3.2.1 Questionnaires:
These surveys rely on a private catholic school that I’m working on. A questionnaire is distributed to parents, to teachers who teach in our school and in parallel in other public and private schools, and to administrators. Questions are done for open answers and then all answers are analyzed to obtain the stakeholders point of view.
3.2.1.1 Parents’ Questionnaire:
- Why did you register your child in the “R” School? (Discipline, curriculum, religious, etc…)
- Are you a parent’s committee member (do you participate in all meetings? Do you give suggestions? Are they taken into consideration?
- Whenever there is a problem confronting your children does “R” School management listen to you?
- What are your suggestions to improve the “R” School performance?
- Do you recommend it to someone else?
- Did u receive any statistic sheet to obtain your feedback about the school performance?
3.2.1.2 Teachers and Coordinators’ Questionnaire
- What is the degree attended?
- Do you work for more than one school?
- What is the number of years of experience in teaching, coordinating?
- Is there any performance appraisals?
- Is there any continuous training attended?
- Do you participate in decision making?
- Are you aware of the minister of education policies?
- Do you communicate with parents, teachers and colleagues?
- Do you use new technologies?
- Do you have any benchmarking in terms of progress and results with other schools that you are working for?
3.2.1.3 Administrators’ Questionnaire:
- Divide the entourage into several areas, are all students living in the same area or in diverse areas? How do you evaluate it?
- What is the actual number of student? How do you analyze the increase or the decrease of such number through the past 5 years?
- Do students pay full tuition, half tuition, socially assisted? How do you estimate your growth continuity?
- How many parent’s school are ex-students? How do you treat these results?
- How many teachers does the school have? How many part timer and full timer does it have?
- How do you evaluate the training and development activities and its effectiveness on staff and school performance?
- Do you have any strategic plan to improve staff and school performance?
- School trainer does it exist? How often?
- What is the Level of communication (admin, parents, and students)?
3.2.2 Assessment
Multi methods were used for this questionnaire, as structured and semi-structured questionnaire were used to do the Comparative analysis, which helped to evaluate admin, teachers and parents to see the competitive advantage of the school.
A linkage system should exist between school and the need of Lebanese society. A whole system is to be implemented, to put strategies that reduces gap between various departments in school and between the school and its stakeholders as well.
When analyzing the answers I tried to put them in priority starting with parent’s answers.
The school campus for example is safe, but are there any rules to follow to keep it safe? Is the personal trained to keep the campus safe? “The answer is NO” because everybody is allowed to enter the campus (parents accompanying children) till classes which is not permissible in other qualified schools because no parents are allowed to go beyond the entrance they should leave their children on the gate and there is a security person who will take this matter in charge, but because people consider that they are from the neighborhood they are allowed to act as they want.
The majority of the parents’ answers varied, especially the reason to choose the “R” School, some prioritized the religious management, and others preferred the discipline and a good few tended to the financial reasons; all these factors combined are available in the school but not well organized because the management doesn’t focus on any of them, they give parents the chance to try and to decide.
Parents committee is active in terms of school financial support however they are sedentary in other issues related to their duties, but the question is how far the management allows to these stakeholders to work on this issue?
Staff background is good, all teachers are skilled and experienced but there is a problem in the training issue because not everybody attends to the needed training, because some of the teaching staff considers that they have enough experience to attend any extra training. The majority of the teachers and coordinators’ answers showed that there is not enough involvement culture or policy of the teaching staff in the school education program or in the school interior decision making.
Training sessions are done whenever is necessary knowing that training is very costly because actually concerning NPO’S and specially schools there is only one training agency in Lebanon. School asks their staff to attend training on their private budget or free training.
Number of students through the school history has decreased and this is somehow critical because the strategy provided by the management concerning this issue is not clear.
Based on the above, the table in chapter four describes the comparison between the concept and the actual situation of the “R” school according to the answers collected.
3.2.3 Parents choice for “R” School
The school shows a high demand of admission, and most of its students are in the region but we can’t ignore that there is a high competitive challenge from other 3 private schools in the area and some of them have a waiting list students on their schedule. In this study we explain the school statement, and why people always go for the reputed private sector instead of other private and public ones whenever they have the choice.
Parents in this area have chosen this selected school because it’s nearby, have a good curriculum, good trained staff and its tuition fees are similar to any other private school in the same region and it is affordable; but to choose not necessarily mean to be satisfied.
Based on above, the “R” School is recommended to implement the Quality Management System and apply the corrective and preventive movements to stay competitive.