Page 33 - DEDU503_EDUCATIONAL_MANAGEMENT_ENGLISH

Unit 3: Management at Different Levels-Elementary, Secondary, Higher Education

A school building must be excellent, spacious functional and with pleasing architectural features. Notes
“Buildings are to education as body is to the mind.” “A sound mind can only be there in a sound
body.” It is the statement ; “A fine building makes a fine school and a poor building a poor one.”
School should be housed in beautiful buildings, which are not only stimulating centres of education
for children but also vital centres of community life. The American Association of School
Administrators has suggested the following seven principles for planning a school plant building:
1. Curriculum adequacy : The institution must be planned to provide the facilities necessary for
the efficient and effective accommodation of all the phases of the curricular, co-curricular
and community activities for which the plant is intended.
2. Safety and well-being : The school should be so planned as to protect the comfort health and
safety of pupils, teachers, and all who will use its facilities. Lighting, heating and ventilating
should be in accordance with the best practices.
3. Interfunctional co-ordination : Each unit or portion of a plant may be well-planned for its
specific purpose, yet if the units are not put together with respect to their mutual relationships,
the plant, as a whole, will be unsatisfactory. For example, certain rooms, because of their
association, should be planned ensuite. The noisy units should be located, so as not to
interfere with quite zones.

4. Efficiency and Unity : The school plant should be planned and assembled in a manner that
will promote efficient school management and convenience of pupils and the public in its
use.
5. Beauty : The entire school plant should be cheerful, attractive and pleasing.

6. Adaptability : A school plant should be planned for economical future adaptations to changing
requirements.
7. Economy : A school plant should be economical in its original cost, upkeep and operation.
Any material — metal, glass or kacha material, all should be universally adopted to the uses
of young life growing up in sunlight and cherishing the ground as its native birthright. Low
initial cost, functionality, durability, appearance, acoustical properties cost of maintenance
and low operational costs should decide the type of building.

The headmaster is the kingpin in any educational effort. Since he is the pilot and the
navigator, he alone can find a path to the destination howsoever zig-zag it might be.

3.4.2 The School Office
The school office is the nerve centre of the school plant where various records, reports and
registers are stored, where the important matters of administrative policy are discussed and
where the visitors are received. It serves as a ’home-base’ for the principal, ‘professional centre’
for the school staff, and the ‘service-centre’ for the entire school. It is fulcrum around which the
whole of the school rotates. On its efficient organisation and management depends the efficient
administration of the entire school.
Functions of the School Office
1. Up-to-date file of data about the children : Teachers should be free from the onerous task of
book-keeping wherever possible. The clerk should be mainly responsible for book-keeping,
so that teachers energies may be released for the creative job of guiding the development of
children.

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