School Principal Leadership and Implementation of Independent Curriculum in Improving the Quality of Education in Indonesia

Leadership is a force that moves struggles or activities towards success. Leadership means the process of influencing group activities in the context of formulating and achieving organizational goals. Therefore, a leader must optimize management and create an organization always conducive and the quality of education increases. There are two things that characterize leaders in carrying out their duties, namely "openness and willingness to serve". Therefore, there is a need to study the leadership of school principals and the implementation of an independent curriculum in improving the quality of education. This research is descriptive qualitative research. Observation, interviews and documentation were used as data collection techniques. The research subjects were school principals, teachers and students. Based on the research results, it shows: 1) The school principal as the leader of the organization has carried out his duties well in accordance with procedures and regulations. 2) The implementation of the independent curriculum has been running effectively, efficiently and productively. The advantages of the independent learning curriculum are: 1) making the world of education more flexible, which means removing the shackles of the world of education so that it is easier to move, 2) giving students the opportunity to deepen the lessons they take according to their needs, 3) providing a platform for students exploring general knowledge by going into society, 4) students can prepare themselves to face the world of work. An educational institution is said to be of quality if it has the following characteristics: 1) Students demonstrate a high level of mastery of learning tasks (learning tasks) as formulated in educational goals and objectives, including academic learning outcomes expressed in learning achievement. 2) The results of student education are in accordance with the demands of students' needs in their lives, so that apart from knowing something, they are also able to do something functionally for life. 3) Student educational outcomes are in accordance with environmental needs, especially the world of work. Therefore, relevance is an indicator of quality. Thus, good quality benchmarks are not absolute quality benchmarks, but relative benchmarks, namely those that suit customer needs. School quality will be good if the school can provide services that suit the needs of its customers.