Sustainable School Leadership Preparation Model: A Capacity Building Approach in a Small-Scale Education System

Small-scale education systems are characterised by limited human and financial resources, centralised decision-making, and a relatively low level of institutionalisation. In such systems, leadership is mainly shaped by individual initiative, and approaches to developing sustainable leadership capacity should be tailored to the system’s conditions. This study seeks to examine the selection and training models of school administrators in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from the standpoint of sustainable educational leadership, institutional capacity building, and system-level governance sustainability. The research used a qualitative design; semi-structured interviews were performed with 40 participants from five stakeholder groups, selected using maximum diversity sampling. Thematic results indicate that the current administrator selection system is principally exam- and document-based, with shortcomings in application-based competency assessment and structurally inadequate preservice preparation and onboarding mechanisms. The opinions of the stakeholders highlight the necessity for application-based preparation, structured mentoring, and multi-criteria assessment approaches. Based on these findings, an integrated, phased school leadership preparation model has been developed to support the continuity of the leadership pool and institutional learning. This study offers a conditionally transferable model and governance consequences for sustainable school development and evidence-based education policy design; the model’s core governance logic is appropriate to other small-scale, under-institutionalised systems, while specific design features remain context-dependent and require contextual adaptation before implementation elsewhere.