A systematic way of running school affairs

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday April 6, 2026 06:00

From my long years of classroom experience, one can confirm that schools determine, prior to the beginning of a semester, how many department and general staff meetings shall be held. This is an integral part of an annual plan. Organised and properly governed schools that shun a laissez-faire environment have a systematic way of running their affairs.

And regulating meetings is part and parcel of the process of enhancing effective management and ensuring that things are discussed and get done. In fact, the pulse of a department, in particular, or of a school, in general, could be measured by the number of meetings it has managed to hold. The more meetings a department has, the more it is presumed livelier and healthier. It would appear that the frequency of meetings counts more than the quality and purpose of the gatherings. What makes the holding of scheduled meetings mandatory is also the need to meet the expectations of external oversight entities.

Public schools fall under a dual management system comprising a local school management team and oversight institutions from the regional office and the central ministry. External oversight institutions have their own checklists when they visit to offer professional support or assess the health of chronically ailing schools. One of the critical areas on the radar of oversight bodies is ensuring a proper record-keeping system, including the availability of meeting minutes and the frequency of meetings. When schools hold meetings, they have at the back of their minds not only their local needs but also the possibility of entertaining planned or unplanned visits by oversight and supervisory entities.

The need to satisfy external pressures and requirements could determine how many meetings a school could hold. And as such, a need for a meeting may not arise from internal demands but from a desire to satisfy powerful forces outside the school.

It is therefore not without justification for one to suspect that school gatherings can sometimes be compliance-driven and box-ticking exercises.

Habit-driven school meetings can be a waste of energy and time, draining school resources in the process and further diverting the school’s attention from the instructional core. The instructional core is the hub of any school. It should at all times enjoy sufficient attention. Nothing should be good or urgent enough to relegate teaching and learning to the background. Power struggles, which often characterise organisations, should be dispelled as speedily as possible.

Prolonged internal squabbles, if permitted to take center stage, can cause a serious mission drift. Therefore, schools should always be mindful of their purpose: to champion and perfect classroom instruction to raise students’ achievement outcomes. Primarily, meetings should be arranged around matters of governance and pedagogy.

The purpose of school meetings should be two-pronged. On the one hand, refine and fine-tune the strategy to achieve improved learning outcomes, and on the other hand, address staff welfare.

At the end of the day, it should not be about counting how many meetings have been held in an academic year; the emphasis should be on making meetings count. Meetings should be anchored on the desirability of team building and the spirit of exchanging best pedagogical practices.

As they execute their teaching responsibilities, teachers dispense knowledge while also learning from their experiences. A school should embrace the need for continuous professional development. And meetings provide an opportunity for learning.

Focused and productive school gatherings are predicated on a desire to celebrate and consolidate gains made while creating opportunities to close identified achievement gaps. When meetings are called to address staff welfare issues, the agenda should be strictly regulated to give primacy to and undivided attention to matters of classroom practice. Peripheral issues including office politics should never be allowed to crowd and cloud the agenda of meetings. If not managed properly, meetings could spiral out of control. Turf wars can play out in a meeting, but a convenor of an instructional core-based meeting should restrict the agenda to matters purely driven by the need to upgrade the instructional language.

A totalitarian focus on instructional matters strengthens students’ ability to shift into high-performing gear. On the subject of placing emphasis on classroom matters, Elizabeth City and Rachel Curtis noted that “Transformation is possible when all forces from the kindergarten to board room members come together and commit to making the education of children the number one priority. The number one priority above power struggles, political whims, or practitioner or parental excuses”. Once the focus on instruction has been identified, it is relatively easy to allocate energy and resources to areas that count.

It is possible for schools to hold short, productive meetings. Prolonged and protracted meetings encroaching on teaching time can be avoided. It is also important to ensure distractions, however powerful, do not dictate the agenda of schools. Students should be the epicenter of meetings. Any meeting that does not address how best to strengthen teaching and learning is largely tinkering on the surface.