 Hello everyone, myself Pranapsai Kya, welcomes you all to this MOOC course on school management and leadership. Friends, you all know school management and leadership are essential components of the school system. The quality of the school management and leadership largely determines the quality of the school. School management includes functions like planning, organizing, financing, directing, supervising and evaluation. And leadership is a practical skill encompassing the ability of an individual or organization to lead or guide other individuals, team or entire organizations. In a school system, the school head is the educational leader and administrator. So, the personality and professional competence of the school heads have a tremendous influence on the growth and development of the school. The physical, social and emotional environment of the school largely depends on the quality of the school heads. The quality of the leader will lead to the direction he or she wants it to go. Effective leadership of the school administrator is an important prerequisite without which even the best teacher, curriculum and teaching learning materials cannot ensure desired learning outcome. Therefore, to be efficient, appropriate professional training for acquiring leadership qualities and techniques is a must for every school administrator. This course, School Management and Leadership is a professional program that builds the capacity of the prospective and in-service school heads for various levels of schools. The course is designed to help the heads of academic institutions or prospective educational leaders to acquire the skills necessary to manage educational institutions by utilizing the available human resources in innovative ways and identifying their potential to yield the best results for an academic institution. Presently, a huge number of teachers are serving as school heads at different levels of schooling. However, no leadership training is prerequisite for serving as a school head. Any teacher who is senior on the basis of joining the school is appointed as the school head. But looking at the changing scenario of education and the huge responsibility of the school heads in the development of the school, it has become a challenging job now. Moreover, it has been realized that proper training in management and leadership will help in augmenting the developmental steps in the field of education. Keeping all these aspects in mind, this course is designed with some specific objectives. These are to develop an understanding of basic educational management concepts and their application in educational environment to provide opportunities to the prospective and in-service educational administrators of the schools to acquire training in educational management and leadership, to enable them to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the institution, to enable them to utilize the resources to the optimum for the development of the institution, to build a positive attitude among them towards management and leadership, to empower educational administrators and school leaders to effectively render their roles and responsibilities. This course not only filled the vacuum of trained leadership in the school but also ensured effective leadership from the grassroots to the administrative levels of the school education. This course will ensure optimum utilization of human and material resources in schools. Now, let's see who are the learners for this course. Of course, in-service help teachers of all levels of schools working in government and private sectors, all school teachers, prospective educational leaders, NGO workers involved in school education and other organizations in the field of education, and anyone who are having an interest in school management and leadership and wish to contribute to the field of school education are eligible for this particular course. Now, you see the course design. This course has been designed on a weekly modular content basis with a four quadrant approach of its delivery. Total credit of the course is four and the course consists of 12 modules. The duration of the course is three months and the medium of instruction is in English. So the 12 modules, let me introduce you. Number one, an introduction to educational management, a brief introduction to school leadership, introduction to school management, a rule of communication in school leadership, diverse rule of school heads, school as a learning organization, management of human and material resources in schools, managing teaching, learning process, institutional planning, community engagement in schools, school governance and financial management, leading innovation in schools. These are the 12 modules consists this course. And every module has been designed with e-tutorials, e-text materials, module-wise quiz questions, time in examination and asynchronous and asynchronous introduction through discussion forum. Assessment will be conducted in two forms, continuous assessment through MCQ with 30% weightage of the e-tutorial course and time in examination conducted by national testing agency with 70% weightage. And regarding certification of the course, a minimum of 40% passing marks are needed in internal and external assessment for being eligible for the certificate. So friends, what are you waiting for? Please come and join us. Thank you.