In June 2005, Zahra Orane, M.Ed., under the aegis of Growth Facilitators, followed and observed the principals of a public co-educational girls' and boys' school in the Corporate Area for two to three days each and interviewed them thereafter.
Impact of education legislation and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture (MOEYC) on financial and day-to-day operations:
Though each principal reported that some supportive and helpful people at the MOEYC, and the staff training that this organisation provides, are positive aspects of its service, its operations interfere with the principals being able to do the job effectively.
Said one principal: "The MOEYC (also known as the ministry) are not facilitators - they are intruders".
For instance, principals received last-minute requests from the ministry to release teachers to participate in a course, or to mark national test papers, and one school, explained its principal, is to send to the MOEYC each staff member's name, age, qualifications, NIS numbers, even though it already has this information.
"The MOEYC detracts from being able to do a good job,"stated one principal. "They don't know how to run a school."
Indeed, financially, each principal's school was short $1 million or more to carry out basic functions (pay utilities, conduct repairs) for the rest of the year because the MOEYC-set school fee, which is to cover these expenses, is lower than what is actually required to operate the schools.
Explained one principal: "Our school fees finished in May. We have to pay electricity, telephone, water, security bills. We haven't had an increase in fees in three years, and the cost of living is going up. Our school's light bill is $250,000 a month - this wasn't so three years ago. So we spend $3 million on electricity out of the $14 million we make."
Cut your budget
The school submits a budget to the MOEYC, but "if you tell them you really need to collect $10,000 per child, versus $8,500 (current school fee), they tell you to cut your budget," said another principal. "So, to manage, we beg the PTA and past students."
One bursar reported that the accounts department had started to borrow from the canteen in order to pay bills.
Furthermore, not all parents/ guardians have paid their children's fees (there are no sanctions for this); so, one school had $2.5 million outstanding in school fees.
To make matters even worse, all three principals reported that they were owed funds by the ministry:
When teachers go on leave - for up to a year or more to study, or up to a term for vacation (The Education Act, Sections 63-66) - their leave is paid. And as per the Education Act, schools can send up to 10 per cent of their teaching staff on leave: six to eight teachers at a time in the case of these schools.
Because the MOEYC is responsible for paying teachers, it is to pay those on leave, and their substitutes.
The principals reported, however, that the MOEYC often does not, and that the schools have to come up with the money to do so.
Hence, the schools are now owed $15 million (which the principal says the MOEYC denies), $8 million and $3 million - an accumulation of years of funds the schools have paid to teachers.
One principal stated that if the MOEYC does eventually reimburse the school, the institution can only use those funds for teachers' salaries; to use them for anything else, it must submit a request to the ministry.
So, the capacity of principals to be effective managers was impeded by the struggle to keep their institutions financially afloat, and exacerbated by the ministry's inefficient and obstructive means of operating.
Tomorrow: Staff issues and the effect of education legislation and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture (MOEYC) on staffing will be dicussed in the next segment.
The school has to handwrite the data and is not permitted to computerise it and submit it electronically. And, it must do this every year for all 100-plus staff, old and new.
