Administration Of Education

The term educational administration connotes a very comprehensive meaning today. Like administration of other affairs, administration of education is also considered to consist of all those activities which are concerned with the planning, organizing, directing, coordinating and controlling of educational activity. Again, as in other areas, administration in the educational field also demands a high degree of natural ability, training, knowledge and experience on the part of those who are associated with it.

 During the past decade an enormous amount of literature has appeared in the field of educational administration, and it reveals that the subject of administration of education has a professional status and those who are to associate themselves with that have only to have a very high degree of natural talents but have also to acquire through training, study, and experience a close acquaintance with educational problems and practices as evidenced at different levels and processes of education.

A distinction is sometimes drawn between the terms organization and administration in educational field. Though the two terms are to a considerable degree, interrelated and interdependent, it is stated that administration is principally concerned with management- with the conduct, operation and management of an enterprise.

Organization is primarily concerned with the pre-execution stage-the stage which involves collection and co-ordination of material and resources so as to be put into operation. The organizational aspect is mainly concerned with making arrangements that permit the beginning of purpose realization; the administrative phase is concerned with actual conduct and operation of the arrangement made available through organization.

Thus construction of a school building and procurement of different supplies and equipment would be a matter of organization, making proper use of those things would be a matter of administration. Good administration will ensure good results from an organization; poor administration may prevent even a well organized enterprise from producing what it is capable of producing.

Organization and administration are thus interrelated phases of any enterprise. Gulick has mentioned seven activities viz., planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting, which enters into the two phases, and it may be difficult to say which one of them exclusively belongs to this or that phase.

Both organization and administration demand a very high level of competence, imagination, and foresight and execution capacity. No one can work efficiently if necessary facilities and materials are not made available to him; at the same time if those facilities and materials are not properly used or are abused or misused, it is not unusual to see a very well-organized enterprise like a school frittering away its resources under the charge of a poorly equipped administrator.