Branding Higher Education: Institute Aminuddin Baki as a

Center of Distinction for Educational Leadership

By
Khair Bin Mohamad Yusof, PhD
Institute Aminuddin Baki
Ministry of Education Malaysia

1.0 Introduction

Institute Aminuddin Baki (IAB) was established under the name of Malaysian
Education Staff Training Institute (MESTI) in Mac, 1979. The establishment of
MESTI was based on the Report of the Cabinet Committee Review of the
Implementation of Educational Policy 1979: (285) which proclaimed,

“Owing to the rapid development of education in the country, and

the need for training in order to produce quality staff serving the
Ministry of Education, it is imminent that a National Education Staff
Training Institute be set up.” (98:250)

In 1984, MESTI was renamed as the National Institute of Educational Management

(NIEM) and were relocated to its new campus in Genting Higlands. In 1988, the
institute was named after the late Mr. Aminuddin Baki who was the first Malaysian
Director General of Education. Regardless of its rebranding, IAB remain focus in
developing professional educational leaders in Malaysia. Its main objectives are first
to develop and strengthen leadership and educational managerial expertise among
educational leaders and second to develop the corpus of knowledge in educational
leadership and management field.

2.0 Branding IAB as Educational Leadership Development Premier Centre

Thirty years have passed. Since its inception, the institute had undergone several
important structural changes which shape IAB now. The credit goes to the previous

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leaders who had managed to inspire notable transformation and strengthening of
IAB’s institutional capacities and functions. However, the rapid development in the
educational world had caused changes in educational policy, social trend, politic,
technology and economy. There are also newly acquired knowledge in the field of
educational leadership and management based on researches around the world.
Hence, it is needful for IAB to reflect on its role and objectives, delivery system as
well as it its training programs.

3.0 The Strategy

A two stage strategy was adopted:

a) A medium term branding strategy to reposition IAB as a premier centre for

educational leadership and management training and development at the
international level
b) A long term branding strategy to position IAB as a credentialing authority to
award or certify professional trainer (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Schematic Diagram Representing IAB as Premier Centre

To achieve the position, there are six strategic thrusts which focus on enhancement
of leadership assessment, high impact training, organizational development,

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research and development, knowledge management, networking and collaboration
and finally a strategic program on the development of comparative study on
educational leadership and management.

4.0 Branding and Impact on Delivery and Monitoring Exercise

For the purpose of this paper, I would like to dwell on only one of the strategic thrust
i.e on the high impact training, by sharing some of the initiatives already being taken
to achieve the medium term branding objective as a premier center for training and
development. Additionally, I would also like to share how a particular new approach
in leadership training has some subsequent effects on how we deliver and to a
certain extent monitor the delivery of the training.

As the sole educational leadership and management training arm for Ministry of
Education, IAB is main function is in the training and development. In 2008 IAB
introduced the Managing Educational Leadership Talent (MELT) which focuses on
the elements of continuous training and development. MELT consists of five
important elements that interconnected and related to one another: Growth Oriented
Training and Development (Khair, 2007), High Impact Training and Development
Initiatives (HITI), Leadership Competency Assessment (LCA), School Leadership
Competency (SLC) and its output which as the High Impact School Leadership. The
relationship of the five elements in MELT is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2:
MELT
Framework

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GOTD is the core of MELT and serve as input for HITI as well as LCA. HITI and LCA
are two approaches employed by IAB to carry out GOTD hence translate the output
of MELT into High Impact School Leaders (HISL). However, the hub of every
processes involve in MELT is the School Leadership Competency (SLC). It is
therefore, imperative for IAB to develop the SLC in order to materialize this
framework.

Therefore, a Malaysian School Leadership Competency was derived from an

elaborate study on the trend of educational leaderships’ traits. MacBeath (2004) had
identified 25 leadership traits relevant to the management and leadership practices
in schools. A thorough review of literature showed that the leadership traits were
known by its adjective expressions such as instructional, participative, democratic,
strategic and transformational. These labels compliment the differences in leadership
traits and methodology in achieving two main objectives in effective organization
which is organization goal setting and influencing members towards the achieving
the organizational goal (Leithwood et al, 2004). This extensive review of literature
produced the High Impact School Leadership Model which encompasses six
leadership traits: personal leadership, managerial leadership, instructional
leadership, transformational leadership, distributed leadership and value-based
leadership as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: High
Impact School
Leadership Model

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The competencies of each leadership traits were scrutinize and analyze into a
generic competency suitable to the educational leadership and management in
Malaysia. The analysis yield 26 competencies and were grouped into six domains
which is Policy and Direction, Instructional and Achievement, Managing Change and
Innovation, People and Relationship, Resources and Operation and Personal
Effectiveness (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The Competencies of Malaysian School Leaders

5. Assessing the Needs of Competencies for Training and Development

The landscape for needs assessment has change greatly since 1999 (Gupta, 2007).
The changes involved the organizational decision which may have local or global
impact, larger role of technology such as online surveys and email and the increase
of ethical guidelines by professional association. For the last 10 years IAB had
focuses on job and task analysis for assessing the needs for training and
development for schools leaders. IAB is proud with the establishment of the
Competencies of Malaysian School Leaders (Figure 4), which has become the
foundation of development of KOMPAS©. KOMPAS was developed internally by a
group of IAB professionals based on the High Impact School Leaders Competency

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research in 2008. Its main purpose is to determine the competencies needed by
school leaders for training and development purposes. KOMPAS© could be access
online through IAB’s official website, which is http://www.iab.edu.my/kompas.

6. Competency Needs Index for School Leaders: A Case Study on Two

States in Malaysia

The Competency Needs Index for School Leader is derived from the data obtained
from KOMPAS© Online. The Index is the average of all the 26 competencies in the
Competencies of Malaysian School Leaders Model (Figure 4). The minimum value is
1.0 (Not Needed) and 5.00 (Highly Needed). The national Competency Needs Index
for 2008 was 3.5 which shows that the Malaysian school leaders basically in needs
of training and development. Institut Aminuddin Baki will produce yearly national
index as well as state indexes.

To date 3,530 school leaders had access and completed the assessment of
KOMPAS© On line. Two State Education Departments in Malaysia ie. Sabah and
Johor was fully involved with IAB’s initiative in their effort to improve the professional
development of school leaders in their state respectively. This report will focus on the
analyses of KOMPAS© of both states. Purpose of the analysis is to

1. determine the competency needs index of two states in Malaysia ie: Johor
and Sabah
2. determine the competencies needs index for school principals and
headmaster for both states
3. compare the competencies needs for training and development based on
school leadership competencies
4. implications of the findings to Institute Aminuddin Baki and school leaders

7. Findings

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 7.1 Competency Needs Index of Johor and Sabah

Figure 5 shows the Competency Needs Index for the primary school headmaster for
Johor and Sabah. The index for the state of Johor is 2.98 which is equal to the
National Index. The Competency Needs Index for Sabah is much higher which is at
3.93. Similarly, for the secondary school principal, the competency index for Johor is
lower than the national average. But for the state of Sabah the value of the index is
higher as compared to Johor.

Figure 5: Competency Needs Index for School Headmaster

4.10
3.63
3.23

N
ational Johor S
abah

Figure 6: Competency Needs Index for School Principal

7.2 Comparison based on Domain of Competencies

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Figure 7 and Figure 8 show the radar graphs for the six domain of competency for
headmaster and principal respectively.

Policy & Direction

4.50

4.00

3.50 Instructional &

Personal Effectiveness
3.00 Achievement
2.50

2.00

People & Relationship Change & Innovation

Resource & Operation

National Johor Sabah

Figure 7: Comparison of Competency Domain for Headmaster

Policy & Direction

4.50

4.00

3.50 Instructional &

Personal Effectiveness
3.00 Achievement
2.50

2.00

People & Relationship Change & Innovation

Resource & Operation

National Johor Sabah

Figure 8: Comparison of Competency Domain for Principal

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The analysis shows a considerable gap between competency needs for headmaster
of Sabah as compared to the current national index. The gap can be observed
particularly in the Change and Innovation and Resources and Operation. Smaller
gaps also existed in the Policy and Direction and Personal Effectiveness domain.
The analysis also reveals the competency needs for headmaster of Johor is below
the national index.

Similar pattern can be observed for the school principals. However, the gap is much
larger and can be observed in all domains but with greatest gap is in the Change and
Innovation and Resources and Operation domains.

7.3 Comparison based on Competencies

In order to know the exact competency needs of the school leaders, an in-depth
analysis KOMPAS was conducted focusing all 26 competency in the Competencies
of Malaysian School Leaders Model. Figure 9 and 10 shows competency needs for
school principals and the headmasters of Johor and Sabah.

Figure 9: Comparison of Individual Competencies for Headmaster

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The greatest competency needs for headmasters of Sabah is Quality Focus,
Managing Change and ICT Management. There are also needs in Strategic
Thinking, Decision Making, Problem Solving, School Improvement and Capacity
Building. As for the state of Johor, it seems that the needs are low in all
competencies (Figure 8).

Similar pattern can be observed for the school principals, but the gaps are larger in
all competencies. In this case the largest gaps are in Quality Focus, Managing
Change, ICT Management and Performance Management. The other competencies
needed are Instructional Development, Curriculum Focus, Supervision, Problem
Solving, and Decision Making (Figure 9).

Vision Building
Social Management4.50 Quality Focus
Self Management Strategic Thinking
Social Awareness 4.00 Proactive
Self Awareness 3.50 Achievement Orientation

Team Work 3.00 Instructional Development

2.50
External Relation Knowledge Sharing
2.00
Communication Curriculum Focus

Capacity Development Supervision

Performance Management Problem Solving

ICT Management Decision Making
Physical/Asset Development Managing Change
Financial Management School Improvement
Creativity & Innovation

National Johor Sabah

Figure 10: Comparison of Individual Competencies for Principal

8. Monitoring Training Needs and Training Delivery

KOMPAS Online enables IAB to conduct three level analyses in assessing the
competency needs for training and development of school leaders in Malaysia. At

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the first level, it gives the overall competency needs for training and development in
each state by producing a Competency Needs Index for each state. Our case
analysis shows that the state of Sabah shows greater competency needs for training
and development compared to the state of Johor. The second level of analysis
produces competency needs based on the domain of competency. In our case
analysis, the domain which of greater needs are Resource and Operation, Managing
Change and Innovation (for headmasters in Johor) and for the school principals, the
competency domain are Resource and Operation, Managing Change and
Innovation, Instructional and Achievement and People and Relationship. For the
state of Johor, the needs are much lower than the national average.

The third level analysis, will give the detail needs of every competency. Figure 11
shows the competencies needed by school leaders in Sabah. KOMPAS Online
enables IAB to plan and to give higher priority to Sabah in those twelve
competencies. As for Johor, since the index for the state is lower than the national
average, the focus of IAB is to help the state to mobilize school leaders to engage in
continuous professional development (CPD) and to create professional learning
community to enhance their knowledge and skills. IAB will publish a Manual for
School Leaders as a guide/workbook.

Instructional School Improvement

Development
Curriculum Focus Managing Change
Strategic Thinking
Quality Focus
Performance ICT Management
management Problem Solving
Decision Making Capacity Building
Supervision

Principal Headmaster

Figure 11: Critical Competencies for Sabah School Leaders

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9. Implications

From the above discussion, KOMPAS Online will enable IAB to plan and focus it
effort based on the real needs of school leaders in Malaysia. The results of three
level analyses of KOMPAS will pinpoint the most critical competencies required by
them. It is the responsibility of IAB to design the right training program to fulfill their
needs and to make sure the resources provided by our government is channeled to
the right program.

Another advantage of KOMPAS Online is the ability for school leaders to check their
training and development needs on a regular basis. The result can be used for
personal professional development and as a guide in choosing the right training
offered by IAB through SPK Online. In future, IAB plan to integrate KOMPAS and
SPK Online so the system will automatically suggest the right training and
development program required by any school leaders when they use the system.

At the district or state level, the collective results can be used as a planning guide for
their training and development program. By having this kind of knowledge, the
training and development program can be tailored to fulfill the needs of the school
leaders in Malaysia.

10. Conclusion

In conclusion, the creation of KOMPAS Online and SPK Online has change the
management of training and development scenario for Malaysian school leaders.
The training and development index derived from KOMPAS enables IAB to assess
the effectiveness of its training program which is very crucial in her exercise to
achieve the position of the premier centre. At the same time, it also informs every
school leader of their training needs so that they can plan their own continuous
professional development proactively and hence creating the professional learning
community amongst them.

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Amin, S. (2008). Institut Aminuddin Baki: Melangkah Ke Hadapan, Malaysia: Institut

Aminuddin Baki.

Amin, S. and Abdul Razak, M. (2008). Competency based training and development,
Paper presented in Oman – Malaysia Educational Seminar, Muscat, Oman.

Gupta, K (2007). A practical guide to needs assessment. San Francisco, CA: John
Wiley and Sons.

Khair, M.Y. (2008). Assessing the Needs of Competencies for Training and
Development.: Case of Two States in Malaysia. Paper presented at 17th
Conference of Commonwealth Minister of Education Stakeholders Forum Kuala
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Khair, M. Y. (2007). Latihan berorientasikan pertumbuhan untuk pemimpin

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