Better Schools:
Resource Materials for School Heads in Africa
 
   
 
   
Self-Development For Educational Managers
Schools today are complex organisations to manage. This is due to the fact that we now recognise the difficulties of providing for a wide range of abilities and interests amongst students, and the challenge of providing them with relevant and useable skills for them to succeed in an increasingly complex society. While in the past proficiency and success in classroom teaching were important criteria for promotion, today a wider range of skills are seen as necessary. Headship is now seen to involve to a large extent the function of management.

As we suggested at the start of the general introduction, it is now widely recognised and agreed that one of the key factors affecting school effectiveness is the nature and quality of the leadership and management provided by each school head. The purpose of this module is to encourage primary and secondary heads to reflect on what they do, and why, and how, and with what success, and to discover ways in which they, themselves, might become better managers and thus be responsible for more effective schools.

Individual study time: 22 hours

Objectives
After working through this module you should be able to:
• formulate a mission statement for your school and a set of objectives
• indicate the values promoted by your school
• identify the various styles of management open to a school head
• identify how school programmes may be designed to meet the needs of your staff and students, the community and the nation
• understand the concepts of job analysis, job description and job specification
• manage your time more efficiently.

Units
This module is divided into five units.

Unit 1: School mission, values and objectives
5 hours
In this unit you will learn why and how your school should identify its mission and its values, and how you may express these in terms of practical objectives.

Unit 2: Styles of management
3 hours
Here you will identify various management styles and how each is likely to produce different results: this should enable you to reflect on your own approach to school management and how you may improve it.

Unit 3: Needs identification
6 hours
In planning the development of your school and the activities which you organise there, it is important you recognise that many groups, in addition to your pupils, have expectations and needs. In this unit you will learn who these groups are and how you may recognise their needs.

Unit 4: Job analysis
4 hours
The purpose of this unit is to enable you to analyse the jobs of those employed within your school, and to produce clear job descriptions which enable everyone to understand their own roles and tasks, and the relationships involved.

Unit 5: Time management
4 hours
Time is the one resource we all have the same amount of, yet some people use it far better than others. Through this unit you will learn how to make the best use of your time as a school head.

Contributors
This module was written by a team in Zimbabwe:

Mr R G Sisimayi
(Team Leader) Deputy Chief Education Officer, (Standards Control Unit and Professional Administration)
Mr L C Bowora Deputy Regional Director (Primary), Harare Region
Mr T Benza Deputy Regional Director (Primary), Midlands Region
Mr L K C Dube Deputy Regional Director (Secondary), Masvingo Region
Mr E S Chigwedere Deputy Regional Director (Secondary), Mashonaland West Region
Mr I Glover Head, Mount Pleasant School, Harare
Mr H J Ndanga Deputy Regional Director (Secondary), Midlands Region