The Nova Scotia Instructional Leadership Academy is a provincially designed leadership program. To ensure a range of expertise and perspectives, a partnership advisory committee was struck in 2009, including representation from elementary and secondary principals, school boards (now RCEs/CSAP), the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, the Nova Scotia Educational Leadership Consortium, post-secondary teacher education institutions, and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
The committee's first task was to review the research about best instructional practices and the focus of instructional leadership initiatives across Nova Scotia, Canada, and around the world. The committee discovered that while many jurisdictions have developed programs with a broad focus on educational leadership, very few leadership programs have a narrowed focus on instructional leadership.
Based on these findings, the Instructional Leadership Program Advisory Committee developed a comprehensive definition of instructional leadership and descriptive standards of excellence. These form the foundation for the Nova Scotia Instructional Leadership Program and continue to guide program development today.
Since the introduction of Nova Scotia's Educational Leadership Standards (ELS) in August 2023, the ILA program course content has been reviewed and revised to ensure alignment and integration of the ELS into the ILA curriculum, resources, and offerings.
