School Resources

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Building a professional community. In this article, Dr. Annamaria Sacco deals with the enhancement of human resources details within the educating community.

The school of autonomy requires the contribution of all the subjects who are part of it: through cooperation that originates informally between professionals who work together to achieve common and shared objectives, communication extended to the entire educational community, a shared knowledge of process priorities and objectives leading to professional community building.

The enhancement of human resources

School autonomy also necessarily entails the responsibility of all subjects, with the establishment of mechanisms for the detection and evaluation of results.

The quality of the scholastic service depends on the functionality of this relationship: it is in fact now established that the skills of a person can express themselves excellently only within an efficient context and, if the quality of the context is effective, the person benefits by developing the best himself and his own resources.

It is therefore necessary that both components, human resources and organization, express the maximum of their possibilities, interacting in a systemic perspective from which the quality of the school service arises.

The enhancement of human resources

In this area, over the last twenty years, systems for the enhancement of human resources have alternated with respect to the quality of the service provided and the improvement of the working climate.

In her work, Dr. Sacco provides readers with an interesting in-depth analysis of the revisited theme in relation to the various regulatory changes that have occurred and the great responsibility that the figure of the Headmaster holds in the context of enhancing human resources represented by the teachers, the DSGA, and by all the ATA staff working at the school.

The enhancement of human resources: building a professional community

The transition from a stable organization to a flexible one based on criteria of efficiency and educational effectiveness of autonomous school organizations has involved management by objectives and results.

Already Law 59/97 which in art.

21 establishes the conquest of autonomy and management, in paragraph 16 it refers to “new professional figures of the teaching staff” in compliance with the principle of freedom of teaching and at the same time as the conferral of management qualification.

In these two lines, the legislator lays the foundations for the professional development of both the school head and the teaching staff, as if to underline how the evolution of the two professional roles should be closely related to the achievement of school autonomy itself.

  1. In reality, however, the subsequent legislation does not reveal anything in terms of new professional figures of the teaching staff to be created, giving greater prominence to a single figure with managerial functions who are entrusted with autonomous powers of direction, coordination and enhancement of human resources.
  2. Further on, in article 5 c. 2 of Legislative Decree 165/2001, measures relating to the management of labor relations and human resources within the exercise of managerial powers are made explicit.

25 of the TU on public employment it is envisaged that “in the performance of their organizational and administrative functions, the headteacher may make use of teachers identified by him, to whom specific tasks can be delegated…”: the collaborators of the headteacher are teachers who are required to support the manager’s job.

The C.C.N.L. of 1999, in anticipation of the attribution of scholastic autonomy, had already foreseen similar figures as a “fundamental resource constituted by the professional assets of teachers, to be exploited for the performance of specific objective functions”.

Still in paragraph 5 of the art

With the CCNL of 2003, the objective functions become instrumental functions destined for the “creation and management of the institute’s training offer plan”.

They are functions, no longer figures, which must be assigned to available and competent teachers.

Whatever the denomination that the intermediate figures assume, it is undoubtedly that they contribute with their work and skills to the management of the institution, supporting the school manager and receiving from him, assignments and delegations to carry out their action.

Still in paragraph 5 of the art

Alongside the already mentioned profiles of teachers who assist the headteacher’s work, instrumental figures or collaborators, other professional specialization profiles emerge which do not yet enjoy specific regulatory recognition (area contact persons, department coordinators, complex managers).

To the so-called middle management that has emerged so far entrusted with the delicate task of specializing and taking care of the various sectors of school organization and it is the task of the school manager to enhance human resources by promoting the development of existing professionalism and the diffusion of collaborative leadership functions.

Without middle management it would not be possible to pass from theory, i.e. the decision-making choices implemented collectively both in terms

Organizational aspects, to practice

Furthermore, the teachers who assume these roles have a privileged observation position as they can simultaneously maintain a double operational dimension of the school, the didactic and the organizational one, and at the same time come into direct contact with teachers, pupils and families.

The quality of our school system depends on the willingness to get involved and on the additional commitment of the professional figures who collaborate in school management and who in most cases are also teachers who, strongly believing in the school’s mission, are competent, engaging and manage to raise motivation in their students.

These are certainly the qualities that must be recognized and valued.

Unfortunately, however, Law 107 of 2015, the so-called “Good School” completely leaves the question of careers and credits in the shadows which, on the other hand, were issues addressed by the report “The Good School, let’s make the country grow”, presented only a year earlier.

The conservative choice will be preferred, and nothing relating to the recognition of career development and training credits will be taken into consideration by subsequent legislative or contractual provisions.