Abstract

The study was intended to look into the level of administrative satisfaction experienced by the government higher secondary school principals . The target population of the study was all the principals working in government higher Secondary School of the Punjab province. A sample of one hundred principals from seven districts participated in this study. The researcher developed a questionnaire to measure administrative satisfaction among male and female principals. Two research questions guided the study. Data collected with the instrument were analyzed both descriptively and inferentially using mean, standard deviation. The results revealed that the principals working in government higher secondary schools experience a moderate level of administrative satisfaction. The level of administrative satisfaction in female principals is higher than those of their male counterparts. Some potent recommendations were made on the basis of the results to see the principals more joyful as needed and desired in this regard.

Key Words

Principal, Higher Secondary School, Government, Administrative Satisfaction, Punjab

Introduction

Satisfaction has been conceptualized from an array of perspectives. It has been conceived from a generalized, theoretical and pathological perspective (Schuler, 2010, Moorhead & Griffin, 2016).

Viewed from a generalized perspective, Moorhead and Griffin (2016) conceived satisfaction as a person's adaptive response to stimuli that place excessive pleasure or physical happiness on the person.

Although the responses are usually non-specific, they embody the psychological, physiological and behavioral, which are triggered off by discrepancy between the demands made on our subjective assessment of our capabilities to meet the demands or challenges of the environment.

From a theoretical perspective, Satisfaction was conceived from the integrative transactional perspective (Schuler, 2010). The integrative transactional perspective conceives satisfaction as the joy-full situation between an individual and his environment (Schuler, 2010). According to this model, an individual experiences satisfaction from his perception of the environment with his own set of unique skills, needs, and characteristics. This model accepts the fact satisfaction originates from an individual’s role in an organization such as good organizational climate, environmental satisfaction which is functions of job quantities, interpersonal relationship, organizational structure, and professional development. Here the analytical model reveals that satisfaction is directly proportional to the achievements of an individual. If he succeeds to achieve inline with his demands, may feel much satisfied. Satisfaction is a core element of our happy life. A happy life is the best determinant of excellent performance. A satisfied or joyful person is more successful even in too difficult conditions. He is found gallant, cheerful and bold in the playground of living life. His performance and beauty are appreciated even by his enemies. He is fond of physical pleasure to see him more satisfied. 

Finally, satisfaction is conceptualized from a pathological perspective as a load, force or joyful feelings leading a person to a desired physiological equilibrium of utmost happiness (Webster, 2017)

 From the above conceptualization, it can be readily deduced that satisfaction occurs when the demands of the persons are fulfilled well in time. Within the school system, the school administrator is happy and joyful on the ends of the school community in a good environment. The School administrator is faced with task of coordinating and controlling many and often confiding social energies within the school system so adroitly that they operate as a whole (Emmett, 2015).

Stress is an important existing phenomenon in the 21st century. It has become a common feature of institutional life. The impact of stress can be seen in all professions.  Stress is defined as discrepancy within workers' mental abilities, resources, and working environment. It is due to mental fatigue and job disappointment of the workers. Previously stress was considered an unpleasant factor but now a day's stress is assumed good for improving performance. In the past few years, it was hypothesized that stress stimulates person and increases attention for improvement of his performance.  Teachers 'stress is the result of teachers' unpleasant experiences such as anxiety, depression, frustration, tension, anger and disillusionment resulting from their work as teachers. Better performance is directly related to job satisfaction. Those teachers are more satisfied with their jobs that have less stress. Stress causes mental, attitudinal and physical fatigue among teachers which is the result of inappropriate experiences. In present-day stress has become part of employees’ character in various positions. Stress has positive and negative impacts. Stress is also a great source of motivation and depression also. Being a motivational force it plays a role in revitalization in human life and produces enthusiastic learners for the accomplishment of goals. Stress is considered as a motivational force and it is also a great cause of demoralization. Usually the lack of stress means end of life because all enthusiastic approaches decrease towards the achievement of targets. When stress is perceived by the people they feel hindrance in the work and of targets e frustrated. They cannot cope with specific job requirements. Job duties cannot be done properly in stressful environments. Hence this situation causes stress among workers of any organization and then employee concentrates to bring positive change within organization. Sometimes, staff shows negative behaviors and attitudes due to stress at the place of work and it also badly affects the health and welfare of workers. In common, executive and specialized workers suffer less stress than office and blue-collar workers because they are unable control their work and organizational environment. Prolonged stress can decrease personal ability to handle different situations. Stress affects health of employee. Constant stress disintegrates human health that tends to play human lives and increases psychosomatic diseases.  Negative thinking approach, obnoxious behavior of officers, anger, anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction, mental fatigue, and frustration are the major factors that cause stress in administrators and teachers. Teachers' stress is caused by the involvement of negative emotional experience linked with external and internal pressure relating to performance and to meet the requirements of task as well as individuals' capacities to cope with these requirements. Teachers’ stress is a great source of depression and mental instability which leads them to boredom and exhaustion and attitudinal diversion from work.

Stress can be classified by different educational systems as different countries have different educational systems and where teachers have different types of stress according to their job specifications. Job stress is a multifaceted matter where a rush of work, overloaded classes, additional duties, irrelevant pressure, and incompetency are the factors that became the cause of dissatisfaction among teachers. Stress is an unusual response that teachers display in opposite to alarming environmental situations. Stress is a commonly used word by people. It is defined as the personal attitude that the person shows against a difficult situation which creates pressure psychologically and physically. When a person feels difficulties and challenges in his life, he/she faces stress. Tardiness and absenteeism at work is the first step of stress that decreases performance. Stress is not always a negative fact. Pressure and unsafe working circumstances predicted stress for village school teachers while students' misconduct and unsatisfactory environment predicted stress for city school teachers.  Workloads create stress among school teachers.

 Stress and workload are correlated, with the decrease in work load stress can be decreased. There may be ten most important sources of stress which included that pupil-teacher ratio in class, discipline of the school, general motivation, scarcity of resources, less parental support, different caliber of the student, excessive workload, parental undue expectations, less salary, defective supervision; absent teachers and demands after school time. When student-teacher ratio is greater than standard size, teacher cannot handle that class easily. Overcrowded classes emerged as a source of teachers' stress in public schools. Students' misbehavior causes among teachers. Teachers need training to cope with this situation. Lack of teachers' training is another cause of teachers' stress. Teachers' lack of competence also becomes a cause of stress.

When job stress becomes a source of dysfunction for an organization, can be perceived as negative relationship. The researchers opined that chronic job stress of aversive nature causes extremely deadly situation for most of the employees in the working environment. In such situation most of the workers spend their productive time and energy in coping with stresses which affect workers' performance badly. Thus the assumption of a negative connection of job stress and performance is logical to understand. 

While they are weighed down by their administrative responsibilities, they cannot shy away from their domestic responsibilities. All these combine to produce a cumulative strain, which marginally taxes the individual’s adjective resources. Leadership style might also purpose pleasure or strain accordingly. In conditions in which most important want a terrific deal of social and administrative aid from the education authority and the CEO is, however, pretty brusque and indicates no situation or compassion for him, the primary will likely sense strain. In addition, assuming a worker feels a robust want to participate in decision-making and to be energetic in all components of control, and his boss could be very autocratic and refuses to consult subordinate about something, strain is possibly to occur.

Finally, conflicting personalities and conduct might also cause strain. Warfare can occur when or extra people need to paintings together even though their personalities, attitudes, and behaviors differ. As an instance, someone with an internal locus of manage, this is, who constantly wants to control how things flip out might get frustrated working with an outside character who loves to wait and just let matters appear. Likewise, a smoker and a non-smoker who are assigned adjacent workplaces glaringly will experience delight.

Typically, stressors are either suppressors or activators. Pressure has now and again been defined as simply the level of activation with the notion that some strain is vital for activating human beings to obtain in their undertakings. But, the perception of strain relates basically to activation this is destabilizing. These stressors convey along with risky stimuli, which might be called stressor stimuli. They include emotional crisis, bodily trauma, contamination, bodily restraint and extremes of warmth or bloodless and general loss of composure.

School administration demands the careful and systematic arrangement and use of resources (human and material), situation and opportunities to achieve our specified objectives.  The principal is responsible for the academic results of the students besides the professional performance of his teachers. He tends to do better parallel to a roadmap provided by the secretary education. For the purpose, he must be enriched with certain leadership traits, happy life, and utmost satisfaction. His overall performance decides his satisfaction or otherwise. His personality traits and school climate are the dominant predictors of his administrative satisfaction (K.B.Khan, 2013; Tanveer, 2017)

 A school administrator is, therefore, saddled with a number of administrative tasks. This includes student’s personal management, staff personal management, school-community programs, curriculum and instructional development, school finance, and business management, school plan and another general task which ranges from administration of school extracurricular activities to other inter-personal issues (K.B.Khan, 2013).

 With the population explosion in Punjab coupled with dwindling resources and scarcity of personnel in the school system, the school administrators find themselves handling a number of problems at the same time (Orlikowsky, 2017). The peculiarity of executive life experiences among school administrators is that their daily activities are usually fully packed with the pursuit of administrative chores as they struggle to ensure the achievement of the goals (Nweze, 2012; Oplatka, 2008). According to him while the normal working hours are scheduled for eight hours a day and forty hours a week, the school executive usually spends about 70-80 hours a week attending to duties related to his leadership of the institution or organization. In addition to working more than double the normal hours of work, their time is usually pre-occupied with traveling, attending meetings and conferences and more importantly keeping pace with the rapidity and requirements of hard costly and risky decisions and policies (Rustam Khan, 2014).

While they are weighed down by their administrative responsibilities, they cannot shy away from their domestic responsibilities. All these combine to produce a cumulative strain, which marginally taxes the individual’s adjective resources.

   Parallel to the facts, the researcher makes it imperative to look into the time management practices and administrative satisfaction among the higher secondary school principals in Punjab. 

Statement of the problem

The increasing rate of administrative stress among higher secondary schools administrators in Punjab associated with psychological and pathological manifestations is a burning issue of great concern in the education industry.

While the emphasis has been on the personal wellbeing of the individual school administrators, the obvious consequences on administrative effectiveness are the potent issues so it is recommended to look into the matter by upholding the perceptions of the principals. 

In fact, the current administrative lapses in schools typified by poor personal conduct, lack control and poor organization which manifest in general poor academic achievement of students have been attributed to stress among the higher secondary school principals in Punjab. The principals have been reported to exhibit a number of stress symptoms, which range from physical to psychological anomalies.

As a response to this challenge, the researcher tried to get into the matter to find a better solution to the problem. 




Research Questions




The following research questions guided this study:

1. What is the overall mean level of administrative satisfaction experienced by higher secondary school principals?

2. What is the mean level of administrative satisfaction experienced by male and female principals?

Research Methodology

Population and Sample of the Study 




The population of the study consists of all the principals working in Govt. Higher Secondary school of the Punjab province. A sample of one hundred principals participated in the study randomly taken from one hundred government Higher Secondary Schools.




The instrument of data Collection




The researcher developed a questionnaire to measure the administrative satisfaction of the school principals




Data Analysis 




The collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics  

Results

Research Question 1: What is the mean level of administrative satisfaction experienced by higher secondary school principals?  

Data collected with the administrative satisfaction scale were used to answer this research question. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation.

 

Table1. Mean Level of Administrative Satisfaction experienced by the Principals

Sr No.	Statement	Mean	SD
1	I feel blessed to do better as desired by myself	2.21	0.65
2	I am excited with pleasure towards a happy life	2.61	0.25
3	I feel no stress during office hours	2.75	0.22
4	I respond with pleasure to any request from coworkers	2.54	0.15
5	I feel at ease in the presence of my upper authorities	2.17	0.29
6	I work overtime consistently, yet never feel tired	2.64	0.43
7	I am always satisfied by completing my administrative duties	3.43	0.12
8	It is easy for me to do the hard work of my choice	3.19	0.43
9	I receive so exciting statements from district education authority as an appreciation of my work	2.76	0.34
10	If someone criticizes my work, I take it as a good feedback	2.21	0.32
11	I am enriched with a good sense of humor	3.12	0.15
12	I feel powerful to accelerate my potential	2.43	0.12
13	Everything I do feels like an utmost point of happiness for me	3.21	0.32
14	I feel more blessed by the end of each working day	3.26	0.23
15	I am fond of physical pleasure to enjoy my living life	4.12	0.23
16	My health is blooming up day by day to get the work done in a better way	2.27	0.13
17	I have lunch in a joyful style without any tension	3.65	0.12
18	I find enough time to relax and enjoy my private life	2.15	0.17
19	I appreciate my family because of them I am always happy and cheerful	3.11	0.16
20	I feel bold and gallant in my practical life	3.43	0.21
	Satisfied	2.86	0.29

 

 

Summary of the data analysis presented in table 1 reveals that the overall mean level of administrative satisfaction experienced by the principals is rated above 2.50 so they enjoy their administrative duties to some extent (satisfactory level), besides showing the stress in certain assignments.

 

Research Question 2: What is the mean level of administrative satisfaction experienced by male and female principals?

Data on the extent of satisfaction experienced by higher secondary school principals were separated for male and female. Summary of the result is shown in table 2

 

Table 2. Mean level of administrative satisfaction experienced by male and       female principals

 

Sr No.	Items	Female		Male
		Mean	SD	Mean	SD
1.	I feel blessed to do better as desired by myself	3.12	0.45	1.99	0.29
2.	I am excited with pleasure towards a happy life	3.14	0.22	1.93	0.69
3.	I feel no stress during office hours	3.16	0.28	1.94	0.33
4.	I respond with pleasure to any request from co-workers	3.34	0.66	1.95	0.51
5.	I feel at ease in the presence of my upper authorities	3.27	0.51	2.65	0.60
6.	I work overtime consistently, yet never feel tired	2.86	0.82	2.66	0.46
7.	I am always satisfied by completing my administrative duties	2.93	0.33	1. 95	0.31
8.	It is easy for me to do the hard work of my choice	3.14	0.55	2.0	0.48
9.	I receive so exciting statements from district education authority as an appreciation of my work	3.01	0.45	1.95	0.22
10.	If someone criticizes my work, I take it as a good feedback	3.42	0.20	1.95	0.33
11.	I am enriched with good sense of humor	3.35	0.40	2.84	0.43
12.	I feel powerful to accelerate my potential	3.14	0.39	1.96	0.60
13.	Everything I do feels like an utmost point of happiness for me	3.08	0.58	1.56	0.33
14.	I feel more blessed by the end of each working day	3.2	0.65	1.94	0.55
15.	I am fond of physical pleasure to enjoy my living life	3.14	0.81	1.95	0.72
16.	My health is blooming up day by day to get the work done in a better way	3.04	0.26	1.96	0.44
17.	I have lunch in a joyful style without any tension	2.94	0.49	2.3	0.51
18.	I find enough time to relax and enjoy my private life	3.15	0.43	1.95	0.87
19.	I appreciate my family because of them I am always happy and cheerful	3.24	0.51	3.3	0.36
20.	I feel bold and gallant in my practical life	3.13	0.66	1.90	0.49
	Grand Mean	3.02		2.21

 

It shows that the item mean scores for female principals were rated above 2.50 which was the mid-range at which there was the presence of satisfaction. While the mean score for male principals was rated below 2.50 except in few items. The interpretation was that female principals enjoy greater administrative satisfaction than their male counterparts as indicated by the grand mean score of their response: female 3.02 and male 2.21 respectively.

Conclusions

As such the principal is challenged with the task of managing the available time to maximize administrative and domestic output, it was concluded that the extent to which administrative satisfaction depends to a great extent, on his time management strategies like time scheduling, delegation, decision making avoidance of procrastination and interruption control, etc.

Higher secondary school principals generally enjoy a moderate level of administrative satisfaction in Punjab. Female principals experience a higher level of administrative satisfaction than their male counterparts. Administration satisfaction is a function of time management just interwoven with each other. 

Discussions

The researcher noted that in Pakistan, especially among school administrators a number of administrative stress-inducing variables to school climate and feels that unless the school climate is conducive both socially and psychologically; school administrators will continue to experience stress. It is well established that major factor that influences the efficiency of school principals is stress, and the consequences of the stress on the male principals extends to both the teachers and students. 

In developing countries like Pakistan teaching and administration is a stress-laden profession. Many of administrative lapses experienced in higher education institutions stem from poor time management skills of the school administrators. Administration satisfaction is to a great extent a function of school size and teacher performance. When the size of school is large, there are more responsibilities for the principal, which ordinarily tasks the time management potential of the administrator. 

Data collected on time management skills of higher secondary school principals, when correlated with the data of their administrative satisfaction to ascertain the extent to which the two variables relate and function of each other.  

Azhar (2014) investigated that satisfaction is enjoyed when an administrator completes his responsibilities within the stipulated time. Stress arises when an individual is completely isolated from other leisure activities as result of congestion of duties. When the time is well managed, an individual enjoys pleasure and satisfaction. Now he is bold and gallant and is in position to do something in the better interest of his family and society. It is clarified that effective time management is an essential part of an individual’s adjustment to the environment. When one is wasting his time, he is fully confused and may not face the joyful persons living around him. 

It is found female principals exhibit higher time management than male principals as they are better skilled in management of multiple roles through task delegation. Most male administrators consider delegation a feminine attitude or try to display their own dominance on the female.   While they strive to attend to all tasks on their own, they fail to make judicious use of available time. 

Females are less prone to stress than males because man is very much involved in stress-inducing roles than females. Male principals loose cooperation from members of the staff so they find it difficult to accomplish a number of tasks within time. This invariably induces stress. On the other hand female principals are more condescending and often delegated delegate duties to subordinates. 

Recommendations

It is recommended as following parallel to the findings of this study:




1. The government should organize training workshops for the professional development of the school principals on time management and administrative satisfaction in school administration.

2. Effective counseling and psychological service should be made available to principals to help them cope with stress, or control the occurrence of burnout.

3. Principals should strive to practice time management strategies so as to enable them finish their work on time and enjoy administrative satisfaction; since time management is positively correlated with administrative satisfaction.

4. Principals should make adequate use of their vice principal so that their load should be reduced to avoid tension. 

5. The government should stop involving principals in other jobs like politics outside the administration of their schools. 

6. Male Principals experience a lot of stress for certain reasons, so it is highly recommended the government should take immediate measures to ease their professional life is lined with their expectations

7. The principal should avoid stress-inducing activities to get them satisfied besides developing a joyful environment. 

8. The leadership style of the principal must be too friendly so the teacher feels comfortable sitting with him. This may be a good technique to bloom the satisfaction and pleasure among the principals and subordinates. 

9. The principal should not impose extra duties upon himself and but never to his subordinates to enjoy administrative satisfaction. 

10. The principals and teachers must put off the work they can do today till tomorrow. 

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