STUDIES: THE ROLES OF THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AND SCHOOL COMMITTEE

With the advent of decentralised education management and school based management (SBM) the role of the school principal has started to change. Furthermore the school committee has an important role in school management. Our consultants, Elizabeth Sweeting, Muhlisoh, Furaidah and Supriyono Koes, assisted by our other consultants have made a study of the role of the school principal and school committee especially in schools which are already successfully implementing SBM in the MBE and CLCC program areas. The aim was to discover the key to success in these schools so that it can be disseminated to other schools. You can read the conclusions of the reports below. You can read the complete studies on our website mbeproject.net.

Study 1: Role of the School Principal

School heads have 2 major roles, first providing instructional leadership to their teachers, and second providing management leadership.

The education reforms of school-based management (SBM) and school committees, introduced as part of decentralization, give school heads greater opportunities to implement more fully the various functions of these two roles.

Many of the school heads visited during the studies have taken up the opportunities offered by SBM to adjust their behaviour to meet the new situation in their school and community, and to implement changes. They recognized that they need to be a colleague rather than a boss with their teachers and collaborate more closely with them and the community in school affairs.

This included conducting a number of key management tasks such as visiting classrooms to encourage and support the implementation of PAKEM teaching methods, holding informal meetings with teachers to stimulate, discuss and share innovations, and appreciating and supporting the work done for the school by the community through the school committee.

Some of the reported changes in the behavior of school heads included (i) open management - being transparent, accountable and inclusive about plans, finances and the school program with both teachers and the community, (ii) creating and managing a friendly, positive learning atmosphere in the school, and (iii) being open to and supportive of innovations.

On the other hand, school heads were more reluctant in other matters such as delegating responsibility for the implementation of school program activities to others, visiting and monitoring their teachers classrooms for any length of time, or holding formal meetings with school committee or parents more frequently than monthly or each semester.

The principal encourages the teachers to create and friendly and positive learning environment in the school.

The more adventurous school heads were at the stage where they and some of their teachers were able to develop their own innovations, becoming the schools that others visited in their search for ideas.

These more progressive school heads also used a variety of strategies innovative in themselves - to both encourage their teachers to innovate and to disseminate their innovations to others within the school.

As well as identifying limited funds as a constraint to improved practice, some school heads candidly noted their own need for self-improvement. Moreover, the more perceptive school heads acknowledged that their teachers also faced constraints to changing their classroom behavior, and rather than declaring them non-responsive, made positive attempts to assist them overcome their fears.

A major concern of school heads and their staff, was the unknown impact that using PAKEM methods would have on students' performance on the end of primary school examinations (UAS).

In conclusion, school heads would appear to be more comfortable in the role of management leadership than of instructional leader. Self perceptions of the school head's role focused more on the former and some considered that "teaching was the business of the teachers".

For their part, teachers and school committee members saw the role of the school head in relation to their own role within the school. In this, teachers focused on their need to be supported by the school head in their classroom work.

Similarly, committee members listed those functions which were part of the school head's assigned role during committee meetings, namely: "facilitator, motivator, advisor, initiator, mediator and a partner".