Module 4

Management
of supervision
staff
The performance and effectiveness of
supervision and support personnel
depend on different factors: the roles
and functions assigned to them, the
organizational structure within which
they operate, their workload and the
ways in which their work is managed.
It is clear that the attitudes and
competence of individuals are
influenced strongly by the training
and support they receive, either
while preparing to enter a
profession or when on the job, as
well as by their working conditions
and financial incentives.
Much also depends on the profile of
the individual who enters the
profession, which is a function of the
recruitment criteria and procedures,
and is inspired by their main roles.
Equally influential are the career
opportunities open to them
What this module will
discuss
first
-issue of recruitment, the
different criteria and innovative
practices that have been tried out
with some success.
second
- examines the career
development opportunities
available to supervisors and the
strategies used to evaluate and
assess their work.
Third
The availability and
quality of professional
training and of support
instruments
Fourth
- two preoccupying areas in
many countries that have a de-
motivating effect on supervisory
staff; namely the working and
financial conditions.
Recruitment
The recruitment of supervisors is a
somewhat contentious issue in many
countries. The effectiveness of recruitment
depends on two aspects: criteria and
procedures. Most countries use a
combination of two criteria: qualifications
and experience.
Three types of criteria:

experience, qualifications
and human skills.
 Recruitment criteria
In many countries,
experienced teachers are
promoted to supervisory
positions on the basis of
seniority.
In many countries, regardless of the
minimum requirements, the position of
supervisor is seen as the last promotion in
a teaching career. In others, supervisors,
even if they are relatively young at the
time of their recruitment, remain in that
position for the rest of their active lives
due to the limited potential for further
promotion. The result is that the average
age of supervisors is rather high.
 Questions can be raised about the undesirable
effects of a relatively old age profile on the
innovative capacities of inspectors and advisors.

Young teachers, especially when fresh from the

university, arrive in schools full of new ideas,
which cannot be properly adjusted to „realities‟
when headmasters and supervisors are too out of
touch for real dialogue to take place. Fruitful
cooperation between theory. Fruitful cooperation
between theory
and experience is then replaced
by more or less polite hostility
(...) The most common
complaint is about the
authoritarianism that creeps in”.
But the problem is not only one
of seniority and numbers of
years of experience, but very
much about the nature of that
experience.
 Manifestly,subject advisors at secondary level
should have some experience of teaching in
their respective subject areas but may do
without experience as a principal. The problem
is mostly with local level supervisors, who have
multiple roles to play of control and support in
pedagogical as well as administrative matters.
A specific problem could exist when the same
supervisor is in charge of both primary and
secondary schools.
In such a context, it regularly occurs
that most supervisors have experience
as headteachers of primary schools, as
secondary principals might not
consider a move to a supervisory
position to be a promotion. As a result,
their working relations with secondary
school heads are not as smooth as they
should be.
Academic qualifications: an
alternative for experience?
 The relative emphasis to be placed on
qualifications as compared to experience
is another delicate issue. If preference is
given to experience, supervisors in
certain countries may rapidly be less
qualified than many teachers simply
because the level of education of newly
recruited teaching staff is increasing year
after year.
If the basic task of school supervisors
is indeed to provide guidance to
teachers for improving their
classroom teaching, they themselves
must be well versed in the task of
teaching. The choice between
qualifications and experience needs to
be guided by a vision of the expected
role of the supervisor but also by the
need for them to be accepted and
respected by school staff.
 Human relation skills: a neglected
prerequisite?
 It is interestingto notice that, in most countries, little
attention is being paid to other recruitment criteria
that may be equally if not more important than
teaching experience and academic qualifications.
Personal qualities such as creativity, innovativeness,
leadership and communication skills are rarely
explicitly considered, even though they are
increasingly identified as essential attributes of a good
supervisor.
Recruitment procedures
the procedure is simply one
whereby a post is advertised.
Candidates are pre-selected on the
basis of the recruitment criteria, a
shortlist is made up, generally
(though not systematically)
interviews are held and a candidate
is selected.
At times, political factors play
a role, especially in countries
where a public service post
remains a scarce and valuable
opportunity.
 Opening up the posts to external
recruitment can bring in some new
blood to the service and help it to
benefit from skills exercised outside of
the school sector. It has one
disadvantage though: it probably adds to
the lack of career development
opportunities in the education sector
and especially among teaching staff.
Innovative practices are being
tried in order to take into
account a more comprehensive
set of criteria and at the same
time overcome some of the
problems of bureaucratization
and stagnation. A few
examples are as follows:
Fixed-term contracts
 One possibility, tried out for instance in
Spain, is to employ teachers on short-
term (e.g. three-year) contracts as
inspectors. The anticipated advantages
were: younger staff, with a better feel of
what goes on in schools; and individuals
who could easily set up a collegial and
thus a mutually trusting relationship
with teachers.
Part-time supervisors
 In Ceara, a state in north-east Brazil,
supervisors are selected from amongst the
best performing teaching staff and combine
teaching and supervisory, mostly advisory,
activities. This is seen as a privileged way of
making sure that supervisors remain in touch
with teaching practices and develop collegial
relationships with the supervised staff.
 In some countries, headteachers play the
role of supervisors of the neighbouring
schools. This is the case for quite some
countries where school clusters have been
set up. In such cases, however, these
headteachers seldom have a supervisory
authority; they are in charge of the
administration of the cluster and of
supporting the teaching staff.
Out-contracting supervision
 In the UK, teams of inspectors contracted by
OFSTED carry out school inspection. Only
inspectors accredited by OFSTED can be part
of a team and only registered inspectors can
lead inspection teams. To become a registered
inspector, an accredited inspector must meet
special standards of effective team
management and monitoring. Registration,
which is renewable, lasts for three years, but
may be terminated in the case of
unsatisfactory performance.
Electing supervisors
 In the province of San Luis in Argentina, an
innovation was started in the late 1990s as part
of a reform programme of the supervision
service. It consisted of organizing elections for
school supervisors (who are at the same time
administrators of a particular region). This was
done because, previously, supervision posts
were political and the candidates therefore had
to have the necessary political connections.
 It was felt that an election would make the
whole process more transparent and allow
for a choice without undue political
influence. Teachers and parents were among
the voters. Each candidate supervisor had to
propose a plan for the further development
of the region. Everybody could in principle be
a candidate but, not surprisingly, most
candidates had experience in education.
 Career development and
evaluation
 Career development perspectives are
one of the most powerful incentives
used in any work setting. The issues to
be debated here are: What are the
career prospects for newly appointed
supervisors? How are they being
evaluated, namely what are the criteria
on which supervisors‟ evaluations are
based?
 Limited scope for
promotion
 The scope for promotion to higher levels
within the administrative system is rather
narrow and the time lag or waiting period
before seeking promotion is often long. In
many countries, the only way up is the way
out of school supervision, or even out of
educational administration as a whole.
Evaluation systems
 The monitoring and evaluation system
for supervisors is generally a reflection
of the bureaucratic set-up of the
education departments. Within the
hierarchical structure, the higher officer
is expected to monitor the work of the
junior officers.
 In many countries, annual confidential
reports are written by the immediate
controlling officers, which are then
followed up by the reporting and
reviewing of officers at higher levels.
These reports form an important input
into deciding promotions.
The evaluation of supervisors‟
performance is more complex than
it may seem. The simplest
assessment criteria concern the
numbers of visits made and reports
written, but this gives little
information about the quality of
the work performed or its impact
on schools.
 These criteria could also have a perverse
effect: supervisors will focus their
attention on undertaking the required
number of visits and prepare the
expected number of reports, rather than
taking the time to ensure that such visits
and reports are useful and
comprehensive.
It could be argued that, in the
present context, supervisors should
undertake less, but more intensive
visits, and take their time to discuss
at length with the principal and the
teaching staff.
Training and support
 The need for professional training of
supervisors is largely recognized. Yet
arrangements made are seldom adequate in
most countries. In the absence of capacity-
building opportunities, the availability of
support instruments gains in importance. The
following paragraphs first examine two types
of training –induction and in-service – before
looking at the support instruments that are of
use to supervisors.
Induction training
 The training is meant to improve
their supervisory skills and also to
strengthen their knowledge of
various subject matters. In recent
years, due to budgetary cuts, the
number of inspectors who
participated in this training has
decreased.
Supervisors generally
consider such training
both useful and cost-
effective.
In-service training
 In-service training is essential if supervisors are
to keep abreast of new trends in curriculum,
teaching, learning strategies and school
management. This training must be practice-
oriented to ensure that supervisors are not cut
off from what is going on in the classroom or
end up operating on a wavelength different
from that of the teachers they are supposed to
supervise. Experience has also shown that in-
service training can be a strong motivating
factor.
 they are usually short-term courses
 related to the implementation of
particular projects.
 Supervisors, however, ask for more
training, particularly better-organized
programmes with more relevant
content.
 Indeed, it is important that in-service
training be very practical in focus and
not repeat what is already explained in
pre-service courses. To ensure its
relationship with the daily experiences
of supervisors, it could be useful when
defining an in-service training
programme to interview or question a
number of supervisors and ask them for
the themes on which the training should
focus.
It is equally useful to invite a
few (retired) supervisors who
you feel are among the most
competent to participate as
resource persons in the training
programme.
Support instruments
 In addition to training, to some extent
the performance of supervisors will also
depend on the quality of the
professional support instruments that
are put at their disposal. Two such
instruments of particular importance are
supervision guides or manuals and a
regular database to prepare and monitor
the supervision work.
 Supervision guides and
manuals
 While most countries have prepared pro-
forma supervision reports, it remains
true that this most basic instrument is
not available everywhere. What is
equally worrying is that more
sophisticated and more useful
instruments are far less prevalent.
 There continues to be some discussion about the impact
of these manuals on supervision work. Three positive
points can be mentioned: they are undoubtedly helpful
to the supervisors themselves and to the schools; they
can turn the inspection visit into a more objective
exercise, and, thirdly, by informing schools and teachers
of the issues on which supervisors focus they lead to a
more transparent process. Some teachers and
supervisors have, however, been more critical and
believe that such a framework or guide can become a
straitjacket for the schools and the inspectors, as they
are not sufficiently flexible. These instruments then turn
the work of some, if not most supervisors into a ritual
mechanic activity, devoid of personal reflection and
initiative.
Database
 One more expression of the policy neglect of supervisors
manifests itself in the fact that supervisors seldom have
access to an appropriate database concerning the
performance and quality of schools and teachers. Indeed,
very few supervisors have indicators at their disposal
that would allow them to identify needy schools and
teachers for more intense monitoring as well as prepare
themselves for their visits. One reason can be the simple
absence of such a database; another the lack of linkage
and communication between those in charge of statistics
and the supervision service.
Working and financial
conditions
 When examining working conditions,
several factors must be considered: the
availability and quality of offices; the
availability and quality of office
equipment; the availability and quality of
support staff; the availability and quality
of transport; and the housing situation
and distance between home and office.
Faced with financial
constraints, what alternatives
are open to managers of
supervision services to improve
the working conditions of their
personnel?
 all supervisionoffices should be provided at
least with a set of basic equipment. What
precisely should be considered „basic‟ will
depend very much on the context of each
country, but undoubtedly some form of
transport, an office with a telephone and a
filing cabinet will be among those basic
tools;
the demands on supervisors should
be adapted to take into account
their resources. Asking supervisors
to prepare reports on all visits and
to distribute them widely makes
little sense if these same
supervisors have to work without a
secretary, a computer and a
photocopying machine;
some rationalization of resource
use might be possible. Two options
seem to have some potential. There
is a need to look carefully at the
distribution of staff over the
different levels and to determine
whether some staff are not
undertaking the same job, but are
posted in different offices.
 Inseveral countries, the
decentralization of more supervisory
tasks to the district level has not led to a
cut in staff at the regional and central
levels, although the workload at those
levels has been lessened.
in budgets available to district
offices, it could be very useful to
clearly identify funds that are
earmarked for school supervision
and support in order to prevent
them from disappearing into the
overall budget of the office
 Staff management decisions relate to
various issues. The most important are:
recruitment criteria and procedures;
career development and evaluation;
training and support; financial and
working conditions. It is important that
these different elements are inspired by
a similar vision of the role of the
supervision service and of the profile of
a successful supervisor.
 Most countries want supervisors to have
classroom and school management
experience and robust qualifications.
These demands are not always easy to
combine and it may be necessary to
focus on one, e.g. experience. Few
countries pay much attention to human
relation skills, though they are very
important. If they have to be considered,
there may be a need to change
recruitment procedures and also
contractual arrangements.
 In general, promotion opportunities for
supervisors are limited, which may be a
source of de-motivation. Some countries
have allowed a regular shift from
teaching or principal post to supervision
and back. It is crucial that evaluation
mechanisms go beyond a simple
administrative assessment and take a
wider look at the performance and
impact of supervisors. Evaluation and
promotion should be closely linked.
Training is useful to improve the skills of supervisors, and
works as a source of motivation. Few countries have the
resources to organize systematic induction training. In-
service training programmes are useful‟ needs and are
integrated into a long-term program. Providing
supervisors with guidelines, manuals and school data is a
fairly straightforward and very useful way to supporting
their action in the field.
Many supervision services face
severe financial constraints.
There is no short-term solution.
Many services may be obliged
to reformulate their mandate
and focus on the schools most
in need of their intervention.
 School supervision services exist in nearly all
countries; they have played a key role in the
development of the public education system, by
monitoring the quality of schools and by supporting
their improvement. However, in many countries,
these services are under increasingly heavy critique,
because of their failure to have a positive impact on
quality of teaching and learning. This failure is, in
part, the result of a strategic challenge: the mandate
of the service outweighs by far its resources, and is
also caused by a series of poor management and
planning decisions.
 Against this background, many countries have attempted
to reform their supervision system. These reforms are
also inspired by the need to improve educational quality
and by the recent trend towards more school autonomy.
Indeed, the ability of schools to use their greater freedom
effectively will depend to a large extent on the support
services on which they can rely, while supervision may be
needed to guide them in their decision-making and to
monitor the use they make of their resources. While these
reforms have met with mixed success, their overall
analysis allows us to gain profound insight into what can
be achieved in a specifi c context. This set of training
modules takes the reader through a systematic
examination of the issues that a Ministry of Education,
intent on reforming its supervision service, will face.