When school principals team up with local business leaders, leadership becomes a shared mission.

So says Stanger Heights Primary School principal Nduduzo Ngcobo, one of several KwaDukuza educators whose leadership journey was reshaped through the Leaders for Education programme (formerly known as Partners for Possibility).

For Ngcobo, the transformation began almost by chance in 2017 while he was teaching at Groutville High School. The then principal, Nhlanhla Mbele, asked him and his colleague Simphiwe Gumede (now Groutville’s principal) to attend a workshop on his behalf.

“Mbele called me and my colleague one day. He said, ‘There’s a Partners for Possibility workshop happening – go in my place, you might benefit from it,'” Ngcobo recalled.
What seemed like a simple errand became a turning point.

“That one day opened my eyes. We started to see that leadership wasn’t the task of one person, it was the collective responsibility of a team,” he said.

When Ngcobo later joined the programme officially as a principal, he used it as a tool for transformation.

“At our school, we built a guard house using small donations. A fellow principal saw it and did the same. That’s how we work – we don’t wait for things to happen; we make them happen.”

The Leaders for Education programme pairs school principals with local business professionals to bridge the gap between education and business leadership.

Mbele, who benefitted greatly from the programme during his own time as principal, said his approach focused on growing leadership from within. He delegated responsibilities based on educators’ strengths and encouraged young teachers to lead meetings. He also introduced teacher awards and a grade mentorship programme, giving educators experience in managing large groups of pupils.

“The impact was incredible. Many of those educators now lead big schools and are doing well,” he said.

Through partnerships with business leaders, principals learned to think beyond the classroom.

“We gained new ways of thinking and solving problems,” said Ngcobo.

Today, the results are evident – leadership is shared and school communities are more engaged.

“Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about creating more leaders. That’s what this programme did, it built leaders who build leaders,” said Mbele.

Interested principals and business professionals can visit citizenleaderlab.org/leaders-for-education to get involved.

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