Risks in the general education management: Information-communication aspects of the school principal’s work (on the example of Bashkortostan)

The article considers those management risks faced daily by most heads of Russian general educational organizations which require timely and effective tools for diagnosis, prevention, and elimination. The author emphasizes the increasing complexity of the school principal’s work in contemporary society characterized by rapid and often unpredictable changes in external for the school conditions (regulatory and legislative changes, digitalization boom and widespread use of information-communication technologies, transformation of worldview attitudes and behavioral patterns of younger generations) to explain the need for a comprehensive and systemic approach to identifying risks and preventing their negative consequences, and one element of this approach is sociological monitoring. The article presents the results of the exploratory empirical study conducted among school principals and deputy principals in several districts of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The findings allow the author to draw conclusions about the level of concern of heads of general educational organizations about various types of management risks (based on the author’s typology) in the activities of their schools and to formulate some recommendations for improving risk management at the school level. Today, school principals face a differentiated set of systemic management risks that are closely intertwined and therefore require a comprehensive, multilevel (school – higher-level educational authorities) approach to their diagnosis, prevention and elimination, including in the interests of school administrations’ transition from the currently dominant reactive approach to risk management based solely on formalized tools to a proactive approach incorporating informal decisions and self-governance practices.

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