School Management: Discussion, Tips

The education system has been drastically changed over the last decade due to many factors. While driving a school, coordination in departments and campuses is one of the biggest challenge.

Technology plays a huge role in the field of education but many school administrators find tough about its adoption and this has made it a real challenge for them to identify what and when they should adopt technology to improve performance, to support the academic and administrative processes.

All the while the modernization is to improve its operational efficiency with the help of cloud, mobile and digital technologies is challenge in itself.

The objectives of school management, as per authors Sheryl F. Abuid, Benedict DC. David in their paper ‘Strategic Proposal For Best Practices Of School Management’, are

1) achievement of the institution’s objectives;

2) improves planning, organizing and implementing of the institution‘s activities and processes;

3) creating, maintaining and enhancing a good public image of the institution;

4) appropriate utilization of human;

5) enhances efficiency of institute;

6) facilitates optimum utilization of infrastructural facilities;

7) prevents duplication of work;

8) enhances job satisfaction;

?9) create and maintain a congenial school climate;

10) Manage interpersonal conflicts, manage stress and use time effectively; and

11) Interpersonal communication improvement.

At first let’s see what are the common challenges faced by school management and later we ll see a research paper discussing about challenges faced by head teachers and their deputies and presenting possible solution.

Challenges:

1.?????????Taking Strategic Decision

The School administration is the centre of managing and controlling a school body and its activities. They have to overlook the discipline, making schedules, managing academic staff etc. So, school has to survive in a long term competition while meeting the expectations of parents, funders, and donors.

2.?????????21st-century curriculum

Another challenge faced by the school administrators is re-creating the school curriculum to suits to prepare students for life and work in the 21st century.

3.?????????Academic Staff Recruitment and Retention

Recruiting capable and qualified teachers to teach & retaining them is challenge. With the technology, it helps to track down the most competent teachers out of a pool of applications, but still, the competition in the field of education makes it difficult to have a healthy recruiting process.

Another issue is with the retention of competent teachers. School administrators are struggling to find capable teachers. Normally, recruiters & referrals are best source.

4.?????????Paper-based processes

Maintaining records of attendance , fees, admission, etc is quite cumbersome. Generally school ERP is answer for this.

5.?????????Online Registration

Nowadays push mobile payment is key to automate for fees and SMS reminders for other process which school opt for.

6.?????????Admission & Enrolment

From inquiry of admission to enrolment, school/college are insecure. This could be done by online cloud-based education solution. This is about smoothening of onboarding process leading to better student experience.

7. Course Management

Designing “Need of time course” is crucial. Course Management ware takes care of its assignment, exams, time schedule, etc.

8. Teacher Evaluation?

The effectiveness of teacher’s teaching is reflected in feedback and performance of students. Proper evaluation methodology should be adopted.

9. Communication & Collaboration

Most of the communication between students, teachers and admin staff is off track. To take these on same platform, a mobile based education system/app to be adopted. SMS alerts, email, parents, alumni are the key stakeholders.

10. Classroom Management Strategy

Managing difficult students is one of strategy. This could be done by behavioural management system: AI tools are available which can take care of attendance and behavioural pattern.

Student Monitoring:

With effective Student management system, their attendance, absenteeism, assignment, leave, etc is accurately tracked.

The discipline of the students:

The modern-day students are raised in a completely different from the world administrators grew up in. So, it’s important that administrators try to understand where modern students are coming from in each situation.

Lack of attendance:

Attendance of students is drastically dropping due to many reasons. Some of these reasons are mostly unreachable by the school administrators, so even if the school administrators have a solution, they are helpless as it is out of their control.

11. The uncertainty of student outcome

All the school administrators want a higher rate in student achievement, as it is a driving factor to attract more students. But the uncertainty in the outcome of student achievement is an uncontrollable issue faced by school administrators nowadays.

12. Lessening in the involvement of parents

Most of the parents do not have enough time to pay attention to their children’s education life due to their busy life schedules providing for their family. This has become a major issue that school administrators are facing. Schools should be strict about to call parent/s atleast quarterly to seek out for problems faced by their wards.

13.???????Revenue Management and High cost in maintenance and operations

Without fees a school can never run. Tracking fee is key driver of schools. Collection of fees and contributions from alumni should be monitored properly, preferably by school ERP.

Maintaining a school or an education centre is a huge challenge today for many administrators- especially with the high cost of maintenance and the costs need to be undertaken when adopting new trends which can be extremely expensive.

14.???????Forecasting the academic achievement

Using data analytics, Dashboard reports and intelligent analytics are useful indicators for educators to examine attendance, assignments, grades, etc. and predict student outcomes.

A Discussion:

Authors Izzet Dosa, Mahmut Sagir, Remzi Burcin Cetina (published paper ‘Classifying Daily Problems of School Managers’ ) studied the problems faced by head teachers and their deputies. They found that student and technical problems are short term, whereas staff and parent oriented ones are mid term, and finally if the problem is caused by organizational structure or policy based then it can be said to be long term one.

Their Findings and solutions were as under:?

1)????Short Term Duties of School Managers(Administrator)

The managing body of a school classify student oriented problems, the disagreement between students and teachers, teaching habits and related problems, cleaning, simple disorders and sometechnological incapacity within the daily routines of a school and accept them to be solved easily in short term.

1)????Mid term duties of School Managers

As it is shown in table-2, the managing body of a school classify students’ health problems, teachers’ interaction with each other, organizational issues, habits, parents and staff disobedience within their duties and accept them as mid term problems.

1)????Long term Duties of School Managers?

According to https://web.worldbank.org/ , School Based Management(SBM) Q& A for the web/knowledge nugget , authors Winkler & Gershberg?hypothesized how several key components of effective schools of ?SBM and improve the conditions for teaching and learning for a School Effectiveness.

They explore how SBM may lead to improvements in key characteristics of effective schools including: strong leadership; skilled and committed teachers; increased focus on learning; and, a sense of responsibility towards results. Winkler & Gershberg have developed the following table to illustrate their theory.

Conclusion:

Ongoing educational trends and the limitations of teachers in today scenario of hybrid pattern teaching is a big challenge, it is ?difficult for these teachers to cope up to such a situation. Their existence is getting tougher by every day. The stakeholders - schools, teachers, students and parents should come together to find common platform so that the cooperation from students and parents can help teachers to give their best out.