An Exploration of Administrative Operations and Quality Measures at Primary Level: Perceptions of the Head Teachers in theRural Area Primary Schools in Punjab

Abstract

Quality learning especially at the primary school level depends on the school Head teachers and strategies they adopt to improve the teaching and learning processes at school. The role of the Head teachers remains crucially important in maintaining school progress at one hand and tackling the unintended concerns and issues on the other. While causal inferences portray a general perspective of problems and issues, there is an emerging need to pay attention to the operations and measures at the grass-root level. The main objectives of the study were; to identify the problems faced by the head teachers in maintaining quality learning at primary school level in rural areas, to explore the strategies head teachers adopt for enhancing the quality of learning at primary schools, and recommend some suggestions to manage with problems faced by the administration at primary school level in rural areas. The qualitative research design was employed to conduct the following study as a qualitative research design explores the problem in depth. The interview protocol was designed to collect the desired information. All Head teachers of primary level teaching in rural areas of District Bahawalpur were the targeted population of the study. A convenient sampling technique was used to select the participants of the study. Twenty head teachers were selected for the collection of the data. A semi-structured interview protocol was developed to gather information from the head teachers. Before interviewing, the pilot study of the interview protocol was carried out. Four specialists in the field were coopted, between them, two were teachers and two were educationists. Modifications in the interview protocol were made based on the opinions of the experts and educationists. Due to the situation of COVID 19, a researcher couldn't visit the schools personally so, telephonic interviews were done by the researchers. The collected information was analyzed and themes were drawn through thematic analysis. The main findings of the study reveal that there was a shortage of teaching and non-teaching staff at the primary school level. School teachers are lacking in the expertise of the use of the latest technologies. It was recommended in the study that required teaching and non-teaching staff should be provided in primary schools to increase the effectiveness and to enhance the quality of the learning. It was a recommendation that multiple pieces of training should be organized to enrich the numerous skills of the teachers.