STAFF AND MANAGEMENT
 

Combining efficiency with effectiveness

When it began as a project of the CBSE in 1979, there was a small staff of 29, which rose to 37 by 1981. With the rapid and dramatic increase in enrolment, the staff strength has also grown, but the tradition of the Open School project was to manage with a lean staff, since over-staffing would have led to drop in efficiency.

Till 1988, most of the student file work (registration of students, and later registration for examination) was manually managed but which have now been fully computerised. The support of the computer was always available for the processing of the results of the public examinations. This year, Internal assessment tests have been introduced. The answerscripts are computer marked, through the Optical Mark Reader, thus ensuring both speed and accuracy. This year, 1,67,000 answer scripts were computer marked, and consolidated reports made ready for despatch to the AIs in about a month. The next evaluation would be speedier from the experience gained from the first exercise.

By the very nature of the work in hand, some work, especially connected with examination, is seasonal, and for this contract staff is employed, who work with the regular staff. This experience has been a happy one and the work quality has been kept at a high level, though, for exacting accurate work, such as for the mailing of dispatches, errors have occurred. Procedures are being standardised and simplified, to reduce the problem areas.

Heavy reliance on the computer, for admission, examination and for various other jobs such as. production of identity cards as well as voluminous correspondence, has resulted in the reduction of cost and improvement of the quality of the output. Apart from data entry of students, the editing and updating of data from the checklist received from centres, the computer provides the following:

* subjectwise student data for each centre

* statistics reports on age, course selection, sex, medium of study, economic status, urban/rural etc.

* payroll system for staff salary disbursement

* computerisation of AI's for ready correspondence with individual students through mailmerge Attendance Sheets and other form sheets

* Status reports for various branches

Decentralisation

NOS believes in decentralisation of responsibilities, along with delegation of necessary authority to take decisions. This includes delegation of financial authority as well, upto the level of Assistant Director and Tutors. We have also the system of Imprest for easy and ready money availability, while keeping accountability intact.

Levels of Posts

The pyramid is the usual resulting configuration of the levels of posts in many organisations. Our organisational chart looks more like an evergreen tree (see figure) Group D level posts have been kept to a minimum and

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so too the Group C, while there is a greater volume of supervisory and technical level posts. The Adminograph envisaged over the next five years can be seen from the figure.

Functional Autonomy

Though remaining a grant-in-aid institution, Open School had a good deal of functional autonomy. With the establishment of NOS as an independent registered Society and by reason of its constitution, NOS enjoys a good deal of real autonomy. The earlier Advisory Committee of the Open School, which was the highest body within, has been replaced by an Executive Board, to which all powers of the National Open School Society have been given to manage the affairs of the Society.

The Executive Board does forward planning of policies and programmes of action; takes appropriate decisions, ensures effective implementation and exercises the review function.

The Executive Board has the following representation:

* Chairman of the Society, who will also be Chairman of the Executive Board

* Vice Chairman who will be the Director (Academic)

* Secretary of NOS who will be the Member Secretary

* The Heads of all the Departments of NOS

* Nominee of the Deptt. of Education, MHRD

* Nominee of the Integrated Finance Division of MHRD

* One specialist from each of the following:

Distance Education

Development and Education of Women

Industry

Media

Technology

Vocational/Technical Education

There is also a General Body which shall have, vested with it, the responsibility to assist the Society by providing sound and professional advice and counsel; it well generate a vision and give broad policy directions to the Society; it will receive and critically examine and comment on the Annual Report of the Society; it will receive and approve the annual budget of the Society; in general, the General Body will help ensure that the Society will remain publicly accountable and that it exercises its powers and functions in consonance with the Mission and objectives of the Society and within the framework of normative national documents.

The Staff Strength during the 10 Years is projected in the following Graph.

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