UNIT C2: MANAGEMENT

YOU WILL BE A MANAGER

As a teacher you will be a manager. You have to manage your students, the resources of the subject or department and keep proper records. If you are a Head of Department you have to manage other members of staff, hold meetings, write minutes, and perhaps deal with finance for materials needed.

If you later become a Principal or Deputy you will need many other management skills.

This unit will help you to learn some of these management skills.

ACTIVITY C2.1: KEEPING STUDENT RECORDS AND MAKING REPORTS

Read the following and then do the activity below.

As soon as you start teaching any class, you should write a list of their names in a book with columns to record any marks or grades you give them. You may also put in any special comments about the students: their good points as well as problems. This will help to build up a student profile as explained in Activity C2.2

You may be asked to write a report on each student at the end of the year and this is easier to do if you have proper records.

Reports should say something meaningful and if possible encouraging e.g. “Made a very good table”, “Worked hard in piggery”, rather than one word comments such as “Good” or “Poor”.

The Centre must keep a file on each student with all records so that they can write references for students after they leave.

Based on your observations during the year, write short reports on each member of your class.

ACTIVITY C2.2: STUDENT PROFILE AND RECORD CARD

Read summary sheet C2, Keeping student records and Student profiles

Using the ideas given, design a form which could be used for recording a student profile and student record card.

Use it to compile a profile of any three students you have taught in St. Dominic’s.

ACTIVITY C2.3: RECORDING AND CARE OF TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT

Read the following and then do the activity below.

Recently one RTC was trying to teach carpentry without a single tool. The previous teacher had taken all the tools at the end of the year. Another RTC had only one hoe left out of 40. The rest had been ‘borrowed’ by staff and not returned.

Loss of tools and equipment is one of the greatest problems of RTCs and of schools. This is partly caused by the Solomon Islands custom of not accusing people publicly or even privately if they borrow something and do not return it, in case it causes ‘shame’. So no action was taken against the teacher who took those tools and no one insisted that the staff must return the hoes. It was the students who suffered.

An RTC is not a village. We cannot follow all Solomon Islands customs in running an RTC. Students and staff must learn to follow different rules while living at an RTC. We must have a strict system for recording and lending equipment to students and staff.

Each Department or teacher in charge of equipment must keep

1. An inventory: This records all tools, equipment and books belonging to the department or subject. It should show the type or number and have columns to check the inventory at the end of each term or year. At these times everything must be counted, a new total entered, and losses recorded with reasons e.g. lost, damaged, worn out.

2. A Record of Tools Borrowed book in which all items lent, even for an hour, are recorded with name of the person borrowing it, the date and the date returned. Each loan should be for an agreed time. Although it is not a Solomon Islands custom to ask someone to return something borrowed, we have a responsibility to our students to change our customs and always ask for things to be returned when they are due back.

Even equipment and tools used by students during a session must be counted as they are given out, the number recorded in the Record of Tools Borrowed book or on the blackboard, and then counted back before the students leave the room.

In the end, the Principal should have responsibility for the Centre’s tools and equipment. Whenever any teacher leaves the Centre, therefore, they must hand over the tools and equipment they are responsible for with the stock book and loans book. The Principal must then physically check the stock before the teacher leaves and then hand over all the items to the new teacher who comes. Unless we do these things, we will continue to have RTCs wasting their time by ‘teaching’ practical skills with no equipment!

Design a format for

a. a Record of Tools Borrowed book;

b. an Inventory book.

Each page should be divided into columns. Decide how many columns there should be, and what should be the heading for each column.

RUNNING A DEPARTMENT

Some duties of a Head of Department include:

Making sure you have enough staff and asking for recruitment if not;

Looking after tools, equipment and books as described above;

Ordering or requesting new tools and equipment;

Making sure you have course programmes;

Making sure that teachers keep student records;

Holding regular meetings of the members of your department (even if there are only two of you!) and recording the results of these meetings.

ACTIVITY C2.4: HOLDING MEETINGS

Read the ideas below about chairing meetings and writing minutes, and then do the following activity.

Organise a ‘staff meeting’ amongst your class.

Appoint a 'Principal' to chair the meeting and a secretary to take minutes. Make an agenda of items of concern to the class or the running of the College.

Hold the meeting and take the minutes using the guidelines below.

Afterwards discuss the meeting. Was it a useful and successful one? How could it have been improved?

CHAIRING MEETINGS

The following applies to all meetings, including staff meetings and department meetings. Although the smaller the meeting the more informal it can be.

Draw up an agenda in advance. Ask all members to add items if they wish.

Sit in a circle so it is a discussion not a lecture.

Make sure there is a secretary to record the minutes.

Open with a short review of previous minutes, although this need not be a formal reading of minutes, approval and matters arising. It is quicker to just ask if there are any points which need to be raised again or reports on activities done. Some meetings spend so long on the previous minutes there is no time for the present meeting.

Try to allow time for all people to have their say, but do not let discussion drag on for too long. As chair you must end the discussion either by suggesting something all can agree on (a consensus) or by taking a vote. Make sure some definite decision is made.

Try to encourage staff to look for ways they can agree and try to understand the other people’s point of view. Consensus means agreeing to do something because most people agree, even if you do not. Parliamentary ideas of government and opposition and opposing for the sake of it are certainly not productive in an RTC.

It may be good to put a time limit on the meeting and postpone unfinished business to the next one. This often speeds things up.

Try to make sure the whole meeting is not announcements from the Chair, but you should provide leadership and be the one to take the lead as much as possible with new ideas.

WRITING MINUTES

Minutes should be brief and only need to record the topic and decisions made, not the discussion which led up to them, unless some of that is important.

They can be written in note form, not full sentences. No one wants to read too much.

Put a column on the right for action. In this column, put the action agreed on and the person or people who should do it. At the beginning of the next meeting ask each of these to report back on what they have done.

Make sure actions are done. There is nothing worse than deciding things which are never carried out.

Minutes must be given out within 2 or 3 days of the meeting to remind people what action they agreed to take.

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SOME DUTIES OF ADMINISTRATORS: PRINCIPALS AND DEPUTIES

FILING

In an RTC or even a department it is good to file letters and papers systematically so you can find them easily.

A good system works like this:

Files:

1. Administration

1.1 Letters
1.2 Student records
1.3 Syllabus

2. Finance

1.1 Grants
1.2 Fees
1.3 Expenses

3.Staffing

3.1 Current staff
3.2 Recruitment

The first number is the general category. The second is a more detailed category within the general one. Thus all the files on one topic are kept together and can be added to easily.

The file number should then be used on all letters and documents.

FINANCE

A Principal needs to be an amateur accountant, but hardly any are trained in this.

The main points to remember are:

Record all income in one place under different headings e.g. grants, fees.

Record all expenditure separately under headings e.g. food, equipment.

Regularly subtract expenditure from income to find out how much you should have left and check this against cash and bank account.

At the beginning of the year draw up a budget showing estimated income and expenses under each heading and how much you expect to spend each month on regular items.

Keep checking actual expenditure against the forecast and cut expenses if you are spending too fast. Many RTCs are forced to close early because they do not do this.

RECORDS

In your filing system you should have

A file for each staff member.
A file for each subject or department.
A file for each student.
A copy of the syllabus for each course taught.
Financial records.
Records of staff meetings.
Official letters from outside bodies.
Details of controlling authority and correspondence with them

ACTIVITY C2.5: MAKING A TIMETABLE

Any teacher may be asked to draw up a timetable for the RTC. This is quite an easy job if you know how to do it, but very difficult if you don’t.

Read the information below and the instructions about drawing up a timetable, then compile a timetable for the imaginary RTC, Moana Rural Training Centre. You must start by deciding the times of the teaching periods and other activities each day and drawing an outline timetable with this on. Your tutor will help you with this. Use the card method suggested below to compile the timetable.

MOANA RURAL TRAINING CENTRE: TIMETABLE DETAILS

5 x 1 hour periods per day = 25 periods per week.

Subject	Periods per week	Name of teacher
Agriculture	5	James Sulimae
Home economics	10	Patricia Rarumana
Carpentry	10	Chris Ronge
Secretarial studies	10	Nancy Nuku
Building	10	Fred Batu
Mechanics	10	Peter Tia
English	3	Janet Garo
Maths	3	Isaiah Pitu
Christian Education	2	Fr. John Bulima
Health	2	Freda Sanga

There are 4 classes:

Class 1G: girls

Class 1B: boys

Class 2G: girls

Class 2B: boys

Home Economics and Secretarial Studies are taken only by the girls class and Carpentry, Building and Mechanics are taken only by the boys class, so these subjects can be timetabled in the same periods. All students take Agriculture, English, Maths, Christian Education and Health so these classes must be timetabled separately. As far as possible all the practical subjects should have double periods.

MAKING A TIMETABLE

To make a timetable you must consider:

Number of periods per day and timing of these.

Number of periods per week / per subject / per class.

Who teaches each class?

Possibly rooms to be used.

Special considerations such as double periods.

An easy way is to cut out small pieces of card in different colours. Each colour represents a subject, e.g. green for Home Economics.

Write the name of the teacher who teaches that subject on one card for each lesson they teach with each class e.g Patricia Rarumana teaches Home Economics 10 periods a week for each class, so write her name on 20 green cards.

Draw a grid to show the days and periods for one week on the left and columns on the right for each class.

Use drawing pins to pin the cards into the spaces.

Start with one teacher and class e.g. since Patricia Rarumana is teaching Class 1G 10 periods per week, you place her 10 cards in any 10 spaces for that class, trying to space them out over the week. Remember these should be two double periods. Then take her other 10 cards for 2G and place them in any spaces.

Gradually take other teachers and subjects and fill up the timetable.

Towards the end you may have to make changes. Maybe the only way to fit in Freda Sanga teaching Health to 2G is to move one of the periods we have already put for Patricia Rarumana. But, by using cards, it is easy to make changes without any rubbing out or other mess. Just un-pin the card and move it to another place.

The card timetable can be kept in the staff room (away from the wind!) so changes can be made easily at any time.

TYPES OF TIMETABLE

RTC timetables are usually different from school timetables of 35 periods per week. Students need long periods to practice skills and most RTCs like to link the skills with the work and income generation activities of the Centre. Most RTCs have a few classroom lesson times – perhaps 2 or 3 per day and longer periods of 2 hours or more for practical work. Usually a large part of the day is set aside for work on the Centre farm or other projects, which is seen as part of the learning process.

Two examples are:

1. At St. Stephen’s Vocational School, Pamua, the practical subjects are taught for 1 or 2 days a week, when students do only that subject from 8 a.m. to about 1 p.m. The teacher decides how much of that time will be classroom learning and how much practical. Other days, students do other subjects for a full morning and there are also teaching periods for English, Maths, and other background subjects. Each afternoon is set aside for work sessions on the farm or elsewhere.

2. St. Dominic’s, as you have seen, has a system of teaching practical subjects in ‘cycles’ of 2 1/2 weeks when one group learns that subject only, while other groups learn other subjects. After this they swap around and learn a different subject and come back to another cycle of the first subject later in the term. Each day has four 45-minute classroom times and the rest of the teaching time is for practicals. The first two hours of each morning are spent working on the farm, plus one whole day a month. Occasionally whole weeks are given to short courses from outside teachers, such as Business or Health or special skills like bee-keeping.

All RTCs spend most of the time on practical skills but many also teach some background subjects, such as English, Maths, Business Studies, Health or Social Studies.

Official letters should be brief and to the point. You do not need long introductions and greetings as you might in a personal letter. Officials and business people are busy people and do not want to read long letters. The following is an example of the usual layout. Use this to write one of the letters suggested below.

ACTIVITY C2.6: WRITING OFFICIAL LETTERS

You are the Principal of Moana RTC, Vanugu Island, Rongo Province.

Write a letter on one of the following topics.

To Bernard Rapasia, Chief Education Officer (non-formal education), Ministry of Education, P.O.Box G28, Honiara reminding them that you have not yet received the grant you were promised on 30^th July. You were at school with Bernard Rapasia many years ago.

To the New Zealand High Commissioner asking if they could give financial help in buying tools for Home Economics.

To George Wu, ordering rations for the school.

To a parent, Samuel Sanga, who is also your wife’s cousin, in reply to his letter of 14^th August complaining that his son was sent away from the Centre for not attending work sessions.

ACTIVITY C2.7: WIRELESS OR TWO-WAY RADIO

Most RTCs communicate by two-way radio, often called wireless. You should get used to using this. Remember:

People at the other end can only hear you if you press the button on the microphone. At that time you cannot hear the other people.

Say “over” just before you release the button so the person at the other end knows that you are finished speaking and that they may answer.

Try to wait for a pause in traffic before calling a station, otherwise everyone is trying to talk at once.

Your tutor will arrange with St. Dominic’s for some of you to practice on the radio while others listen.

ACTIVITY C2.8: DISCIPLINE AND PERSONAL PROBLEMS

In your groups imagine you are on the staff of an RTC. Hold meetings to discuss how you might deal with the following. You might like to ask one member of the group to act as the person in trouble in each case, so you can interview them. Let them decide what story to make up about what happened. This is known as role-play and is another technique we can use in teaching. Add any other examples of problems you think are common in RTCs.

A male student has been found sleeping in the girls’ dormitory.

A member of staff consistently fails to turn up to teach their lessons.

A sum of money has been found missing from the canteen, which is run by a different student on duty each day. The student on duty that day denies seeing the money.

Ten students and two staff have been found smoking marijuana on one of the group farms.

A student got drunk during a dance at the weekend and threatened other students with a knife.

After your discussions try to draw up “Guidelines for dealing with disciplinary cases in RTCs”.

Discuss these with your tutors and the Principal and Deputy Principal of St. Dominic’s.

ACTIVITY C2.9: RELATIONSHIP WITH OUTSIDE BODIES

A number of outside bodies will have relationships with your Centre:

A Controlling Authority, such as a Church, local community or Provincial Government.

The Chief Education Officer or Education Officer for non-formal or community education in the Province.

The Director of Non-formal education in the Ministry of Education.

Solomon Islands Association of Rural Training Centres (SIARTC).

Your tutor will arrange for the Principal of St. Dominic’s to talk to you about each of these relationships.

STAFFING

Staff for RTCs will usually be recruited through the Controlling Authority. Try to ensure that all posts are fully advertised and chosen on the basis of merit not the ‘wantok’ system. This can spoil staff relationships in an RTC very quickly. Tell the Controlling Authority exactly the kind of person you need: what qualifications and experience.

FINANCIAL HELP

You may decide to look for financial help from your RTC from High Commissions, Embassies or overseas aid organisations.

The best procedure is to write an enquiry letter first. Give brief details of the RTC and the particular reason you need help. This should be for a specific project, not just general assistance. Enquire if the organisation might consider giving help and state that you will submit a formal proposal if their reply is favourable.

If the reply is favourable submit a project proposal. This may have to go through your Controlling Authority. This should normally include the following information:

Background to RTC: situation; number of students and staff, male and female; Controlling Authority; sources of present finance etc.

Details of the project for which the finance is needed.

How the project will be carried out and who will be responsible for doing this.

A timetable for carrying it out.

Details of finance needed. Some places will ask for pro-forma invoices i.e. invoices from suppliers of materials to show how much the material will cost.

How much finance or other assistance the RTC will provide. Almost all organisations look more favourably on a project in which the RTC will make a substantial contribution in the form of money, fund raising, materials or skilled labour from students, staff and others. The total value of your contribution should normally be at least 30% of the cost. However this does not have to be money. Many organisations will tell you at what rate to value your labour, materials such as timber or gravel or other non-financial contributions e.g. so much per day per worker. If not, make an estimate of this yourself and include it in the proposal.

Benefits you expect from the project for the students, the RTC and the communities from which the students come.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT

It is always important to try to improve the skills and quality of your staff.

This can be done by seeking outside courses of training or by internal staff development. This can involve:

Asking more experienced teachers to observe sessions of less experienced teachers and help them to improve.

Holding ‘seminars’ in which teachers discuss particular ways in which they might improve their teaching e.g. questioning skills or methods of assessment.

After this course you may find you can help other teachers with some of the ideas you have learnt on the course.

ACTIVITY C2.10: FOLLOW-UP OF STUDENTS

In your groups, discuss and make a list of the problems likely to be encountered by students trying to use their skills and knowledge in their home communities.

Suggest ways these might be overcome.

The following ideas may help you with this discussion:

The only way to find out if the aims and objectives of your RTC are being carried out effectively is to follow-up your students after they leave. Since our main aim is to teach skills and knowledge useful when students leave it is essential to find out whether students are making use of what they learn.

This should not be difficult in RTCs drawing students from a limited area, but is difficult where students come from all over the country. In this case existing students might be used to trace and follow-up past students during holiday times.

Two problems students faced when they leave are not having money to buy tools and equipment to carry out the skills they have learnt, and not having the support of the older people in the community.

Some RTCs try to solve these problems by:

Having a savings scheme from projects carried out by groups during the course. This money is then used for buying tools for students when they leave.

Calling the ‘olos’, or older people from the students’ communities to the Centre at the end of the course. They discuss with the students and staff how they can help the students when they return to their community.

ACTIVITY C2.11: VISION FOR THE FUTURE

All RTCs should have a plan and vision for the future. Discuss the following ideas in your groups and then write a Development Plan for your local RTC.

Development plans

A development plan should include:

The aims of the RTC and how these can be carried out better.

Response to and fulfilment of the needs of the community.

Possible expansion to increase the number of students.

Possible new courses or new ways of running courses (e.g. ‘evening’ classes, short courses) to better serve the needs of the communities.

Physical changes in the Centre: new buildings and equipment aimed for.

Improvement in training of staff.

Links with local communities

In all your planning and in running the RTC you must keep in mind that RTCs exist to serve the needs of the local communities of the wider community of Solomon Islands. It is important, therefore, that the RTC establishes and keeps firm links with the local community. This is true even if the RTC serves wider needs.

Here are some possible ways of providing those links:

Making sure there is good representation of all the local communities, and all the groups within each, on the governing body of the RTC.

Staff going to talk to the communities about the work of the RTC.

Direct recruitment of students by going out into the communities.

Asking communities what courses we should be running and making sure we are responsive to the needs and wishes of the local communities.

Student groups carrying out projects useful to the local communities as a means of using their skills, either free or for a small payment.

Using skilled members of the local communities to teach part-time in the RTC e.g. canoe building, weaving, cooking techniques, traditional medicine, traditional music and dance, custom stories and local history.

Holding open days to display the work of the Centre and inviting the local community to functions at the Centre e.g. entertainment, cultural shows, graduation ceremonies.

Can you think of other ways of relating to the local community?

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