School Management:

DESCRIPTION:

School management means running the school along the desired educational policies. It
takes into account all aspects of the school (policies, material and human resources,
programmes, activities, equipment etc.) and integrates them into a fruitful whole.

CHARACTERISTICS:

1. Quality of Education: Good school management is concerned with the quality of

education being given in schools.
2. Headmaster: He is a democratic leader of the school.
3. The best use of resources: In order to promote efficient functioning of the school.
It makes the best possible use of the material resources.
4. Joint Enterprise: It involves the joint enterprise all the personnel connected with
the school – Teacher, supervisors, pupils, parents etc.
5. Professional growth: It brings out the best in the teacher and supervisors and
takes steps to promote their professional growth.
6. Efficiency and Improvement: It tries to bring out over all improvement and
efficiency in the school.
7. Continuous process: It is a continuous process. It always concerned with
improvement and development of the institution.
8. Input–Output Model:  It works on the input-out model. It takes into account the
efforts made and the outcomes achieved.
9. Community oriented: It is alive to social needs and requirement as the school is
meant to serve the society.

Objectives/Aims:
The followings are the aims and objectives of school management,

1. To reflect and conserver basic values.

2. To carry out educational futures.
3. To manage social change.
4. To profit by experience.
5. To carry out modernization.
6. To propagate science.
7. To adopt technology.
8. To realize National Integration.
9. To form character and values.

Improving the School System/The Educational System:

1. Less academia and more learning

The last century has been focused, if not obsessed, around the idea of accreditation.
Back in the day, having a degree used to mean the difference between getting a regular
job and a great one. It was a symbol of status and credibility. Nowadays it's a basic
requirement. Most entry-level jobs will not hire a prospect without a degree of some
sort, even though according to a study by the Society of Human Resource Management
only 34% of employers will do a background check of said degree. This, however, is
starting to change. In the age of global interconnectivity, automation, and agile
development, the needs and requirements of the current job market are by far outpacing
the relevancy of the education colleges are capable of delivering. At the end of the day,
it's the market that decides what the relevant skills are, making some degrees (Computer
Science, for example) virtually outdated in the span of 4 to 10 years. This is a huge
change of what made a college degree have any value in the first place and is prompting
tech giants like IBM, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon, to name a few, to
welcome applicants without a degree; some even creating their own universities.

The fact of the matter is that a degree is no longer a reliable quantifiable measure of a
person's capacity to work as many of these graduates will have outdated skills with
little-to-no experience in soft skills such as learning on their own and updating their
personal value to modern needs. This is because learning as we know it is more about
cramming as much information as possible to a single individual in as little time as
possible. True education is about having the ability to connect dots not the knowledge
of what the dots themselves are. This allows individuals to evolve, understand, create,
and adapt to whatever they are required to do. It's a basic skill that should be taught at
an early age but sadly it is not. Its easier for institutions to follow along with the
guidelines of the latest pre-approved textbook and prompt kids to memorize hard facts
which they could have Google searched at any time. The future of education should
teach more skills like work ethic, creativity, teamwork, critical thinking, complex
problem solving, and emotional intelligence let alone practical skills like personal
finance savvy or interpersonal intelligence.

2. Education should be a learner-driven:

"Is this going to be on the test?" is a question all high school teachers hear regularly and
a really sad one at that. The question itself acts as a filter for students to find out if their
new learned topic should be temporarily memorized or downright forgotten. Schools
have become so grade and exam-oriented that both students and teachers forget what
they're doing in school in the first place. Standardized testing, a one-size-fits-all grading
system, and a lecture-driven education are further reinforcing those aforementioned
outdated industrialist values of producing drone workers instead of capable individuals.
We are so conditioned to sit straight, quiet down, look up, and follow instructions that
by the time we become adults we have been stripped of our curiosity, individuality,
creativity, and interactivity that makes us unique and capable.

Though lecturing is a fast way of teaching a topic quickly, the fact is humans (along
with every other mammal) are not programmed to learn in a single session to session
information exposition. Quite the contrary, humans are programmed to learn through
play. The reason play itself exists in animals is to create an incentive of trial-and-error
experiments with your surroundings. A bird doesn't learn to fly by memorizing the
properties of aerodynamics and a lion doesn't learn to hunt by taking the written
standardized hunter exam. They do so through supervised experimentation during play
sessions. We learn our best when we are in a safe, nonjudgemental space where failure
is not only allowed but encouraged. We need to stop reprimanding mistakes and start
embracing them. Standardized testing makes capable kids feel incapable and grading
makes students act competitively instead of cooperatively.
Instead, schools should have learner-driven models where each student can learn at their
own time and at their own pace. Not every person learns at the same speed and in the
same way and there is no reason they should. Software and tools like online courses
have made a personalized education not only possible but accessible. Not only that,
every person excels at different skills and topics and that should not be chastised but
embraced. Instead of teaching the same portfolio of hard facts to children, how about we
teach accountability, responsibility, problem-solving, and the most important of all,
learning how to learn and find your own answers instead of relying on an all-knowing
textbook. Programs like Acton Academy are using readily available tools like Khan
Academy to let children learn at their own pace and they are monitoring results through
what is essentially a contract between the teacher and the students. This approach has
achieved amazing results as it doesn't only teach responsibility and liability to children,
but it also creates an environment where time-management and organizational skills are
put into practice from an early age.

3. Students and teachers are people and should be treated as such:

There is something disturbing about the image of teachers yelling or undermining

students. We can generally agree with the old methods of authoritarian aggression from
teachers to students feels outdated and inefficient, to say the least, but how about the
concept of a teacher dictating the class? From the simple acts of sitting kids in straight
rows facing forward, without being able to interact with one another, following rules
without question, and even requiring permission to relieve bodily functions are all
remnants of this old-fashion industrialist behavior. We take for granted that children are
not capable of responsibility and self-management without authoritative supervision.
The opposite is also true, however. When children are given complete control over the
teacher via sensibilities and overreacting parents, then they obtain a tool that allows
them to manipulate a system and limits what teachers can do. Well, if neither teachers
or students should have control of the class, who should? A more compelling question
would be: should we take agency and autonomy away from children?
To answer this question, many new education models are taking this seemingly inherent
truth and giving it a new perspective. Schools that base their roots around Montessori
and Learner-driven education have gone as far as to remove the titles of ' teacher' and
'student', replacing them with terms such as 'guide' and 'voyager' or 'eagle'.  The entire
premise of the experiment is to place both "teachers" and "students" on the same
playing field. This is done in the form of contracts that are negotiated and agreed upon
by both parties. These agreements generally consist of a trade. Children agree on how
they will behave or perform and guides agree on how much freedom or privileges the
kid may have in return. This might include privileges such as using your phone in class,
sitting wherever you like, or even the ability to take days off. The results of these
models have had made it clear that when you give independence and liability to
children, they will comply with flying colors. And it's not just between students and
teachers, but also student-to-student, student-to-headmaster, teacher-to-headmaster and
so on. Basically, the idea is to acknowledge every present individual as an equal human
being and respecting boundaries and promises.

4. Education should be decentralized:

We've accepted the idea that we should limit our studies to the teachings available on
one institution, and that we must choose the best. This idea, nevertheless, is being
challenged by many experimental schools and programs that aim to give a more
accessible and less institutionalized education to everyone involved. Online courses and
automated platforms are a small showcase on how education can come from virtually
anywhere. Imagine if there were certified courses from a global education institution
that gave children access to take a law class from Harvard, a programming class from
MIT, and even a wine course from Oxford, and that is just talking about big-name
colleges. Look at how Master Class is taking top talent such as Howard Schultz and
making a $60 course. Taking the same course 20 years ago would have cost thousands.
The idea is simple, education and institutions could and should borrow instruction
materials from each other.

5. School should be a likable experience:

What is it with schools making the experience feel like a grind instead of an adventure?
Why should students feel relieved on Fridays instead of excited on Mondays? The fact
is school is boring, mundane, stressful, and emotionally and mentally harmful. I
graduated from game design back in the day and one of the most useful skills I got out
of it was the ability to understand human behavior, and especially how to stimulate
certain reactions and emotions such as fear, curiosity, or fun, and it is not that hard to
turn school into a likable experience. You see, there are very few differences in
activities we might consider work versus that we may consider fun. If you take away
graphics, momentum, music, and all of the flashy bits, a game is simply a job we do for
fun. And what makes a game a game is three main rules:

1. A sense of purpose - every game will have you playing as a hero in an epic quest, a
member of a sports team, or with the simple purpose of arranging blocks in a straight
row. Most students are in school because they have to be there, without question. They
are simply another number undergoing the standard procedures of academia. What if
everyone was a hero? What if everyone found a calling, as simple as it may be, that
drives their journey?

2. A clear objective with a safe space for experimentation - What are the rules
of chess, poker, or video games like The Legend of Zelda? Generally, a well-designed
game will present you in a digestible fashion what you can and cannot do as well as
what you should try to do through experimentation. You must jump instead of fly in
many video games, you can only do one move per turn in chess, and you can only have
five players in the field in basketball. Schools oversimplify this by telling the students
what to do and what not to do. Nevertheless, they fail in experimentation. Again,
humans learn through curiosity and play. Experimenting is what makes us grow. Let
students bend the rules in exchange for performance. Enhance their creativity and let
them explore and try out new things.
3. Immediate and flashy feedback - Every time you jump off a cliff in the famous Super
Mario you get sent back to the beginning, and every time you miss a shot in soccer, you
risk the other team gaining the ball. Grades often give students negative feedback, but
how about positive feedback? How about accumulating points in a gamified manner to
obtain a reward or accomplish a title? And how about instead of making individuals
compare with each other having them work together for a common objective?

The conclusion is education should be fun, exciting, more about the learning and
preparation, and most importantly, schools should be effective in the formation of a
person. The bad news is education has not seen too much progress during the last
century. The good news is it's finally starting to change, and fast. The education
industry is ripe for disruption and it's only a matter of time until someone gets it so right
that every educational institution will have no choice but to adapt to the trend.