School leadership quality is among the biggest factors ensuring high-quality student learning worldwide. Women school leaders develop greater interactivity with children, helping them achieve greater engagement with learning and better results. Developing women school leaders is therefore key to improving school education in India and across the world.
The proportion of women teachers in developing countries, including India, has risen significantly in recent years. However, their participation in school leadership is comparatively low due to ingrained negative perceptions as well as several sociocultural barriers.
Women in School Leadership ;aims to document vividly the initiative by women, especially in developing countries, to achieve parity in school leadership. It analyses and interprets qualitative primary data collected from detailed case studies of women school heads, and secondary data from Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE), the Indian national database for school information, as per a multi-disciplinary approach. The book validates the current level of progress and suggests ways to improve the situation further through policy measures and by reducing barriers to women’s school leadership development. Success in this endeavour is expected to lead to gender equality, scope for fair access and the promotion of the merit principle in education, competition and employment opportunities in schools.
Mythili, N.: - N. Mythili is an expert in school education with 16 years of professional experience. She began her career as a trained graduate teacher in a government-aided institution and taught mathematics and physics at secondary level for six years in Bengaluru, Karnataka. She secured the third rank at the university level in her MEd degree. Later, she obtained national scholarship to do her PhD at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. She undertook research to know the causes for the burning issue of the education system even today, that is, lower levels of learning among students, for her PhD degree under the title 'Determinants of Quality of Schooling in Rural Primary Schools in Karnataka'. In her thesis, she carried out an in-depth study on time-on-task in teaching-learning process, an unexplored area in the year 2000, leadership at block or sub-district level and community participation for children's schooling. Soon after she completed her PhD, she worked as Research Associate at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Development Research at Dharwad, Karnataka and engaged in the project of developing education data banks.
Dr Mythili joined the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi in 2013. Since then she has been working as Assistant Professor at the National Centre for School Leadership Development. Here, she led the team for developing Curriculum Framework for School Leadership. Besides, she also led the starting of Post Graduate Diploma in School Leadership and Management, first of its kind in India.
Before joining the NIEPA, New Delhi, Dr Mythili worked at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai as Project Officer for research on the topic 'Strengthening and Empowering State Education Resource Institutions in Karnataka under 12th Five Year Plan'. Prior to this, she worked as Specialist, People Development in the unit of Educational Leadership and Management at Azim Premji Foundation, Bengaluru and was also briefly involved in curriculum development for the Educational Leadership programme for the then forthcoming Azim Premji University at Bengaluru.
Dr Mythili's research articles on the community pressure for achieving higher quality, effective use of time and quality education are published in well-known journals in India. Besides quality of schooling and education, her other areas of research interest include school leadership, teacher education and its regulatory mechanisms, governance and leadership.
