ABSTRACT
This qualitative study aimed to determine the school heads’ contingency strategies on teachers’ non-administrative functions as basis for program recommendation in Schools District of Leon II during the school year 2024-2025. The data of the study were gathered through an in-depth interview and they were analyzed and interpreted using thematic analysis. The study found out that the non-administrative functions of teachers included teaching different learning areas, assuming school coordinatorship, preparing daily plans, instructional materials, reports, and forms, conducting remediation activities, setting conference with parents, and providing learning environment. The study revealed that teachers cope with their non-academic functions through multi-tasking, time management, open-mindedness, and good communication. Based on the results of the study, a policy recommendation composed of several programs is hereby recommended. These programs should be geared towards training teachers to perform their tasks effectively.
Keywords: School Heads, Contingency Strategies, Teachers, Non-Administrative Function, Program Recommendation
INTRODUCTION
Over the years, one of the prevalent problems of the schools is the unavailability of the non-teaching staff who can serve the school in response to its administrative functions.
As school heads bear most of the responsibilities, some of the tasks are being delegated to teachers to ensure that the required reports are submitted on time. This situation made teachers assume overwhelming workloads instead of focusing on teaching their students.
Teachers are unable to devote their time and energy to prepare their lessons, instructional materials, and execute the administrators school policies designed for the welfare of the students and other technical competencies as part of their duties and responsibilities.
As teachers in public schools, especially when assigned in a small or multigrade school, teachers can experience heavy workload of coordinators not related to academic or teaching and are added on top of their teaching loads and subject coordinatorship. Thus, this accelerates teachers’ burnout and exhaustion on their job.
Considering that the school head is the leader of the institution, he ensures smooth school operations and secures effective management by implementing several contingency strategies. Through this, the daily activities of schools will continue as they are expected to serve their clienteles by providing quality education to learners.
A school head sees to it that teachers within his school have been trained to handle multiple responsibilities whenever one of them is unavailable to allow continuity of services or functions and delegate tasks equally to all teachers to avoid over-reliance to single individual.
The removal of these administrative functions to teachers may increase their ability to take necessary time in class preparation and feedback on learners’ progress on different learning areas.
The researcher observed that, even though there is already an order coming from the Department of Education, there are still schools that experience problems when it comes to performing administrative and non-administrative functions in school. Due to unavailability of personnel to do the administrative functions, teachers need to assume tasks which are not anymore part of their ancillary functions.
This study may allow program implementers to look at the core of the problem and see the real situation in places or schools situated in far-flung areas. They may be given awareness on providing concrete, permanent and immediate solutions to address concerns of the school head as well as the teachers. In situation where there is lack of manpower, the school head finds it difficult to accomplish all the necessary reports because he has already so many tasks on hand like liquidation of funds, proving technical assistance to teachers, supervisory functions, and so many more since administrative tasks previously handled by teacher were ordered to be handled by them. On the part of the teachers, they have to assume all the ancillary functions aside from teaching, which detract them from performing their teaching obligation to their students.
see PDF attachment for more information