Needed: 21st century educational leaders for 21st century challenges

Leadership, reduced to its barest essentials, is about the exercise of influence to bring about change, preferably improvement, in people's lives. The need for concerted educational leadership in Australia is greater in 2007 than it has been for several decades - but so is the opportunity. There are two reasons for this: (1) there exists across the Australian educational landscape a growing mindset that the quality of school outcomes is shaped significantly by factors other than socioeconomic-cultural considerations, and can be heightened if particular school-based variables are supported and encouraged. (2) With a federal election looming, the major political parties have developed and articulated highly focused educational proposals. Herein lies a truly unique and compelling challenge for Australian educators who would call themselves leaders and who aspire to exercise influence for the betterment of their communities and nation: to accept that there is merit in each of the major education proposals that are being asserted by the major political parties and to develop educational responses to them, both singly and through aggregation. The 2007 federal election has brought into focus unique educational challenges. It requires leadership that is grounded in new forms of intellectualism, moral courage and professional relationships