In simple terms, school supervision refers to the act of monitoring, observing, and regulating the school’s management, daily operations, teaching strategies, students, and other essential functions. This is a major topic that can be found in school management courses as school managers such as principals, head teachers, and supervisors are primarily responsible for school supervision. School supervision makes up for the effectual running of an institution and is extremely important because it helps ensure the following factors:
- The institute is clearly following standardised guidelines, syllabus, teaching methods, and assessment techniques that will cater to the students’ academic, social, and personal development in the long run.
- At the same time, as noted in the school management courses, supervision helps ensure if the teaching and learning strategies include activities that are in alignment with the curriculum, promotes long term learning, and serves the learning preferences of a diverse group of learners.
- Supervision also involves the process of effectively assessing and evaluating the students through the means of aptly devised formative and summative assessments. These assessments should not focus on grades, but instead cultivate sustainable learning.
- Under school supervision, the school managers must also make sure that the teachers and students are motivated. This may be achieved by training the teachers, incentivising them, providing a comfortable workspace, offering proper learning and teaching infrastructure, promotion opportunities, and a slew of other motivational measures that can extract the best out of the teachers and the learners.
- Financial management is another essential aspect of school supervision. School managers need to keep track of the school’s expenses, focus on maintaining a budget, keep room for accidental costs, look for ways to eliminate unnecessary costs and reallocate them for more important areas, and many more. Cash flow is the bloodline of every institute, and thus, financial management is of prime value.
- In addition, recruiting the rightly skilled teachers, training them, and appointing the right staff for the right set of roles is another area of school supervision that can promote effectivity and efficiency because when tasks are delegated to the rightly equipped individuals, then the quality of work can certainly be escalated.
- Furthermore, school supervisors are responsible for managing complaints that may arise both inside and outside the school. These complaints may range from disappointed parents, to naughty children, unhappy teachers, conflicts between staff, and many more. Supervisors need to be able to patiently handle such complaints without taking sides, and put a quick end to issues that can otherwise disrupt the flow of work and productivity.
- Importantly, researching and implementing new instructional strategies and curriculum content also belong to the spectrum of school supervision and management. In order to cope up with the evolving pedagogical and learning strategies, constant research and development is something that every school leader and manager must ensure.
These aforementioned areas of school supervision are usually deeply covered in school management courses. They are extremely important because they enable school leaders and managers to smoothly run their respective institutes and deliver impactful learning that will benefit the students and the society.
