The damask-brilliant grabbed, tore the hare, and a duck flew out of the hare and flew under the sky.
The result: “minus”, after some temporary reduction in paper flows (by 10-20%), a paper avalanche six months later again “ninth shaft” covered the education system. The system proved to be stronger than the subjective sincere desire of the then minister to limit the appetites of the paper monster.
2008. The story of the new “progressive” Minister Ivan Vakarchuk and his Order No. 349 21.04.2008 “On the preparation and organized beginning of the 2008/2009 school year” has already been told in the publication “MARASM No. 4 PREPARING THE SCHOOL FOR THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR “. http://education-ua.org/ua/component/content/article/19-blogi/tema-1/778-marazm-4-pidgotovka-shkoli-do-novogo-navchalnogo-roku
The result: “negative”, the attempt to persuade the minister not to issue “stupid” orders proved to be counterproductive. The then minister himself became a passive prisoner of the bureaucratic system, who had little understanding of what was going on around him and did not even try to resist in the clutches of a paper monster.
The experience of the Artek Dialogues at the time showed that the minister should not be persuaded not to issue empty orders, he should simply be deprived of the right to do so and the source of the paper avalanches would disappear “like dew in the sun. “
Any order (letter, methodical recommendation) of the Ministry of Education and Science automatically generates clone orders in 180 cities of national and regional significance and in 490 districts of Ukraine. Of course, “at the execution of the order” at this level it is also necessary to hold “meetings”, “plans”, “control detours of schools”, “to collect information about execution”, “to plan inspections of the state of execution … “. Then the paper avalanche multiplies in 17.6 thousand schools, which not only “order” but also report. Therefore, the result of the already mentioned order “On the preparation and organized beginning of the school year” is predictable: it not only does not help prepare schools for the new school year, but also prevents it from doing so.
2014. As soon as a new “progressive” team came to the Ministry of Education and Science again in the wake of the Revolution of Dignity, Deputy Minister of Education Pavlo Polyansky sent a letter from the Ministry of Education and Science №1 / 9- 630 dated 05.12.2014 “On strict adherence to the principles of guaranteeing freedom of teaching” http: // zakon .pedrada.com.ua / regulations / 1521/8456/8458/468871 /
The result: zero (it was simply ignored, because “it’s just a letter, and Polyansky is no longer in the Ministry of Education and Science, but he does his thing for us”).
All this convinces that first of all the root cause of information avalanches should disappear, so let’s give honest answers to simple questions:
Why does an educational bureaucrat need to imitate work solely by increasing paperwork?
What should be done to eliminate the need to “cover” yourself with papers at the level of the school principal?
Why is it that every cog in the system still tries to oppress “subordinates” under the guise of their official powers, etc.?
So, once again stating that the school is suffocating in bureaucratic shackles, the next step should be taken: to find out “why?” and suggest mechanisms for “how to change it?”. This is the only way to neutralize and gradually overcome bureaucracy.
Let’s look by analogy with a famous fairy tale together where is the “Death of Kashcheev” bureaucrat!
1. The island. “Bulat-well done began to shout:” Take us to the island! “
Find the “island”. Go from external management to school-based management. There is still an “island of bad luck in the ocean” on which the Soviet command-and-control rigidly-centralized model of management has been preserved in a completely intact form. Thus, step # 1 on the path of debureaucratization: the Ministry of Education and Science voluntarily or under pressure from the community relinquishes power – 90% of the functions it currently performs or simulates are transferred to non-governmental organizations or to a lower level of the hierarchy.
It is the “horizontal” instead of the “vertical”, ie the creation of a quality professional pedagogical community capable of self-development, approval and protection of their standards, is a prerequisite for a real reform of education from below. Otherwise, the “vertical” will only try to do what no one else in the world has managed to do: reform education “from above”.
2. Oak. “Bulat-well done grabbed and in one fell swoop pulled out an oak with roots.”
Pull out the oak. Carry out a real decentralization of education management with the elimination of redundant structures. Develop non-bureaucratic forms of interaction horizontally (oak now lies on the ground).
In particular, we are talking about building professional communities, such as the “community of responsible teachers EdCamp Ukraine”. Eventually, for example, EdCamp’s proposed non-conference format, which promotes teacher co-creation, will replace traditional August conferences that no one needs or cares about.
An example of how real decentralization of education management can be carried out is the “practice that works” in Georgia. In this country, according to the Law on General Education adopted on April 8, 2005, all education departments have been liquidated, and there is no bureaucracy left between the Ministry of Education and Science and schools.
For example, a local government body is authorized to appoint only one member of the board of trustees of a school located on its territory, and the board of trustees independently elects the school principal, who is only registered by the Georgian Ministry of Education and Science …
See Law of Georgia “On General Education”, Articles 30, 38 https://matsne.gov.ge/ru/document/download/29248/54/ru/pdf
The scheme of interaction between school and students websites for writing lab reports, school and parents has changed. The state has stopped funding schools and is funding students. The financial voucher, which is issued to the student free of charge, allows him to choose in which school to study and deposit their funds. Parents are involved in controlling the school budget through the board of trustees.
3. Chest. “The brilliant damask took out a chest, tore off an eyelid, and a hare jumped out of the chest and ran.”
Open the chest. Ensure openness and accountability of all educational offices.
In the education system, any head must systematically report on his work: the minister to the board and the public council, the school principal must be accountable to the board of trustees, which will decide on the basis of the report to extend his contract or not …
Openness, transparency, simplification of basic procedures, limitation of the term of office and the opportunity for regular free evaluation of the activities of managers – this will be our new powerful blow to the very interior of the bureaucracy.
4. The hare. “Bulat-well done grabbed, tore the hare, and a duck flew out of the hare and flew to heaven.”
Unhook the stop light from the hare. Everyone knows that there is no beast that is braver than a hare, so at this stage of the bureaucrat hunt we get rid of the practice according to which Her Majesty’s Instruction has always had the most powerful and decisive word.
I will explain this with an example. One day at a World Bank seminar, I had an interesting discussion with the Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, Tymofiy Desyatov. Dear Tymofiy Mykhailovych, he reproached me with the following: you are constantly talking about autonomy, school-based management and so on, and listen as at any meeting, for example, vocational school principals demand that the Ministry of Education and Science issue another instruction …
I answered him in Bulgakov’s style: Of course, they demand it. If an issue is not regulated by regulations, the KRU will come to them and “remove the chips from them”, so either you will continue to produce these instructions, or finally there will be a single final paper. Actual. Real! Armor “. In this” final piece of paper “there should be one key word: all questions of the organization of educational process, payment of work” and other, and other, and other “educational institutions solve INDEPENDENTLY !!! Fso! It will be scary at first, but over time they will get used to life without instructions.
5. Duck. “The damask grabbed her, tore her in two, and an egg flew out of the duck and rolled into the sea.”
Well, the goose! To slaughter “birds”, ie to eliminate the Soviet approach to management: “the chief for the chief”.
Michel Foucault has a book with the eloquent title “Supervise and Punish,” which describes the main function of our educators.
Watch and punish, watch and punish, watch and punish on
As long as the boss does not depend on the subordinate, the chicken coop principle will apply.
The “chicken coop” and “boss for boss” will disappear as soon as the school becomes an autonomous organism. This is what happened in Georgia, where schools are now run by boards of trustees that elect school principals. Of course, in this case, the main ones immediately become those at the bottom …
So, we release educational institutions for independent swimming…
Paper flows will not disappear until a new management philosophy is established. A good school principal does not need to be instructed, he knows what to do. A good teacher also does not need any methodological recommendations or curricula, he will compile them himself, having certain guidelines of the national standard.
We still keep all heads of educational institutions and all participants in the educational process at the school level for “stupid children” who are not able to give advice to themselves …
6. The sea. “If there was that cancer, we would get an egg from the sea.”
Find an egg in the sea. In the sea of information you need a GPS-navigator. We create a modern system of collecting, exchanging and filtering information.
A system that will finally, based on the use of digital age tools, free teachers from having to walk around the yard to keep track of school-age children.
A system that will not take away from the director or head teacher precious time to present all the “information” that will hang on the digital “cloud” …
So, after the root causes of information redundancy, you can start creating tools for filtering information, weeding out information garbage.
7. Egg-forehead. “Yes, just a shock! With that egg on Koshchiev’s forehead, and he rolled over and died.”
A click on the forehead! We kill the bureaucrat in ourselves, in ourselves, we eradicate bureaucracy in the minds of educational and not only educational managers.
If anyone thinks that the final “death of Kashcheev” is a bureaucrat in the development of modern information technology, he is deeply mistaken. ICT will not eradicate bureaucracy from the soul of the educational manager. Volodymyr Belyi writes: DO NOT REPLACE the post-Soviet manager with a modern manager who realizes his role as a community employee! And it’s not just about young officials, because they are already full, but the spirit of bureaucracy they still have! These have switched to an electronic version: schools for bureaucrats make presentations instead of the most “interesting” events, accompanied by films, photo reports and many electronic “letters-documents” which then simply need to be “duplicated on paper and passed to the government. “