Tatiana Popa and Inga Chiosa are the first teachers from Moldova to successfully graduate from the National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL) of University College London (UCL) – one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
To achieve these prestigious qualifications for educational leaders, they have completed formative assessment tasks, leadership performance coaching sessions, and gained advanced skills to meet complex educational challenges.
During the program, Inga Chiosa and Tatiana Popa created customized plans for Heritage. Both plans have been successfully implemented and the program allowed understanding the aspects that were effectively integrated and those that could be improved.
Inga Chiosa, Deputy Director and Academic Director at Heritage, focused on quality assessment: “Educational leadership means ensuring high level support and improving high quality teaching, learning and assessment, making effective decisions and creating inspiring school environments. The NPQSL course was an outstanding opportunity to develop my leadership knowledge and expertise, this insight into successful leadership brought a better understanding of the change implementation process and strategic leadership. The school uses a variety of strategies and processes to monitor and evaluate the quality of education and make necessary improvements to ensure that the students receive high quality education and reach their full potential. At Heritage we use our educational expertise and skills to focus the efforts of all members of our school community on providing quality education at the high standards of an outstanding school.”
Tatiana Popa, Deputy Academic Director and Head of Global Education at Heritage, focused on continuing professional development: “Being a senior leader in the school implies lots of responsibilities – it is a complex task and usually senior leaders contribute to all aspects of the school, no matter their role. I am truly grateful to Heritage school for offering me this NPQSL course, as it made me reflect and self-assess my daily practices in the school. Thus, I understood what I know and what I should know for my respective role as a senior leader. The course framework is tailored according to the latest standards for school leaders, and structured in 10 modules. My focus was to develop a continuous professional development plan for the whole school, to implement it, to analyse its impact and to plan future steps for a modern, updated, enthusiastic teaching community at Heritage. I really hope that all we have learned in this NPQSL course by University College London will bring additional value to all we do inside the walls of Heritage school and outside of it.”
The NPQSL course started in November 2022 and is accredited by the Department for Education in England, combining the latest research and best practice to train exceptional leaders. After over 18 months of hard work, mentored by Heritage CEO and Director Rob Ford, the teachers successfully completed the programme.
“We have witnessed and celebrated a lot of unique '1sts' at Heritage over 7 years and in a long list of incredible achievements of our international school in Moldova, the awarding of the 1st prestigious NPQSLs to Inga Chiosa and Tatiana Popa as school leaders, is one I am particularly proud of as Director and CEO. Part of our mission is to develop future leadership and to meet the challenges of this decade and the future. Integral to the future success of education and young people, is to have the right leaders, with the relevant qualifications and experience to lead schools in an increasingly demanding and complex education sector. Inga and Tatiana represent the very best of Moldova and educational leadership and I hope that their example is one we see across all schools in Moldova. It has been my privilege to mentor them as colleagues and their achievement only continues to increase the high quality international education that Heritage stands for nationally and around the World”, said Heritage CEO and Director, Rob Ford.
The National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL) is developed by the Center for Educational Leadership of University College London (UCL) – the UK's largest university center for research, teaching, development and innovation in educational leadership. For the second year in a row, UCL has been ranked ninth in the world's best universities.
The Heritage teachers are always looking for new challenges and learning opportunities, and this achievement is truly remarkable, being a first for the education in our country.