Die koste van administrasie by skole : 'n gevallestudie

Abstract

Education is necessary f or every child to ·enable him to attain intellectual maturity. Education is essential for the survival of every nation and will, especially in the future, have to fulfill a more important roll in order to enable the child t o immunize himself intellectually against weak influences. The educationist fulfills an important place in society and a big responsibility is placed upon t he shoulders of teachers who must teach and lead these children on to intellectual maturity. The society fails to appreciate the important roll which teachers play because persons not in the teaching profession; being misled by the relatively short school day of school children, believe that teachers also work short hours. Teachers, on the contrary, work very long hours and they are sometimes forced to neglect their professional duties in favour of administrative duties, and this naturally, during school-time. Although education is the most important duty of the teachers, it is disquieting to find that so many administrative duties confront teachers. Teachers are now no longer judged according to results achieved because more attention is now being paid by pricipals and inspectors to the neatness of his preparatory book, mark sheets, reports and his participation in post school activities. Because the teacher has so many functions to attend to, he performs as many non-professional duties as possible during school time to the detriment of education. When comparing the three duties of the teachers, we find that sen~or and ordinary assistants work the longest hours owing to the fact that they have fewer "free" periods than principals and vice principals. Principals and vice-principals perform most of their administrative work during these "free" periods. This, of course, is quite understandable, bearing in mind that principals and vice principals have many more post-school social obligations resulting from their status than senior assistant and ordinary assistant. It is still too early to say at this stage, but the assumption can be made that the new system of differentiated education will increase the administrative duties of teacher s. The success of this system is going

to depend on the teacher but the ordinary teacher should also have been considered, especially in the light of a bigger extent of duties that is. to confront the teacher. At the moment, teachers devote 42,78% to organisation and administrative duties and if a saving of this time could be effected , more time could be devoted to education providing the teachers still work the same amount of hours per week. A more important fact is that, apart from the ordinary administrative personnel at schools, teachers still have to perform administrative work. Can the reason for discontentment among teachers not be the administrative duties they have to perform? Seen exclusively from the point of remuneration i .e. salaries, too much is spent on administrative and organisation at schools and1 too little on the actual function of education. It is highly improbable that the administrative duties of teachers is going to be alleviated, either under the present system or the new differentiated system education. If positive action is to be taken on the part of the state to lighten this unhealthy condition of administrative duties, it must be in the form of availability of funds for the training of teacher assistants. If a teacher assistant, who can lighten the administrative duties of the teacher, be allocated to each teacher or a group teachers, more time then be devoted to education. As a result of the research, the following derivations can be made: i) The functions or duties of teachers can be divided or assorted into three groups, namely professional, organisatory and administrative duties, and post-school activities. ii) The teacher's work consists of basically 15 activities. iii) Too much of the teacher's salary consists of compensation for the performance of administrative duties . iv) Teacher assistantance a possible solution for the all evaluation of the administrative duties of teachers. v) Automative training should be applied more intensively in order to attain more effectively the professional function of education.