Headmasters’ Safety Management and Performance in Two Malaysian National Primary Schools

Abstract

A conducive environment to ensure safety among school students is crucial as most of the time they are at school and grow up in school settings. It is vital to understand that, this period is a critical development stage for students whereby their personality is developed holistically in a different environment from home. The failure of handling hazards effectively and neglecting attitude on reporting cases contributes to the rising number of accidents in schools. Thus, the study aims to explore headmasters' strategies in safety management and how they strengthen teacher's safety performances in schools. An explorative case study research design was adopted using purposive sampling. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with two headmasters. The data analyses were performed by reviewing the informants' transcripts, and the transcripts were coded through open, axial and selective coding. The findings of the study revealed seven strategies implemented by the headmaster's in managing school safety are: (a) Importance of Safety Management; (b) Acting as Role Model; (c) Communicates School Safety; (d) Safety Practices; (e) Training Teachers; (f) Budget Arrangements; and (g) Alliance with School Community. Findings also revealed headmaster's strengthen teacher's safety performances in schools in two ways: (a) Trust in Teachers; and (b) Teachers Execute Programmes. This study provides an insight into the headmaster's safety management and safety performance in two Malaysian primary schools. Besides, policymakers will benefit from the change that could be made on safety-related matters with the aim of reducing the number of accident and incident cases among school students.

A Systematic Literature Review on Leadership Practices for Safety in the Education Sector

“…The countries where the studies were conducted are shown in Figure 2. Out of 21 selected articles, seven studies were conducted in United State of America [7,20,41,[44][45][46]49], three studies were conducted in Malaysia [10,36,38], two studies were conducted in Turkey [23,39], two studies in Taiwan [21,42], one study was conducted in these countries, namely Canada [43], Sweden [37], Finland [40], Iran [22], Spain [24], Iraq [48], and Saudi Arabia [47]. The total number of articles published each year is displayed in Figure 3.…”

“…The total number of articles published each year is displayed in Figure 3. Out of 21 selected articles, three articles were published in 2021 [47][48][49], three articles in 2017 [24,44,45], three articles in 2015 [10,23,37], two articles in 2019 [38,46], two articles in 2016 [39,40], two articles in 2014 [22,43], two articles in 2008 [21,42], one article in 2011 [41], one article in 2007 [20], one article in 2020 [36], and one article in 2005 [7]. Most of the selected articles were about leadership practices for safety in higher education institutions with 13 articles (62%), and another 8 articles (38%) were about leadership practices for safety in schools at the primary and secondary levels.…”

“…To stimulate safety voice behavior, leaders need to listen to the views of their staff and students, understand their situation, and try to find the solution [22]. Other than that, leaders need to pay attention to staff and student personalities when dealing with safety matters [21,38,41], because the level of awareness for speaking up is different. Tucker and Turner [43] found that men are less vocal about safety compared with women; meanwhile, young workers who do hazardous work feel no need to complain about safety.…”

“…Some leaders provide safety guidance by serving as role models to motivate staff and students to pursue the quality and safety agenda [20,21,36,46]. As for safety role models, leaders are personally committed to safety management practices in their organization through their understanding of the concept, importance, and contributions to improving workplace safety management [38]. According to Naranasamy and Adams [38], school leaders serve as models by implementing safety management practices, for example, by preparing safety procedures and rules such as safety lines, safety display boards, warnings, and awareness on safety matters in schools, and observing the physical condition of the school such as buildings, the school landscape, and the environment.…”

The elusive Malayan tiger ‘captured’: A systematic review of research on educational leadership and management in Malaysia

“…As for management studies, only 9% of studies typically examined quality and accountability processes (Abdul Khalil and Awang, 2016;Ismail and Don, 2015), discipline management (Ghani et al, 2014), curriculum management (Awang Besar and Hj Ahmad, 2013;Mohd Hamzah and Ayob, 2015), safety management (Naranasamy and Adams, 2019;Ramachandran and Kenayathulla, 2018), conflict management (Khun-inkeeree et al, 2019), financial management (Mohd Arus et al, 2018), and human resource management (Hj Ahmad, 2009). The distribution of the Malaysian EDLM studies corroborates with the global literature in EDLM, which has demonstrated a preference on studying leadership in recent years (Mertkan et al, 2016).…”