School Systems: Management, Participation and Internal Quality Control

School Management is a complex theme as different actors at different levels are at stake. Moreover, there is a worldwide trend from a management model towards a leadership approach. It implies that school managers are getting more responsibilities with regard to educational management, financial management and HR management.

In developing countries, school managers are not always used to or trained for this new role. Where school managers were engaged in daily operational management and problem solving of ad hoc issues, nowadays they are more involved in strategic management of the school. This is also the case for parents. To what extent do you involve parents in school management? Or is parents’ participation in schools’ daily life sufficient?

As resources are scarce within the context of the Ministry of Education in developing countries, strategic choices can be hard to make in comparison with a middle income or a high income context. As mentioned above, a lot of aspects are involved in school management: the link with the community, cross cutting themes such as gender, interaction student-teacher, learning results, involvement of students and parents, internal quality control,…

Some examples

VVOB focuses in Rwanda on the massive training of effective school management teams of basic and secondary schools and the reinforcement of the School Leadership and Management Unit in the Ministry of Education.

In Suriname the Programme more Effective schools Suriname has links with School Management as it implies the training of directions and the clustering of schools to enable peer to peer learning.

Active teaching and learning is perceived in Vietnam as a carrier towards a more effective School Management. The direct beneficiaries are the teachers, while the National Institute for Educational Management is one of the operational partners.

Finally, the programme in Zimbabwe focuses on attitude changes in the improvement of School Management. In other words, School Management is not a result on its own, but a condition to attain the results. In this case, the direct beneficiaries are the teachers of the Teacher Training Institutes.