Can Secretary Briones supply the missing administrator of public schools?

Every school enterprise must be run in a businesslike manner. The principal or academic school head in either a kindergarten or a larger elementary school or high school will not succeed at all unless there is an administrator to support the academic manager.

UNESCO is especially concerned with the public schools, which are attended by majority of children. After 10 years of Education for All (EFA), the UNESCO evaluated the global EFA results in Dakar, Africa. It pointed to the need for ACTION TO PROMOTE QUALITY EDUCATION, a factor missed in the decade of accessing education in Asia, Africa and Latin America. To achieve this, UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura proclaimed the EFA-DAKAR FRAMEWORK OF ACTION. This focused on uplifting the morale and professional status of teachers through innovative training and curriculum, as well as sound management of schools.

Getting to know the public schools

We started the EFA-DAKAR pilot in the Angeles Pulung Bulu Elementary School in 2001, a block away from our then 20-year-old O.B. Montessori School along McArthur highway. This is a model public school used for teacher seminars. The school children could read quite well, although they could not comprehend English.

Like any outreach program we initiated, I personally designed it with my academic team headed by my then vice president for academic affairs Sara Soliven-de Guzman (the current CEO). As we monitored the first phase, I checked the availability of water for the preschool Practical Life exercise of Grooming, and Hygiene, laundering, etc. The first grade teacher proudly showed me a one-foot high water jug. “Can we not prepare at least half a drum of water?” I inquired. She apologized, “I am sorry ma’am, but I cannot provide that. The afternoon teacher too cannot.” I admonished, “The school administrator should provide these things, not you teachers!”

With a school population of nearly 2,800 students and 80 teachers, the Angeles Pulung Bulu Elementary School has 12 buildings with 69 classrooms, plus 8 reconstructed lahar damaged classrooms. To maintain the cleanliness and order in the environment, there was only one permanent janitor. However, two others were hired by the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). Meantime, one of the buildings became a bodega when the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic explosion covered it with lahar. It sank almost a meter deep and was constantly flooded half of the year with rainwater.

We remodeled a bodega (storage) sunken by the volcano lahar flow into a two-story affair to isolate for the EFA-DAKAR pilot school. It was intended to be a demonstration model of the quality Montessori Pagsasarili Basic Education system for principals and teachers of Region 3.

When construction was nearly completed, the principal reminded me to put additional security measures in the building when fluorescent lamps and cash were stolen in the adjacent building. Thus, a cyclone wire fence encloses the passageway and double door locks were installed. The EFA-DAKAR PTA hired an extra janitor and donated electric fans, as well as water dispensers per classroom.

Public schools administration and supervision

According to the antiquated 50-year-old Service Manual of the Bureau of Public Schools (this 1959 edition referred to DepEd as a “bureau” then), which Dr. Herman C. Gregorio used in his book, School Administration and Supervision, ”…Being the head of his school, the principal is vested with complete ADMINISTRATIVE and SUPERVISORY powers and duties.”

More quotes from the manual: “The administrative duties of the public school principal covers the maintenance of school discipline, care of the school grounds and buildings, care of the school property, as well as eliminating hazards. He or she handles the planning of the school programs, systematizing the office work, making reports, filing forms, as well as attending to correspondence. His administration of the school also includes the enforcement of school policies.

“The principal’s supervisory duties include classroom observation of weak and strong points of teachers and pupils. This can be remedied by actual demonstration classes of superior methods and techniques of teaching, as well as by experimenting new methods of classroom instruction. He should conduct conferences and meetings with teachers for administrative and supervisory purposes.”

Believe it or not – this book was still available then in bookstores and is widely referred to by school officials and students. Is there an updated version of Philippine school administration and supervision regulation?

Private school administration

On the other hand, the organizational chart of a high performing private school (HPS) with a thousand school children indicates that the school administrator is assisted by an Environmental Care Officer (ECO) who looks after the building construction and maintenance of both the inner and outer environment of the school: the classrooms with its furniture, blackboards, library, clinic, kitchens and laboratories, as well as the toilets, garden and playground. The ECO coordinator checks the work of janitors (one janitor for every 10 classrooms with each classroom averaging 40 students) and security guards. Every summer, she makes sure that all furniture get the necessary repair and re-painting. Thus wooden furniture can last for 20 years because of sufficient maintenance. In contrast, the damaged desks in public schools are not repaired due to lack of carpenters. Thus, these are wasted and are kept rotting in bodegas when actually there is a dire need for furniture yearly.

Under the Administrator is a Human Resource personnel who recruits and interviews teachers, and puts them under a training program. She makes sure school policies, rules and regulations under the Employee Code of Conduct are implemented. She also handles legal and labor relations. Together with the principal, he or she evaluates the merits and demerits of teachers so they are properly promoted or re-assigned to assume the higher responsibilities of coordinatorship. Corresponding increase in salaries are given. A Cashier provides the salaries of teachers and personnel every 15th and 30th of the month. The same personnel receives tuition fee payments.

The Registrar, on the other hand, attends to enrollment matters and keeps students’ records. She works with the Administrative officer to come up with a yearly projection on increase in student population, so they can forecast the need of additional school rooms, furniture and equipment, as well as additional textbooks. The enrollment usually increases according to the popularity of the school based on its quality of teachers and culture-loaded curriculum. Their students are known to be both intellectually competent and dynamic.

Thus in good performing private schools, there is an Administrative Officer who is assisted by four other personnel. This administrative team works closely with the Principal.

How public school teachers are evaluated

Public school principals are supposed to evaluate one teacher per day (ATAD – A Teacher, A Day). However, this is not realistically practiced, in most cases, except for model schools like the IMAGE schools of Porac and Minalin, Pampanga, which have only 500 to 900 students each.

I interviewed a public school teacher and I was informed that some principals just give out the evaluation form to the teachers and they evaluate themselves. The Principal just approves the self-evaluation done by the teacher.

A regular teacher who wants to be promoted to Teacher III must first take 45 units of a Master’s degree. He or she submits the certification and automatically gets his promotion. After three years, a Teacher III should request his principal to recommend him as Head Teacher based on his accomplishments.

With regards to their salaries, each public school has an assigned Liaison Officer who goes to the Division Office to get the computerized individual pay slips of the teachers in his/her school. The salary of teachers may come either in the form of individual checks or group check. If the salaries of the teachers are given as a group check, the Liaison Officer is authorized to encash the said check and gives the cash to each teacher. As they receive their salaries, the teachers sign in the pay-slip, which comes in triplicate copies (teacher’s copy, school’s copy, and another copy returned to the Division Office).

Teacher discipline in public and private schools

Public school teachers are supposed to fill up a Leave of Absence form when they are absent. Deductions due to absence are reflected in the following month. To monitor the attendance and punctuality, the teachers are expected to log-in daily at the Principal’s office upon reporting for duty. However, Individual Daily Time Record is usually given towards the end of each month, and the teachers just fill this up. Since this will be reflected in their evaluation, they do not necessarily put the actual time they arrived. Monitoring on punctuality and attendance, therefore become lax.

It is common in public schools to see defective bundy clocks. Rumors say that these bundy clocks, which are usually donated by their PTA, are destroyed by teachers themselves so that the actual time they arrive and go home cannot be monitored.

Enhancing the successful management of schools

In 2004, as the UNESCO Secretary General of the Philippines, I participated in the ANTRIEP (Asian Networking of Training and Research Institutions in Educational Planning) conference involving education officials from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines. This conference is co-sponsored by UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). It reinforces UNESCO’s crusade for the EFA-DAKAR Framework of Action for quality education.

A policy-making body and research institution, ANTRIEP’s objectives for the conference are to search for management strategies of school head teachers, as well as to share best practices of successful schools in Asia. This conference is indeed timely for improving the management systems of both public and private schools today. The latest ANTRIEP workshop on innovations and best practices in educational administrative and management took place last April 19-21, in New Delhi, India.