Organisational Performance - Clarendon Primary School - Case Study Example

Development of a child starts at an early age. Schools play a primary role in shaping the child as majority of the time is spent there. It inculcates a habit in a child which he uses as he grows up and brings about a change in behaviour. One such school is the Clarendon Primary School. The school imparts primary education and was started in 1885. (Clarendon Website, 2011) The school has students in the range from 50 to 150 but inclement weather, house work and other conditions always ensured that the school had around 100 students. The school is situated in Adelaide, Australia. (Clarendon Website, 2011) The school generally provides education to the poor and improvised who are not able to go to school and work to feed them. The school has ensured students get proper education by ensuring teachers and books which help to impart proper education. The objective thus is to impart education by teaching the various art of management like team spirit, behaviour and communication by setting the target and measuring the performance to see if the objective was achieved. The Australian government has taken steps and ensures different laws and regulation which looks towards the education for primary children. The government has set up a Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs which looks to ensure that the education imparted is of high standards. (MCEECDYA, 2011) An independent body with the name Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is also looking towards a curriculum on the national level which will help to monitor the performance of school and develop better education imparting tools. (ACARA, 2011) The Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs has developed a new program and scheme by the name National Information Agreement on Early Childhood Education and Care which looks to improve the education imparted to primary children. (MCEECDYA, 2011) In this reform the government looks to improve collecting, reporting and sharing information related to early childhood education and develop a mechanism through which the education is imparted thereby enabling them to grow. (MCEECDYA, 2011) The government also has different mechanism through which monitoring is done but this involves better reporting and monitoring thereby enabling to find the area that the schools need to work on to improve education. Clarendon Primary School follows the management practices followed in organizations as they identify the area where they need to work upon to improve the quality of education. They have identified various factors which will help them to ensure that they are on track to achieve their objective. The school has a set of behaviour management code which ensures that they are able to deliver quality education. (Behaviour Management, 2011) They ensure that the rights of students, teachers and stakeholders are protected by ensuring discipline, disclosure and proper monitoring of the performance of all. (Behaviour Management, 2011) Clarendon Primary School which has a mix of different culture and background rely on brainstorming to find the ways in which the school can benefit and achieve their objective. Group Thinking is a phenomenon which involves people from various backgrounds, culture, religion, and caste to come together and discuss upon something thereby arriving at a consensus. Group thinking is widely used today and most business decision is arrived at after conducting a group thinking process. Clarendon Primary School uses it to ensure that the system to monitor the performance and to see the development of students are as per desired. Group thinking provides a lot of advantage. Since it involves brainstorming it thereby helps to come up with various new ideas and the best one can be chosen based on the requirements of the school. (Tim, 2005) This also improves flexibility as group thinking involves better coordination among the employees. It makes employees realize the importance of working in a team and this ensures that employees are motivated and feel a part of the organisation. (Tim, 2005) This thereby develops the decision making process and helps to find employees who can take responsible position in the future and thereby helps in planning for the future. Clarendon Primary School based on these principles has been able to support education and ensure that the development process passes to the students. The overall strategy used by Clarendon Primary School is thus to ensure that they act on a situation after identifying the areas they need to work upon to be able to achieve the objectives the school has identified for them. The overall cycle looks as follows In this strategy Clarendon Primary School looks to act only after identifying the areas they need to work upon by planning through group thinking and then using it. The school then checks the performance and brings changes to ensure that the stated objective is achieved. (PDCA, 2011) Clarendon Primary School thereby using the above model takes the following to impart education and ensure that the objective is achieved. Clarendon Primary School by using the above model ensures that the access the requirements of the class and decide accordingly. They design the curriculum to include different management practices so that students inculcate it in their process. This helps to provide a differentiated instruction which needs to be acted upon and there checking to ensure that the objective was achieved. (Tague, 2004) The measure used by the government and Clarendon Primary School will help to improve the performance and ensure that the objectives are achieved as both of them look towards a similar model to improve education. There are differences in the approach but the objective of both the government and Clarendon Primary School align each other. The manner in which both the government and the school are working in tandem will help to improve the academic system and will help to transform the education sector. The learning in Australia has undergone change and special attention has been laid to integrate technology the teaching method. In a recently held summit on video games it was seen that special attention was being laid on integrating the games with the learning pedagogy. Learning through games proves beneficial as it helps to improve knowledge and at the same time ensure fun in learning. It is also seen that the teaching which has games helps to bring team skills and including the learning pedagogy improves the retention power. (Stapleton, 2004) The manner in which the pedagogy is being designed is after consultation with the MCEECDYA which will ensure that the efforts of both are directed in the same direction thereby enabling both the government and Clarendon Primary School achieve their objective. The school also lays stress on a program called National Assessment Program and Numeracy (NAPLAN) where under the direction of the government test is conducted to find the literacy and ability of students. (NAPLAN, 2011) This falls in line with the education at Clarendon Primary School as they are able to understand the development of a child and the areas that needs to be worked upon to improve the child learning process. Both the school and the government also use different tools and techniques to evaluate the performance and match those with their objective. An important aspect to note here is that Clarendon Primary School changes its pedagogy from time to time to match the government requirements wand while doing so special care is taken to ensure that they don’t divert from their objective. Clarendon Primary School has also looked into the stakeholders by ensuring that they are provided the correct information and ensured that all material information are brought to their notice. Clarendon Primary School makes it a point to ensure that parents and other stockholders attend the assembly on Wednesday on a fortnight basis so that they are regularly aware of the proceedings taking place. This helps to build a good rapport and makes it easy for the stakeholders to gauge the performance of the students. (Behaviour Management, 2011) Clarendon Primary School also issues news letter which is sent to the family members to keep them updated about the developments in the child. (Behaviour Management, 2011) The school has also ensured adequate facilities for the teachers and staff so that imparting of education is facilitated and helps in the development of children. Thus, the paper presents the manner in which the Clarendon Primary School performance and the rules of the government are adhered to. This throws light on the fact that managing school with the laws of the government is similar to managing an organization as the task of both is to ascertain and improve future for the stakeholders. The paper highlights the manner in which different organizational performance and measurement tools are used by Clarendon Primary School to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching process and ensure that their objectives align with those of the government. This also presents the manner in which alignment helps to ensure that the objectives are easily achievable as the policies help to ensure that the efforts yield maximum result. References ACARA, 2011, “Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority”, retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://www.acara.edu.au/default.asp Behaviour Management, 2011, “Behaviour Management: Clarendon Primary School”, retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://sites.google.com/site/clarendonprimaryschool/general-info Clarendon Website, 2011, “Clarendon Primary School”, retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://sites.google.com/site/clarendonprimaryschool/ MCEECDYA, 2011, “Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs”, retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://www.mceecdya.edu.au/mceecdya/early_childhood_development,28147.html NAPLAN, 2011, “NAPLAN”, retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/About__NAPLAN.pdf PDCA, 2011, “From problem faced to problem solved”, retrieved on March 3, 2011 from http://www.hci.com.au/hcisite3/toolkit/pdcacycl.htm Stapleton A, 2004, “Serious games: serious opportunities”, Australian game developer conference, Academic summit, Melbourne Tim B, 2005, “Group Thinking”, Critical Thinking on the web, Austhink Tague N, 2004, “Project Planning & Implementing Tool”, 2nd edition, ASQ Quality Press, pp 390-392 Read More