Abstract:

Based on the persistently increasing demands on the process of management of educational institutions, respectively the work of school managers in Slovakia, there is a discussion about the issue of their adequate preparation for this demanding job in professional circles. Unfortunately, there is no research that would address this issue in terms of exact research investigation in the Slovak Republic. The aim of this paper is, therefore, seeking answers to the following questions: Are current headmasters able to organize work time for themselves and their employees effectively? Do they know about any methods and techniques of effective time management? If so, do they dispose of such personality traits that allows them to implement this knowledge into management practice? And further. For this reason, readers are mediated with original and interesting research results focused on analysis of headmaster educational needs while their knowledge in own time management have been also verified. In the paper conclusion concrete solutions have been proposed, which should lead to the professionalisation of the school management process in the Slovak Republic. In the introduction the author discusses main requirements focusing on educational needs of headmasters, with emphasis on the application of the Person Centered Approach (PCA), whose principles are also taken into account in the research part of the paper. Author also points to the selected aspects of self-regulation and then self-management that significantly affect the quality of management process in schools. There are different tools available for headmasters, which should help them to manage a school institution successfully, such as individual management functions. Therefore, the paper points out professional mastering of these areas of school management that significantly determine the way of organizing the headmaster´s work and time, respectively his time management. In response to this, the methodology of the research part of the paper focuses on solving descriptive and relational research problem aimed at identification of headmaster’s current state of time management in an elementary school in Slovak Republic and further ascertains dependence between the relevant key variables. In order to evaluate our findings, we applied quantitative and qualitative research methods. In addition to above descriptive research problem, further dependencies between the relevant variables have been identified. They were part of the solution for the relational research problem. In order to evaluate results of our research, we applied the non-parametric correlation – Chi-square test of independence. The research results point to interesting findings, which essentially determine the way of solving this problem from the level of the Ministry of Education. Individual partial results confirmed fact that excessive workload of headmasters do not always depend on the quantity of work tasks, but on the professionalism of their own time management. An interesting finding was also the fact that the length of managerial work does not automatically lead to an increasing efficiency of headmaster’s work. As the most of the facts may be considered as surprising, in the last section of the paper, concrete recommendations to improve headmasters work are presented. Recommendations are based mainly on an analysis of headmaster educational needs, which highlights the need to review the curriculum of headmaster training.

Keywords:

School management, Headmaster´s training, Managerial functions, Self-control, Delegation, Coaching, Teamwork, Methods and techniques of time management.