School leader – academician or administrator?

s work sites became larger and complex with the industrial revolution, Fredrick Taylor envisioned a new class of employees whose primary responsibility was to maximise output from given human (‘workers’) and material resources, giving birth to ‘scientific management’.Management is increasingly considered a body of knowledge and practice, a process comprising of planning, organising,staffing, directing and controlling 2 . Large school system have come into being, which present complexities, requiring considerable energies on administration or management 3 activities at both school and system levels. A ‘school head’thus is seen to need management skills – how to make school plans, organize required resources to implement these, assess implementation and feedback for planning the next period. This skill set is seen as a full time specialisation distinct from ‘academic’ tasks like teaching learning,preparing to teach, teacher support etc. Many schools suffer poor management, which affects institutional effectiveness- absence of rigorous long term and short term (annual)planning impacts focus and alignment of work of teachers,poor organising impacts implementation, poor monitoring and feedback mechanisms affect the school’s learning fromits work/experiences which in turn affects planning. Thus every school needs a good manager