Principal's Administrative Role For Quality Assurance In Schools
By Swaleha Sindhi
18 September, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Introduction
Quality assurance in education is the efficient management, monitoring, evaluation and reviews of the resource inputs and transformation process (teaching and learning) to produce quality outputs (students) that meet set standards and expectations of the society. Robinson (1994) defines quality assurance as the set of activities that an organization undertakes to ensure that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality. Its goals are the anticipation and avoidance of faults or mistakes by setting attainable standards for a process, organizing work so that they are achieved, documenting the procedures required, communicating them to all concerned, and monitoring and reviewing the attainment of standards. A critical look at the definitions shows that quality assurance in education encompasses systematic management, monitoring and evaluation procedures adopted to measure the performance of school administrators (principals), teachers and students against educational objectives to ensure best practices in resource inputs, utilization and curriculum management by the principals to produce students that achieve the set educational goals in secondary schools.
Role of School Principal and Quality Assurance
School principalship is a well established position that provides instructional leadership by coordinating curricula, co-curricular programmes and is responsible for the general administration of the school. The principals being instructional leaders are at the vantage positions to supervise, monitor, assess, evaluate and disseminate current information on educational issues and modern teaching techniques to teachers in order to stimulate them for scholarship and best practices in curriculum delivery.
Quality assurance is achieved in schools that have strong principals who devote considerable time to coordinating and managing instruction; such principals are highly visible in the school and stay close to the instructional process. In many instances, effective principals adopt continuous and consistent classroom visits to ensure adequate teaching and learning processes (Peters and Waterman 1988). At the same time, instructional leadership is in many ways a shared responsibility. It engenders a common sense of commitment and collegiality among the staff. Effective school principals establish clearly defined goals for academic achievement, and they concentrated their available resources and their operations on attaining them, provide adequate time-table for teaching, routine check of lesson plans and observation of classroom instruction, continuously monitor students progress to determine whether their instructional goals are being met, provide feed-back on student performance, motivation of teachers for improved performance, reinforcement of students for excellent performance, maintenance and appropriate usage of physical facilities, enforcement of discipline to ensure peaceful atmosphere, capacity building of teachers for effective service delivery and provision of instructional facilities and materials to enhance quality teaching-learning processes.
In furtherance of quality assurance, it is necessary for an ideal school principal to set reasonable expectations for work and achievement. The concept of the school as a place of learning is communicated clearly to the students, and a commitment to learning is expected in every classroom. Expectations of the society are manifested in the performance standards set by the school. High standards reflect high expectations; low standards reflect low expectations. It is therefore crystal clear that the complex task of the principal is how to organize the school to meet the various challenges facing school administration so that the education aims and objectives can be achieved. As the head of the school, the principal must make it possible for staff to have access to suitable facilities of all kinds in order to discharge fully their responsibilities in achieving the educational objectives. The teachers must be well supervised and motivated in order to sustain their interest and make them dedicated, committed, willing, enthusiastic and inspiring teachers. The quality of the supervision of teachers ‘instructional tasks by the principal is an index of effective school management. Of all the major tasks of a school principal, none is as sensitive and as challenging as the one relating to the supervisory and it is expected to be given the deserved attention in the scheme of things. Instructional supervision is an internal mechanism adopted by principals for school self evaluation, geared towards helping teachers and students to improve on their teaching and learning activities for the purpose of achieving educational objectives.
The principal ensures effective supervision by interacting academically and socially at a regular basis with teachers and students within and outside the classrooms. The primary aim is to monitor the implementation of curricular and ensure desirable increase in teachers ‘capabilities, upgrade their conceptual knowledge and teaching skills, give them support in their work to facilitate better performance in teachers ‘pedagogical practices and students ‘learning outcomes in the school settings. Instructional supervision provides a vehicle and structure which allows schools, departments, as well as individuals (teachers and students) within them, to respond effectively to curriculum and instruction in order to achieve the stated educational objectives. Instructional supervision, if handled with utmost attention, has the potential to strengthen the principals ‘capacities for managing human and materials resources. The principal who is the driving force behind the school programme needs to proactively mobilize all members of staff, teaching and non-teaching, the governing board, parents and the community towards identifying the schools strengths and weaknesses and take appropriate decisions on type of follow-up action required to improve teachers ‘inputs and students ‘learning outcomes in the school. The appraisal of teachers ‘pedagogical practices is necessary in order to safeguard quality standards in schools. In order to accomplish this task, the principal must have an intimate knowledge of the psychology of human learning, have a command of the various theories of instruction, be acquainted with the sources and uses of instructional media/materials, be familiar with evaluation techniques, be skilled in individual and group counseling, and have a good knowledge of education system and goals. In pursuit of these goals, the school principals make use of supervisory/administrative techniques: clinical supervision/classroom observation, micro-teaching, seminar/workshop and research to improve the conceptual knowledge, skills and competence of teachers, and students ‘learning,
Conclusion
A cursory look at the various methods of instructional supervision discussed above shows that the principal acts as a change agent for the professional growth of teachers and the improvement of curriculum delivery which is the central focus of instructional supervision. The areas that usually attract the attention of secondary school principals include the planning of lesson plans, effective delivery of lessons, assessment and quality of tests/assignments given to students, improvisation and utilization of instructional materials, providing regular feed-back on students‘ performance, adequate keeping of records and appropriate discipline of students to ensure quality assurance in secondary schools. A well-planned and adequate instructional supervision enhances teaching and learning effectiveness in schools.
(Swaleha Sindhi is an Assistant Professor in The M.S.University of Baroda, Gujarat, her interest areas are management of education, secondary education and quality assurance in education. Email: [email protected])
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