There is great interest in educational leadership in the early part of the 21st century because of the widespread belief that the quality of leadership makes a significant difference to school and student outcomes. There is also increasing recognition that schools require effective leaders and managers if they are to provide the best po ssible education for their learners. Schools need trained and committed teachers but they, in turn, need the leadership of highly effective principals and support from other senior and middle managers. While the need
for eff ective lead ers is widely acknowledged, there is much less certainty about which leadership behaviours are most likely to produce favourable outcomes.
I examine the theoretic al underpinnings for the fie ld of educational leadership and management, assess different leadership models, and discuss the evidence
of their relative effectiveness in developing successfu l schools.

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Educational leadership and management: theory, policy and practice

I argue that parent participation in SGBs is an important ingredient in building
democracy in the schooling system, as well as in the wider society of South Africa. At some schools in South Africa, parents are not yet playing their full role as governors mandated by legislation. Parents at some rural schools are reluctant to participate in the decision-making by School Governing Bodies (SGBs) as a result of their low educational level or of power struggles in SGBs. In some former model C schools, on the other hand, lack of participation is related to a level of education of parents in general, lack of education on parental involvement in school activities, a fear of ‘academic victimisation' of their children, language barrier, and difficulty in attending meetings. This lack of involvement is at its highest in school governing bodies. It appears therefore that while representation and debate are theoretically open and fair, there are still factors that inhibit SGBs from operating democratically. Although the political control of apartheid has gone, issues related to full democratic participation have not been resolved. South African Journal of Education Vol. 29 (1) 2009: pp. 83-103

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The perceptions of parents of their role in the democratic governance of schools in South Africa: Are they on board?

The South African Schools Act of 1996 (SASA) mandates the establishment of school governing bodies (SGBs), comprising parents, educators and non-educator members of staff. As parents are required to form the majority on an SGB, they have been placed in a powerful position with authority to influence fundamental issues, such as school budget, school and language policy, discipline, and appointment and promotion of teaching and administrative staff. A survey of educators' experiences and perceptions of the role of SGBs, followed by in-depth interviews with selected principals, was undertaken. Findings suggested that educators do not consider their SGBs to be very effective. They support the role of the SGB in learner discipline, but they have reservations about its role in matters of educator misconduct. The role of the SGB in appointing staff is accepted, although educators feel that school governors should be trained for this and all other functions of the SGB. Many educators are concerned that the principal may dominate the SGB. Results further suggested that a purely legalistic approach to dividing the responsibilities of SGBs may not always be helpful and that the emphasis should rather be placed on the constitutional principles for co-operative governance. South African Journal of Education Vol.24(1) 2004: 49-54

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School governing bodies: the experiences of South African educators

This article argues that the work of school principals in South Africa is shaped by two major sets of constructs or ‘landscapes’: the literature on leadership and management which provides particular constructions of the field and its changes; and the terrain of new policy frameworks adopted after apartheid to transform the education system. In terms of the former, the influence of international debates may be seen in South Africa, but these are situated adaptations rather than simple reflections. In terms of the latter, the new policies are underpinned by a tangled network of regulations on governance, labour relations and performance management, which bring complexity to the task of running schools. In addition, the enormous inequalities that continue to exist between schools mean that the work of principals is very different in different contexts. The article argues that a mismatch between the ideal and the actual may impede, rather than assist, attempts to improve schools. In particular, constructions...

Landscapes of Leadership in South African Schools: Mapping the Changes

This paper reviews key documents that have influenced understandings of educational quality in low income countries amongst international agencies concerned and researchers based in Anglophone countries. There is a particular focus on quality as defined with reference to formal primary education. The paper identifies five dimensions of quality that are recurring themes of debate on quality. The literature review remains ‘work in progress’ that will take on board more of the literature and thus develop over a period of time, both feeding into our research programme and being informed by it. The paper starts by differentiating education from schools and argues that any framework to conceptualize educational quality is necessarily value-based. Two broad approaches to understanding quality are then outlined in Part 2 and a selection of key texts reviewed that falls into each approach. The humanist/progressive approach is characterised by a broad concern for the development of the whole child and human development or social change. The second broad approach, the economist approach is largely concerned with efficiency and effectiveness, the achievement of learning outcomes at reasonable cost. Learning outcomes tend to be narrowly defined in terms of cognitive achievement. This approach is identified with the World Bank and two key Bank publications are reviewed. Part 3 summarises the conceptualisation of quality implied in three Education for All documents: the World Declaration on Education for All, the Dakar Framework for Action and the Global Monitoring Report 2005: the Quality Imperative. These are found to take a broad approach to understanding quality that emphasises learning for social development, through the promotion of Life Skills. However, despite setting goals of quality education in terms that embrace a broad range of personal and social learning outcomes, assessment of progress in achieving quality is mainly respected to those cognitive learning outcomes that are easy to measure using pen and paper tests. Part 4 complicates the dichotomous schema used to categorise understandings of educational quality by drawing on Chitty’s three concepts of schooling. These are schooling for human fulfilment, schooling as preparation for the world of work and schooling for social progress or change. In part 5, the authors present five key dimensions to education quality that have emerged from their reading of the literature. The conclusion poses questions raised by these five dimensions for the development of the EdQual programme of research.

Review of the 'international' literature on the concept of quality in education.

School governance reform in post-apartheid South Africa has been used instrumentally to democratise schooling and to calibrate governance functions to accommodate diverse school contexts. Through an analysis of relevant sections in legislation, the author shows how the reform was structured to allow for representative democracy and partnerships. But, drawing on two recent studies, she contends that the governance reforms failed to include measures that prevent a re-enactment of traditional South African power relations of race, class and gender at schools, and apartheid-era inequalities continue to manifest in schools. The author concludes that in general democratic school governing bodies have fallen short of the transformation vision.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3099521.pdf

Jenni Karlsson

Papers

The Role of Democratic Governing Bodies in South African Schools