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BANYUMAS: Placing School Principals According to Ability
The head of the Subdistrict Education Office in Kebasen, the school supervisors and the Head of the Teachers Union were brave enough to take a wise but not popular decision. They promoted Drs. Suyanto, a teacher at SD Bentul to become school principal at a core cluster school.
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The School Supervisor and Principal of SDN Kebasen working together professionally
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It has been the custom, when teachers are first promoted, to place them in inaccessible remote schools or in schools which are of poor quality and have many problems. If the school principal performs well, he or she may gra-dually be moved to a better school, for example, to a core cluster school. Placing principals in these schools is normally linked to their length of service.
Before a decision was taken, tough discussions took place because the proposal went against tradition. The participants in the discussion understood that Drs. Suyanto was a very able teacher and a district facilitator in science who had already done training in other districts. Based on his ability, Drs. Suyanto would be very suitable to be placed in the core cluster school but, based on normal custom, he should have been placed in a remote school.
In the end all the participants in the discussion decided to place Drs. Suyanto as the new school principal in the core cluster school, SD Kebasen 1. So the Head of the Subdistrict Office, supervisors and union leader took a positive step by placing a school principal not on the basis of length of service but rather on the basis of his ability.
KEBUMEN: Head of Subdistrict Office Delegates Responsibility
The Head of the Subdistrict Education Office in Ambal devised a set of activities to encourage all teachers, school principals and supervisors to implement PAKEM. His strategy started by drawing up plans with all the conventional (SD) and religious (MI) school supervisors in the subdistrict.
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By delegating responsibility many problems can be solved because there are many more people helping
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The steps were as follows:
The Subdistrict Education Office Head and staff of the Religious Affairs Department divided up the schools in the area. Each supervisor was allocated to a number of schools.
The supervisors were then trained in PAKEM, together with the teachers. They all took part in all the training activities, including teaching practice.
They accompanied the MBE district facilitators during mentoring in MBE partner schools.
They mentored in their own schools.
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They reviewed the results of the mentoring of their school groups.
They reviewed the results of the mentoring at subdistrict level.
They held an exhibition of students' work from each of the supervisors' schools.
MAGELANG: School Plan Training
MBE, together with the District Education Office, gave training in writing school development plans to principals, teachers and committee members from the twenty MBE partner schools on 13 September 2006.
The aim of the training was to review the capacity of schools (principals, teachers and committee) after they had received SBM training and to add relevant material concerning school financial management.
During the training each school identified gaps in performance and analyzed the causes of the problems. Then they made a strategic four year program, calculated the costs of the program and identified sources of funding while drawing up a budget for one year.
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Above: Ibu W. Susilowati, Head of Primary Education, explaining the importance of school development plans.
Below: Ibu Siti Maimunatun, Head of the Schools Section at MORA helping a madrasah draw up its school plan.
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It is important that all stakeholders at the school, especially the school committee, should be responsible for finding sources of funding. That was one of the topics delivered by a community participation facilitator, who told about his experiences at SDN Magelang 7 in encouraging active participation from the school committee and parents groups.
During the training the Religious Affairs Department (MORA) from Magelang was involved in helping the madrasahs (MI and MTs) to draw up their school development plans. During the last session the education office emphasized the important of drawing up a school development plan as the basis on which to make a school budget.
They referred to the mayoral instruction #900/34/122, 2003 concerning "Managing School Finances In Kota Magelang Through Performance Budgeting". Schools drew up budgets in order to implement this regulation. Apparently to date there have been many aspects of school finance which have not been included in school budgets.
This does not conform with government policy, which requires integrated financial management, where all receipts and expenditure are included in the school budget. This is important in order to cut down double budgeting, so that schools can make the most of their resources in order to achieve their vision and mission.
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