Leadership and management in public schools: Opportunities and challenges faced by school leaders in Punjab

Punjab has been undergoing radical changes in transforming school education. Especially the governance structures (school being unit of analysis for improvement) influencing school and learning atmosphere. The proposed study focuses on scrutinizing these changes regarding school leadership in the era of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Pakistan. Leadership is concerned with how Head Teachers (HTs) promote, manage, and monitor the teachers' pedagogical content knowledge and skills using ICT to support student learning. These structural changes have created an engaging, prolific, and fruitful rationale for researchers to discuss how the policy-mandated initiatives impact leadership for learning mainly in primary schools. A qualitative case study of district Hafizabad opted as the methodology. Thirty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted, twenty-five with the HTs, seven with Assistant Education Officers, and the district supervisory staff. Thematic analysis was applied to reduce data and reach conclusions. There was an improvement in teaching-learning practices in school, but the pace of development could be faster. As a precursor to further research, this article highlighted gaps in policy and implementation for school improvement.