A Pathology of the Human Resources Management System in the Ministry of Education and Ways to Improve the System (A Quantitative Study)

The present research has endeavored to identify the flaws in the human resource management system in Iran's educational administration and resent suggestions for improvement. Quantitative in nature, this study has taken a descriptive approach regarding its objective while the approach toward data collection has been of the survey kind. Teachers and principals of state-owned schools in the province of Tehran constituted the statistical population, and the sample has been selected by means of random multistage clustered sampling. The system flaws have been identified in four areas – recruitment and securement, training and improvement, maintenance and the deployment of human resources. Thus, exploratory interviews were conducted with experts on Iran’s educational system, and the research questionnaire was devised based on relevant theoretical foundations. For data analysis, LISREL and SPSS software were used, and confirmatory factor analysis and the one-sample T-test were used. The findings indicate that, as seen by teachers and principals, when it comes to retaining staff, the most important flaws occur in the components of salary, benefits and security, while in the domain of training and improvement, performance assessment is the main component, and in the field of deployment, motivation is the main component. Inappropriate indices of ranking and performance assessment, inadequate salaries and benefits compared to other executive branches of the government, the lack of legal support such as civil liability insurance for teachers and the absence of a career path system can be named as some of the flaws.