Facing today’s challenges the education of Ukraine, including the schooling concept, content and form, requires modernization. The global educational practices and successful experiences prove that the impact of school leadership on academic achievement tends to be stronger in schools with higher degree of school autonomy.
Ukrainian Ministry of Education recognizes inhibitory effect of administrative command heritage and bureaucracy in education. In order to overcome the bureaucratic barriers which distract school leaders from their primary responsibilities and negatively affects the quality of their work some Ministerial orders and special directions were issued to solve the problem. Actually, they had no or little effect on the school leadership quality.
However, in practice Ukrainian schools suffer from inhibition processes of democratic change, most school heads fear the introduction of autonomy but at the same time sustain strengthening of administrative pressure. Together with providing educational services according to the State Standards Ukrainian average school must also "prepare, develop, hold, bring, collect, enhance, spread …. meet the requirements of different centers / departments: extracurricular activities, social, psychological, youth and sports, health, teaching centers, sanitary station, Fire Department, police military, health centers, etc… ". Neutralization of inhibitory effect of excessive schools’ handling is a key objective for the development of education, for instance, promotion of educational autonomy and implementation of the principles of democratic governance in education.
From this perspective with the initiative of Kyiv School Heads Association and the support of International "Renaissance" Foundation expert study "Educational Management and school autonomy: a view from the school" was conducted. This research was designed to identify and analyse different elements and factors influencing school governance, revealing principles of autonomous school management and preconditions for successful school leadership development.
The study was conducted by individual interviews with school heads, officers of local educational authorities and the researchers from different regions of Ukraine, who care for the reform of Ukrainian schools, decentralization in education, who have scientific publications and significant practical experience as managers of educational institutions. 542 respondents were interviewed and 700 questionnaires were analysed. The survey took place at the national level geographically having covered different regions of Ukraine.
