The perspectives of school principals in Spain: identifying professional competencies beyond their scope

ABSTRACT

School leadership plays a crucial role to quality education. Social changes have led to an increase in school principals’ competencies, responsibilities, and demands. There are significant gaps in the literature on school leadership and limitations in the study of principals’ responsibilities. This study aimed to analyse whether principals consider the competencies assigned to them by educational legislation to be within their scope. Participants were 394 principals from state-owned schools in Andalusia, southern Spain. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses were performed. We identified four competencies that the principals believed they were unable to effectively assume within the Andalusian educational context: (1) awarding contracts for construction, services, or supplies; (2) authorising expenditures, arranging payments, and preparing the school budget; (3) promoting the qualifications and training of teaching staff; and (4) supervising non-teaching staff in the school. This study emphasises the need of a comprehensive reevaluation of how competencies assigned to school principals are managed, highlighting the significance of incorporating principals’ perspectives. For future research, we recommend exploring alternative approaches in competency management to enhance their effectiveness and relevance in the educational context.

KEYWORDS:

• School leadership
• educational leadership
• school leader
• functions
• tasks

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the school principals and the Andalusian Association of Secondary School Principals (ADIAN) for their participation, especially Andrés Luis Martín Esteban for his collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://forms.gle/hXJEJh3hvRbkizdV9

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Málaga (Spain); Junta de Andalucía (Spain), Regional Ministry of Education and Sport under Grant PIV-030/22, ‘KEY Project: School Leadership as a Value for Quality Education’.

Notes on contributors

Francisco Javier Gil-Espinosa

Francisco Javier Gil-Espinosa is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education Sciences at the University of Malaga (Spain) and holds a PhD from the University of Granada. He is currently working in the Department of Languages, Arts and Sport, with previous professional experience in teaching and school management in secondary education in Spain. His main line of research is on educational instruction, although he presents others such as quality physical education, teacher professional improvement and curricular issues.

Iván López-Fernández

Iván López-Fernández holds a PhD in Pedagogy and is a lecturer at the University of Malaga (Spain), in the Faculty of Education Sciences (Department of Languages, Arts and Sport). Prior to coming to University of Malaga, he worked as municipal manager in Torremolinos (Spain). His research focuses on teacher training, physical education teacher education and higher education.

Cristina Cadenas-Sanchez

Cristina Cadenas-Sanchez has double bachelor degree: education and sport sciences. Both the degrees and PhD were carried out at the University of Granada. She is currently a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and University of Granada. Her research is focused on physical education and its relationship with health.

Rafael Burgueño

Rafa Burgueño holds a Phd on (Physical) Education at the University of Almeria and is a lecturer at the University of Malaga (Spain). His main research interests are the analysis of the (de-)motivating styles from the teacher on students’ motivation and learning-related outcomes in physical education.