Primary School Supervision During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study of How Elementary School Superintendent in Bontang City Responded to Growing Needs

Abstract

Supervisors are parties who are expected to provide professional development for teachers in teaching and learning activities and provide the latest information related to educational policies, provide alternative solutions when schools have difficulty improving quality or running educational programs. However, limited attention is paid to primary school supervision issues during the current COVID-19 pandemic. This article discusses the implementation of primary school supervision in Bontang City during the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative approach with a descriptive method is used to describe the conditions that occurred at the time the research was conducted and then examine the causes of the conditions under study. Then, the researcher also explained how the supervisory plan for monitoring, implementing and evaluating Bontang City elementary schools during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results showed that school supervision during the pandemic was not carried out properly. The implementation of supervision does not follow the supervisor's technical instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the supervision process does not provide real implications for the implementation of effective learning.

Problems Implementing Academic Supervision in Pandemic and New Normal Period in Senior High School

“…At the time of the pandemic the school principal was unable to carry out academic supervision due to the problem of unsupportive internet access where some teachers live in remote areas and the ability of teachers to operate IT is still low, especially teachers who are age adrift (Asmarani et al, 2021;Fatoni, 2022;Fendi et al, 2020;Hastowo & Abduh, 2021;Sanoto, 2021). In addition, the school principal also does not know for sure the mechanism of online academic supervision activities (Nurlaelah et al, 2022;Rindarti, 2021). On the other hand, the implementation of supervision during a pandemic actually continued to be carried out online in various schools and had a positive impact in addition to the problems that had to be faced.…”

“…During a pandemic, the implementation of academic supervision did not go well because the implementation did not follow supervision procedures during a pandemic, there were no application standards from the government, internet access constraints, and the teacher's ability to use IT was still low (Fendi et al, 2020;Nurlaelah et al, 2022). The inhibiting factor for the implementation of academic supervision is that supervision is carried out not according to a predetermined schedule due to the many agendas of the principal and team of supervisors outside the school so that sometimes supervision is carried out suddenly (Dewi, 2020;Iskandar, 2020).This also has an impact on the lack of follow-up for teachers so that the implementation of supervision is considered not effective.…”

Implementation of Kindergarten Supervisor Academic Supervision

“…School supervisors are vocational education officials who are assigned by authorized officials with all the functions, responsibilities and authority of teaching and supervision in the academic field (technical education) as well as school management/management (Sagala, 2012). It is stated that the main function of school supervisors is based on the regulations of the government of the Republic of Indonesia (Nurlaelah et al, 2022). Decree 19 of 2005 concerning National Education Standards, in Article 55 regulates: "Supervision of teaching units includes monitoring, supervision, evaluation, information and monitoring of supervision results" (Irmayani et al, 2018).…”