ASSIGNMENTS

SPECIALIZEDAREA: EDUCATIONALMANAGEMENT
MASTER OFARTS (EDUCATION)-2nd YEAR
January 2019 & July 2019

MES-041: GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL

MANAGEMENT

a) Discuss the dimensions of and issues in secondary education. (500 words)

b) Highlight the factors that contribute to innovation in learning organization. (500 words)
c) Identify the skills needed by administrators and managers, How will you apply them as an
educational manager or administrator? Give suitable examples. (500 words)
Answers
a) Discuss the dimensions of and issues in secondary education.
Ans.: Secondary education systems in developing countries are under pressure to serve
morestudents and to do so more effectively. The Education for All movement and the
adoption of free primary education in many countries resulted in remarkable progress in
boosting enrollment at the primary level. In contrast, secondaryenrollment rates remain
stubbornly low in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this is likely to change
rapidly in thecoming years as today’s primary school students become old enough for
secondary school and as countries strive to meet thetargets set forth under the Sustainable
Development Goals spearheaded by the United Nations and supported by more than
190countries. At the same time, secondary schools need to do a better job of preparing
students for adulthood―making sure thatthey actually learn while they are in school and
equipping them with the soft skills they will need to become productive workersand full
participants in their societies.
Education is the basic requirement for success of democracy and progress of the country.
Universalization of primary and secondary education is a provision to provide free
educational opportunities to all children of the society, irrespective of their caste, creed and
sex. Since independence, many steps have been taken and different commissions and
committees have given suggestions to achieve universalization of education. Free and
compulsory elementary education for all children had been debated even in preIndependence
years. It made its way into the Constitution as a Directive Principle. The Constitution of
India, under the Article 45, directed the State to “endeavour to provide, within a period of ten
years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all
children until they complete the age of fourteen years.” But this goal has not been achieved
by the States even several decades after India became independent. With the Right of
Children to free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 coming into force, there is an
expectation that this will finally be translated into a provision of quality school education for
all children.

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Secondary education is a very crucial juncture of every learner’s life. It is so because, after
the completion of secondary education, learners enter into a discipline which they like most
as their career. The choice of subject and the stream starts after completion of secondary
education. The role of teachers is very important at this stage because they prepare and
motivate learners to become future professionals in many ways, as technicians, bureaucrats,
teachers, lawyers, medicine practitioners, etc. A secondary teacher therefore needs to be
acquainted with the issues and the contemporary development of secondary education. After
implementation of Right to Education Act, 2009, intellectual discussions are going on across
the country to make secondary education a right for all children. In view of this, India has
already started implementing Universalisation of Secondary Education. In this context, the
Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) has been implemented across the country.
Keeping in cognizance all the above issues, the present Block, entitled, “Issues and Concerns
in Secondary Education” is specially designed to make you sensitive of the following:
 Dealing with the issues related to Universalization of Secondary Education
 Promoting equity and equality as a key to spreading quality secondary education
across the nation;
 Initiating debates and discussions on curricular as well as specific curricular issues of
the secondary curriculum; and
 Understanding the parameters of professional development of secondary teachers.
It is important for the teacher, school and the curriculum to provide education catering the
needs for ensuring equality. A teacher should be able to develop in the student, empathy for
children from different sections of society, particularly the disadvantaged and educationally
backward sections along with an understanding of the status of women in society. All men
and women are equal partners in society; they live and grow up together. Members of a
society depend upon one another. All activities of men and women, big or small, significant
or insignificant, become a part of the societal system. All members are equal so far as their
rights and dignity are concerned.
The two years period of Secondary Education is very crucial in terms of accommodating
intense physical changes, vibrancy and energy of the adolescent children. Adjusting the
children to the secondary classes who are at the transitive stage, coming from eight years of
elementary classes and having high expectations from senior secondary classes, is really a
difficult task for the schools and teachers as well. The widening of the thinking horizons of
young children at this stage; their knowledge about world of work; and their personal,
academic and other areas of interest make the teachers and the administrators sensitized
enough to formulate suitable curriculum for them. The main aim of secondary curriculum
should be to satisfy the needs and the aspirations of the adolescents.
Traditional approach of organizing curriculum is mostly based upon the subject-centered
approval. It often creates many difficulties for accommodating many areas of knowledge
such as: Arts and Craft education, Work education, Peace education, Life skills education,
Sports and physical education, Value education etc. These areas of knowledge have not yet
been treated as distinct disciplines to be included in the school curriculum like; study of
Languages, Social Science, Science, and Mathematics. ‘Those important areas of knowledge

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become sidelined and are then described as ‘extra’ or ‘co-curricular’ areas of study instead of
being an integral part of the curriculum’ (NCF, 2005, p.29).This section will particularly
address the issues and problems of specific curricular issues in the curriculum.
b) Highlight the factors that contribute to innovation in learning organization
Ans.: The concept of learning has traditionally been used in the context of individual persons
(and animals). Recently this concept has been extended to organizations, distinction being
made between individual learning and organizational learning. Organizational learning can be
seen as a continuum from no learning ( insensitive or close to experiences and realities ) to
full learning ( effective use of experiences for action). Organizational Learning (OL) can be
defined as the process by which an organization acquires, retains, and uses inputs for
development, and the process results in an enhanced capacity for continued self-learning and
self renewal.
An organization needs to develop flexibility and a positive attitude towards experimentation,
trying out new ways to deal with issues and problems. Several mechanisms can promote this.
Some are suggested below.
 Invite experts and experienced and creative practitioners to share their ideas and
experiences with selected members of the organization.
 Encourage employees to try out new ways of dealing with problems, even if these
may not always succeed.
 Reward new ways which are successful in solving a problem, the reward may be
related to the benefit. For example, if an innovation results in saving, about 10-15 per
cent of the saving can be given as a reward.
 Hold periodical meetings to share results of the experiments.
 Such meeting will help in encouraging persons to know about innovation, create a
climate of experimentation, and show legitimate experimentation and flexibility.
 Hold periodical meeting to share the objectives, design, and experiences of
innovations being tried out.
 The same purpose as suggested above in 4 is accomplished. Organize employee
seminars on new developments.
 This educational measure will help the member of an organization to become aware
of new developments in a particular field, and create a positive attitude towards
experimentation, employees may be encouraged to raise relevant questions and issues
in such seminars.
 Set up an implementing and monitoring task group for the new projects/experiments.
 The task group will have responsibility of educating the members of the, organization
with the purpose and progress of an experiment. This mechanism may indicate the
seriousness of the organization in starting -an experiment or a project.
 Set up a task group to examine common elements between old practices and the
innovation, findings of such a task group may help the employees perceive, the
innovation as a useful evolutionary step, rather than supplanting all the old practices.
Hold periodical reviews of experiences and share experiences.

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  It serves the same purpose of sharing the experiences widely, at all, stages of
introduction of change.
Modify the plan of implementation, if needed. In a large and complex organization adoption
of an innovation may require some modification in the innovation to the organization. For
example, an organization may decide to implement the innovation first in one department,
review the results, and then introduce it in other departments. Another organization may like
to introduce it in one region, and modify it slightly for another region. A third organization
may want to introduce some parts of a new system first, and after these get internalized, may
move to introduce the other parts. Sharing the rationale, modus operandi, and experiences of
such modifications may create a climate experimentation rather than of conformity to one
accepted way of doing things.
Organizational Learning requires mutual support, mutual respect, learning from one another,
collaborative work, and effective teams to solve problems. Without team work OL can not be
effective. In the concept of OL is team-based learning by a group of persons to deal with
problems, and their capacity as a group to sustain it for future use. Several mechanisms
involve promotion of team work and mutuality. We shall mention below some of these .
Those already discussed will only be mentioned without comments.
c) Identify the skills needed by administrators and managers, How will you apply them as an
educational manager or administrator? Give suitable examples.
Ans.: The field of education has seen rapid and exponential growth over the years. It has
made administration and management of academic sector a complex task. The ICT and its
various tools have tried to make changes in the administrative system to enhance its
efficiency and efficacy. In this section, you will study about how ICT has changed
administration and management processes in the educational system and how educational
institutions are adopting e-governance and automated school management programmes. This
needs capacity building of the stakeholders for its implementation.
Educational management involves a lot of activities like admission, record keeping, resource
management, etc. ICT plays a vital role in supporting all these activities in an efficient
manner. It can be used right from student administration to various resource administration in
an education institution.

School management essentially involves interactions, communication between all the

stakeholders like school management board ,teachers, parents, staff, alumni, community
members and others. School management is comprehensive term including school
admissions, subject selection, course selection, class and teacher allotment, maintaining
records, communicating with parents, preparing various certificates, analyzing various
data,etc. School management involves all stakeholders in decision-making process. School
manager is entrusted with responsibility of planning policies and their implementation and
creating learning environment for students and nurturing their talents.
Thus school management involves many processes like planning, budgeting, accounting,
school related processes like timetable, fee collection, staff management, resource

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management, communication with parents and community. Besides all theses, the school
manager should keep himself/herself abreast with the latest developments in the school
education, suggestions and guidelines of CBSE, NCERT and the Government of India. All
this Herculean tasks need lot of time and energy. Thus to keep pace with time, a school
management software would be of immense help for both administrative and managerial
purposes. This is in sync with the Digital India movement as well in which digitization of
processes is being encouraged to increase efficiency and transparency. A host of software
options are available both in ‘proprietary’ and ‘paid category’ as well as free and open source
categories.
One of the tasks that schools face is allocation of duties to the academic and non—academic
staff on periodic basis. Thus, scheduling of duties and roles to all teachers and staff members
is crucial to efficient school management. ICT helps in creating a schedules that maximize
instructional time, provide time to meet the needs of the school students, provide time for
staff to meet, plan, organize various curricular and co-curricular activities of the school. Use
of scheduling tools ensures that the school resources are optimally utilized and schools
function efficiently
The scheduling and allocation of duties to teachers and staff needs annual and semester-wise
scheduling. Thus, there is need to plan and schedule for one academic year called as School
Calendar. This may be further specific as ‘Teaching time table’ and ‘Examination time table’.
The co- curricular or extracurricular activities and the meetings with parents through PTAs
may be allocated time.
The examination process has undergone a revolution with the advent of ICT making it more
effective and efficient. Use of ICT in evaluation involves the use of digital devices to assist in
the construction, delivery, storage or reporting of student assessment tasks, responses, grades
or feedback. ICT is used to create tests, record, provide immediate feedback, give grades,
analyze them students’ responses with reference to the quality and relevance of student’s
response besides helping teacher with learners analytics. Nowadays, ICT based assessment
can be used to test a wide range of abilities and skills in students. Still there are a few skill-
sets, especially in the affective domain, which might not be suitable for assessment through
ICT. But this list is fast diminishing as more innovative uses are coming in. The use of
Virtual Labs has helped students learn and their performance can also be assessed in virtual
labs.