What is Educational Administration? Definition, Goals, Roles and Functions

Educational administration is a form of effort to integrate existing activities and programs. This activity is interdependent with groups and individuals who have the same goal for the benefit of students.

The following is a further explanation of the existence of educational administration.

Understanding Educational Administration

The meaning of educational administration is expressed by several experts as follows.

  1. Drs. M. Ngalim Purwanto,  stated that educational administration is a process of integrating or combining educational goals personally, spiritually and materially.
  2. Dasuqi and Somantri,  stated that educational administration is an effort to practice existing administrative rules in the field of education.
  3. Hadari Nawawi,  expressed educational administration as a series of joint activities to achieve education in order to create systematic education.
  4. Good Carter V,  interprets educational administration as all the techniques and procedures used in administering educational institutions in accordance with predetermined policies.
  5. According to  Knezevich , educational administration is a process that deals with the creation, maintenance, stimulation and unification of personnel in an educational institution in an effort to realize predetermined goals.
  6. Oteng Sutisna  also stated that educational administration is an effort to coordinate the interdependent activities of people and groups in achieving the common goal of children’s education.
  7. Nasution  stated that educational administration is the overall process of all joint activities in the field of education by utilizing all available facilities, both personal, material and spiritual, to achieve educational goals.

Apart from that, educational administration can also be interpreted as a collaboration to achieve educational goals, as well as a process to achieve educational goals, starting from planning, organizing, directing, monitoring and assessing. Educator administration can also be considered as a system with a whole consisting of interacting parts, with the aim of management to monitor whether it has achieved the set targets.

From a leadership perspective, educational administration functions to answer questions about how educational administrators carry out their duties, as well as a decision-making process between employees and a leader.

Meanwhile, from a communication perspective, educational administration is an effort to make other people understand and vice versa. Educational administration can also be seen from an administrative perspective regarding routine record-keeping activities, documenting activities, also organizing correspondence in all its aspects and preparing reports.

By paying attention to the components of education and the education system, the administration will play a supporting role and facilitate the teaching and learning process. In carrying out educational administration, there will be many things that must be done. Not to mention related to social cases such as dropping out of school and problems regarding insufficient character education.

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Elements and Objectives of Educational Administration

According to  Sondang P Siagian,  there are several elements that must be present in educational administration, such as having more than 2 people doing the work, and also being supported by equipment and supplies.

According to  The Liang Gie  , the elements of administration are different, namely including organization, management, communication, finance, supplies, personnel, administration, and public relations or public relations. These eight elements must be present in educational institutions, from elementary level institutions to university level.

According to Sergiovanni and Carver, the goals of administration   are seen in four basic goals that are emphasized in the world of education, namely creating production effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, and building job satisfaction.

Apart from these four objectives, another objective of educational administration is to achieve flexibility in the educational administration process, efficiency and effectiveness in the implementation of educational administration and the implementation of continuity of educational administration and lifelong education that is disciplined and guided by scientific linearity.

Education administration is also responsible for forming and producing students who are qualified and useful for the nation and state. Apart from being intelligent, it also produces students who have faith, morals, independence and responsibility. Don’t become a corrupt person, because in the end it will be detrimental to society and the country.

The Role of Educational Administration

There are several roles of educational administration that we need to know as follows.

  1. Planning , achieving educational goals requires careful planning. The plan is made as best as possible so that it can run optimally. Because educational planning is not made arbitrarily, it must be mutually agreed upon.
  2. Organizing , this is very necessary in building relationships and interactions, both interactions with staff, between education and students. Therefore, these things must work together to achieve the expected educational results.
  3. Coordination , this must be based on good communication. If communication is not based on coordination, it will not have an impact. The team in the coordination section will be responsible for developing techniques, generating ideas, and how to create interactive learning.

If it stagnates, the management of educational institutions will also collapse. Student results will also be messy because the knowledge that has been given is not optimal.

  1. Communication , one way to establish connectivity between educators and students is good communication. Building communication is used as a means of transforming knowledge between educators and students, as well as reporting the results of educational achievements from regional units to central units.
  2. Supervision , while carrying out activities to achieve goals, supervision is necessary. Because without supervision, if fraud occurs, you can immediately be reprimanded. In each educational institution unit, a management structure is formed, if it is not monitored, the potential for fraud is very likely to occur.
  3. Personnel , usually called  staffing  , is responsible for planning and organizing. With staffing, the work structure will make it easier to achieve educational goals.
  4. Budgeting , to carry out and achieve educational goals there are outgoing costs and entering costs. So  budgeting  is needed which requires supervision. Because in the financial sector there is a very high risk of corruption by irresponsible people or individuals.
  5. Assessment , in an organization or educational institution will require transparency in the management process. One of them is by carrying out an evaluation, whether it has been done effectively and achieved overall or not at all, so that things that are lacking can be corrected.

Carrying out education is not an easy thing, because it requires many elements that are integrated and related to each other. In fact, many structures must be involved in order to achieve national education because it is related to government and the world of education.

Principles and Functions of Educational Administration

The existence of a relationship between education providers and learning in schools has given rise to several main points and functions of educational administration, namely as follows.

  1. Educational administration  is a regulatory system for integrating all types and forms of resources related to the effectiveness of learning towards achieving educational goals in schools. In the Preamble to the 1945 Constitution, it was emphasized that the aim of the national education of the Republic of Indonesia is to make the life of the nation intelligent.
  2. There is  the formation of a national education system with educational autonomy , because the social reality of the Indonesian nation is multicultural. With a national education autonomy system, the managerial learning process in each school can run intensively, effectively and efficiently.
  3. There is a need for  clear national education planning  to achieve the elaboration of national education goals, with the elaboration of concrete and structured forms of programs. Implementation needs to be supported by an accurate organization and coordination system. This also requires an intensive monitoring system so that learning in schools can run effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the target of multi-competency human resources as an urgent national need.
  4. There is  a strong function and role as a renewal of  social life towards achieving national goals in the future.

These four main ideas of educational administration need to function as a basis for developing educational management and effective learning in schools. Apart from that, it also requires consideration of the psychological, anthropological and sociological background of the community in the school environment.

This is because the substance of spiritual, intellectual and moral intelligence has become the goal of education with the process of developing behavior as a social psychological, anthropological and sociological aspect. In order for the process to run smoothly, clear and comprehensive education and learning planning is needed. Apart from that, an effective and efficient implementation management system is also needed.

Principles of Educational Administration

There are two principles used as the basis for the work of educational administration activities in schools, namely  ideal principles  and  operational principles .

The basis of Idyll

In principle, the implementation of educational administration in a country depends on the education system adopted. The education system adopted by the Indonesian state is an education system based on Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.

Educational administration is essentially a broad educational sub-system, so the ideal foundations used in administrative activities in schools are Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.

Operational Principles

The second principle is the operations or principles used to achieve the national education goals stated in the National Education System Law Number 20 of 2003, the education system in Indonesian schools has undergone reform. This reform was carried out to improve the quality of education at the school level.

The principles used in the 2013 curriculum as a basis for operational administration are as follows:

1. Principle of Flexibility

The implementation of education in schools must pay attention to ecosystem factors and the ability to provide facilities for the implementation of school education.

2. Principles of Efficiency and Effectiveness

Efficiency is not only in using time appropriately, but also in utilizing energy optimally.

3. Goal-oriented principle

Educational administration is a component of the education system, so to achieve these goals the operational objectives that have been formulated must be the basis for implementing educational administration activities in schools.

4. Principle of Continuity

It is the operational basis for carrying out administrative activities in schools. Because, every level of education must have a mutually sustainable hierarchy.

5. Principles of Lifelong Education

Every human being is expected to always develop. Therefore, society or the government is expected to be able to create situations that can support the teaching and learning process.

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Educational Administration Duties

The educational administration tasks are as follows:

  1. Strive for education to appear normally by formally formulating, completing, describing and setting educational goals that will be concerned
  2. Disseminate and try to instill educational goals in the members of the institution, so that these educational goals become a need and drive the work of the members of the institution
  3. Select, select, describe and determine processes in the form of actions, activities and work patterns that are calculated and provide results in accordance with the stated objectives
  4. Supervise the implementation of the educational process by monitoring, checking and controlling every activity, action in every system process. This effort is often associated with inherent supervision or quality control in education.
  5. Assessing the results that have been achieved and the processes that are currently in effect, in addition to trying to ensure that information regarding the results and processes becomes feedback that can improve the process and results in the future

Scope of Educational Administration

There are several fields within the scope of educational administration, including:

School Administration Sector

  • Organization and structure of administrative employees
  • School financial budget
  • Staffing and school personnel issues
  • Finance and bookkeeping
  • Correspondence or letters
  • Problems with appointments, transfers, placements, reports, filling in master books, report cards and so on

Student Personnel Field

  • Student organization
  • Student health problems
  • Evaluate student progress
  • Student welfare issues
  • Guidance and counseling for students

Teacher Personnel Field

  • Appointment and placement of teachers
  • Teacher personnel organization
  • Staffing problems
  • Problems of conditions and evaluation of teacher progress
  • Refreshing and upgrading teachers

Supervision or Supervision Field

  • Efforts to increase the morale of teachers and administrative employees.
  • Strive for and develop good cooperation between teachers, students and school administration employees.
  • Strive and create guidelines for ways to assess educational and teaching results.
  • Efforts to improve teacher quality and experience.

Field of Curriculum Implementation and Development

  • Guided by and implementing the school curriculum in an effort to achieve the basics and goals of education and teaching.
  • Carry out curriculum organization and methods, in accordance with educational reform and the community environment.
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Components of Educational Administration 

Administrative components can be broadly classified into:

  1. School Personal Administration , the entire process of managing personnel in the school consisting of the principal, deputy principal, teachers, head of administration, all administrative employees and so on
  2. Curriculum Administration , all experiences provided by schools to foster children’s development by creating teaching and learning situations.
  3. Administration of Educational Infrastructure and Facilities , for infrastructure such as locations or places, school buildings and sports fields. Meanwhile, facilities are direct tools to achieve educational goals, such as space, books, libraries, laboratories, and so on.
  4. Student Administration , such as the OSIS with the aim of training student leadership and providing a vehicle for students to carry out appropriate curricular activities.
  5. School and Community Collaboration (PR) , there are several paths that can be taken in school and community relations, namely:
  • Child or student
  • School letters, leaflets and bulletins
  • Mass media
  • Informal meeting
  • Student progress report
  • Formal contact
  • Utilize the resources available in the community
  • Education organizing auxiliary body

It is very clear the important role of administration in the educational sphere. Educational administration that is implemented well will certainly support the achievement of educational goals for students.