Whether we’re discussing in terms of a rural nightmare thrown in the middle between three villages, or we’re looking down on a grand century-old college building built in Laskar Katarjiu’s time, or we’re learning in the old schools, from the dispensary, but covered top to bottom in recent thermopanes , the times of Giorgiu-Deja and Nicolae Ceausescu, any school in Romania in 2023 organizes its activities in committees. Three years ago, when the pandemic scared and shook unvaccinated people, they talked about digitization. done We can now fill out the same paperwork in-state as before, but we also scan and email it to be there. This is a real digitization of the state. We collect mountains of reports that we misuse. They are not turning into knowledge, but into pseudo-statistics that mostly hide the reality (most reports from the Romanian state actually understate the serious real situation – we are facing an inverted version of data inflation from socialism Romania, where the achievements were world-class; now we finish last in any parameter of the quality of life in the hope that the Bulgarians will come for us). The purpose of these committees, organized at the school level, established by the Ministry of Education, is vague and nowhere clearly defined. Why do these commissions exist and who do they serve? What is their rationale? The leaders who coordinate these working groups are not paid for this work, and their responsibility for indiscipline is not defined by the legislator anywhere in writing. The work of committees is undoubtedly useful and necessary in schools, as I will explain, but the voluntary and free nature of this additional effort is another legislative loophole and a serious vulnerability in our national education system.

The need to work in permanent committees (Evaluation and Quality Assurance Committee, Curriculum Committee, Occupational Safety and Health Committee and Emergency Situations Committee, Internal Management Control Committee, Committee for Prevention and Elimination of Violence, Corruption and Discrimination in the School Environment and Promoting Interculturality, commissions for didactic mentoring and training in the teaching career) is reasonable in itself: the school management cooperates with some pedagogical workers involved in the organization of teaching activities, who are usually part of the board of directors. educational unit. This is normal and it is desirable that this cooperation be as effective as possible. Unfortunately, things often go wrong. What are the reasons for the lack of cooperation? If the district and sector level education management inspectors were people not elected politically, temporarily appointed for personal, petty, non-negotiable reasons, as is the case, there might be a greater possibility that they could manage situations in schools with flexibility, intelligence and justice. Our inspectors start acting only when an incident occurs. Otherwise, they don’t know and don’t want to help with advice to the schools they shepherd, and their number is quite large (why not more education management inspectors? – maybe because in Romania we are talking about political sinecures, not real, dedicated professionals to his work, in these positions of control and decision, although the school inspector is, as a rule, a teacher with a “specific record” – a personality on paper).

The inspector is perceived as a danger, threat and enemy of the school, rather than a real ally and support. It is rare in the education system to have teachers who speak honestly, with admiration and respect about the inspectors in our education system – “at least they don’t harm us and leave us in pain”, this is the peak of popularity random Romanian inspector And we wonder why schools no longer conduct student surveys at all and stay away from the same statistical collection methods. Feedbackin relation to parents…

It is impossible to discuss minimally effective institutional relations, schools are only internally in one or another form of independent management of the educational process. They have a tick in the face of the inspector, but contact should be avoided by definition “if you don’t want to get into trouble.” , not even good, the work is so pernicious that the toxic institutional culture seeps in a viscous liquid from top to bottom. If an inspector shouts and threatens managers, then they, as a result, do the same to their subordinates. Impunity in the political chain leads to chaos and verbal (and, in other words, physical) violence on the hierarchical-administrative scale. Reverse professionalism leads the state to the sphere of petty political gangster practices. Hence the real difficulties of communication between the teaching staff in Romanian schools, in addition to the inevitable petty arrogance and hard-to-justify moral jealousy on the part of some, however, educators of young people.

Therefore, in most school divisions, the above-mentioned commissions work hard and poorly. A leadership that imposes order with the help of a whip, knows only arbitrariness, is the result of an ineffective and poorly organized educational system, decentralized in itself, however (de)centralized it may be in theory. But the statutory interpretation of the tasks of these commissions is wrong from the start, apart from the Ministry of Education’s recommendation that each school develop its own procedures (why does the Ministry of Education not develop common procedures for anything school activities that schools can customize to some extent because schools already operate according to standard top-down procedures?). Let’s take one by one only those that are constantly operating in schools to observe the administrative incoherence in motion, the tripling of real positions of decision-making and control with others, suspiciously similar, but devoid of the act of decision-making.

The Curriculum Development Committee has many tasks to complete, from questionnaires to needs reports, but the main task concerns the drafting of the CDȘ proposal. (curriculum as decided by the school), i.e. optional for the next academic year. This is one of the most difficult and important tasks in relations with parents and students. The responsible person should usually perform the work of the junior secretary of the training unit. In fact, the real secretary assists or works in place of the teacher, because the volume of information and its tabulation would greatly increase the work of the average teacher who deals with lessons and students by calling and duty.

The evaluation and quality assurance committee fills out many bureaucratic documents online, which are usually secretarial in nature (multi-column statistical tables, projected learning figures, responses from application satisfaction questionnaires, etc.). This commission is actually managed by another school secretary, a shadow one.

The internal control commission duplicates the reports of school principals and deputy principals. The head of this commission has access, theoretically speaking, to all the results of the principal’s activity in the school he is evaluating. Given the complex or dysfunctional hierarchical relationships that exist in our public institutions, do you think that this commission works transparently and adequately to its theoretically formulated requirements? Maybe yes, maybe not, but it is difficult to practically verify the answer to this question, although reasonable generalizations can be made.

The Occupational Health and Safety Committee is inactive for most of the academic year, but when there is an opportunity to intervene, it is inundated with reports and does not fulfill its mission in the existing legislative framework, which requires an average legal qualification. However, responsible teachers are not lawyers, legal advisers and lawyers in their free time. They are not competent in labor law as specialists in the field, nor are they legally responsible in the event of a serious accident or labor dispute.

The commission on prevention and elimination of violence, corruption and discrimination in the school environment and promotion of interculturality sounds pompous, complex and eclectic: in practice, situations of indiscipline and deviations from acceptable student behavior are dealt with by school principals, the person responsible for this commission is put in the thankless position of writing reports and discussing with colleagues as an “informal leader of leaders” of the school unit, which cannot be and is not. Let’s keep quiet about the investigation of corruption cases. This is the competence at the first stage of inspections, and then the prosecutor’s office.

The Teacher Mentoring and Career Development Specialist focuses on overseeing the career development of teachers. He monitors the courses of his colleagues, their evaluations for teaching, helps them with advice in educational activities, takes care of demonstration lessons, what else?, is the director of personnel of the school, although he does not have this function, which does not exist in our educational institutions. In real life, the person in charge writes reports, playing the role of a school secretary.

In addition to these unpaid duties, which absorb brains, effort and time, the school also has a coordinator of school and extracurricular projects and programs, whose duties cover a page and a half of the ROFUIP, almost as much as the duties of a full-time assistant principal.

As can be seen with the naked eye, those responsible for these permanent commissions take upon themselves, free of charge and without legal right, minimal sanctions for mistakes or lack of involvement of fellow teachers, significant pieces of the profiles of the positions of the director, deputy director. and the school secretary. How did it come to this? Why do the activities of coordination, supervision and decision-making in schools coincide with the activities of committee leaders? Why do teachers in schools end up stepping on the mats, stimulating relational conflicts against the pre-existing unstable background of the institutional culture? Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro