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The education service in most African countries has expanded at a profound rate in the last three decades. This has created a variety of administrative and management problems for the education system: poor communication between headquarters, regional offices and schools; lack of accurate information and data for decision-making and management of the education service; and delays in dealing with teachers' confirmation, appraisals, promotion, deployment, payment, pensions and discipline. School heads are rarely prepared for their managerial and professional responsibilities.
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This guide, which has been produced to assist teacher managers, highlights procedures and practices which are the basis of their daily work. All too often the pressures of handling the multitude of tasks related to the staffing of schools distracts the senior manager from examining the methods employed in his/her department. The guide produces both checklists, which can be completed quickly, and references to related topics in some of the recent publications on teacher management.
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Over recent years there has been a world-wide trend to move the management of education systems within a country away from the centre, which is remote from the action, to regions and districts. This process of decentralisation allows a balance to be struck between the strategic control of the education system by the Ministry of Education against the operational management of the service at a more local level.
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The primary objective of teacher management is to ensure that schools are staffed with the requisite number of teachers appropriately trained and qualified for their task. Additionally, if the goals of the national curriculum are to be achieved it is essential that teachers are appointed in good time, that they are adequately supported administratively and financially and that they are aware of the aims and objectives of the curriculum which underpins the education system. Having a Scheme of Delegation which specifies where responsibility lies for each Teacher Management task together with a ‘Planning Calendar’ is, therefore, an essential element in any well structured education system.
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The enthusiasm and commitment of newly appointed teachers, particularly those straight from teacher training institutions, must be captured and used for the benefit of the young people who will be in their care. These qualities must not be allowed to be lost or dissipated by poor posting and inefficient deployment arrangements.
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While the completion of a course of teacher training may lead to a qualification this, by itself, does not ensure that the newly qualified professional has all the necessary attributes to be recognised, publicly or professionally, as a fully-fledged teacher. Most countries require a newly qualified teacher to serve a period of probation and, subject to satisfactory reports over a period of time, to seek confirmation. This is normally granted by the appointing authority but, in some countries, confirmation is granted by an independent body and is taken as the act of conferring professional status.
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Without coherent and consistently applied policies on teacher transfer some schools would soon become over-staffed while others could continue to languish below their approved establishment. While some staffing imbalance may be reduced by teachers seeking voluntary transfer, this can have only a marginal effect. In some countries acceding to voluntary transfer, requests can actually exacerbate the situation.
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Appraisal is viewed by many in the teaching profession, as in other areas of government service, as a bureaucratic process which has little relevance to the task of teaching and the process of learning. While the purposes of appraisal can be fully justified, it is the manner in which it has been carried out over the years that has brought it into disrepute. Teachers, Headteachers and others complete the appraisal proformas as a routine, if not boring, task and with little respect for the fundamental objectives of the system.
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Staff development in the education service may be defined as the planned process designed to improve the effectiveness of teachers, individually and collectively, by enhancing their knowledge and skills in response to modern information, fresh ideas and changing circumstances with the intent of improving, directly or indirectly, the quality of pupils' education.
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Apart from annual leave regulations, leave of absence should be based on the principle that teachers do not make personal arrangements which conflict with the condition that they be on duty at all the times required by the terms of their conditions of service. The need to ensure continuity of education for their pupils must always be the overriding consideration.
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Promotion is viewed by the great majority of teachers as the vehicle which provides professional progress and salary enhancement. It introduces a form of competition which at times is healthy but at others, because of the inadequacies in the procedures used, produces rancour, bad feeling and disenchantment.
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If matters of a disciplinary nature in schools are to be handled professionally and brought, from the viewpoint of both management and teacher, to a successful conclusion, there must be clear and unequivocal rules for handling such issues. All too often disciplinary problems are dealt with on an unofficial basis, with the result that when a major incident arises, no history of previous incidents is on the teacher's record. It is imperative that clear disciplinary rules and procedures exist and are applied whenever any incident is brought to the notice of the Headteacher.
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