Fedina S. Sundaryani, Jakarta – The Culture and Education Ministry has found through a study that competent school principals were still lacking, especially when it came to supervising teachers.
According to a 2012 school principal competency test undergone by 166,333 principals nationwide, the average score principals achieved was 45.92 out of a total score of 100.
The study found that on average, school principals scored the weakest in their supervisory skills, at only 36.45 out of 100. However, school principals scored the highest in managerial skills at 48.87 out of 100.
A similar study conducted by the Education Sector Analytical and Capacity Development Partnership (ACDP) has also concluded that school principals nationwide have been focusing more on administrative skills rather than the supervision of teachers' skills and the school's education programs.
The ACDP defined administrative, or managerial, skills as the ability of principals to manage and develop a school's program and curriculum, while it defined supervisory skills as the ability to assess teachers and implement programs to improve the skills and professionalism of teachers.
"School principals scored the lowest for their supervisory competency and also on the use of information technology to reach education goals," the ACDP said in the study.
The study, conducted in 2011, asked 4,070 school principals nationwide to assess themselves based on their strengths and weaknesses. The study also surveyed their teachers and school supervisors to determine the competency of the principals. The ACDP also asked the principals whether they possessed written assessments of their staff, focusing on the teachers at the school.
"The study found that many school principals, especially Islamic school principals, did not possess any documents that were necessary to [assess and supervise teachers], which shows that increasing the supervisory skills of principals is imperative," the study said.
The ACDP found that only 79 percent of public school principals had documents that pertained to staff supervision from the 2010 to 2011 academic year while only 76 percent had documents assessing the performance of their staff in the same academic year.
Islamic school principals scored worse, with only 70 percent owning documents in relation to staff supervision and only 64 percent had documents assessing their staff's performance.
"Many principals said that they did not feel comfortable or competent enough to assess the professionalism of teachers and give them pedagogic advice."
The study also argued that increasing the competency of school principals was an integral part of improving the quality of teachers, a problem according to both the ministry and many education experts.
Many claim that teacher quality has contributed to the country's stagnant education quality, as demonstrated by Indonesia's results in the last Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in which Indonesia ranked 64 out of 65 countries.
Retno Listyarti of the Federation for Indonesian Teachers Association (FSGI) said that many members of the organization had experienced a lack of support from school principals, hindering their journey to improvement.
Retno, a former principal, said that it was largely to do with the fact that principals did not want to find substitutes and did not like teaching themselves.
"The reality is, many principals do not like teaching so many of them prevent teachers from taking part in training programs. The reasons are pretty classic, for example, the teachers would be away from class for too long because some training programs took days," she told The Jakarta Post.
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/08/10/quality-teachers-declines-poor-supervision.html