DO TEACHERS NEED TO BE INVOLVED IN DECISION MAKING IN THE SCHOOL?

Post date: May 25, 2017 5:09:06 AM

by: Engr. Jhon Zen I. Capulong

With the emergence of the 21^st century in the whole world, school principals play critical roles in the development of high quality schools. The foundation of creating a community of leaders lies on developing relationship with the teachers. The principal should, in one way or another, accord importance and attention to faculty and staff. In order to do this, communication gap between teachers and principal must be successfully overcome. Consulting the teachers’ about how things should be done in the school is a step in opening the line of communication. The principal should exercise democracy when raising school issues and concerns-gesture that will have great impact on teachers, make their role more defined and allow their voices to be known and heard. Principals must take advantage of weekly meetings as a time for open discussions and not for show of domination and authority. Inevitably, this action will lead to free exchange of ideas, feelings, interactions as well as healthy arguments. Freedom of expression will develop the capability of teachers to decide and recognize important matters in the school, this will provide impetus for learning.

Principals are catalyst of change, as such he/she must be able to establish the building of relationships through proper interaction and shared-decision making. Teachers’ participation in shared decision-making is one of the recommendations of school-based management policy, as stipulated with the enactment on August 11, 2001 of Republic Act 9155(An Act Instituting a Framework of Governance for Basic Education and for other Purposes),the legal mandate for decentralization of governance in basic education-

School-Based management (SBM) is a response to decentralize school control and to promote teachers’ participation in decision making. Centralization was considered as an institutional reform in improving quality education. This centralization is said to be the process where the concentration of decision-making is in few hands. All the important decisions and actions at the lower level are subject to the approval of the top management.

Decentralization of decision-making power in education is popularly known as School-Based management (SBM). There are other definitions and names for this concept but they all refer to the decentralization of authority from the central government l level. SBM emphasizes the individual school ( as represented by any combination of principals, teachers, parents students and other members of the school community) as the primary unit for improving education and the redistribution of decision-making authority over school operations as the primary means by which this improvement can be studied The school- level actors however, have to conform to or operate within a set of centrally determined policies.