The study was undertaken in order to identify how the school principal's managerial role has shifted to that of an academic leader. Twelve principals and two hundred and twenty five teachers were selected from four types of schools in the Sri Jayawardenepura educational zone, Colombo district of Sri Lanka. The selection of school principals and teachers was done randomly. Data for the study were mainly collected through a questionnaire. It was executed among principals and teachers. Interviews and focus group discussions were conducted to gather more descriptive data. The study revealed that principals were aware that their role has changed from manager to that of an academic leader. Though the principals were aware of their leadership role, in most instances they tended to exist as a managerial administrator than an academic leader. As an academic leader, principals tended to be more democratic and participatory leaders. Principals in type 3 and type 2 schools were considered as democratic leaders compared to principals in 1AB and 1C schools. Teachers do expect principals to be democratic leaders than managerial administrators. It was revealed that all the principals were interested in enhancing the effectiveness of the school. In order to improve the quality in education, principals have followed a number of steps as a practice. Though the principals consider themselves as democratic leaders, this study has brought out evidence that principal's responses and teacher responses were not in agreement.

Two research studies (Lekamge & Jayathilake, 2002; Jayathilake, 1996) which focused on the Continuous Assessment (CA) mechanism of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) had identified several problems such as lack of quality of the set assignments, limited comments on assignments, discrepancies among marking examiners, ill practices among student teachers and high turnround time of assignments and suggested long term and short term measures to those problems. As a result, the Faculty introduced several innovations namely course team approach, training workshops for marking examiners, Activity Based Assignment Day Schools and appointment of Centre coordinators for improving the quality of the CA mechanism. Having implemented those innovations for nearly three years, it has necessitated an exploratory research study to examine the effectiveness in improving the quality of the CA mechanism and to reveal how it could be further modified to maximize their potentials. The sample of the study included 290 student teachers representing four regional and two study centres of the OUSL, 104 marking examiners and 21 visiting academics of those centres. Exploratory interviews, questionnaires and direct observations were used as the main data collection methods of the study. They revealed that the majority of student teachers, visiting academics and marking examiners were satisfied with the new innovations and admired the positive changes taken place in setting, marking and monitoring of assignments. Finally the study