BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: The Acting Director of Schools, Awg Hj Kassim bin Hj Mohd Yassin, recently presented the PEAKSTM ICT Certificates to school leaders and officers from the Ministry of Education (MoE) who participated and completed the five-day ICT Leadership training programme at The Empire Hotel & Country Club, Borneo Bulletin reported.
A total of 97 school leaders and MoE officers received their certificates as part of human capacity development towards ‘readiness’ in accepting the emerging technologies and ‘Development Programme’ that leads towards performance improvement.
As a follow up from the PEAKSTM ICT Leadership training programme, the participants are expected to undergo another five-day workshop to design and develop the ICT Strategic Plan Framework for their respective schools and department. This framework will become their guideline to utilise the IT devices and leveraging the human capital towards transforming the culture towards ICT.
The training programme is divided into three cycles, with the first cycle of 900 personnel comprising heads of departments, school leaders and school administrative teams.
The 21 cycle will be 600 selected teachers from Pre-U (Sixth Form Centres), secondary and primary schools. These personnel will be trained and certified in PEAKSTM Level 1, 2 and 3.
The 3rd cycle participants will be selected from the cycles 1 and 2 to undergo ‘further training and certification in PEAKSTM Level 4 and 5.
Several participants gave their feedback on the programme. The Principal of the Meragang Sixth Form Centre (PTEM), Chong Li Chen said the PEAKS profiling is amazing as it is able to clearly identify her true personality and enabling her to understand herself better.
“By reflecting on my innate qualities and concentrating on my strengths, my leadership journey would be more focused and exciting. Being identified as a ‘compelling, dynamic, encouraging, visionary and robust’ person, it would help me with my leadership journey and beyond. I am now able to understand my team better by knowing that there is beauty in every nature and together we would be able to scale greater heights.
“Education today is full of challenges as the younger generation is tech-savvy. Students in the 21st century are so called ‘digital natives’ who like multi-tasking. ICT transformation is inevitable and schools must be ready to embrace ICT culture due to technological advancement. With PEAKS Teaching-Learning Pedagogy Profile and Student Profile, learning would be optimised through differentiated strategies. PEAKS profiling will definitely prepare me to embark on ICT transformation in my school,” said Ms Chong.
Another participant, Hjh Aji Hj Ahmad, Headmistress of Rimba I Primary School said, “In my capacity as the headmistress, I want to be able to support my teachers professionally that includes the elements of distributive leadership, professional development, coaching, mentoring, guidance, etc. An effective school autonomy requires adequate support that includes an appropriate model of distributed leadership and relevant forms of training and development besides guiding teachers to seek understanding the attributes to adaptability and creativity combined with conceptual and analytical skills to better and learn more about how they can be recognised and be high achieving models for others.”
She added that PEAKS had provided a deeper understanding on leadership such as leadership succession process that identifies and develops individuals for leadership posts, and a leadership development process, and that it can provide development activities for specific individuals at different levels within the organisation.
The Principal of Sayyidina Hasan Secondary School, Hj Metusin Hj Jais said through PEAKS training, which carries the motto ‘There is beauty and strength in every nature’, he learnt that every one has their own strengths and continued, “If we focus all of our strengths together, I am sure that we can all face any challenges ahead of us. That’s where PEAKS come in to help to bring all of us together and to bring all our strengths together to face any challenges ahead. As we know technology is moving very fast, I have faith that by having PEAKS with us, we can move forward as well as instil a culture of ICT to our new generation in our endeavour towards excellent nation.”