The Manager and his Environment

School Management

Schools need leaders who have a vision for improving quality and learning outcomes, and who are also effective
at ongoing management tasks.

School managers’ preparation and leadership:

 School managers can positively contribute to school effectiveness when they are prepared
and able to use extensive leadership knowledge to solve complex school-based problems,
and to build trust through working relationships with school staff, parents, students, and the
community.
 Managers can have different and overlapping management styles
including instructional, transformational, and distributed leadership, with each style having
an influence on student outcomes and how teachers respond to leadership.
 However, it is important that school managers lead in a way that is appropriate to the school
culture and context, that they be given opportunities for management support training, and
that their performance be appraised by school inspectors, municipalities, or other boards that
provide oversight on school management quality.
 School managers who model strong instructional leadership focus on planning, evaluation,
coordination, and improvement of teaching in order to achieve positive student learning
outcomes.
 School managers need to assess student and teacher performance and lead in a way that is
culturally and pedagogically responsive to student’ and teacher’ strengths and needs.

School improvement plans:

 Effective school managers design a school improvement process to guide their work.
 School improvement plans (also called school development plans) can provide such a
process because they are strategic and based on a scanning of the school environment and
the conditions that are faced. School improvement plans should prioritise goals and
objectives, identify strategic actions to achieve school goals, and include a set of methods for
monitoring, implementing, and evaluating the strategies.
 In particular, they may outline strategies for improving student performance in targeted
subject areas, recommend particular types of assessments for teachers to measure student
performance over time, and indicate when and for how long strategies should be
implemented.
 The development of school plans is a collaborative process between school professionals and
councils, parents, and other community stakeholders, and the results should be made
accessible (in hard copy or online) to the public as a form of accountability.

Teacher appraisal:
 Another function accomplished by school managers is regular teacher appraisal. A teacher
appraisal framework makes evaluation fair by clearly defining roles, responsibilities and
procedures, and includes multiple forms of measurement such as teacher portfolios, classroom
observations, and surveys and/or administrator and peer assessments
 School professionals should have a clear rationale for choosing assessment measures, and
should be cautious about using forms of teacher appraisal that can place too much value on
student’s standardized test scores.

Other management functions:

 Other aspects of schools require a clear management framework including maintaining school
libraries and storerooms, addressing school health and safety issues, and managing school-based
funding and accounting.
 The management of school funding has a particular relationship to learning outcomes, since
high performing schools tend to focus resources on the areas of greatest learning needs,
including individual attention for students to learn core subjects and extra support to improve
teachers’ effectiveness.

School clusters:
 Rural or low-resourced schools may be grouped into school clusters in order to pull
resources together for the purpose of improving the quality of teaching and learning.
 The management of school cluster includes similar roles and responsibilities as in individual
schools, however, additional leadership through a committee or a more experienced lead
administrator will be needed at the cluster level to manage and oversee curriculum
delivery and evaluation across school sites.
 The decision to form a cluster should be based on an assessment of school needs and
shared goals across school sites for developing the cluster.
 Forming a cluster can include mapping activities to identify schools that are self-
sufficient and may not require inclusion, determining accessibility issues and the spatial
distribution of schools in the network to identify a centralized location for a teacher
resource center.
 Trained staff for managing teacher resource center activities including providing support,
training, and resources to teachers is also important for effective management of a school
cluster.

Roles, responsibilities and functions of a manager

1. Functions and Roles & Responsibilities of a Manager GUIDED BY~ PRESENTED BY~ PROF. SONAM MATHUR
ISHA JOSHI (MIB – I SEMESTER) PRESTIGE INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT & RESEARCH, INDORE
2. CONTENTS WHO IS A MANAGER? FUNCTIONS OF A MANAGER ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES OF A
MANAGER
3. WHO IS A MANAGER? A Manager is the person responsible for planning and directing the work of a
group of individuals, monitoring their work, and taking corrective action when necessary. A manager is a
person responsible for supervising and motivating employees and for directing the progress of an
organization.
4. FUNCTIONS OF A MANAGER
5. ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES OF A MANAGER INFORMATIONAL ROLE INTERPERSONAL ROLE DECISIONAL
ROLE
6. INTERPERSONAL ROLE OF A MANAGER The roles in this category involve providing information and ideas.
Figurehead - A manager has social, ceremonial and legal responsibilities. He is expected to be a source of
inspiration. People look up to him as a person with authority, and as a figurehead. Leader - This is where
manager provide leadership for his team, his department or perhaps his entire organization; and it's where
he (manager) manage the performance and responsibilities of everyone in the group. Liaison - Managers
must communicate with internal and external contacts. He needs to be able to network effectively on behalf
of his organization.
7. INFORMATIONAL ROLE OF A MANAGER The roles in this category involve processing information.
Monitor - In this role, manager regularly seek out information related to his organization and industry,
looking for relevant changes in the environment. He also monitors his team, in terms of both their
productivity, and their well-being. Disseminator - This is where manager communicate potentially useful
information to his colleagues and his team. Spokesperson - Manager represents and speaks for his
organization. In this role he is responsible for transmitting information about his organization and its goals to
the people outside it.
8. DECISIONAL ROLE OF A MANAGER The roles in this category involve using information. Entrepreneur - A
manager creates and control change within the organization. This means solving problems, generating new
ideas, and implementing them. Disturbance Handler - When an organization or team hits an unexpected
 roadblock, it's the manager who must take charge. He also needs to help mediate disputes within it.
Resource Allocator – A manager also needs to determine where organizational resources are best applied.
This involves allocating funding, as well as assigning staff and other organizational resources. Negotiator –
A manager may be needed to take part in, and direct, important negotiations his team, department, or
organization.

The external environment is composed of general and task environment layers. The general
environment is composed of the nonspecific elements of the organization's surroundings that might affect its
activities.

It consists of five dimensions: economic, technological, sociocultural, political-legal, and international.

The effects of these dimensions on the organization are broad and gradual. The task environment consists of
specific dimensions of the organization's surroundings that are very likely to influence the organization. It also
consists of five elements: competitors, customers, suppliers, regulators, and strategic partners. Because these
dimensions are associated with specific organizations in the environment, their effects are likely to be more
direct and immediate.

The internal environment consists of the organization's owners, board of directors, employees,
physical environment, and culture. Owners are those who have property rights claims on the organization. The
board of directors, elected by stockholders, is responsible for overseeing a firm's top managers. Individual
employees and the labor unions they sometimes join are other important parts of the internal environment. The
physical environment, yet another part of the internal environment, varies greatly across organizations.

Organizations and their environments affect each other in several ways. Environmental influences on the
organization can occur through uncertainty, competitive forces, and turbulence. Organizations, in turn, use
information management; strategic response; mergers, acquisitions, and alliances; organization design and
flexibility; direct influence; and social responsibility to adapt to their task environments.

One important indicator of how well an organization deals with its environment is its level of effectiveness.
Organizational effectiveness requires that the organization do a good job of procuring resources, managing
them properly, achieving its goals, and satisfying its constituencies. Because of the complexities associated with
meeting these requirements, however, experts may disagree as to the effectiveness of any given organization at
any given point in time.