School leadership as a field of supranational education policy

INTRODUCTION. In recent years, International Organizations, especially OECD and EU, have paid increasing attention to school leadership as a key factor for the quality of education, establishing recommendations on this issue. Since many education systems have recently undertaken reforms in relation to leadership, the question is if it is possible to find converging aspects in the policies developed at the international level, based on the proposals made by these agencies or, on the contrary, if it is an area where the predominant factors are essentially national. METHOD. After a documentary review of the reforms relating to school leadership in OECD and EU member countries, the content of these reforms is compared with guidelines from both agencies, in order to verify the existence or not of international convergences in this regard. RESULTS. The results suggest the existence of common lines in current policies on school leadership in the countries analyzed, although some variations can be found in the scope of the reforms and the specific aspects regarding these. DISCUSSION. There arises the existence of an interaction between global streams postulated by international organizations and the weight of national states in defining models of school leadership. It is considered, therefore, that there is an influence of the supranational level in policies relating to school leadership, so these can not be analyzed exclusively in a national perspective.