Managing Resources and Risks, and Increasing Capability

Introduction

The number of children in need of special education program is on a rise. As this number increases, so does a need to formulate a responsive plan to cater for their educational needs. This project aims to improve teachers’ performance and assessment to ensure their instructional methodologies address learners’ needs. This plan is a construct of recommendations for strengthening teachers’ assessment and performances. Through the adoption of this plan, learners with special needs are likely to attain learning experiences for their personal development.

5.3.1 Analysis of School's Resourcing Challenges in Terms of Finances, Staffing, Teacher Workload and Educational Resources and Plans to Address These Challenges

Resource management for special education needs’ learners is a challenging process which requires knowledgeable expertise. Without proper resource management, the achievement of deliverables as formulated in the plan becomes a lot more difficult. The proper management of financial resources, human resources, teacher workload and educational resources add up to the achievement of stipulated goals within an intended timeframe. Amidst the implementation process lie a myriad of resourcing challenges which then derail the realization of expected outcomes.

By virtue that the future of projects is uncertain, the emergence of new risks may require a new pool of capital which may not be readily available. These future uncertainties render difficulties in the allocation of financial resources to projects. The occurrence of risks required financial interventions which may not be readily available is one of the key challenges affecting the school’s resourcing venture (Barrett, 2014).

In the docket of teacher staffing, the recruitment drive is a time consuming prospect, which may also ignite more financial requirement. Upon securing new talents, retaining them in school may be a challenge. The challenges of retention revolves on inability to sponsor teachers’ needs due to limited resources, coupled with long working hours and low pay. When teachers are not sufficiently motivated through physical rewards and lucrative pay deals, they become vulnerable to quitting the profession. This may be a disruptive experience that may be costly to bring to normalcy. Alongside the spinning wheel of students’ population increase in our schools proper planning for these students is a challenge (Faubert, 2012). Allocating enough staff for the students may require constant financial resources, and the source of this financial pool may not be within our disposal.

Contemporary teacher workload surveys indicate that teachers are working on average 54.4 hours weekly. Besides, recent poll indicated that 46% of teachers acknowledge a high daily stress associated with their work. This presents teaching profession as a highly engaging and stressful venture. The stress is an extraction from constant trainings, meetings, and high demands in teacher-students engagement. Students far below grade level, adverse weather days, and grading also contributes into heavy teacher workloads and this has become a source of voluntary turnover intentions for many teachers.

Insufficient teaching resources is also a potential resourcing challenge; taking forms of inadequate classrooms, social workers, instructional tools, psychologists and counselors. These inefficiencies derail proper administration of teaching duties, and lowers morale in teaching. Insufficient teaching resources and aids make learning experiences unpleasant and therefore complicate the attainment of holistic learning outcomes (Anderson and White, 2011).

Learning environments should champion for health, personal development and wellbeing of learners with special needs to wholly take part in and attain optimal benefit from education and raining experiences. Successful learning environments ascertain learners have the chance to attain their various potentials and prepare learners to pursue fundamental roles as autonomous and responsible citizens. It is for such rationales that there is a need to address resourcing challenges as aforementioned. The following is a tabulated form of an action geared to address resourcing challenges;

5.3.2 A Curriculum-Led Budget Aligned to Plans

The following curriculum-led budget intends to be a practice for various expenditures, in the aim of actualizing learners’ needs.

5.3.3 The Effectiveness of School's Accountability Arrangements for Managing Resources and Risks

A strategic approach towards the implementation of the evaluation and assessment framework offers a chance to reflect upon articulations between various evaluations components. It is important to assess the effectiveness of the school’s accountability framework for managing various resources and risks, because this will provide a timely reaction to identified loopholes. This prospect of measuring accountability can be achieved through the use of achievement data beyond school, quality assurance tools, school leaders and teacher performance appraisal and monitoring of teachers’ conduct at school.

Achievement data are utilized for accountability purposes engaging particular stakeholders alongside schools, parents, teachers and students. School heads are asked to report on if achievement information, including school’s performance tests and graduation rates are posted openly, tracked periodically by administrative authorities or given directly to parents. This model for measuring accountability is relatively time consuming and cheaper to administer. However, it forms a basis of providing important information concerning how resources are distributed in school, and whether resources are utilized in meaningful activities.

In addition, the schools at time hires quality assurance officers to conduct periodic checks to see whether school resources are properly invested for the betterment of the school and heightening of educational experiences (Shinkfield and Stufflebeam, 2012). Whereas this process of hiring quality experts for check-ups is expensive, it is worthwhile because check-ups offer a broader understanding in resource management which may provide necessary knowledge and skills to further correct the appropriation of different resources. Besides, the feedback accrued from quality experts and human resource management experts is essential in improving the schools’ learning atmosphere, and general allocation of resources.

School leaders and teachers appraisal is another way of gauging accountability on how the school’s resources are utilized. School leaders are one of the key proponents involved in financial allocation. Teachers are also the main resources directly transferring expected learning behaviors, knowledge and skills to learners. The teachers are aware of the prospects of workload before them and the prevailing environment where learning thrives; and therefore are fully aware of the discrepancies there in learning materials availability and that which is missing in the learning context. Appraising school teachers and leaders singularly provides useful insights concerning how accountable these proponents are attaining expected deliverable in their respective domains. Further, this methodology gives an opportunity to attain firsthand information from actual stakeholders involved in learning experiences (Blandford, 2012).

The analysis of the placement of school’s finances, staffing, teacher workload, educational resources, curriculum and openness to risk provides a vivid impression of the role which performance appraisal and monitoring does in the timely improvement of resourcing and capability. Continuous monitoring and evaluation of resources of various resources paves a way for immediate remediation of poorly functioning logistics.

The unpredictability and uncertainty nature of many risks requires that schools conduct periodic reviews and monitoring. It is through this process that the emerging risks can be captured and a relevant course of action taken to rectify situations. There is a need for expert personnel in the field to assess all stakeholders’ roles in the actualization process of various plans, and establish whether finances allocated are properly utilized. Further, the evaluation of teachers’ needs provides a basis for their motivation, based on their needs (Hallinger, Heck and Murphy, 2014). This in turn induces job satisfaction, retention in work stations which in long-run inculcates optimal performances.

Increasing capability

6.3.1 Systems for Evaluating, Managing and Rewarding Staff Performance

Rewarding staff is the foundation of retaining them in school environment workplace. It is important to evaluate the staff individually to deduce responsive judgment concerning their performance and competencies and provide a feedback supporting the improvement of their performances. Teachers are important factor in learners’ achievement and play a crucial role in elevating quality and equity of schooling. For this reason, it is important to ensure teachers are highly skilled, well-motivated and resourced for them to execute their duties optimally.

To motivate teachers based on their primary needs, it is crucial to carry out need assessment and use these findings to motivate the teachers accordingly. Students with special needs require special attention, and it would require highly inspired teachers to bring out the best learning experiences to such students. The aspect of motivation on the part of instructors can be achieved through constant training to meet the dynamic needs of learners. When the instructors are trained, they continually become aware of the things which their learners need, and therefore integrate these needs into educational programs. Besides, motivation on the part of instructors can be accrued through either internal or external reinforcement (Cascio, 2015). Internal reinforcement contributes into the basketry of internal motivation; which is more advantageous especially based in the axiom it inspires the instructors to find meaning and reason of delivering the best educational experiences even upon the withdrawal of these reinforcers. On the other hand, external reinforcement is actualized by virtue of physical awards such as money inventories, and physical presents. These awards make the instructors highly rejuvenated and fueled towards retaining high performances or even going beyond the already attained threshold.

Through staff rotation, the staff members get exposed to different working conditions and change of working environment which therefore alleviates monotony and boredom in carrying out similar duties over time (Paton-Ash and Wilmot, 2015). In this manner, the staff gets inspired, alongside gaining extra expertise and knowledge in related educational and teaching fields. Job rotation is an impeccable idea which brings about personal development when perceived with a positive mentality. By enriching the staff’s experience, the staff member acquires extra skills which make them more competent. This may therefore make the employee more inspired, translating to higher classroom performances.

Different staff members are motivated by different factors. It is crucial to conduct an evaluation to establish motivators for different persons. According to Abraham Maslow’s theory of needs, people’s need vary in urgency. In his model, Maslow emphasizes that the needs on the lower pedestal of the hierarchy of needs are more argent, constituting the physiological and safety needs. The needs decrease as one ascends up to the topmost which is self-actualization. Physiological needs include such needs as food, clean water and these needs are not to be postponed. It is for this perspective that every staff should be singled out based on his/her particular constraining needs.

6.3.2 Quality Professional Development

A well-coordinated professional development is anchored on the needs of staff members and those of the institution. The nexus between staff needs and those of the learners and institutions should be mutually beneficial. In this view, as the school invests in training the staff to enrich themselves and make them psychologically fulfilled, the staff in turn should render improved services to the learners and in turn realize the intended outcomes (MacBeath, 2013). The staff members should also in turn take responsibility in respecting the school resources and work towards making the institutions a rich reservoir of hope and life to the many needy students.

High quality professional development on the part of staff entails active learning. As the teachers train and get enriched with new skills, they ought to do so actively. Active learning fosters lifelong retention of intended knowledge and skills for future transferability. The practice of training should also be continuous to capture the growing need of our learners. The training should equally be content-based and therefore entrenched with actual needs which the learners direly need (Anderson and White, 2011).

Professional development is also fabricated with models and effective practices. Special needs learners learn best in a manner that is differentiated with the typical learners. Their demands are unique and therefore require special approach to understanding (Noe et al., 2017). It is vital that the instructors become familiarized with every bit of learners’ requirements and then apply responsive models to meet the learning requirement. The sort of professional development also favors collaboration between systems especially between the educators and policy makers. The broader the collaboration, the greater chances there are that effective learning will be implemented. Lastly, the element of feedback and reflection is vital in professional development. The access to reliable and constant feedback on performance and time for self-reflection are vital precepts of professional development.

6.3.3 Analysis of Current and Future Organizational Capability Challenges and Plans to Address these Challenges

The rate at which learners with special needs increases are unprecedented and pose unequal challenge in accommodating them, owing to limited nature of resources. In the current dispensation, the limited financial resources, limited supply of skilled staff and high numbers of needy learners has posed a challenge in actualizing delivery of high-quality experiences. Based on this view, the population is projected to rise, therefore exciting a need for more infrastructural needs to accommodate the learners. To manage this projection, it is important to conduct proper planning, and seek for more financial pool from the government, Non-government agencies, well-wishers and donors to meet the present and future needs. In this context, proper planning should also encompass sparing spending of readily available resources, to minimize wastage. The rapid pace at which technology revolutionizes the academic world may also require constant update. In addition, new technological requirements may be expensive to procure. This may pose a huge gap in technological requirements for meeting the school’s needs. In response to this, the school will seek to procure the most fundamental technological tools while raising capital to purchase auxiliaries for the purpose of uplifting teaching experiences.

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References

• Anderson, M. and White, S., 2011. Resourcing change in small schools. Australian Journal of Education, 55(1), pp.50-61.
• Barrett, D., 2014. Resourcing inclusive education. In Measuring inclusive education (pp. 75-91). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
• Blandford, S., 2012. Managing professional development in schools. Routledge.
• Cascio, W.F., 2015. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill.
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• Hallinger, P., Heck, R.H. and Murphy, J., 2014. Teacher evaluation and school improvement: An analysis of the evidence. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 26(1), pp.5-28.
• MacBeath, J., 2013. Schools on the Edge. In Learning In and Out of School (pp. 21-23). Routledge.
• Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
• Paton-Ash, M. and Wilmot, D., 2015. Issues and challenges facing school libraries in selected primary schools in Gauteng Province, South Africa. South African Journal of Education, 35(1).
• Shinkfield, A.J. and Stufflebeam, D.L., 2012. Teacher evaluation: Guide to effective practice (Vol. 41). Springer Science & Business Media.