The process of elementary and secondary school supervision in Malian education system

The purpose of this study is to highlight the functioning of the current supervision's system for elementary and secondary school in Mali by exploring the views of Supervisor, principal and teacher in Kayes, Koulikoro regions and the district of Bamako. The qualitative research and case study methodologies are applied to analyze the primary data of this study. Snowball method of purposeful sampling is used. The participant group of the study consists of a total of 40 people, divided as follows: 30 supervisors, 5 teachers and 5 School principals from elementary and secondary schools. Interview, observation and document analysis techniques are used for data collection. Descriptive analysis method is used for data analysis. According to the results, the official roles of supervision services are determined as to supervise or evaluate and support school and school's personnel and to assure liaison between school and educational institutions. According to the participants, due to insufficient resources these roles are not fully implemented. Supervisors by taking into consideration their experiences and aptitudes are appointed by the order of the Minister of National Education. However, according to most participants, it is highlighted that the supervisors should be recruited by exam. It is stated that the supervisors are not systematically controlled. However, according to the participant they should be controlled through reports written by the supervisor after each task and by IGEN regular visit of supervision services. It is stated that the supervisors in elementary schools did not receive any pre training relevant to their tasks and secondary school inspectors received it in a short period of time. According to the participants, appropriate school should be opened to provide the inspectors pre-service education; otherwise they should receive the necessary pre-service training. In-service trainings should be stressed on the discipline of the supervision, on innovations in teaching, on the National Education System or by attending conferences in neighbors' countries or somewhere else. The problems of supervision are lack of resources generally and lack of human resource singularly in secondary school supervision services, lack of pre and in-service educations, management problem and inefficiency of school supervision. For "the ideal system of school supervision" Providing the necessary resources to the supervision services, reinforcing cooperation between the different supervision services, managing adequately supervision human resources, enhancing school and school personnel supervision and ameliorating supervision services management are highlighted. Finally, in practice, there is no significant change in current school supervision's system in spite of multiplication of supervision services, redefining the roles of supervisors, renaming supervision's services and democratization of supervision's system. Considering the lack of resources provided to supervision's services and distance between some schools and supervision's services the initiatives as "Resident advisor" and "CA of Teacher" should be reinforced and backed. After providing the necessary resources to supervision's services the supervisors should be systematically controlled and good result should be required. Keywords: Educational supervision, supervision process, roles of supervısors, supervision services, Malian Education System.