ACCOUNTABILITY

Who are heads accountable to and how?

Education is a service provided to meet specific national goals. Notwithstanding the inadequacy of resources in schools, the government spends a large proportion of its annual budget running this service. In addition to government resources, other sources contribute to the system’s needs e.g. NGO funding, staffing and training and international development agencies such as CIDA in Canada or the UK DFID.

Heads are accountable to:-

the government
the local community
the Regional Education Department or Board of Governors
parents
pupils
themselves

In subsequent paragraphs, we will look at the various groups that may have a direct interest in your school, to whom you may be accountable. These groups have a bearing on the skills and knowledge you may need to acquire in order to improve your effectiveness as a school head.

In Guyana, the provision of education is the collective responsibility of a variety of agencies and institutions. While government, to a large extent, bears the bulk of education costs through payment of salaries, grants and subsidies, local communities in Guyana through the Town Councils or Regional Democratic Councils are generally responsible for infrastructural costs.

The government
Schools are accountable to the government for their effectiveness through the Ministry of Education. Module 6, Monitoring School Effectiveness, describes how this is done through the various sections of the Ministry.

You, as head, have to account for:

¨ the professional competence of your staff
¨ the management of the curriculum
¨ the management and use of all resources
¨ the quality of graduates from your school.

You need to be clear about ministry expectations and the reporting structures to be followed.

Regional Education Department
The provision of physical structures may be the responsibility of the region, or it may be some other authority in the case of Private or Board Schools, such as a church group or private trust. In this respect you, as head, will find yourself accountable to this authority for, among other things:

¨ the maintenance of the school plant
¨ the management of resources
¨ development or maintaining a school ethos consistent with the mission of the responsible authority.

However, effectively, it is government money which mainly funds this through the RDCs. You need to clarify with your authority the ‘accounting’ procedures to be followed. You will be required to submit reports or returns at regular intervals or carry out an audit of some kind.

The local community
While you are accountable formally to and have a contract with the two groups first discussed, the local community is a very powerful group to which you are also accountable even though you may have no formal contact with it. The local community usually contributes a great deal in cash and kind to the development of the school and you draw your clients from it. The school, in this sense, is part of the community. You as head are, there fore, accountable to it for:

¨ bringing skills, knowledge and attitudes that are relevant to its needs
¨ bringing about desired change while maintaining the desirable values and norms.
¨ rendering some form of ‘community service’.

You will need to establish formal and informal links with the community so that you become aware of and anticipate its needs. You have probably noted that the majority of schools serve rural communities and these communities are fairly solid and homogeneous with clear authority structures. The influence of theses authority structures extends into the school. You will benefit from acknowledging the local community leadership and communicating regularly with it. You may have noticed that all that is necessary is to seek their permission. Overlooking local leadership could lead to tension which can hinder school development.

The parents
The parents of your pupils are a special group of the local community to whom you are particularly accountable. Because of the simplicity of most of the rural folks who form the bulk of the parents, school heads do not always regard this group with the seriousness it deserves. You need to appreciate that you are accountable to individual parents for achievements of their children and in ensuring that they get value for money in terms of learning gains for their children. Education is free in government schools but the parents pay for it through their taxes and various contributions to the state.

The Pupils
Your school and you, as head, would not exist if there were no pupils. Pupils are all too often taken for granted and heads do not always see themselves as being accountable to them. You owe it to your pupils to ensure that:

¨ the school is a “learning” community
¨ a healthy ethos and discipline prevail in your school
¨ opportunities for guidance and counseling are afforded to every child
¨ pupils are kept informed of what is expected of them and what is happening in the school.

It is not often that pupils will demand that you account to them for these and other issues but, if you are consistently insensitive to their expectations, you could be sitting on a time bomb, which could find expression in indiscipline and destruction of property.

We hope that you now appreciate the complexity of your job as a head if only from the point of view of having to handle a wide range of interest groups and accounting to these groups for the effectiveness of your school.