A survey into tendencies influencing some administrative decisions

Abstract

Our work is an analysis of the results obtained from a questionnaire distributed to a number of Primary School Heads in Malta. The survey meant to identify tendencies influencing the taking of some routine decisions of heads. The decisions chosen concerned: (i) the allocation of classes to specific rooms (ii) the allocation of teaching staff to particular classes. For the purpose of the first part of the questionnaire, we sought to identify potential strategic points in the physical structure of the school itself which might influence the placing of a class in one room rather than another. We oriented our questions around three structural features: gates, storeys and staircases. What we wished to establish was whether these features, which are more or less associated with an element of danger, were considered by heads in their decision taking - assuming of course they have a choice. Another element we included in this section was toilets. It should seem obvious that toilets play a key role in everyday school-life and we wished to see to what extent their location in school and proximity to classes is relevant in our perspective. One cannot talk of tendencies influencing any head's decision without considering the head's own view of his school and the socio-cultural environment beyond it. In this respect, we tried to form a picture of how the head classified the bulk of his school population. Other issues in this section include parental reaction to change; the provenance of problems from unmotivated children and their parents. The idea, of course, was that we felt that these perspectives should be fundamentally important in orientating decisions. This section was also indirectly meant to generate a certain awareness of realities impinging on the second decision we decided to treat; the allocation of a specific teacher to a particular stream or year.