The school heads face flak

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday August 1, 2022 06:00

When schools do not perform as expected, deservedly so, school principals face a lot of flak and criticism from all quarters.

Parents expect the best education and teaching climate for their children while government demands a return on investments.

Schools can only be successful in the enterprise of raising academic achievement levels, if deliberate efforts are made to place ahead of any other consideration the interests of students.

A school should not under any circumstances allow anything to stand on the way of teaching and learning.

However, experience has shown that schools now and then contend with too many distractions, which encroach into the instructional space and in the process compromise quality educational services.

And having worked closely with schools for a considerable length of time, in my oversight capacity, I would be the first to admit the complexities, challenges and often near insurmountable distractions that come with the territory.

The work of school principals has become a crowded affair, compounded by the need to navigate not only matters of curriculum delivery but a wide range of external interests, which equally compete for attention.

So effective school leadership necessarily entails constantly making a judgement on what may or not impact directly on student learning outcomes. In other words, school principals should be on their toes at all times to manage distractions and endeavour to separate wheat from chaff. Accomplished educators Rachel E. Curtis and Elizabeth A. City have laid bare some of the external powerful distractions frustrating the efforts of school leaders in their quest for transformation. The duo concluded succinctly that, “schools are noisy places; crises big or small come one after another. Local and national politics (with all the interests they represent) add to the din.’’

The present culture of academic under achievement is indeed a source of grave concern to parents, business community, regions, central office and in government general. In a desperate attempt to reverse underachievement solicited and unsolicited solutions from external players are streaming into schools from all fronts. This has led to a situation where managing external aid has become a major preoccupation and this phenomenon if not handled well has the potential of taking away the steam from teaching and learning. As instructional leaders, school principals are duty bound to lead teaching and learning from the front.

And this means creating time to visit classrooms to look for opportunities to develop teachers and grow and sharpen their pedagogical approaches. They cannot afford the luxury of confining themselves to their offices. However, the stark reality is that overwhelming office work is keeping principals rooted in the office against their will. External pressures from powerful entities have now assumed centre stage at the expense of teaching and learning. Again Curtis and City shared their invaluable experience on the subject matter.

They underscored the fact that schools are driven by distractions and not necessarily their own strategies and student interests.

The reactive nature of schools to external stimuli is, “reflected in the principal who spends all morning responding to the never ending stream of requests, calls, emails and never making it into the classroom to observe, although the morning schedule is blocked for that purpose.’’ Adding that, the reactive nature of the whole education system is, “reflected in the central office department that agrees to pilot a new student assessment simply because someone else is willing to pay for it, even though it is not the best tool for the system and will take instructional time away from students.’’

This is a sad statement of affairs. Every year schools embark on the exercise of developing strategies and such strategies are relegated to the shelves to gather dust while external pressures are assuming precedence. In our jurisdiction, there is challenge of data keeping. Data is not seamlessly flowing as it should from school to the region and central office.

And schools are growing weary of the endless demands for data and it keeps school principals on their toes. The business community, in the spirit of corporate social investment, is also providing various forms of assistance to schools. While the gesture is good and noble, it is important to mange this kind of ‘external aid’ so that schools don’t become dumping grounds for things that do not add value to the learning process. Some schools are saddled with gifts of defective ICT gadgets, which are participating in the learning process.

Schools therefore should have a greater say on the sort of assistance they need rather than to be subjected to a situation where everything is dictated by donors. Ward Heneveld and Helen Craig in their World Bank report of 1996 titled, “School Count” discussed factors related to school effectiveness.

Some of the key enabling conditions were cited as flexibility and autonomy and high time in schools. This means to be effective school leaders must be granted breathing space to design and take full control of the instructional environment.

Flexibility and autonomy give the schools opportunity to take responsibility for what is happening and not happening in their schools. Too much external influence creates not only a dependency syndrome but also undermines accountability at the school level.

Being accountable for results, school principals must have nerve to say no to any distraction or assistance with no direct bearing unlearning outcomes. Even though desperate for help there is need to calm, reduce the noise and keep distractions to a minimum. The interests of students in the classroom must be given priority and this can only happen if principals are granted the space to lead instruction.