Robert BEREZOVSKIa,b, Cristina BEREZOVSKIb, Florica Orţanc
aUniversity of Pitesti, RO
bMinistry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport
cUniversity of Oradea RO
Decentralization in the Romanian educational system is part of the national decentralization strategy and is meant to create an organized educational system, managed and financed according to the European rigors, which concerns the quality assurance of the instructing-educating process, total, equal and free access of all the children and youngsters to the educating act, the adaptation of the educational offer to the interests and needs of the direct and indirect beneficiaries, as well as creating and developing specializations adapted to the demands of the labor market.
The functioning of schools in a climate which is not easily adapted to the incessantly changing demands of the economic and social environment, affects the quality of education at any level and under all aspects.
The already conducted studies of diagnosis, as well as the actual facts demonstrate that in the Romanian educational system there is a crisis caused by the managerial competences of the school units’ managers, regarding the application of modern managerial theories and strategies.
According to the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) of 2007, which measures the level of text comprehension, the reading and interpretation competences at the end of primary classes, Romania is situated on the 36th rank out of 45, in comparison with the 22nd rank that we had at the last evaluation in 2001 (an average score of 489 points out of 1.000 possible points)
In comparison with the average of European countries, where only 5% of the pupils of the fourth grade are at the limit of the lowest degree of performance, 16% of the tested pupils in Romania in 2006 cannot reach even the lowest level of performance at the comprehension of a written text, 4% more than in 2001.
The international evaluation PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) of 2006, made by the Organization for Economical Cooperation and Development (OECD) tested the competences of fifteen years-old pupils concerning Reading and Mathematics, and the way they use all the information in their everyday life.
More than 50% of the pupils in Romania have low competences at Reading (53, 5% are situated at the first level of proficiency or below this level). We also mention that this percentage is growing as compared to the one in 2000.
The international evaluation TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) is made on students from the fourth and eighth grade (Romania participated only at the evaluation of the students from the eighth grade), in order to test their competences at
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
sciences. As the other test revealed, Romania is situated in the second half of the classification, and the results in 2007 are under the score registered at the anterior applications.
The performances recorded in sciences place Romania under the international average media. Only 2% of the eighth grade achieve high performances in science, while 23% fail to achieve even a low level of performance. In Romania there are still large differences between students from urban and rural areas, as well as differences between the performances of various schools. Young people, aged 15-24years, experience the greatest difficulties in the overall employability of the working population: the youth employment rate is 11% lower than the one registered in 2001. Also, the lowest values continue to be registered in the case of young people with a low level of education (8 grades -14,3%, 4 grades or without graduating school – 16,1%). This indicates the difficulties of finding labor on the labor market which they face, and the adult participation in lifelong learning in Romania is of 1,6% compared to 9,5% as it is the average in E.U.
International studies show that there is a direct correlation between the quality of school management and the quality of the offered education, as seen in the students’ results at different national and international evaluations.
A study realized by the Education 2000+ Centre, refers to the perception that the parents of primary and secondary level students have about school and the educational system in Romania. The parents complain about the fact that students in Romanian have a complex timetable and that they are part of an incoherent legal system, poorly funded by the state, with an out of date teaching style. Even if 95% of the parents believe that school is useful for their children to form their theoretical knowledge, very few of them say that school is useful to develop their children’s talents or practical skills which will help them to prepare for a profession.
The number of Romanians who are satisfied with the Romanian education is quite small, only 13% of the population aged 15, says a study conducted by GfK in September 2009, on a sample of 1000 people. However, comparing the school today with the school 15 years ago, there appear more negative opinions: about 58% of the Romanians aged 15 perceive an alteration of the quality and only 19%, on the contrary, seized an improvement, mention the specialists from GfK. In addition, people with higher education are more likely to have a critical attitude towards the actual Romanian educational system and towards the way in which it evolved over the past 15 years.
Numerous studies and analyses have revealed the inappropriate use of resources, including human resources and, in particular, teachers’ psycho-educational training and the scientific methodological training, at a medium or low level.
The researches of The Institute of Education Sciences, and other studies and reviews have identified barriers related to crisis of the managerial competences. The lack of or insufficient crystallization of knowledge/skills in strategic management and educational leadership of the persons involved in school management, the using of managerial techniques and instruments as an end in itself and not as a means of efficiency, the lack of failure or inadequacy of objectives, policies, strategies on quality, for a short, medium and long period, a belief such as: “quality is achieved by detecting and solving the problems”
and not by the fact that strategies regarding the prevention and addressing the risk factors that may occur in the current activity, lead to the application at the level of school units of a bad management.
Improving the quality and efficiency of education involves opening the educational organization to society and linking school education system with the labor
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
market by promoting educational leadership focused on performance. According to this idea, performance refers to individual progress and to the value added through education.
Training managers at a national and local level must take into account the essential changes in the theory and practice of education, in management and leadership education, the results in these areas, the necessary changes at the level of mentalities. Following the principles of decentralization, the management system applied to all sections of the Romanian preuniversity educational system requires managerial career professionalization.
The promotion of an educational leadership focused on performance in a “healthy school”, characterized by trust and commitment of its professionals and its students’
success, involves applying a high result-oriented management and having the ability to promote a stimulating, dynamic learning environment, generator of performances and integrated especially in the UE economic and cultural space, as well as in the national and European space.
The manager’s competent, participatory and reforming way of communication, having a situational managerial style, based on a supportive behavior, attracts the employees and gives them energy for joining a vision. Aligning the educational system to the criteria of the EU policies in education, requires the existence in the organizational culture of concepts such as: quality, performance, devotion and love for work. The managers’ role as institutional leaders is “to communicate the vision, to provide the auctioning direction of the group and to achieve the merger between work and pleasure.”
The functioning of the educational pre-university system in a decentralized environment requires, as a consequence of redistribution of decisional authority and public responsibility among the stakeholders (ministry-inspectorates- school unit- County or local government authority), the replacement and development of managerial competences at the level of school inspectorate and the school unit.
The effect of the functioning of the pre-university system in a decentralized environment at the school unit will increase the ability to:
o implement educational policies developed at the national and European level;
o increase the quality of education, quality expressed as through the students’
learning progress and their results, and thereby increases satisfaction for all direct and indirect beneficiaries;
o increase the level of society’s confidence in education;
o increase the prestige of the educational establishment in the community;
o ensure an institutional growth on average and long term, in line with the needs identified at the community, regional, national and European level;
o manage human, financial, methodological resources towards institutional development goals and objectives;
o communicate effectively intra and inter-institutionally, through rational use of modern information and communication;
o generate a real and efficient educational partnership at the level of local community;
o initiate and develop partnerships at regional, national and international level;
Decentralization requires the effective management of the school, according to the requirements and socio-economic situation of the local community.
Decentralization requires a “marketing” of the school. The marketing of public schools consists of increasing their autonomy from local or central authorities. The school units would remain in the public property, but they will be managed by a board composed of teachers, parents and local community members.
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
The administrative board will have fully decisional power, regarding the employment policy, curriculum (within the limits set by regulating authorities), student selection and school resource management and heritage. Funding will be made according to the parents’ request for a school or another, but also from private funds attracted by the administrative board.
The advantages of school marketing include: the parents can choose the educational services, the increased link between the educational system and the local community, the imposition of high educational standards and teachers’ motivation. The students will benefit from a flexible and open system, that enables an appropriate and flexible educational course, which provides the opportunity of personal skills development.
There will be created new opportunities of learning and social integration and active citizen participation in society will be among the fundamental objectives of the society.
The parents will have free choice of the unit where they want their children to attend school according to clear and transparent, non discriminatory criteria and rules.
The local or regional community will define in its strategies their expectations on the school network, and due to a contract they will state the requirements and aims from the school manager, and also the expected performances according to the allocated resources.
The employers, through local and county community, or through a direct contract with the school will participate in the decision on the basic skills at the exit from the system, regarding the profiles and the qualification, and they will directly participate in the monitoring and evaluation.
In order to implement decentralization, we must take into account the relatively low managerial capacity of the schools’ managers, especially of those in the rural areas, who confront themselves with their own inability to exploit the law, to overcome the obstacles that arise. The prolonged lack of independence made a reduced administrative act, the decisions regarding the school unit being made by the school inspectorates. Among the identified obstacles are those which maintain the school’s organisation personnel’s counter-productive mentalities, attitudes and behaviour; the lack of or inadequate training of the staff involved in the managerial process; perceiving and ensuring the quality as an exclusive “duty” of the enforcement personnel and the lack of involvement of the concerned institutions; the priority given to quantitative objectives, at the expanse of quality objectives; the inefficient communication with the interest partners; ignoring the reluctance and resistance to change and of the methods/techniques to reduce them.
Decentralization, in essence, suggests moving the responsibility for financing and providing educational service, including management of all documents created or brought into the institution, from the central authority to the local authorities and even to the schools themselves.
In the context of applying the educational reform, based on the promotion of managers-leaders and not just managers-administrators, there is an essential note: internal managerial communication is not just a tool, but also a dynamic, independent and innovating force, which manifests itself especially in relations with subordinates, materializing through what the manager realises beyond his administrative powers. The school manager should manage efficiently educational resources (human, material and methodological resources), he should develop his capacity to attract financial and human resources, to maintain in the system the well trained and motivated human resources.
The manager should define and communicate the required profile for future teachers, motivate teachers to achieve high performances through financial leverage, but also through identifying individual, real, training needs by mentoring activities, organizing
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
training and development activities on a regional/county level and on the unit’s level. The school manager should also identify good practice and acknowledge innovation.
In order to achieve all these, the school manager should develop at the unit’s level a system of managerial control. School’s problems do not appear because of the managerial control operation; they exist and are caused by mismanagement and breach of law. The smooth running of an educational institution, regardless of the level, is conditioned on the acceptance and assuming of the fact that the student should be the centre of our interests.
Developing a system of managerial control is done mainly in order to ensure that the management’s objectives are met. The standards of good practice in this field state that every employee should be responsible for his own internal control in the structure to which he belongs.
In this sense, the internal control is reflected in the structure of each of management’s functions, of every activity and it is the responsibility of every employee, this is why it is not recommended to be organized as a separate department within the entity.
The management control system has no reason to be, unless it superposes to the activities performed within the school organization, such as achieving the objectives which have been stated.
With the help of this control system, the school manager identifies the deviations of the results from the set objectives, he analyses the causes which determined them and adopts corrective or preventive measures. He handles a misconduct, an irregularity or failure occurred during the course of an activity by verifying the compliance with the law, the procedural legal framework in force. At the same time, the manager provides documented feed-back to the county, regional and national decisional-makers. The beneficiaries of this managerial control system are the students (directly beneficiaries), the unit’s employees, the parents, the community, the entire society (indirect beneficiaries).
It also facilitates the participation of all the beneficiaries in the decision-making process regarding the institutional development, based on shared information and on known requirements. However, at the level of pre-university school unities, there is on course an implementation and development of the managerial control system inadequate or ineffective, incapable of solving the deficiencies which arise in the school’s current activity.
The Control Body of The Ministry of Education and Research, Youth and Sports conducted from April to June 2010 a study, without claiming that it respects the sociological standards applicable to the conduct of such studies, involving 277 schools in the rural and urban area, of varying degrees, and from different geographical areas.
This study allows us, those who perform managerial control activities to have a general view, as close to the real situation that the school managers have to face with, in order to be able, together with other specialty lines of the Ministry, Institutes of Science and Education, Institutes of Superior Education, as well other organisations specialised in education, to develop a policy for the pre-university educational management, which has as a general objective the optimization of pre-university education at regional and local level in a decentralized environment.
The managers of schools unities had to complete a questionnaire which included several items related to management training, the use of modern technologies for communication in the current activity, the implementation and development of a managerial control, the knowledge and application of standards and strategies in the quality domain.
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
The results of this study are given below.
Educational Management Exam Results fig. 1
a) PC competence b) PC skills in current activity
fig. 2
a) The establishment in a circuit of documents b) Documents’ circuit
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
c) The existence of an assigned person d) Person assigned with the gestion of the documents
fig. 3
a) Personal archive b) Method of archiving
c) Perfectioning program for archiving documents
fig. 4
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
a) Managerial Control System b)Managerial Control System (OMFP 946/2005)
fig. 5
a) Procedures b)Procedures (OMFP 946/2005)
c) They elaborated or took part in the procedures
fig. 6
Robert BEREZOVSKI, Cristina BEREZOVSKI, Florica Orţan / Procedia – Edu World 2010
a)Act SR EN ISO 9001:2001 b) Act SR EN ISO 9001:2001
The analysis chart of Fig.1 shows that the, from the actual school managers, only 42.29% followed and promoted either a master in educational management, either a training course in educational management.
97,10% of the respondents said that they had knowledge of PC, Fif.2 a), and out of them 94,58% used them in their current activity, fig.2 b). However, the item about the documents’ archiving, including the elaboration ad transmission of documents, fig.4 b), only 53.51% of them use the computer for archiving.
97,83% declared that the school unity had its own archive, but only 7.94% of them had attended a training course related to archiving, fig.4 a) and c).
Related to the implementation and development of a system of managerial control, 94,94% of the respondents declared that they had such a system, Fig.5), but only 35,74% of them had a managerial system control in accordance with the Official Gazette no.
946/2005, fig.5 b).
In connection with the underlying operating system of managerial control, 89.89%
said they had developed procedures, fig.6. Procedures developed under the Official Gazette no. 946/2005 were only 36,14% of the respondents, fig.6 b). An important fact is that the percentage of those who have developed procedures according to Gazette no.946/2005 is about the same as that of those who have developed and implemented a management control system according to the provisions in the Official Gazette no.946/2005, about 36%.
The managers who fall in this percentage are the managers of vocational high schools! Only 21,29% have developed or participated in developing procedures, fig. 6 c).
Regardless to the managers’ knowledge of the quality standard EN ISO
Regardless to the managers’ knowledge of the quality standard EN ISO