leadership Standards: Cambodian Secondary School Principals’ Perceptions of Their Capabilities and Challenges in Implementing a New Draft of Leadership Competency Framework

Abstract

Leadership standards or frameworks describing capabilities for school leaders have become common in today’s educational landscape. Recently, Cambodia crafted a draft Professional Competency Standards for School Principals in General Education (PCSSPGE) in response to contemporary educational trends. This study investigated the current knowledge and perceptions of Cambodian secondary school principals, in one school district, regarding their progress toward implementation of the draft PCSSPGE. Mixed methods were employed utilising a questionnaire with 12 purposively selected principals to gain insights into their leadership capabilities in implementing the draft PCSSPGE. Subsequent semi-structured interviews with five volunteers were conducted to acquire in-depth perceptions of their leadership capabilities, challenges, and support required to implement the draft PCSSPGE. Descriptive statistical measures from questionnaire data combined with thematic analysis from interview data informed the findings. Participants perceived the draft PCSSPGE as a managerial-based framework, likely due to their substantial engagement in managerial and administrative work requirements. They collectively perceived Personal Excellence as their most capable domain, particularly managing personal effectiveness. Personal qualities and support from the system leaders were identified as contributing factors to this capability. Despite Stakeholder Engagement collectively reported from the questionnaire data as the second most capable domain, interview transcripts revealed challenges caused by non-engagement from stakeholders, particularly parents and community who had limited educational background. The participants collectively perceived least capability in exercising Strategic Thinking and Innovation, particularly making informed decisions. This was linked to the principals’ leadership knowledge gap and centralised processes of the Cambodian education system that maintained principals’ focus on managerial tasks. Participants also perceived less capability within Managerial Leadership, specifically managing school resources and systems largely due to the insufficiency of resources, including school finance, learning facilities and human resources. Suggested support for implementation of the draft PCSSPGE included a systemwide change of principals’ recruitment criteria, training before implementing the draft PCSSPGE, and continuous support and monitoring of the implementation. Implications of this study suggest that improvement in the quality of Cambodian education would also require parental and community engagement with educational matters and increased resourcing for schools to enable principals to shift from being managers to instructional leaders.