Time allocation of principals and its relationship to school performance

Abstract

The role of school principal involves the execution of multiple activities that, many times, go in parallel with the teaching activity which could be related as performance and school climate. For this reason, the research has three objectives: i) to describe the activities carried out by school principals; ii) to identify who accompanies the principals in the different activities; iii) to analyze the relationship between the management activities and the school’s performance. We have opted for a quantitative study in which the daily practices of 42 principals of schools with good school performance and 42 principals of schools with low school performance are analyzed, according to the results of the National Tests. A Daily Record was used to identify the frequency of execution of activities. On the other hand, a scale was used to measure the school climate. The results indicate that the principals of the different groups formed, distributed the management time in the 10 directive activities identified, giving as a result that the activities to which the principals invested more time were: 1) Non-schools; 2) Relations with students; 3) Instructional Leadership and Goal Planning. The activities that received the least amount of time were: 1) Professional growth; 2) Finance; 3) Infrastructure. In relation to the types of accompaniment that the school principals had, in the group of schools classified by their performance and by the school climate, no differences were obtained. The principals carried out this activity with the following types of accompaniment First, alone (without accompaniment); second, accompanied by lead teachers, facilitators, and teachers. Thirdly, with vendors and contractors. Finally, there was no strong correlation between the activities carried out by the director and school performance.