Primary head teachers\\\' status

The ministry of primary and mass education issued a circular recently upgrading the existing status of the head teachers of the government primary schools to the second class which is, I think, a very worthwhile decision and a long awaited demand of the head teachers. Besides head teachers, the salary structure for the assistant teachers of the country's elementary schools has also been escalated. This decision was announced by the Prime Minister while inaugurating the 'National Primary School Education Week-2014' in the capital. Around 60,000 headmasters and 350,000 assistant teachers of the country's primary schools will enjoy the new scale and status from now on.  This is really praiseworthy that government has started sensing the importance of upgrading the status and salary of primary teachers, especially head teachers but why have they been upgraded to second class, why not first class? Who is a head teacher? Wikipedia says, "A head teacher or school principal (also known as  headmaster, headmistress) is the most senior teacher, leader and manager of a school." Now let's have a look at the role of a primary school head teacher or principal. The role of the principal covers many different areas including leadership, teacher evaluation, student discipline, and several others. He/she has to wear many hats. Being an effective principal is hard work and is time consuming. A good principal is balanced within all their roles and works hard to ensure that that they are doing what they feel is the best for all constituents involved. He/she is the leader in the school building. A good leader always leads by example. A head teacher should be positive, enthusiastic, have hand in the day to day activities of the school, and listen to his/her team.  
Let's have a look at head teacher's job description or call it accomplishments in a bit detail:
School discipline: A large part of any school head teacher/principal's job is to handle school discipline. The first step of having effective school discipline is to make sure that teachers as well as students know what head teacher is expecting when it comes to discipline issue. The more disciplined the school is, the better education will be offered.  
Teacher evaluation: An effective school has to have effective teachers and the teacher evaluation process is in the hand of head teacher. Evaluations should be fair and well documented pointing out both strengths and weaknesses. The head teacher has to know how to effectively evaluate his/her teachers and come up with the feedback.
Develop, implement and evaluate programmes: Developing, implementing, and evaluating the programmes within the school is another large part of a school principal's role. A principal should always be looking for ways to improve the student experience at school.
Review policies and procedures: A head teacher should review, remove, rewrite, or write policies and procedures every year as needed. Having an effective student handbook can improve the quality of education your students receive. It can also make a principal's job a little easier. The principal's role is to make sure students, teachers, and parents know what these policies and procedures are.
Schedule setting:  Creating schedules every year can be a daunting task but it also goes to head teacher's shoulder. Schedule setting includes schedule, duty schedule, exam schedule, report card day schedule, library schedule etc.
Hiring new teachers: A vital part of any school administrator's job is to hire teachers and staff that are going to do their job correctly. Hiring the wrong person can cause you huge headaches down the line, while hiring the right person makes your job all the more easier. The interview process is extremely important when hiring a new teacher. There are many factors that play into a person being a good candidate for you to hire. And here head teacher has got a significant role to play.
Parent and community relations: Having good relations with parents and community members can benefit school in a variety of areas. Being the leader of the school, head teacher has to initiate this.
Delegating: It is vital that a school principal delegates some duties as necessary. Having people around him/her that he/she trusts completely will make this easier. An effective school principal simply does not have enough time to do everything. What he/she has to do is to hire right people for the right place and give them freedom to perform their duty accurately and properly. And their lies the importance of hiring the proper people.
So, these are in a nutshell a head teacher's task. Well, to get these tasks done, we have to find head teachers with the necessary qualities to make a big difference in countrywide primary education to build a skilled generation who would run the country in future.  Now do you think a person with outstanding qualities would be interested in working for taka 6400 as basic salary with a second class status? How about giving him/her Tk 50,000 per month as gross salary with first class government employee status and facilities, a free accommodation with a full time vehicle and driver? How does it sound? Do you think, if the above facilities are offered, thousands of potential boys and girls would be interested in becoming head teachers of primary school and participate in building a prosperous Bangladesh. I bet, they would. And that can really change the scenario of primary education. Government allocates highest budget for education and they can easily amend the rules to help implement this effective steps. Primary head teachers can be taken through a special BCS. Then automatically millions of fresh graduates would try for this and the best ones can be picked from the huge list. We have to bear in mind that Bangladesh cannot grow horizontal, it has to grow vertical and to grow vertically, we have no alternative but create a well educated and skilled human resources. And there lies the importance of primary schools as well as its head teachers in building the nation. The sooner we realise and implement this, the better. Hope, government would give this a serious thought.
The writer is a teacher-trainer
working on rural education. He was  trained in England on "The aspect of teaching and learning English in the 21st century",  email: ziahasan69@gmail.com