Capturing the mood of a school

This is an attempt to capture the mood of a school at the tail end of a long , arduous and energy sapping academic year. At this stage, fatigue would have taken its toll and also buoyed by a burning desire to go on a Christmas shopping spree, the school troops are looking forward to a well deserved respite.

Like a war weary army upon learning of a declaration of a ceasefire, everyone wants to scuttle out of the scene as soon as possible. Depending on the culture of a school, there are standard and distinct protocols associated with closure of business. The standard protocols are mere compliance issues that have universal applicability entailing a clearance exercise based on a check list of things required. Usually there are (if any) limited compliance challenges as many members of staff would want to satisfy the requirements in order to secure their release.

Doing routine but important stuff like filing reports, entering student scores and engaging parents on issues of student performance data, constitute part of the clearance and compliance exercise. Other routine activities include attending send offs for members of staff and students who will not be returning to school. Usually low achieving schools preoccupy themselves with compliance issues at the expense of deeper and game changing strategy matters. However, in a high performing school culture, closure of business is a much more demanding and rigorous exercise carried at a more strategic level. It is an exercise which can determine renewal or non renewal of contracts.

The manner in which a closure of business is handled can be a distinguishing factor between a low and high achieving school. Before digging deep into issues of strategy, it is important to dispense with common problems that schools usually face in the latter part of the year. From day one to the last day of business, management should be switched on to avoid facing the repercussions of the euphoria associated with closure of school business. Many schools experience a seamless closure of business while some schools could experience unfortunate disruptive developments.

If allowed to reign supreme, the euphoria associated with the closure of an academic year can get the better of students resulting in their brush with the law. The duty of school principals and their charges is to develop pre-emptive measures aimed at preventing chaos and anarchy. Switching eyes off the ball or put differently, a lapse of concentration may spoil what could have been a good and problem free academic year.

It is important to ensure that the discipline and protocols that gave a school shape and kept it going are maintained from the first minute to the last. There should be no room for complacency. At all times students are always looking for an opportunity to test the waters and to gauge the extent to which their teachers are keeping watch. A lot of things can go horribly wrong at the end.

Here are some of the signs of a school going adrift and losing its character and flavour at the very end. If allowed, the euphoria associated with closure of a school business can cause students to form adhoc gangster groups which pit strengths against each other. Some students may not resist the temptation to come to school without wearing proper school uniform and hair styles while others could be absent from school without the knowing of parents and without reasonable cause.

Therefore, it is important for schools to be proactive in terms of adopting a vigilant and security conscious posture intended to preserve law and order while minimising occurrence of disruptive behaviours. School leaders should never drop their guard.

It is worth noting that how an academic year ends might define how a succeeding academic year might begin. Lessons learnt and experiences gathered should be used to refine strategy. Once a seed of lawlessness has taken root, it might be difficult to uproot it. Student discipline is as important as staff discipline.

As the curtain comes down on an academic year, it is equally important for teachers to keep watch and avoid sitting on their laurels. The business of a school should continue even in the latter days of the term. Students can easily exploit what they might perceive as relaxation of rules and protocols.

At a more strategic level, the closure of a school creates an opportunity for a school to underline major highlights and take-aways of the year. In a high performing environment with a strong culture of good governance, conducting a post-mortem of a strategy is a routine common place occurrence while in poorly governed schools where there is a drought of strategy and vision, attempting to account for what and why and how things happened they way they did is nothing short of a miracle. End of term arrangements should go beyond the superficial exercise of rank ordering students based on the performance data.

Student achievement data is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Student scores dont show how weak students are but reflect how well or badly a strategy has been executed. It is crucial for a school to dig deep into underlying issues behind the student scores. As a matter of fact, not all students fail but schools do fail them. Usually no teacher desires to take the flak for the academic underachievement of students.

The students are usually used as a scapegoat to disguise the low rigour of classroom instruction.

At strategic discussions, school principals should resist the temptation of holding students accountable for low performance.

The drivers of the strategy are teachers and they should account for what happened and did not happen. It is important to note that a school can only change and do better if teachers demonstrate readiness to assume responsibility for the performance of students.

There is no known turnaround strategy that ever succeeded without teachers accepting responsibility for whatever happens in the classroom. The buck stops with instructors and not the recipients of the teachers’ services.

A strategy conscious principal should at the end school business check strategic issues around the rigour of instruction, quality and frequency of on job professional development, quality and frequency of assessment and student feedback.

For instance, from an instructional point of view the principal could establish how well and how many teachers implemented the new instructional materials adopted at the beginning of the year and how well teachers benefitted from an item writing programme, which teachers were subjected to close the gap identified in the previous year.

Another strategic issue that could come under scrutiny is assessing the impact of the extended weekend teacher supervised study hours on student learning outcomes. All in all, schools should use the end of term to create opportunities for more and better learning. No school should carry the baggage from a previous year into the new year. Schools should shed the negative load.